Unspun

Cakram, the Matari-owned magazine that writes mainly about the advertising industry, but sometimes also on other communications disciplines, last week had their annual awards and named Fortune PR as Cakram’s PR Agency of the year. Unspun is sure it is very well deserved, but is not exactly sure why they won.

Unspun is no stranger to the award because an international PR agency The Alter Ego headed back in the last century won Cakram’s then PR Counsellor of the Year Award for 1998. Those days Cakram had invited agencies to submit entires for the award.

In the past few years, however, Cakram seems to have dispensed with inviting submissions. Ever curious about how things work and the PR industry, Unspun e-mailed Cakram’s editor Gunawan Alif  before the awards ceremony to ask him how Cakram selects the PR  Agency of the Year.  How do they know, if they did not ask for submissions, which PR firm to choose, since the PR industry rarely gets together for a love-in like the advertising industry. Neither are most PR efforts visible to the public.

Gunawan’s answer was graciously cryptic: “Thanks.”

Baffled, Unspun wrote back, saying that was not an answer to the question of how they selected PR firms.

The answer was even more eloquent than the initial one-worded torpedo: total     profound    silence.