With the corporate lifespan of a CEO reduced to 3.5 years, the pressure is on for close advisors to demonstrate worth beyond the cloistered confines of the Board room and into the darker recesses of the business. For decades, communication and PR professionals have fought for their place at the Board, garnering trust and necessarily close rapport with their CEOs. Rightly so. It is a place I defended rigorously during my career as a Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 corporate communications director.

However, a precarious situation arises in that intimate rapport between a senior communicator and their CEO as career fortunes become intertwined; the term departure of a CEO can mean the shunning and corporate isolation, if not sometimes dismissal, of a communications chief for no apparent reason other than their perceived over-association with the 'ancien régime'. Unfair, yes. But internal perception often prevails over business logic.

Yet bright prospects beckon. With PR professionals placed fortuitously at the ever-narrowing intersection between traditional and emergent social media, and with an increasingly volatile issues and advocacy environment that business must contend with, stars in the communications industry may be re-aligning.

In true Darwinian style, those PR agencies and individuals who flex, who broaden their skills, who actively apply their accumulated past wisdom and sate their knowledge are those most likely to outlive the short CEO life-cycle; those least disposed to change simply risk dropping out of the PR gene pool altogether.

So, with market turbulence still in prospect, what are the key attributes that will determine survival of the fittest among in-house PR executives - and agencies?

This summer, we advised Dr. John A. Caslione on the launch of his business book, 'Chaotics', written in association with global marketing guru Philip Kotler. Their case study based premise is that an era of turbulence, with chaos, risk and uncertainty, will characterize the future business landscape. Corporate communicators will correspondingly need to fine-tune their agility, composure and strength in handling the 'material' issues facing industry. Acquisitions, divestments, increased activism and the need for ever broader community engagement will test the commercial, leadership and predictive strengths of the communicator charged with bringing the outside world in to corporate strategy.

A contributive understanding of what constitutes good corporate governance, an acquired intuitive sense of consequences of corporate action, of the process and rules of engagement in exchanging meaningful dialogue with mobilising influencers are essential in this recession and post-recession environment. It will force supreme skills in building collaborative networks, in leadership and tactical diplomacy.

Communicators will need to emerge as a new breed of innovator, leading organisations through new social pathways.Too many still underestimate the need to upskill beyond their traditional media understanding. But arguably the train is already leaving the station: Twitter is establishing itself as potent social media platform among Fortune 100s and over 61 Fortune 500 CEOs are penning blogs.

Attributes such as penetrative media contacts, razor-sharp written and verbal communication skills, a motivational presence and an aesthetic eye will no longer stand out as key differentiators. In Maslow's terms, these once-lauded skills have become simple hygiene factors, though they certainly credit the evolution of the PR industry thus far. Foresight and ongoing evolution are necessary here.

For communication agencies, acquiring in-house levels of client and commercial insight will be essential. It is where I have found my reverse transition from in-house to consultancy extremely valuable. De-layering, driving economy, transparency and accountability will remain essential in these straitened times. Breaking down protectionism and forging strategic partnerships with social media, marketing and technology companies will drive integrated client solutions. Out-sourcing specialist skills and improving the short-term project offering will enhance agility.

For organisations, only those willing to attract and empower strong communications talent will see their own prospects transform, whilst resistant ones will certainly continue to require application of the communicator's more traditional powers; those of persuasion, endurance - and staunch optimism!

Labels: business, Change management, Chaotics, John A. Caslione, management, Maslow, Philip Kotler, PR, reputation, Twitter

With the OECD's Interim Economic Outlook published just last week, this has been a good time for many state officials around the world to declare visions of "green shoots" of economic recovery. Indeed Japan, France and Germany were reported officially out of recession (if you consider at least two quarters of positive domestic growth as an indicator).

If you are a British Member of Parliament, however, such an early prognosis may condemn you to Whitehall's wasteland and a very public drubbing along the lines of that received by Business Minister, Baroness Vadera, when she dared allude to prospects of an UK economic revival earlier this year.

No. For the moment at least, British MPs - and Labour pundits in particular -  are well advised to keep stumm as the country lags the overall economic trend, notwithstanding tentative signs of UK manufacturing recovery (the strongest growth in three years during July.) Whether Prime Minister Gordon Brown's address this Tuesday to the annual Trade Union Congress will raise the embargo - and thwart David Cameron's electoral ambitions in the process - remains to be seen.

This restrained approach must not, however, be aped by commercial enterprise. Just as contingency planning is necessary in advance of an imagined crisis, organizations need more than ever to anticipate and embrace the notion of resumed corporate success - even if it currently seems to be doomed prophecy. For this is not the time for bears in the boardroom if companies are to muscle their way out of the curve and seize early competitive advantage (a philosophy echoed by corporate strategy guru, Philip Kotler and CEO Dr. John A. Caslione in their latest book, 'Chaotics', whose UK launch strategy we recently advised).

Nor, must I say, is it the time for organisations to cut their communications talent. While CEOs and senior leadership teams may be bunkered down in their war rooms, good PR professionals* - in-house or agency - are those supremely qualified and adept at raising a head above the parapet, at sounding the marketplace, at taking a long-view of horizon opportunities and shaping a more bulllish internal culture to evolve corporate success.

In an earlier blog, 'The Client Brief: When PR Agencies Fail', I mentioned that strong PR advisors would tease out the essence of what makes a company viable for the future and build strategies to create subtantial corporate reputation and growth. Certainly CEOs should already be asking themselves the following questions with trusted, seasoned PR/communication advisors driving answers in a way that builds a future corporate mission that is transformative, perhaps even revolutionary, in helping an organization re-launch itself into a deeply altered landscape.

These, then, are my top 10 questions for the current climate - in no particular order and by no means definitive:

1. Learning
"What learnings - or "gems" - have we taken from being forced from our comfort zone? (What worked? What failed? What mattered to the marketplace?)

2. Innovation
Are we embedding those "gems" throughout our product service offering, talent recruitment/retention, issues intelligence and control, corporate language? (What will be the timeline and specific action points to do so?)

3. Skills
Have we upgraded our skills to achieve more with less (for our clients/customers/shoppers/users?)

4. Proximity
Have we reinvigorated our public/social and internal employee networks?

5. Dialogue
Have we evolved our understanding of, and outreach through, their connection channels? (have we clarified internal roles/responsibilities and protocols?)

6. Competitivity
How will we organise our infrastructure and processes to secure and maintain future USP innovation and agility?

7. Value
How will we (re)structure to make our client/customer value sustainable - and understood?

8. Feedback
How will we capture and feed client/customer/public/regulatory trends and response into our continuous improvement?

9. Relevance
Is our current business model still relevant to achieve all of the above - sustainably?

10. Vision
What does success look like and how will we measure it/drive accountability?

Just as slowly as doors to opportunity open, so too can they slam shut, leaving many institutions - and their consultants - on the outside if questions about the company's future shape and role are not aired in a frank, timely and trusting environment.This is where robust, proactive PR counsel matters.

We'd be very interested in hearing whether the current climate and prospects are re-shaping the way your are interrogating your business. Or that of your clients. Please do post your insights which we always enjoy reading!


Image thanks to kind contribution by Alex Nolasco http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandernolasco/382374166/

Labels: Baroness Vadera, business, CEOs, Chaotics, David Cameron, economy, Gordon Brown, John A. Caslione, marketing, OECD, Philip Kotler, politics, PR, recession., reputation, TUC

Tonight I have committed a gross, some might even say indecent act of modern communications heresy: I have deactivated my Facebook account. It was an impulsive move and one that had to be made with a sharp intake of breath, eyes shut tight with immutable dam buster spirit. Like jumping into a plunge pool of ice water, best not to think too long about it before reason prevails and forces a re-think.

In the two hours since, I have vacillated between feelings of great liberation and a gnawing doubt that I may have consigned myself somewhat rashly to the community of laggards who either fear, reject or simply cannot get to grips with emerging and evolving technology. Will I be doomed to social - and familial - obscurity? Should I even be confessing my sin to a broader, professional public who may consider my move an indictment of my proclaimed aptitude in online reputation management? By shutting down such a pioneering dialogue channel, am I in fact kicking my own professional credibility and reputation into the long grass?

In the hot forge of my decision this evening, I am writing this blog because I need to capture the raw intuition behind my decision making along with something that, I believe, passes for a rationale.

In an earlier blog, "Time to Write Off Twitter?", I was very clear about the role Facebook plays in my own social/networking mix. Unlike Linked In and Twitter, to which I remain absolutely committed on a professional level, Facebook for me was always a 'closed community' deal. One that had strict admittance criteria for close friends and family only; a forum for domestic and trivial news share that I was always very comfortable to segregate from the more academic business exchanges I've contributed to, and profited from, through my Linked In and Twitter accounts.

Facebook is an amazingly colourful, engaging tool that I have a lot of warmth for. I know I shall miss it deeply. The applications are ingenious to bring laughter, insight and collaboration into one's personal relationships. Yet, ironically, my growing sense has been that the quality of those relationships may actually be falling victim to that ingenuity.

It just seems that the more time spent with family and friends on Facebook is less time spent on human - yes, dare I say, telephone - conversation. For this is the added brilliance of Facebook. The instant text messaging facility is just so easy! And compelling. Though not confining you to a mere 140 characters, it does mean your real-time "conversations" are so much more to the point; text messaging forces conciseness. By its clinical nature, it cuts down the more fallible nature of human discourse: emotion, innuendo, political sniping. It lends a more objective, less risk-laden and therefore, I suppose, innocuous form of discussion. It's an ideal channel for those wishing to avoid the intricacies of complex humanity and family ties.

The visit today of a close friend, whom I have not seen for a long while, threw into stark relief the sense of how much I value human interaction; of how much of it was moving away as our collective addiction to Facebook text-chatter intensifies. I'm reminded, in my brutal decision this evening, that I will never escape my nature. I'm a humanist, a communicator. Words, expression, nuance have always been the make-up of my character as well as the tools of my trade - whether I've been aware of this fact up until this point, or not.

I have always been interested in human 'presence' and reaction and know from experience that reading faces, listening to tone beyond words and pure, personal chemistry form the most powerful basis for collaborative and gratifying relationships. Tonight I realized these cannot be sustained by Facebook alone.

Labels: Facebook, Linked In, PR, reputation, social media, Twitter

In my last blog, I outlined the reasons why so many agencies fail to deliver against client briefs. One of my esteemed associates suggested that I focus this month on what a client brief should include, given that I profess a robust brief to be the foundation to building solid PR programmes - and to recruiting the right agency talent.

My thoughts may not be all-encompassing and I recognize that a degree of tailoring is always necessary. In essence, however, I have 3 guiding principles in setting up a good brief:

1. CONFIDENTIALITY: No brief must ever be submitted to any outside service provider without a legally endorsed NDA (non-disclosure agreement). I am happy to provide an example of this.
2. INTEGRITY: Extreme care must be taken not to include material of a financially sensitive nature (always worth running a brief past the IR team). An equal amount of care must be taken not to 'spin' content. The brief is not a PR document, but a frank and honest review of the company's opportunities and issues to build robust PR response.
3. RELEVANCE: The brief should be geared towards framing the issues and opportunities that the agency can be expected realistically to support. This demands that clients have given first thought to what their marketing/agency expectations are and that they understand what peripheral information is important in helping agencies better understand the company and climate in which they'll be expected to operate.
   

For me, word count does not matter. Content does. And this, in my view, is what a good agency brief should include:

1) The Corporate Story
This section must give as much flavour about the dimension, character, values and principles of an organisation to help PR agency familiarisation but also to aid external corporate positioning.

• What is the company provenance/history and track record?
• What have its milestone achievements been?
• What are its stated mission, vision, values?
• What are its key metrics (financial/geographic) and growth ambitions?
• Is it a market leader or challenger?...
• ... And how does it shape and execute that role?
  
• What characterizes the company's leadership and internal culture?
• What is its business model and structure?
• What are the company's issues and crisis alert procedures?
  

2) The Trading Environment
Here follows an analysis of the company's trading prospects and opportunities, coupled with a realistic analysis of the marketplace threats/issues that the agency may be required to take into account as it develops PR plans.

• Who is the competition?
• What is driving their strategy against the company?
• Which media channels do they exploit?
  
• What is the company's relative performance?
• What is the company's market differential (eg. technology, innovation, commercial)
• Where are the trading threats - and opportunities?
• What are the regulatory barriers? How are these being addressed?
  
• How does the company plan to raise future market entry barriers?...
• ...Or exploit current market conditions?
• What is the company's product/service roadmap?
  
• What key sales and marketing initiatives are planned over the next year to drive growth?

3) The Market Environment
This section begins to deal directly with the company's public outreach strategy and begins to provide insight into the more direct role a PR agency can be expected to play in support.

• Who is the company trying to reach?
  
• How are these audiences segmented?
• What is the current company proposition/message to these audiences?
• What motivates and characterises the target consumer/purchaser/specifier groups?
• Which (online and offline) media channels most influence these groups?
• Which other organisations (NGOs etc) also influence purchase decision?
• What impact have these media/groups had?
• What have been the company's past, public issues? Were they resolved?
  
• Which marketing/corporate outreach initiatives have seen most success?
• Where has the company failed to reach/penetrate its markets?
• What are the company's key marketing objectives over the next 1-5 years?
  

4) The Internal Community
This section recognizes the interdependencies between external and internal communications planning and focuses on how the internal corporate culture can impact or promote external PR success.

• How many employees are located across the company?
• What are current employee engagement strategies/dialogue channels?...
• ...How effective are they?
• What is the employee retention record?
• What are the outcomes of any employee surveys? What are the key issues?
  
• Are any major corporate restructuring initiatives planned?
• How is internal and external communications structured?
• Who are the key spokespeople/external ambassadors?...
  
• ... How competent or well equipped are they?

5) PR Agency Objectives
This section deals with the very specific company requirements of the PR agency and should relate clearly to the above company analysis. It should form the basis of the final agency quote and be embedded within subsequent contractual obligations. For example:

• What credentials (skills, experience, specialism, contacts) must the agency demonstrate?
• Which geographies will they serve?
• What will be their messaging and corporate positioning contribution?
• What strategic market/PR/media insight should the agency contribute?
• Which markets/audiences should the PR agency engage?
  
• What (online/offline) influencer programmes should the agency deliver?
• How must the agency integrate with the business?
• How should the agency evolve its client PR skills?
• How will success be measured? What are the key performance metrics?
  
• What is the budget?
• How will the agency ensure transparency against spend?
• How will they report (to whom, by which method, with which frequency)?

A good client brief is the precursor to any agency pitch and final selection; it sets clear client-agency expectations and is integral to final contractual obligations; it is the reference against which ongoing agency performance can be objectively measured and reviewed.

A good agency, as I mentioned in my last post, will engage with this brief, may challenge it and generate value-adding discussion to help move the company forward in its thinking.

My passion for a good client brief stems from the conviction that, without a brief, there is no performance. And without performance, the communications role will never be viewed as a robust, commercially-minded and trusted entity within an organisation. It is ultimately, therefore, a tool of professional - and personal - credibility.

(With our FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 in-company credentials, we have vast experience in setting up client briefs, including agency performance goals and metrics, as part of any PR agency recruitment or performance evaluation process. Contact us if you would like to learn more).

Labels: business, managerial, marketing, PR, reputation

I've been reminded recently that some things, like men, can't change; nor should they. I'm convinced that as a British nation, decades from now, we'll still be bemoaning our relatively high rates of teenage pregnancy, our innate propensity to binge-drink and our ongoing addiction to working the longest hours in Europe (it is gone midnight as I post this). Aspects of our cultural reputation overseas are, let's face it, not brilliant.

However, just as putting London's Lord Mayor, Boris Johnson, in a suit fails to elevate him beyond the bumbling oaf he resembles (an opinion re-affirmed during my observations of him at the Beijing Olympics), so dressing things up to make them appear anything other than what they truly are is my top PR hate. It's called 'spin'.

Building positive perception of what exists, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter (and challenging for me, I confess, where Boris Johnson is concerned). But where does that leave a common PR calling to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? Well, best look at what you have - a pig. Not everyone knows that they are one of the cleanest, most intelligent animals that exists. Perhaps they should be told.

So, as I sat recently sipping on a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and observing the pristine shop facades and drift of the well-heeled townsfolk of genteel Royal Windsor, I couldn't help but smirk at the 'little green man' on the main pedestrian crossing. Wrongly installed, he lit up all askew with his nose pointing to the ground and arms up-turned, making like one of the many Heathrow-bound aeroplanes flying overhead.

Did I blame shoddy British workmanship and our confounding ability, always, to ruin the aesthetics of our surroundings? The regimented part of my German psyche certainly did! Compensated simultaneously by the sardonic and very English pleasure I took in seeing such jaunty irreverance amidst such an 'establishment' backdrop.

That momentary shift in my perception will keep me entertained for a fair while yet as I reflect that some things, however irritating, are best left unchanged whilst we figure out how to more positively alter the way we perceive them.

Labels: culture, Perception, PR