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by
Feray Alpay
Promedia Public
Relations Company
 While
the whole world is affected by the economic crisis, what are the
developments within the Turkish PR sector in recent years?
Companies in Turkey
appreciated the magic of public relations in recent years, and began
transferring a part of their advertising budgets to public relations
activities.
Turkish economy achieved the growth of 9.9% in the year 2005. Between the
years 2002-2006 it grew by 7.1% which displays a performance far beyond
the world average.
In the year 2006 Turkish economy reached to 59th place, jumping 12 ranks
in Global Competition Index compared to the year 2005. It was included in
the biggest 21 economy of the world with its volume of 400 billion
dollars. However, estimated to be 60 billion dollars in the world,
turnover of public relation sector is below 100 million dollars. Although
it achieved a growth of 15% in average during 2000's, turnover of public
relations sector in Turkey being so low is due to fact that importance of
public relations is underestimated by the Turkish companies.
Programmed itself to grow on efficiency and higher competition, Turkish
industry and service sector invest increasingly in communication
activities, primarily in advertising. As a natural result of this PR
sector displays an uninterrupted growth at least in terms of turnover for
the last 5 years. In the survey conducted by ICCO covering 22 countries
including Turkey, Turkey became the country with the highest sectoral
income increase compared to the previous year. Turkish public relations
sector displayed an increase of 27% compared to the year 2007. It is
estimated that such increase will continue in the year 2008 as well.
After 2001 financial crisis in Turkey, thousands of media employees were
discharged. In this period many journalists shifted to PR sector,
established their own companies, and began to obtain shares from the cake.
Therefore, the fact that demand for and supply of public relations
services has been increasing in Turkey within the last five years, led to
competition being focused highly on price parameter. While the Public
Relations sector is growing, with the increase in number of players,
profits decreased. Emergence of public relation companies of quality to
pioneer institutionalization of public relations sector in Turkey became
more difficult.
Despite the large scale privatizations and foreign companies' investments
in Turkey, 99% of economic activities are still carried out by SME's which
preserve their quality of family business. Therefore, companies in public
relations field are mainly foreign companies and holdings. Their public
relations activities are seen especially in the sectors of pharmaceutics,
personal care, food, finance, information, recreation and automotive.
Situation of PR agencies providing public relations service in Turkey
conforms to this picture. According to TUHÝD-ÝDA survey, 44% PR agencies
create a turnover over 500 thousand dollars. Only 25% of the agencies can
obtain consultancy income over 500 thousand dollars. 57% of the agencies
have clients less than 10, and they employ 16 people in average. Top
three communication services they provide are media relations, corporate
social responsibility works, public relation for products and brands.
Indeed fields of service in which demand is considered to be increased are
respectively media relations (94%), activity management (74%), corporate
social responsibility works (69%) and product and brand public relations
(66%). In this scene rate of firms of which communication
consultancy income actually exceed USD 1,000,000 is only 14%.
These figures explain us that "PR sector in Turkey obtain their
income mainly from operational PR services they provide to their clients.
Instead of corporate communication consultancy such as reputation
management, perception management, crisis management, they concentrate on
company and product publicity."
This case is due to demand from clients receiving public relations service
in Turkey. Clients place media relations (96.3%) and activity management
(92.6%) in the first two ranks of service they receive, and these are
followed respectively by corporate internal communication (92.6%) —
which
is mainly provided by the companies' own corporate communication
departments — and communication of products and brands (92.5%).
In short, in Turkey it is possible to mention a PR sector led by the
client demands.
Feray Alpay
is a public relations and corporate communications specialist
in Turkey. He has been working as General Manager at
Promedia Public Relations Co. since 1992.
For further information on public relations in Turkey visit
www.promedia.com.tr
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