This blog is part of our Building a Global Mindset series to help communicators increase their own cultural awareness and global perspective.

CEC members often talk about the challenges with communications strategies in China – anything ranging from understanding the culture, to working with local agencies to identifying the influential media players, to building the company brand in the market. This interest in China is hardly a surprise as many companies either operate there already and are learning from their mistakes, or are considering entering emerging markets for new sources of growth (and especially China, which is the fastest growing among them, and one of the most important global economies at the moment).

China remains a challenging environment to do business in for many western companies, as Chinese culture and the socio-political nuances of the country are very different from home markets. Arguably, the Chinese PR landscape is one of the trickiest aspects for a communicator. As part of CEC’s A Communicator’s Guide to China, we looked at some of the key trends in the PR industry there, including: Read More »

One of the key activities for communicators in terms of reputation building is stakeholder engagement. Members tell us that they focus heavily on stakeholder engagement activities and are trying to be smarter about it – prioritizing key, influential stakeholders and keeping a pulse on what they are saying about the company. These activities involve not only monitoring for risks and potential issues, but also take the shape of more proactive engagement through thought leadership events, engaging and meeting with industry leaders, and promoting good corporate citizenship efforts.

Currently, most stakeholder engagement is focused around reputation risk management and justifying or positively reinforcing existing reputation activities. Some of the ways in which communicators manage reputation with stakeholders include:

• Stakeholder mapping and monitoring: this involves keeping a pulse on what stakeholders are saying about you, so that you may identify and preempt potential risks. Think of this one as good “housekeeping” to prevent issues or crises from rising. For example, Monsanto utilizes stakeholder-centric monitoring to prioritize issues for specific stakeholder groups. Other companies identify and prioritize reputation risks by mapping “degree of sensitivity to issue” against “strength of company position.”
• Stakeholder conversations and thought leadership: more proactively, communicators identify influencers and discuss issues of concern with them to establish the company as a thought leader in the industry. This is in addition to other thought leadership and executive communications programs. Chevron for example, holds thought leadership stakeholder discussions on important issues to the company.

These tactics are great if you, the Communications team, were the only ones engaging with stakeholders! But more and more it is your business partners and employees who have more frequent interactions with stakeholders.  Adding additional pressure is the fact that the external environment is becoming increasingly complex as stakeholders become more resourceful about how they access information and form perceptions about you.

The problem is that business partners and employees don’t necessarily know all the risks to reputation as they are having conversations with stakeholders, and won’t think through those interactions as strategically as communicators do. Read More »

Are you in Media Relations? Do you write news releases on behalf of your company? Recently, we spoke to your peers to discuss two major changes to the external environment in which we operate, and what those changes mean for how we write the traditional news release:

1. Traditional media (journalists/reporters) are busier than ever before. Their teams are smaller, their jobs are broader, and they have less time to recraft corporate stories.
2. The visibility of news means that journalists are no longer the sole audience for our releases.

Although I highly doubt that these facts will be news to many people, based on my conversations, it seems that very few media relations folks have substantially changed how they write news releases, or adapted them to reflect these changes.

Doesn’t this seem strange to you? Read More »

Managing stakeholder perceptions has always been challenging, but given the growing complexity of the current communications environment, it can often feel like an insurmountable task.  Think about it — as our companies’ business operations continue to change, our customers, employees, and external partners are all becoming far more diverse than ever before.  At the same time, the channels and sources that these stakeholder groups use to consume information continues to evolve.  It’s no wonder that a recent CEC poll Heads of Communications revealed that proactive reputation management was the 2^nd overall priority for 2012, only two percentage points behind employee engagement efforts.

Given the need to address this important topic, the CEC recently launched its next major research initiative —Building an Outcomes-Focused Reputation.  As part of the study we’ve already spoken with communications executives at several dozen leading organizations to better understand the challenges that they are facing in managing stakeholder perceptions as well as the tactics they use to measure, monitor, and improve and their corporate reputations. (Take our 2 minute Quick Poll and tell us what you’re doing to manage your reputation!)

Current Approach:

Faced with increased stakeholder scrutiny and fickle audiences, most companies are focusing on building their company’s reputation by turning up the volume on positive messages related to their organization.  Read More »

I spent a little time recently looking back at some old news releases, to see what has changed over the years and how they’ve adapted. I stumbled across one from the 1950s that covered the launch of four new products which must have been very cool in their day – one of which was the first ever electronic typewriter! It’s fascinating to look back on. I wonder if anyone in the mid-1950s could have guessed at how the typewriter would one day be outstripped by computers, tablets, and smartphones, and most of all, by the notion of linking those devices together via the World Wide Web?

Starting Strongly

What really struck me, though, was its opening line:

“Four revolutionary new products to accelerate the trend towards office and plant automation…”.

It’s true – with the benefit of hindsight, products like the typewriter were revolutionary. Interestingly, this is still a commonly used opener in press releases today – the only problem is, these days every company claims their latest product is revolutionary/spectacular/groundbreaking/earth-shattering… from a journalist/stakeholder perspective, I wonder how often they’ve heard those lines and simply zoned out?

Look at the difference between that opening line from 1956 “we’ve just created four revolutionary products”, and this present-day example from HSBC, in which they announce results from recent consumer surveys looking at “The Future of Retirement”. HSBC’s opening line is this: Read More »

Building a Bank of Goodwill

Financial advisers often emphasize the importance of building a personal emergency fund.  What they’re referring to is a rainy day fund, consisting of a certain amount of money (e.g., 8 month’s salary) which can be drawn down during tough financial times.  Should you lose your job or get slapped with an unexpected major expense, you could rely on these savings to help you weather the financial storm.

In the communications world, a similar concept exists with regard to an organization’s reputation — this is the concept of the “bank of goodwill”.  Much like your rainy day fund, the idea behind the bank of goodwill is that companies can stockpile their reputation assets when times are good and lean on them as a buffer from negative stakeholder perceptions when times turn bad.

On its surface, the concept seems plausible.  After all, in the financial savings example, few would argue that having extra money in the piggybank wouldn’t give you some degree of financial breathing room.  But whereas money can be universally spent on a wide range of goods and services, perceptions are complex, specific to each stakeholder group, and increasingly fickle.  Additionally, academic researchers struggle to quantitatively prove the theory of the bank of goodwill.  Nevertheless, one need only look to the news for examples of big, well respected companies who have been recently blindsided by massive financial and reputation hits due to crisis or scandal.  I’ve spoken with some of these companies and they’ve all said that, if there is bank of goodwill, it gets exhausted quickly. Read More »

The media are always after a good story. That is of course unless they already have one that is too big for them to handle.  And sometimes, you may think that an unfortunate piece of bad press can do great damage to your company’s reputation only to have it never gain traction in the press.

Certainly when I worked for a major TV news broadcast organization, the aim was never to damage a company’s reputation, but if that happened as the story unfolded, that in itself could make the story more compelling.  So if you think you need to get the media involved, consider the following:

1. Context is everything: If the media is already covering something big, chances are that it may actually pay no attention at all to the event that involves your firm.

2. The media’s attention is relatively short: Just as your company’s unfortunate piece of bad press pushed something off the headlines, in most cases the next big thing will push the event affecting your firm down the pecking order. Read More »

Does the mass media really know how to communicate the stuff that people care about? Or does it always prefer to get stuck into a good old scandal? Scandals don’t come much bigger than the one that just engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Starting in the UK, the wave has now hit stateside – and still dominates Europe’s headlines and op-eds.

French newspaper Le Monde quips, “James Murdoch, the son-and-heir, placed on the ejector seat.”  Spain’s El Pais comments, “Murdoch the emperor defrocked” (by the House of Commons’ culture committee).

Why the snowball effect and why the relative blind-siding of other stories? Can these guys just not resist the temptation to report scandals?  It is not that the audience never cared about the Murdoch scandal. Doubtless, many people were fascinated. But it does not affect their livelihoods – unless, perhaps, they work in the media. Other big issues have been relatively sidelined as a result – the Greek debt crisis, and the drought and emerging famine in the horn of Africa  are two relatively neglected issues which really do touch ordinary lives. Maybe the media is giving people what they want, but too much of it for too long. In the midst of a scandal, when does the media pause for a second and determine when it’s over and time to move on to other topics of audience interest?

Read More »

When you don’t have anything nice to say, should you say anything at all? What if you don’t want to draw attention to something that will just disappoint people? Can we keep our mouths shut?

We live in a world that expects open communications. This means that as communicators, we constantly face the tough balancing act of: communicating the truth, communicating what is most relevant to stakeholders, AND knowing when to communicate at all.

For example: How often do the following words come into a consumer’s mind when they are shopping in a retail store? 

Floods. Labor markets. Paksitan. China. Supply chains.

Very rarely. These are not typical thoughts in a shopper’s mind when they are searching for a good deal on the latest trendy sweater, cute T, or pair of athletic socks. But for a large number of retailers, the 15-year high in the price of cotton due to abnormal floods and droughts in Asia is no longer a bearable dent in their supply chain costs. As prices for 2011 are set, many retailers are preparing for shoppers who will see a small to mid-sized price increase in clothing. In speaking with communicators facing this situation we are hearing valid questions like, “Is this something they need to know?” or “Would we be better off if we don’t draw attention to the situation?” Read More »

This is the final post in a three-part series about thought leadership. 

It takes more than one person to develop a thought leadership program.

“People come and go, but thought leadership lives on.” –Matt Broder, VP of External Communications at Pitney Bowes 

Funny isn’t it?  For a company to be viewed as a thought leader, it needs to have smart, standout people within the company to share its ideas.  Yet, any company that is key-person dependent in its thought leadership risks sacrificing the company’s long-term recognition as a thought leader. 

Fortunately, that’s where you in Corporate Communications come in. 

Communications’ role is to build the foundation and create the environment for thought leadership to flourish within a company regardless of its current “face.”  It is Communications’ responsibility to develop processes to support the discovery, creation, and sharing of thought leadership.  Read More »