Swim or sink, for times are a-changing
The task of identifying key issues that will affect a company falls on corporate communicators. And in today’s fast-paced environment where information travels faster than before, corporations are finding that communications are “important to both their product marketing and to re-engineering their credibility.” In multinationals and major companies, corporate communications assist management in building, monitoring, and maintaining its many public relationships. It is a multi-communications services operation. Businesses today mix marketing and public relations to tell a story in launching new products or help boost sales. It is a cluster of communications offerings that help corporations and brands tell a credible story again and again. It is also a means to project key message points that the company wants to get across to target audiences, stakeholders, and the media. And it is an outlook or a way of thinking that gives utmost importance to its power to raise the corporate umbrella and protect the company’s image.
Communications is power and power is communications. When not appropriately used, it can bring problems. As published reports said, US-based energy company Enron projected itself as powerful and successful, but was later exposed as to how it created layers of shell companies to hide its losses. It was also revealed that the company’s accountants at Arthur Andersen knew about the irregularities but did not stop them. Ex-Tyco CEO Dennis Kezlowski misused company funds like throwing a $2 million birthday party for his wife on Sardinia Island in Italy and bought a $6,000 shower curtain allegedly purchased with company funds.
Hundreds of stories were written about celebrity CEO Martha Stewart’s indictment, trial and conviction for lying to federal investigators about a stock sale. British Petroleum was slow in acknowledging the oil spill problem in the gulf of Mexico and did not empathize with those affected by the problem. So when companies misuse communications, companies get burned. Public perceptions of greed and corporate misdeeds are reinforced by unpalatable stories in the media that tarnish corporate reputation. As such, corporations make special efforts to win back public credibility and trust.
One of the roles of corporate communications professionals is to help build or rebuild public trust in business via strategic use of it that is consistent with the company’s umbrella strategy and enhances the strategic positioning of the corporation. This is achieved by using clear and comprehensible messages that are truthful and communicated passionately, repeatedly and unswervingly. One strategy framework is based on the classic communications theory of Laswell — the source-message-channel-receiver (SMCR) or feedback model, wherein corporations send out their messages over the best channels possible to reach their intended publics and evaluate if they have obtained their goals by checking the audience’s response.
How the publics — as represented by the customers, communities, investors, and employees — perceive the company defines a company’s reputation. Corporations realize the importance of maintaining a good corporate citizenship because it has been proven that it attracts top recruits, generates loyalty, allows you to meet defined financial objective, presents fewer risks, gets admiration from your public and achieves higher market assessment and stock prices.
Changes in corporate communications make integration critical as the lives of your publics are fast changing. They are barraged with news and information but have less time and less attention. Reaching them is changing with the evolving information communications technologies from the traditional media of radio, television, and print to the non-traditional and emerging media. Companies have integrated corporate communications in their businesses and the functions have several aspects such as investor relations, public relations, corporate affairs, internal communication, government and community relations. Essentially, there are seven functions in communicating with your target stakeholder groups. Here’s a quick review of what you can do.
• Media relations and monitoring. Reporting by the media is a major source of public information and the public’s perception comes primarily from the mass media. You can get a lot of help in this area if you partner with a monitoring group like MediaBanc, a pan-regional media intelligence company. The group can measure the magnitude of the media coverage about your company versus your competition.
More than just counting the times that your company was mentioned in media, corporate communications people start their day by reading nine broadsheets, 14 tabloids, and several online sites to track issues that may have an impact on the company. Summaries of positive, neutral, and negative impact, reports and write-ups are collated, which are blasted to executives and made available as well to employees who may have a need for them. Monitoring is done daily so that the concerned parties may be able to respond or address the issues, if necessary. To help obtain good media coverage, it is imperative for companies to maintain good media relations. Regular activities to touch base with the media covering your company can sustain the engagement.
• Publicity and promotion. Organize press conferences to launch new products, programs or corporate social responsibility projects. With regularity send out press materials to the traditional media platforms, and, recognizing the importance of new media, build relationships with the bloggers who are on the lookout for content. You can also pitch for special coverage of your corporate events, special features on your executives and personalities in various publications, and column feeds on interesting corporate news and forge print media partnerships for visibility and mileage.
To be in step with development on the online front, launch a social media newsroom, an online site that carries the latest information about the company for journalists and bloggers who can download information anytime, listen to podcasts of presscons they missed, get interview transcripts so they can write their stories, watch the latest on commercials on your products, share them on social networking sites and subscribe to RSS feeds and read them on Flipboard, Google Reader, Taptu, and similar apps. ??Learn the power of social media and the knowledge and skills they bring since it is paramount to being an “in-step” talent. Help your leaders with these new tools, figure out what’s right for them and push them out of their comfort zones. But as you do this, be fairly warned that all the fancy new tools in the world can’t hide bad content. Realize that the concept of social media places a whole new meaning on communications and the Internet. It has given birth to a new breed of Web-savvy corporate communicators who have the opportunity to hold dialogues directly with their clients in niche Web networks.
• Issues and crisis management. Conduct media trainings for your executives on understanding media, messaging, handling media interviews and crisis response planning. Be sure to track issues reported in the media and, if available, monitor feedback to determine if the company is vulnerable on an issue. And when needed, issue a statement to the public through the media.
• Reputation management. Wilcox and Cameron define reputation as the track record of an organization in the public’s mind. Publicize your achievements and awards won, build the credibility of your executives, announce new executive appointments, and share all the good things your company has done.
• Call center operations. Take care of your call center agents who may be handling phone calls 24/7/365. They are your frontline people who may get different kinds of calls. They should be able to engage these callers in meaningful conversations and ensure that they get off the call feeling happy and satisfied.
• Public affairs. Connect your other stakeholders such as those in the academe, the community, and the government. Maintain good relations with your community and barangay, engage them in various activities and address their concerns.
• Internal communications. Employees are the company’s brand ambassadors and the primary source of information to their friends and relatives. Good internal communications can lead to higher employee morale and an increase in productivity. Communicate with your internal publics via a company intranet site, which can report the latest corporate and internal news, features on employees, run promos, upload podcasts and videos to create a virtual community among the employees and, if necessary, across the country and in offices abroad. Expose your employees to your new offerings.
The corporate communications umbrella has become much more expansive and nimble. Its area of discipline cuts across various corporate divisions and requires from communicators a level-up commitment to cover what needs to be covered, and the agility to respond to your target audiences’ stipulations, issues, situations and people. To recap, remember that the public is changing, the competition is changing, the company is changing, and the market is changing. It’s time that you as a corporate communication custodian starts to re-invent yourself. As Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs, “You better start swimming or sink like a stone for the times are a-changing.”
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The above column is the speech of the author to the 5th General Membership Meeting of the Philippine Marketing Association held recently. E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
