Do you work in PR? If so, chances are you’ve experienced some pretty significant changes in the last 5 years. PR teams report that the ongoing progression of social media has created an environment in which stakeholders expect more direct interaction than ever before – no longer is it enough to rely on traditional media outlets to tell your company’s news. The implications for PR teams have been significant, as they come to terms with new means of monitoring stakeholders, and creating new types of content.

What Changes do PR Teams Need to Make?  

Even 10 years on from the emergence of Social Media, many

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PR teams remain optimized largely for success with traditional media (see Figure 1). The CEC has spent time recently identifying the changes that leading PR teams are making in order to succeed in a networked stakeholder environment. What is needed from an individual PR professional? What new skills are required? What’s the profile of the perfect PR hire in this digital age?

From Specialists to Generalists

It’s no secret that journalists have been forced to diversify their skill sets. We’ve seen a similar shift in the profile of new hires on corporate PR teams as well. Members that we’ve spoken to have told us that the new breed of PR professional is a generalist, rather than a specialist; for instance, where once you could probably get away with being ‘just’ a great writer, now you need to be able to do much more. One member told me that they’ve just replaced the person who managed their photo archive (narrow scope) with someone who can simultaneously manage all things visual – video, PPT, images, and so on (broad scope).

Skills Required for PR Success

The skills required of new-to-role PR professionals have broadened, and diversified:

Perhaps the greatest difference between “old world” and “new world” that we’ve noticed is the importance attached to media monitoring. The new breed of PR generalist (who has used their web-savvy to self-teach critical skills) takes full advantage of the opportunities presented by social forms of media, using data to inform all of their outreach, and to bring their other skills to bear.

Metrics

Most of the companies we’ve seen measure performance according to the volume of messaging – the number of news releases distributed, the number of Facebook likes, or the number of Twitter followers. The CEC hopes to see a marked shift in the MBOs used by PR teams, to reflect the impact created by proactive outreach, rather than its volume. Instead of measuring the quantity of content distributed, why not measure the number of stakeholders who act on that communication? This could be as simple as the number of stakeholders who re-tweet your messaging, or as concrete as the number of people who buy whatever product you promoted – either way, it’s the number of stakeholders that do something based on your outreach, rather than simply the number of people that hear/read/see it.

Get in touch

We’d love to hear from you:

• How have the requirements of new PR staff changed?
• How have the skill sets on your team changed?
• Most importantly, where have these changes been driven from? Are they coming from the PR function itself, or are they being driven by external pressures?

Resources from the CEC

• Role Profile: Media and Press Relations Specialist
• Proactive PR in a Networked Environment
• News Releases in a Networked Environment
• How to Build a Leading Online Newsroom

Introducing CEC Quick Polls: This is the first blog in an ongoing series featuring the results of short surveys. Contact jwohlmuth@executiveboard.com if there is a question or topic you’d like us to poll the CEC membership of 14,000+ communicators worldwide.

Who doesn’t like a good statistic? In the CEC Newsletter a few weeks ago, we kicked off our new quick poll initiative with three questions on communications activities around reputation management.

When the results came back, we got a picture of how communications priorities have changed in the last 5 years. With the proliferation of social media, it’s no surprise that messaging through new channels came out as the activity most communicators are doing more of. Perhaps less predictably, corporate advertising and branding efforts have seen the biggest drop off.

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Top 3 activities communicators are doing more of:

1. Messaging through new channels
2. Preempting negative coverage
3. Increasing transparency

Read More »

Managing a full blown corporate crisis is one of the hardest things a communicator will ever have to do. Of course, it’s always been vitally important to protect the profitability and reputation of your organization, but as scrutiny of corporate practice rises, so too does the importance attached to effective crisis management.

Failure to prevent or manage an incident can lead to a loss of your organization’s ‘license to operate’. Interestingly, your own personal brand can also be impacted by your response to a crisis – for instance, we’ve heard from several members that successfully managing a crisis instantly makes a communicator more employable, having navigated a course through heavy fire.

So, both for your organization and for you personally, a crisis raises the stakes like nothing else. With this in mind, CEC spent the last few months learning how the best organizations prevent, prepare for, and respond to major crises. CEC members can check out our new topic center for more detailed guidance, or call our advisory team to discuss your crisis planning.

1. Build a Preventative Culture

Most companies have a contingency plan of some description should something go wrong. But actually using that crisis response plan is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted – by then, the damage is already done, and you’re playing a game of damage limitation instead of damage prevention.

What the best do: Employees often have the most practical understanding of the risks that the company faces by virtue of their day-to-day business activities.  Instead of simply telling them how to behave and what to do, try to tap into their knowledge to identify and mitigate risks. 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 »

Last week we gathered a group of our most forward thinking communications heads from some of the largest and smartest European companies to have a discussion around challenges facing the function.

One of the debates that really caught my attention was about company reputation. Communications heads are feeling increasingly uncomfortable with their ability to both manage and measure reputation at the very time when it is high on the corporate agenda.

Reputation is a key focus area

There were four top reasons that came out for Communications caring about reputation right now:

1) Feeling exposed. As consumers (of both products and information) have more power and ability to share their views they are quick to hit companies for doing something they disagree with.  There was a feeling that the volatility in the business environment had meant that “the winds have shifted” sentiment against corporate and that feels uncomfortable, and personal, for CEOs. 

2) Focus on Growth in new markets. As developed economies face slow growth many companies are looking at new markets (geographies/products) to support their growth. Company reputation can help or hinder our success in these new markets.

3) CEO focus. There are only so many scandals that Time magazine can cover before the topic of company reputation starts to feel very personal to even the most hardy senior execs. The AON Global Risk Management survey 2011 has ‘damage to reputation/brand’ as the 4^th biggest risk to companies (after economic slowdown, regulatory changes and increased competition).

4) Employee sensitivity. An employee’s personal reputation is intrinsically tied to the company they work for. With many employees sharing their work details on social media sites they are increasingly open to peer questioning.

Access CEC support: 1) reputation risk management) 2)  corporate brand management) 3) influencing stakeholders in a networked environment

Measurement is not up to scratch

Everyone was looking for a silver bullet that both tied communications activities to reputation and demonstrated the impact of reputation on business outcomes.  Most telling was that not one person was satisfied with their current measurement strategy and it’s ability to do either (and stand up to cross-examination from the CFO.)

The challenges we heard were:

• Measurement efforts are silod – “we measure media tone and coverage, company reputation, monitor issues and social media but they are all done independently – it must be better to integrate”
• Comprehensive measurement is cost-prohibitive – “the cost of measuring reputation means that we can only cover a couple of core markets so we can’t get the full picture. In an environment where news and information has no boundaries that is a worry”
• Reputation measures are too high level - “the data we get it too high level to really influence our decision making; it rarely turns up anything we didn’t know already”
• Limited value for forward planning – “with the fast changing stakeholder environment a view looking back at what people thought isn’t always the best for helping us decide what we should do going forward”

So, why do we do it? the answer is that currently most companies feel it’s their only option to put a demonstrable numbers to what we do.

What is the right way forward? 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 »

As a former journalist, ohhhhhh how I HATE media hyperbole. Don’t you? Every bad weather system that’s described as (this year’s) Storm of the Century…every one-day drop in the stock market that has investors reeling…every tragedy that forces local residents to rebuild the shattered pieces of their broken lives. Uhhhhhhgggh.

When I think about what’s become of the news business, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or go out on the front lawn and start eating grass (isn’t that what animals do when they think they’re about to barf?).

But I gotta say — although you may already be getting a little queased-out from the relentless coverage of this Joe Paterno/Penn State story — for once, this ain’t hype.  This really is the biggest scandal in sports history. More than just another ringing bell for the Pavlov’s Dogs of Media to salivate over, this is a cautionary tale for EVERYONE in a position of authority at any big organization in the world.

Here’s a strong recommendation from your friends and colleagues at CEC: Use this moment as an opportunity to have an important discussion with your CEO.  Particularly if he (90+% chance it’s a he) is a football fan (gut guess on my part = there’s a 75+% chance he at least likes football).

All you have to do is ask him, “So, uhhhh, whadda ya think about the whole Paterno mess?”, then sit back and let him spew. Whatever he says next will enlighten both of you about his understanding of “the way things work” in today’s media environment.

Chances are you’ll get one of three responses: 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 »

As the world becomes more and more connected by technological innovations, it’s no wonder that communicators have become far less reliant on reactive response strategies. Waiting for a reputational threat to arise before thinking about solutions just won’t cut it. But no matters how fast information spreads, communicators — even those well-armed with response tactics — can only move so quickly.

Communicators are successfully enlisting line manager support in limiting reputational risks by erring on the side of simplicity in developing tools and processes for managers to use. Clear decision rules guiding the frequency, nature and venue of stakeholder interactions — plus making clear when to involve the communications team — line managers can play an essential role in local stakeholder engagement.

Line managers represent a powerful resource in identifying reputational threats as well as mitigating risks through engagement with key stakeholder groups. In companies with widely varying stakeholder groups across many locations, managers are much better suited to handle the basics of local stakeholder relations than a centralized corporate communications team. Leading communicators account for the real challenges in developing line managers as players in stakeholder engagement.

Read More »

Every year, corporate crises hit the news, and remind us of their potentially devastating impact on the reputations of those organizations involved. The UBS tax scandal of 2008, Toyota’s three product recalls from 2009-2010, and BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 all had two things in common:

• They could all have been prevented
• They did significant damage each company’s reputation, and to their financial performance

With the stakes higher than ever before, CEC is updating its existing work on crisis management. And, with the above in mind, we’re looking at two different angles.

1. Building a Preventative Culture

In spite of the best efforts of companies to apply processes, rules, and expectations, this isn’t always enough to drive behavior change – we’ve all seen rules bent or broken to “get the job done”. And yet, we are reliant upon employees maintaining standards to maintain product quality, information security, legal and ethical compliance, and personal or public safety – if they fail to do so, the consequences for the organization can be disastrous.

Communications Challenges

CEC is looking at some of the reasons that employees don’t always act in accordance with the standards required by their organization, its regulators, and other crucial stakeholder groups. Our conversations indicate that many communicators spend a disproportionate amount of time building employee awareness without addressing the personal and systemic barriers to desired behavior. Indeed, research shows that only 6% of employee-observed misconduct is escalated to business leadership, preventing the business from responding to rectify the problem. We’ve thought about what prevents employees from acting in a way that prevents crises. Here’s our first shot, below: Read More »