THE task of identifying key issues that will affect a company falls on a corporate communicator—an expanded role for what is traditionally attached to a PR communicator.
And in today’s fast-paced environment where information travels faster than ever, corporations are finding that corporate communication is important to both their product marketing and to reengineering their credibility. In big companies, corporate communication assists management in building, monitoring and maintaining its many public relationships.
Businesses today mix marketing and public relations to tell a story in launching new products or help boost sales. It is collectively called 360 communication—a cluster of offerings that help corporations and brands tell a credible story again and again; a means to project key message points that the company wants to get across to target audiences, stakeholders, and the media; and 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.
Communication is power and power is communication. 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 shield 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 communication, 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 PR communication professionals is to help build or rebuild public trust in business via the 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 communication 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 PR communication 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 communication technologies from the traditional media of radio, television, and print to the nontraditional and emerging media.
Companies have integrated corporate communication 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, which can help 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 communication 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 news 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 news conferences they missed, get interview transcripts so they can write their stories, watch the latest on commercials on your products, and share them on social-networking sites.
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 front-line 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 academe, the community, and the government. Maintain good relations with your community and barangay, engage them in various activities and address their concerns.
- Internal communication. Employees are the company’s brand ambassadors and the primary source of information to their friends and relatives. Good internal communication 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 communication umbrella has indeed 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.
Your company, public, competition and communication channels are changing. It’s time that you, as a corporate communication custodian, starts to reinvent yourself. As John Powel declared, “Communication works for those who work at it.”
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the UK-based International Public Relations Association, the world’s premier organization for PR professionals around the world. Bong Osorio is the communications consultant and Spokesman of ABS-CBN Corp.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer our readers’ questions about public relations. Send your questions or comments to askipraphil@gmail.com
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