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Neha Mathur Rastogi founded WordsWork – a boutique communications consulting firm specializing in the field of sports, technology and lifestyle public relations (PR) – back in 2009, at a time when sports in India was even more nascent as an industry than it is now.
What began purely as a “business decision” for Ms. Rastogi soon “ended up being a passion-led profession”.
She has seen the media landscape evolve dramatically, from a sedate print paradise to the fast-paced digital behemoth that it is today.
In this exclusive Q&A, Ms Rastogi is candid, conversational, and pragmatic yet optimistic about the transformative power of sports. She provides a nuanced first-hand understanding, diving deep into the world of sports PR in India.
If you are someone who’s always been intrigued by those tasked with communicating the stories of others, then this interview is a must-read for you.
What make sports PR unique and how it has evolved, according to WordsWork founder Neha Mathur Rastogi
1) What led you to start your own sports public relations firm?
It was 13 years ago to be precise. The trigger was that I wanted to start my own public relations company. At that point, you only had really big PR agencies doing "everything" and the whole idea of specialization was a bit new in India. And that’s when the Commonwealth Games happened. I just felt that "hey there’s no one specializing in sports, not that I know of."
2) What got you interested in sports itself? Did you play sports in school?
Actually, no. I was a very extra-curricular driven girl. Yes, I did a bit in sport but I’ve had a very "doctor’s approach" to sport. So even if you have the biggest sporting celebrities in front of me, I have always been very focused on the job to be done.
When I started out [with WordsWork] it was more of a business decision, but it just ended up being a passion-led profession. You grow in love with every single sport you pick up from a communications point of view. Every single athlete that we work with, every single sport that we work with, I think the passion for sport is just growing over time.
3) Coming to subject matter expertise, was lack of familiarity with any particular sport a hindrance initially?
Not at all. It requires a deep dive approach. But, of course, that wasn’t a sustainable approach where I myself deep dive into different sports. So I started partnering with people who have a deep experience in sports.
Typically, a sports journalist fits extremely well for us to work with, or someone who has been completely immersed in content writing in that particular area.
I have never faced any barriers saying "hey, but what’s your experience?" I think experience has led to more experience and gave us that specialization.
4) You’ve worked in public relations across diverse sectors like technology, aviation, corporate and lifestyle/luxury. In comparison, what distinguishes sports public relations work?
The tools remain the same. But the frequency and the utilization of these tools is very different when it comes to sport.
First of all, sport is a weekend activity. It’s not your typical 9-to-5 job, which may be the case in a tech company. There is never a big crisis when it comes to certain other sectors.
In sport, you need to be on your toes, your turnaround needs to be super-quick. The minute a match is over, within half an hour, your release needs to be ready. It needs to be going out across the channels of thousands of people you need to send it to.
Now, thanks to COVID, the media is even more dependent on us because of the bio-bubble situations. They are not sitting there and being able to watch or interview athletes, so I think the role is extremely intense, when it comes to sport. The kind of coverage that we see at the back of the sport is also incredibly rewarding for us.
So, I think the input is intense and the outcome is very rewarding, when you compare it to other sectors.
5) What would you say has been the highlight of your journey so far?
It’s impossible to pick one.
You obviously have your star celebrity moments... So I think it was one event we were doing with the launch of La Liga in India. They had invited Nadal as the chief guest and he was literally standing right in front of me. I never, as a professional, like to say, "Oh you know, [I’m a] fan girl [let me] take a picture." But I just dared to ask him… And he was that much taller than me, and I tapped him saying, "Hey, can I please get a picture with you?" and he did, and I was like, "Okay, this is my fan girl moment"…. I rarely do it but that was the one moment that I recall.
I think professionally also, it’s always very encouraging when you see the scale of the events that you are doing public relations for. When I went for the inaugural session of the Hockey World Cup in 2018 in Bhubaneshwar, I saw the number of people there… It gave me goosebumps! Similarly, with Khelo India, when you go to those big ceremonies where there are thousands of people and you’re communicating on behalf of it… It feels super important and special.
The last one being Olympics… The Olympics that happened last year… To be able to hold that medal in my hand and meet these athletes… It was incredible to be privy to their journey and understand what it took for them to get where they are.
6) Probably no one deserves to tell the 2020 Tokyo Olympic success story more than you, because prior to that, you must have struggled for years to garner media coverage for non-mainstream sports...?
…I can’t tell you! It was such a stark difference from the few months that followed and to everything that lay before those months.
We had media calling off the hook when it came to the Olympics.
It was incredibly rewarding, but also the fact that we knew somewhere at the back of our minds that, "Okay, this is a bubble... It is going to last for a while and we have to make the most of it for the sake of the athletes."
I think more than us deserving to tell that story it was the athletes who deserved that moment. To be able to provide that ‘moment’ to them was incredibly rewarding. I hope it doesn’t go back to square one for most of these athletes, because that would be a lost cause. But I really don’t think so.
I think people have come a long way in recognizing sporting talent beyond cricket, for a change.
7) A lot of the work you’ve done is in non-cricket sports. Do you agree with the criticism that the media covers cricket excessively at the cost of not paying enough attention to other sports?
Yes obviously… I think that’s just a fact being stated.
I’ve been working in sport for 13-14 years… I think only in the last three or four years is when I’ve really started working heavily in cricket. To be honest, cricket doesn’t need the attention; it needs management for sure, but it doesn’t need the attention.
There’s this unsaid mandate that comes through to us: "Okay, I have four pages, two pages are cricket. No questions asked." Then the rest of the two pages are all other sports, out of which a lot of it is international sport, which is somewhat spectator-driven. But then how much space is left for your Indian athlete who is playing other sport?
Now, thanks to things moving to the digital space, at least there’s no excuse of a space constraint, and I feel there are more stories to be told in a more interesting way.
The accessibility that these other [non-cricket] athletes are giving and the positive attitude they are sharing to the media is being noticed, and at some point, they [mainstream media] will realize that there’s so much scope to tell the stories of so many other athletes, and it’s not always the struggle story, let’s be very clear.
Look at the kind of skill & fitness that these other athletes bring to the table. They are of par excellence and they need to be talked about more. But to be honest their stories need to be told in a better way too…and that’s what convinces the media to go beyond cricket.
But it’s an ongoing struggle; we’ve come a long way from where we were and like I said, there are new opportunities with new media, online media like yourselves to be able to tell those stories now.
8) You touched on the positives of new media in helping communicate the stories of athletes from non-cricket sports. But internally, how has WordsWork navigated through these technological and behavioral shifts – from print to digital?
It’s not easy but it’s also a learning process and that’s what keeps it interesting.
Learning is constant in this industry, and adapting to new media is something that we have to do. The story has become more visual and now, more than focusing on the content alone, we need to ideate on what is that "visual media moment" to capture.
It requires a lot more integration with other teams for building those capabilities. Media and digital teams have to work well together to be able to come up with something that makes sense for all.
It needs to be a very integrated approach where the story is from that picture or from that byte. I think just broadbasing it out to being more visually driven and creating those thoughts and moments; it’s actually a very creative process to be able to ideate and come up with those kind of things. So it’s a learning, I feel. We’re skill-building as we go, and as and how the changes happen in the media is how we also adapt to it.
9) Coming to your clientele, broadly, can they be categorized as private leagues, national sports federations, and individual athletes? If so, what are the similarities and differences in terms of managing these clients?
Besides the categories you mentioned, there are also some private entities which may not be in the league format, but they still exist. Like a JSW Sports for example, and from there come the individual athletes as well. There’s a baseline which has a slew of individual athletes as well.
When it comes to Federation-level public relations where you are representing a sport for the country, there’s a lot that needs to happen in parallel. You need to think of all the teams that they represent... Men’s, women’s, seniors, juniors…Figure out the sporting calendar and make sure that there’s something being talked about on a daily basis. So if you are representing the sport, that sport needs to be covered every single day. That is the ask over here. It is quite intensive and you need to be super-organized and in sync with what their sporting calendar is for the year, and add a layer above that, of lifestyle stories, and the human interest stories where you broadbase the audience.
When we look at private entities and private leagues, I think the idea is to structure it out in a really cool way and work on it from a project perspective. There’s a lot of intense work that happens just before the League takes place and during the League itself. During the League, it is more logistics and management and making sure the release goes out in time and gets translated into many languages.
Before the League starts, it’s all about the buildup process. There are certain tent pole things that they do, whether it’s announcing ticketing, sponsors and things like that, or you yourself say, "Okay, this is what it’ll take for you make sure that more people are tuning in and watching or participating in ticketing." So there’s a process to it which is more project-driven when it comes to Leagues.
When it comes to individual athletes, these are more passion projects for us. This is where either the athlete has come directly to us and we do not look at it from a commercial perspective as we would do typically... Or the athlete comes to us through a talent resource like a JSW Sports, for example. So we figure out which athlete needs what kind of approach.
Every athlete has a different approach. We never want to put them outside their comfort zone. So it’s very personality driven. We even conduct media trainings for individual athletes or a group of athletes to make sure that they get up to speed and have that capability to make the best of their relations with the media.
10) You’ve highlighted the three top moments in your career, so the natural corollary to that would be to ask you what has been the most challenging moment so far?
I can go back to our early years, where it was a seasonal profession, and I never thought that through when I started out.
I had about two summers back-to-back where my sports team... We have a team called lifestyle and corporate as well... Had absolutely no work and I didn’t know what to do with them. I had to send them off to these fashion show type of events and they are like, "What are you making us do over here?" I couldn’t help it and I didn’t want to let go of the dream saying ‘okay this may not be viable’. I said, "Okay let’s carry it on, we’ll figure out what we’ll do in the months that there’s absolutely no sporting activity." So that was a bit of an existential crisis which... Touchwood... The industry resolved for us because it grew and evolved from there to be a year-long calendar.
The best outcome I am seeing these days is clients who completely trust us and allow us to storytell the way we feel is fit. We know what the media wants, and we know what the athletes need as well. We just need that trust to be able to have that direct access and get the kind of outcome that we know we can achieve.
11) You mention trust. Recently the YPU Gate scandal broke out. Such situations are closely linked to the work of public relations agencies. So how do you maintain that balance between giving an exclusive opportunity to a journalist while ensuring that everyone has fair access to a particular event or a story?
I think it has to be a very democratic approach. There has to be a lot of respect for the journalist no matter where they are coming from. A lot of young people in the profession have this tendency to "categorize" media and treat them accordingly. I don’t think I’ve ever done that and I think you should never do that.
I would have the same level of respect when I am talking to a journalist from a particular city who is extremely niche, compared to a national editor of a leading daily. This has served us well.
The respect for the journalist needs to be immense. Yes, you have to do exclusives and people need to understand why you are doing those exclusives and then you also need to broadbase it out. So wherever it’s possible, I like to be extremely democratic in our approach towards media, where everyone does get access, and thanks to digital again… It is possible. That press conference which was in one city for 20 people is now available for anyone in the world to see.
When it comes to exclusives, it’s a balanced approach. If I am looking at giving someone an exclusive, it has to be someone who’s really interested in it. I think the clients have also started understanding that "let’s give it to someone who’s really interested in doing this and who’ll be doing a great job with it."
Yes, we come across difficult people, but that’s the case in every single profession. All I’ve noticed is we’ve not had too many tight spots in the last few years [and that's] only because we’ve been extremely respectful and also mindful of not making any false promises.
You have to make sure that the journalist and you are on the same page, on the same side, with the right kind of expectations as well.
12) Entrepreneurship is hard. Perhaps doubly hard if you are a woman, and maybe three times as hard if you are a woman entrepreneur in Indian sports. What has kept you (and WordsWork) going and growing through its 13-year journey?
It’s been a day-to-day process. The reward that the sports industry gives you in terms of outcome in PR is incredible. It’s the best high and that’s what keeps us going.
I’ll be honest with you; I have not faced as many challenges as most people would assume.
Of course, it’s not been easy. I’ve been a working mom. I have two girls and they both were born in the span of these 13 years but not once has a client said, "Oh you have to be on this call, you have to visit this event or…"
I’ve had an incredible team supporting me who completely double down on the stuff that I can’t do. It’s impossible to do it on your own and try to control everything saying, "You know what, it’s my way or the highway." So being extremely open to everyone doing their own thing in the organization and trusting them to do their own thing… That trust and just having that positive environment has really helped [in] this long journey.
Today, if you look at it, yes, it’s been a long journey, but I’ve never felt any sort of resistance to being a woman in sport. In fact it might even play in our favor for all you know. So I would want to encourage more women to get into the industry because though it sounds like a lot of barriers, I just feel that it’s extremely inclusive compared to other industries that I’ve worked in. It’s extremely rewarding as well.
13) What positive change would you like to see within: A) the Indian sporting industry? B) the Public Relations industry generally?
Within the sporting industry, we just need to see sport for what it has a potential to do. It can be a huge space for building inclusion. That inclusion could be across abilities, gender or socio-economic aspects. To use sport for good, in a larger sense, just ticks off two of my biggest passions as of today which are A) A good social impact, and B) Using sport to be able to do that.
People need to give equal attention to all sport, and the entire focus needs to shift to the athlete. So whatever we do, whether that’s the client brief or not, for me, the focus is always the athlete. Are we doing him good? Are we doing her good? Are we doing justice to their story? Are we doing justice to their performance? So that is always going to be my ethical mantra of saying, "Okay, the athlete comes first, the sport comes first and everything else comes after that." So that’s what I’d like to continue doing.
From a public relations industry point of view, I again feel that people need to be more open to inclusion and working together. It’s a fairly competitive space as of now, so we need to change the opinion of PR in the world, which has already come a long way from the fluff aspect or the "last rung of the marketing mix" to being something that’s super-important and on top of everything else.
Public relations is about messaging, it is about actually giving direction to someone’s way of articulating themselves and that, in the true sense of it, has to come first.
I think the biggest problem is the value that PR drives, because at the end of the day, these are articles or stories that come through. So measuring PR has always been a global challenge. But I think the true measure of successes in PR is the kind of consult and counsel that you can offer on the messaging front as well. which people ignore. They are still very driven by outcome. So that balance between input and the kind of consult that you can offer plus the outcome is where that value needs to come through.
Public Relations needs to go beyond media as well. It is all about also building forums for your client to be able to connect to the right people. It may be through media, or not. But can you be that very important person in their entire ecosystem, who knows what they need to do, and how they need to get there. Are they saying something wrong that’s not working for them? So I think that kind of counsel coming through is where the value of the profession will go much beyond where it’s at right now.
14) What is your message to aspiring women professionals looking to enter the sports industry?
I think there is a lot of scope for girls in the sports industry across the board, not just PR but even sports management. There are many aspects to this industry above and beyond being an athlete. If you are interested in sport, interested in this industry, interested even in things like engaging with fans and how to work on those aspects of it, there are just so many things in this industry which are extremely, extremely exciting.
I think anyone who wants a non-9-to-5, non-boring job, who doesn’t want to sit on a desk and wants to be on the run and learn something every single day, then this is a profession for you to consider. This is an industry for you to consider.
