Car companies in Middle East cancel PR companies

Although all car companies and importers have an in-house PR and Marketing department, we see many of them engaging an additional PR or Marketing company for doing their PR work, which is originally the homework of the PR manager and his team.

Now, one of these car companies in the Middle East finally saw there is no need in operating two ‘PR departments’ doing the ‘homework’ of their PR manager.

Honda Middle East therefore announced that it is discontinuing the services of U-Communicate, its public relations and events management company so as to be able to avoid any redundancies amongst their own staff.

In a formal communication to the different media and publishing houses Honda ME informed them that it will communicate directly through its in-house communications team to minimize costs, despite being pleased with the services of U-Communicate.

The company's decision will involve all GCC markets, according to Arijit Basu, Assistant General Manager at Honda Middle East. Arijit Basu continued that the company had no major events that required agency support, so there was no point in bearing additional costs.

This is a very smart step of Honda Middle East and we hope many car companies in the Middle East and Egypt will follow Honda’s steps, especially since a lot of PR companies are just not doing their work right while costing their clients huge amounts of PR budget which should be used in a different way. In some cases in the Middle East PR companies proved to be more business-harming than business-helping for the automotive client.

Besides, why does a PR-manager at a car company engage an external PR-company anyway? Do the work he should do himself? Do the work for him that he should have done himself? Well, if that is the case then this PR Manager should either quit his job or the company should kick him out.

In some countries like Egypt some of the PR companies are working as an addition to the car companies own PR department, simply because the owner of the PR company is related to the PR manager or the marketing manager of the car company.

We heard that several other car companies are preparing to cancel their PR contracts with external PR companies because of the current financial and automotive crisis.