Raheel Nabi is the Director and Chief Executive at Xenith Public Relations. He is an award-nominated marketing and communications expert, with over 13 years of local and international experience. Raheel has been affiliated with Xenith PR since 2012, re-joining the agency in 2017 as the Chief Disruption Officer. He heads Business Development, Client Relations, and Business Strategy & Expansion efforts for the organization. Prior to his re-joining Xenith, he served as Head of Marketing in a Berlin-based block-chain marketing startup, after his 2-year tenure in the financial industry of Pakistan as a Digital Communications Manager.

Following are the edited excerpts of a conversation BR Research had with him:

BR Research: Let us begin with how corporate marketing and advertising has evolved over the years and especially after the pandemic. And more recently, how has digitization and social media changed the face of PR?

Raheel Nabi: The COVID-19 pandemic was a game changer for our industry overall, it forced a lot of clients and agencies to have a lot of conversations that had been delayed for far too long. Digital (and as a subset, Social) was a big part of this conversation. Today, I am thrilled to see that Digital is a priority for almost all companies in the country, irrespective of their size or industry. This was not the case pre-pandemic, where a lot of legacy companies were resisting the move - either because of a lack of understanding or a lack of visibility on what the medium had to offer. The fact that Digital also offered a tremendous return on investments at fractional costs, greatly helped in growing the industry base a lot over the last few years. Smaller organizations are now more comfortable approaching larger agencies, knowing they will not be turned away because of their budgets anymore. And this is critical, the communications, marketing and advertising industries had been fairly stagnant in their sizes over the years - a jolt like the pandemic helped achieve perhaps what the industry players shy away from: nurturing new customers and clients.

Another impact of the pandemic was showcasing the importance of a company’s brand image and reputation as a key decision driver for consumers in Pakistan. The COVID-19 years showed corporations and companies that “humanity” is a marketable business venture, encouraging everyone to focus more on their social responsibilities and taking an often-neglected area more seriously, as a well thought strategy versus sporadic bursts of activity. Not just that, companies are starting to understand that not all great products are popular, a company’s image and reputation (be it as a corporate entity or showcasing leadership involvement) is a key factor of consideration for their stakeholders now which cannot be kept under wraps anymore.

BRR: What are the key focus areas for Xenith PR?

RB: At Xenith PR, our focus is singular: providing best-in-class multi-channel communications expertise which benefits our clients. How we approach this is via different verticals, starting from Public Relations, to Digital Marketing to Event Management and others, the list of services is pretty exhaustive. But the underlying vision and mission remains the same, no matter what new vertical we plan to go into next: can our services help our clients communicate more effectively with their relevant stakeholder groups? This is the question we ask ourselves every single day.

Xenith PR, being one of the pioneers of the industry, has seen a major transformation over the last few years because of this laser focus of ours. We have grown our offered service portfolio almost 3 times to ensure we can constantly deliver value and results that matter. I am a product of this transformation, taking on the role of the agency’s CEO from its founder, Zainab Ansari.

But looking towards the future, we are now starting to look more actively at how our efforts can help our country and our economy, via our client’s and our own platforms. I feel this is an approach critical for everyone to take on more actively. We cannot sit on the sidelines or in our bubbles anymore. We all have a role to play in this country’s future, and we must step up to the plate now.

BRR: Where does Pakistan stand compared to its peers, and how progressive and advanced is social media marketing in Pakistan?

RB: In a lot of ways, Pakistan is ahead of the curve, while in some areas we are living in a different century altogether. This has a lot to do with our economic environment also, and how risk-friendly or averse the industry is acting at any given time. When you talk about traditional avenues of delivery (be it in print or electronic), the available outlets are regressing instead of growing, due to financial constraints. This has limited avenues greatly for companies in Pakistan, unlike our peers. I can play the glass is half-full card and say this has opened some opportunities also, but the constant race against the clock to innovate for solutions or work-around is time-consuming and resource intensive, which could definitely be better utilized. That said our human resource shines against our peers in the sector. Their approach to problem-solving has single-handedly managed to grow the industry at large, even when tools of the trade have been going through a shrink-phase.

When we talk about social media, however, the situation is almost the exact opposite. The canvas is ever-increasing, and how our people have successfully innovated with the tools available is truly remarkable. Our content-delivery game is at another level. You will see agencies, like ours, delivering constantly great hits - day after day, week after week, consistently. Speed, quality, quantity and an effective use of all available tools - we are far ahead of our peers. It helps that our people are extremely agile and quick on their feet, with greatly honed skills available at any given time of the day. Industries have been transformed overnight because of social media - look at the real-estate sector as an example, or even the automotive & parts markets. TikTok and Instagram Reel formats have taken these industries to a different realm altogether - bringing in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of new customers and clients onto the same page and platform, in industries which weren’t known for their customer-centric approach. And mind you, this is all with the limited tools we have available in our country - a lot of premium features of social channels stay locked for us.

I can sit and argue about which country is outperforming the other all day long, but the underlying fact remains: our people are our greatest asset. Give them the right training, the right tools, and a solid foundation, and they will prove that they are better than anyone they go into competition with.

BRR: What would you say are the general misconceptions around PR and their root causes?

RB: Our biggest challenge is explaining that Public Relations is a long-term game, it is not something that can be conquered overnight.

Consistent consistency is key while one-off ad hoc efforts will never bring any meaningful results. This is one of our Industry’s major challenges: explaining to clients that PR requires a well-thought out strategy, spread over a longer time horizon, to start showing results. Perceptions cannot be made, or changed, for the better in the blink of an eye. It requires a constant push and pull; it requires a proper game plan. A major root cause of this expectation, of an overnight success, is piece-meal information available for clients’ references. As an example, take any leading beverage company or an athletic brand’s PR success story: you will see so many broken-down pieces of information about an individual campaign’s tremendous success, but not the work done for months and years before it to make that campaign happen. It also doesn’t help that PR, and Communications, is not something that is taught very extensively in colleges, or given too much importance in professional training courses, even though it has so much value to offer. Executors, or decision makers, have started expecting the same kind of results from PR practitioners, based on a supremely limited bank of information

All roads and reasons eventually lead to the companies and agencies, including us, working in this space - and our aversion to working together to grow and nurture the industry for the years ahead. It is way overdue for every one of us to get together and look at our challenges collectively, and devise a consensus-based path for our future to expand the size of the pie together.

BRR: What do you think about the E-commerce sector growth and its prospects?

RB: I am a huge fan of our E-Commerce sector overall. The sector has shown tremendous foresight, agility and a laser-focus on problem solving. And in solving the most common problems faced by our consumers, most of the operations have come up with solutions with a global scaling potential. I mean look at solutions which focused on providing cheap public transport, or access to hard-to-reach markets and cottage industries. It is exactly the game-changing we need to uplift our people, particularly those with almost no reach in urban markets.

As a country, we need to nurture E-Commerce operations and provide them with as much support as we possibly can. It has immense potential to be a major export source for us, and we must not let it go to waste or, worse, drive them away. This can very well be our nation’s overnight story of success, and we frankly cannot afford to miss this opportunity.

And I know, we have had some big names and companies go into the dark recently. But compare this to the number of companies that open up every day. We are way ahead of the curve, and we need some major winds in our sails to help us go global. I dream of a thousand Pakistan E-Commerce success stories: made by our people, for our people, and scaled by our people. And I think the time is here for it now, we just need to realize the train is at the station.

BRR: What are your plans for the next couple of years? Any plans to expand?

RB: We have been consistently expanding, albeit silently, over the last few years. This started back in 2019, when I rejoined Xenith as the Chief Disruption Officer, and was given this very mandate. We worked on adding influencer marketing as an independent vertical to our services that year, followed by gearing up our digital and social operations, which was followed up with increasing and improving our events and merchandising division. But our expansions were more internal, they were about adding more systems and services to provide a variety of options to our existing clients. Our focus was entirely on establishing a scaled-up, but reliable base of operations and services first, before we start looking externally. We are ready to grow outwards now. We have been working at a tremendous pace to grow our partnerships around the country and, in tandem, grow our geographical footprint.

But one thing will never change at Xenith, no matter who is steering its helm; that is the agency’s focus on driving results, measurable and quantifiable, to all of our clients - irrespective of their size, industry or budget. I am truly blessed to be affiliated with a company with such a clear, and deep rooted, sense of purpose.