Lagos NIPR Survey: PR Practitioners Optimistic of Pivoting Organizations Back to Profitability Post Covid-19

As the country groans under the weight of the economic challenges necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the public relations practitioners in Nigeria overwhelmingly agreed that their service offerings can bring organizations back to stability and profitability post-pandemic.

This was revealed in a survey commissioned in April 2020 by the Lagos State Chapter; the leading and most populated branch of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the public relations practitioners in the country.

The overwhelming majority of respondents (95.2%) believed the public relations profession is strategically placed as a tool to bring organizations in the public and private sector back to reckoning.

As the scourge is on an upward spiral across the country, public relations practitioners in different organizations are at the frontlines managing their organization’s communication during the crisis. The survey revealed that 60.8% of in-house PR practitioners are leading their organization’s communication, bringing hope and succour to their target audience.

Also, according to the survey, 91.2% of the respondents’ revealed that their organizations do not outsource their communications functions to public relations consultancy. This presents a ready market for consultancies to penetrate and offer unique solutions that may not be handled by in-house practitioners.

However, the revelations from the survey were not all rosy. Public relations consultancies, like any other business entities hit by the economic downturn, are calling on the government for bailouts as their resources cannot last more than two months before their staffs are laid off. Despite the challenges, agencies are of the opinion that their businesses will survive the pandemic.