New Media, New Language

Posted on April 28, 2008 | 1 Comments

At a recent dinner, co-hosted by the Council of PR Firms and the Arthur W. Page Society in Chicago, a discussion on the future of the Corporate Communications Officer (CCO) was the main course. Both corporate and the agency perspectives were well represented throughout the evening's panel discussion; highlights were captured in the Council's new weekly e-publication,The Firm Voice.

Being authentic, as we discussed that evening, requires more negotiation and courage from today's practitioner. The CCO's efforts on this front, which include the four mandates laid out in the "The Authentic Enterprise" can be bolstered by stronger partnerships across internal functions as well as with external relationships.

One of those four mandates is "embracing new media," which was covered in a recent PR Week article, "Corporate PR Execs See New Media as the Weak Link" and ties in well with the spirit of our dinner discussion. Embracing new media requires both time and the right " partner/interpreter ." In a sense, it's like learning a new language: you can try learning it yourself or you can work with someone who is fluent. PR firms can oftentimes help CCOs apply the various dialects of new media into their communications programs because most firms have already made the investment in the talent and technology. Just as the CCO needs to forge a bond with the CMO to address the overall needs of the organization, as was revealed in "The Rising CCO" research by Weber Shandwick and Spencer Stuart, the expertise within the client/agency relationship can help strengthen the contributions by the CCO and his/her department to the overall organization.

Kathy Cripps
President
Council of Public Relations Firms
(Guest Contributor)

Managing Trust is Critical Challenge

Posted on April 25, 2008 | 2 Comments

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

So, how does one manage trust? One of the more difficult challenges put forth in The Authentic Enterprise white paper is the call to manage trust in all its dimensions. A great deal of work has been done in the last decade to measure the strength of relationships and the role of communications in building loyalty and trust relationships. (See the Institute for PR website http://www.instituteforpr.org). Yet when all is said and done, we may not be any closer to quantifying trust than poets and philosophers are to measuring love.

Trust takes time to build, yet it can be destroyed in an instant. The loyalty and support you believe you had just yesterday may evaporate tomorrow because of something someone in your company did today. Protecting reputations may be the most difficult assignment in the world.

Lead paint in a manufacturing plant is discovered and becomes a flashpoint issue. An airline subjects passengers to hours of mistreatment and suddenly the reputation of the enterprise is called into question. A political candidate makes an off-hand remark and the poll numbers start shifting.

Just this week, the CEO of Canadian National railway was quoted saying: "We certainly didn't anticipate the scope of the opposition. I lived in the western suburbs for 20 years. I had a lot of people I called friends until this." He was referring to his company's plan to acquire a rail line that ran through the suburban Chicago community in which he once lived. He thought he had friends in all the right places and admits to having misread the situation.

A similar thing happened to Wal-Mart when trying to open stores in urban neighborhoods. The company is bringing jobs, and in their view hope, to communities that need it, yet they are rebuffed. Opposition comes in surprising ways.

If it is this easy to misread your support in your own backyard, how much more difficult is it to gauge the level of trust in cultures and economies far different from your own?

A recent study by Ketchum showed very significant differences around the world on the whole question of trust. For example, when asked "How much do you trust each of the following?" only 11% of respondents in the U.S. trusted corporations, and only 9% trusted the CEO. In India and Brazil, the story was dramatically different with 37% of respondents indicating trust in corporations and approximately one third expressing trust in the CEO.

Why do emerging nations view corporations more favorably than developed nations? You might be tempted to say it is simply a cultural politeness. However, in every country studied elected officials failed to score above single digits on the trust question. So, people are making clear distinctions on who they trust and who they don't.

The west may benefit from understanding why corporations in emerging nations have been successful in creating such relatively high levels of trust. As the rest of the world rises economically, building support, loyalty and trust will have to be done in ways that are more creative, more personal and more effective.

As we become more of a global neighborhood, the ability of corporations to operate effectively will be increasingly tested. The ability to measure and manage trust in all its dimensions may be the most difficult challenge any chief communication officer will face.

As The Authentic Enterprise points out, "The networked global economy and the new worldwide communications platform present a historically unprecedented opportunity to engage directly with all the publics and constituencies that shape a company's success and identity."

If you have thoughts on how to do this well, please share them with us.

Tom Nicholson
Executive Director, The Arthur W. Page Society

Everything is Being Connected, and Reputation is at Risk

Posted on April 14, 2008 | 1 Comments

In this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine there's a fascinating article by Sara Corbett - Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? -- looking at the spread of cellphones in third world economies, and the social research being conducted by companies like Nokia into new technologies and delivery systems.

The article points out that "there are more than 3.3 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide, which means that there are at least three billion people who don't own cellphones, the bulk of them to be found in Africa and Asia.

"To get a sense of how rapidly cellphones are penetrating the global marketplace, you need only to look at the sales figures. According to statistics from the market database Wireless Intelligence, it took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world's population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. And figures from the International Telecommunications Union show that by the end of 2006, 68 percent of the world's mobile subscriptions were in developing countries. As more and more countries abandon government-run telecom systems, offering cellular network licenses to the highest-bidding private investors and without the burden of navigating pre-established bureaucratic chains, new towers are going up at a furious pace. Unlike fixed-line phone networks, which are expensive to build and maintain and require customers to have both a permanent address and the ability to pay a monthly bill, or personal computers, which are not just costly but demand literacy as well, the cellphone is more egalitarian, at least to a point."

It's just another indication that the interconnectedness of stakeholder groups around the globe is increasing at a rapid pace - as "The Authentic Enterprise" called out. And with SMS texting being a primary usage for cellphone users in every country, the speed with which reputations are made and lost keeps increasing at the same pace. Whether we like it or not, the revolution is happening before our eyes.

Peter Debreceny, Allstate (retired)