We communicate when we hear

The Anvil Awards, considered the Oscars of the public relations industry in the country, staged its 49th awards night last Feb. 26 in the ballroom of Solaire Resort and Casino. A distinguished panel of industry practitioners, media personalities and academicians chose the winners in both the PR programs and PR tools categories. I was the chairman of this year’s Anvil Awards committee and the newly inducted president of the Public Relations of the Philippines (PRSP) for 2014. With the permission of my editor, I would like to share with Philippine STAR readers the text of the speech I delivered at that event.

An English statesman and essayist, Sir William Temple, once said, “The first ingredient in conversation is truth: the next is good sense; the third, good humor; and the fourth, wit.” The truth is, tonight we are collectively honoring 107 winners from both the PR programs and PR tools categories — 34 excellence awards, 73 merit awards, two Bronze Anvils and one Grand Anvil.  It was our good sense to have Archbishop Socrates Villegas, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to be chair of the Anvil Jurors.

Unfortunately, he can’t join us tonight because of some urgent Church concerns in Pangasinan that he has to personally attend to. Nonetheless, our gratitude goes to Father Soc on behalf of the Public Relations Society of the Philippines. And thank you, too, to this year’s Anvil jurors co-chair Eugenio Villareal, Jr., chairman of the Movie Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) and our distinguished jurors.

The humor side of our event is — yes — some of us will receive a piece of wood with a heavy metal plate on top.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Anvil — a “basic tool, a block with a hard surface on which another object is struck. The block is as massive as it is practical, because the higher the inertia of the anvil, the more efficiently it causes the energy of the striking tool to be transferred to the work piece. In most cases the anvil is used as a forging tool.”  Some would ask, “What’s an anvil?” Some would answer, it’s just another trophy.  But we in PRSP would say it is the sum total of excellence and quality in communications. 

The Anvil is PRSP’s grail.  And a Grand Anvil is like the phrase “primus interpares,” or first among equals, and if you are in the Hall of Fame, the value added proposition to the company increases more than tenfold. Just like the anvil, PR is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.  In its barest essential, it is, as a communication process, one that is strategic in nature and emphasizing mutually beneficial relationships.

In this definition, “process” is preferable to “management function,” which can evoke ideas of control and top-down, one-way communication.  And “relationships” speaks about PR’s role in helping bring together organizations and individuals with their key stakeholders. “Publics” is preferable to “stakeholders,” as the former relates to the very “public” nature of PR, whereas “stakeholders” has connotations of publicly traded companies.  The anvil forges.  It molds as hammer strikes metal, just like PRSP.

A corporate leader once said, “If reputation is not everything, it’s the closest thing to it.” How a company is perceived — whether the company is trustworthy or not, easy to do business with or not, well managed or not, a good investment or not, a good corporate citizen or not. Indeed, it affects business success — or failure. This year’s Anvil winners make us appreciate the important role of PR in business and communications even more. Here are some takeaways from the judging process:

• Public opinion or image is a powerful force that impacts the earnings of corporations through their actions.

• Image is gained by what one does, and not by what one says.

• PR is used to address several broad objectives including: building product awareness; creating interest; providing information; stimulating demand and reinforcing the brand. PR wields the baton for a symphony to play excellent music.

• Those PR objectives can be achieved at a low cost when compared to other communication efforts.

• The impact of PR is multifaceted. It offers several advantages not found with other communications options. It is a highly credible form of promotion that exposes our target publics to more detailed information than what they receive with other forms of promotion.

Now is the era of wired communicators who know how to engage, are adaptable, can interact with leadership, can talk the management’s talk, introduce the business side of social media and align digital media to company goals, and find an existing executive advocate. This year, the number of digital-based Anvil entries has grown. And we see this growing more in the coming years.

PR is all about “great performance that brings great results” — a solid principle anchored on the view that delivering on a promise will yield better market sales and shares, customer loyalty, and distinctive reputation.

PRSP, as a professional association, has a unique role in instilling ethical norms and standards of practice in PR.  We cut across corporations, public interests, politics and civil society. Last Feb. 18, PRSP had a fellowship night to celebrate the society’s 57th. During that event, I asked: “What is your idea of an authentic professional organization?” And here is where the wit comes in.   In PRSP, six real principles resonate. They are largely inspired by Rob Goffee’s and Gareth Jones’ research as published in the Harvard Business Review. And they can be captured in the handy mnemonic DREAMS: Difference, Radical transparency, Extra value, Authenticity, Meaning and Simple rules.

With PR, creativity is a key index of performance. It increases with diversity and declines with conformity. With PRSP, we all learn from our “differences” and we experience fun in our diversity. With PR, “radical transparency” is becoming the new norm, and in PRSP, communications among us is the rule of thumb. We are all communicators. We have to practice what we preach. We have to walk our talk. We have to connect… connect… connect.  With PR, there is “extra value” and with PRSP there are value-added propositions anchored on development initiatives and informal exchanges of ideas through our annual activities. Using the anvil, therefore, PRSP envisions a credible organization where the society’s identity is consistently rooted in its history — all 57 years. Members demonstrate the values society espouses. And the leaders are themselves “authentic.”

We must continually engage with our publics via the three Cs: Connections (how a member’s work connects to other members), Community (how the PRSP promotes a sense of belonging, which has become increasingly difficult in a mobile world), and Cause (how PRSP contributes to a longer-term goal as well as to nation building). Finally, the organization of our dreams is not an organization without rules; it is, in fact, a rules-based society that makes sense to members who follow them — a much larger challenge, with a far greater payoff.

PR communication in the age of real-time news has truly become even more challenging. Today your brand can be an instant international sensation or a damaged personality depending on how your brand is played out in the online world. Indeed, in an “anybody-can-write-a-blog” environment exemplified by YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, our brand can either be a high-kicking property or “dead meat” based on how we use the power of communication in an intensified, toxic environment.

The commercial environment is changing fast. The breadth of these changes affects many companies — from the emergent role of media to the morphing nature of content and the access through which corporate and brand messages are delivered. In such a milieu, the challenges for PR communications professionals is to adapt to these changes as quickly as they occur, keeping customers and other publics engaged and motivated while adding an ever-expanding list of skills, tools and resources to our toolkits.

Our call to action given this milieu is to constantly listen, because we communicate when we hear. We have to continue to look and aim for excellence in all the things we do in communications. For PRSP, all Anvil entries are already victors.  They are now among the million bursts of light on the horizon that sets the norm.  Congratulations to all the winners.

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Email bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.