JEDDAH, 4 June 2007 -- Creating value through communication is the avowed objective of a new media consultancy company formed by three business partners.

Public relations management, strategic internal communications, media evaluation and cross-cultural communications are the areas each partner of the new 'forward-thinking' Effective Communications has specialized in.

"We are a young and evolving company and our greatest asset is the people who work within," Saleh Abdullah Badruddin, managing partner of Effective Communications, told Arab News in an interview at his Al-Hamad Center office on Rawdah Street.

A distinguishing feature of the new company is that its team works closely with its clients and uses a range of processes to deliver outputs that helps them take informed decisions and assist them in developing the right project for their needs.

"Through a structured PR program and with minimal effort on an organization's part, we can raise its profile in the media and enable it to gain the best possible exposure for the right reasons leading to greater public awareness, which in turn leads to increased business opportunities," said Badruddin, 39, who has spent 25 years in the United States and Europe.

"As a child, I was with my parents in Los Angeles where I was exposed to movies and media. I have since been obsessed with communication," said Badruddin, who studied mass communications and films. He worked with a TV company in England for some years.

He nurtured the idea of establishing a communications company, which has become a reality now, much after he returned to the Kingdom in 1995 and worked with a national bank as head of its internal communications function for almost 10 years.

The company provides organizations with flexible, professional PR and media support as and when they require it. "We identify positive publicity ideas, write and issue media releases, organize and conduct media events and media conferences, plan and stage publicity attracting events, produce corporate newspapers and newsletters, and handle crisis PR," he said.

Badruddin said media evaluation research provides measurement and analysis for media advertising, PR and marketing communications. "We are a full service local media and PR measurement provider, from media auditing, monitoring to brand and reputation research," he said, adding that the company adds insight and clarity to media and PR measurement used by the advertising and PR industry, enabling them with genuine data-driven PR solutions. "We are genuinely passionate about the research we do and the vital role it plays," he said.

Event management and strategic internal communications are among its other activities. Their expertise in internal communications can help an organization communicate more effectively to its employees and its vision, values, and business objectives.

Through a structured communications strategy, an organization will be able to inform, persuade, educate and create awareness among its employees about what they need to know and do their jobs better. With cross-cultural communications, it tries to bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication. "Its core is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other. It is also committed to produce some guidelines with which people from different cultures can better communicate with each other.

"Our expertise can help multinational companies in building communication strategies with their cross-cultural international business," he said.

The company developed a "GCC Financial Services Guide" after it carried out extensive research and studies among some of the major financial firms in the region. The guide serves both end-users and the participating financial institutions in the form of a publication and a dedicated website. The guide also promotes all the central banks within each of the GCC countries highlighting their role, policies and procedures.

"We are eying both national and multinational companies to provide effective communication with our know-how and effective tools, for by helping them succeed, we succeed," he said.

By K.S. Ramkumar

© Arab News 2007