Corporate Communications It’s All About Delivering Value
Corporate Communications It’s All About Delivering Value
What is most counter-productive has been public relations desire to distance itself from the distasteful task of actually “selling” the company, its propositions, its products, its technologies and its services. If it doesn’t help perpetuate the company what value does it serve…regardless of the definition?
We recently read one of the clearest, most concise and easiest to understand descriptions of public relations. It stripped away all of the rhetoric and all of the lofty philosophy…”effective public relations is simply applied common sense.”
Common sense says that a company must achieve sales and must produce profit if it is to survive. If it doesn’t survive then it stands for nothing and is worth nothing. Done properly public relations adds value by employing people, by providing a return to shareholders, by supporting our governmental institutions and by delivering product/service value to customers.
Common sense says that for programs to be successful the must be founded on business objectives, not “PR” objectives. They must focus on the company’s brand equity, not on individual products. This branding activity must extend beyond media relations, charitable giving, legislative relations and other niches.
Accomplishing all of this is no easy task. It means that the organization’s PR team – internal or external – has to truly understand – and be involved in – building and promoting the company’s brand franchise. Some people like to refer to this process as integrated marketing communications (IMC). We prefer not to apply some self-limiting label but rather to think of it as doing what is necessary to ensure the company survives and prospers.
It requires public relations people to become involved in building trust with all of the firm’s buyers and sellers. Don’t think you can go to senior management, plead your case and get a mandate to be responsible for the establishment and vocalization of the company’s total activities… won’t happen.
Start slow and take small steps. Public relations is a service and support function. Advise and assist in branding activities online and offline. Become involved in assisting purchasing, HR, sales activities, face-to-face encounter training, trade show activities, web activities including customer service/customer support and other efforts that involve the company’s brand franchise and the organization’s bottom line results.
Too frequently PR people waste their efforts because they are so busy “practicing” public relations they forget their primary mission. All too often the success or failure of their “practice” is weighed by the pound…how many print, audio and video clips and how many web site mentions/hits. Since they weigh more, too many PR people justify that fifty hits that don’t further the company’s goals are obviously worth more than five that support and extend the company’s brand franchise.
Wrong!
Effective public relations is much like a three-legged stool: a) understanding the company’s anchor value, b) understanding the customer value proposition(s) and c) understanding the marketplace positioning of the products or services. Understanding the three will help the company will help tangibly produce sales and profits and long-term benefits.
Anchor Values
The company’s anchor values should control and guide every strategic and tactical PR activity. From the first day it opens its doors every firm is based on specific purposeful and fundamental values that highlight the company’s strategic ambition, direction and plan for the future.
Without a good understanding of these values we contend that it is impossible for public relations to honesty and effectively deliver for the company. Without a clear understanding of what the company is trying to achieve public relations simply goes through the motions. By being on the same wavelength they can ensure the right basic message is always delivered, that it is delivered to and through the right channels and that it achieves the desired impact and objective.
Customer Values
The second leg of a sound PR program is to clearly understand what the anchor values mean to the consuming public. This means you have to translate the company’s values into general and product/service specific customer values and benefits.
All too frequently PR people tend to list the tangible, technical and functional benefits and stop. Often referred to as specsmanship, the focus is a one way stream from the company to the marketplace rather than taking the time and effort to understand and project this information in consumer terms.
More importantly PR people often list the tangible values and stop. Even in business-to-business there are intangible values – the emotional areas that are satisfied. In the early computer days there was a common – never listed line item on purchase orders – intangible value that no one was ever fired for buying from IBM. In recent history, Intel Inside has been used by PC and notebook manufacturers to give the buying public added reassurance with their system purchases.
Intangible and tangible customer values must continuously support each other and support/reinforce the company’s anchor values.
Positioning
The third leg of the PR program is product/service positioning which will vary from market segment to market segment. If the dotcom trials and tribulations of the past year have shown us anything it is that there is no such thing as one global market.
Using Intel as an example, there is a different positioning proposition for dealers, first time buyers, corporate buyers, professional users, software developers, video/multimedia developers, manufacturer management, engineers and buyers as well as other markets.
The same positioning process holds true for consumer products and business/consumer services. Auto manufacturers tailor different messages for dealers, fleet buyers, people in different age groups, men and women and even different nationalities. Online services that survive are quickly learning to micro manage their positioning messages. Service organizations like legal, financial, venture capital, market research and yes even public relations are tailoring their messages to specific market and client segments.
A Program with Legs
When a PR program is based on clearly defined anchor values, customer values and positioning the actual implementation and tactics are easier to manage and carry out. Or to put it in the vernacular of the day…it’s a program with legs or a program with traction.
Suddenly it becomes easier to establish and manage the relationship with the company’s many audiences. Not slam-dunk easy but easier.
The most difficult aspect of the program will be the internal management issue. We increasingly live and operate in an instant results, instant gratification environment. No part of the public relations or communications program is instant. It requires consistency and continuity.
Too frequently management is willing to approve a given tactic or activity and immediately expect positive results – sales, favorable legislation, increased stock valuation or similar ripple in the time/space continuum.
The effort or activity may build awareness but awareness seldom develops an initial relationship and certainly doesn’t develop a long-term relationship. That only comes with a consistent and continuous program.
At the same time public relations people have to continuously manage, monitor and question every tactical aspect of their programs and the individual messages. Internal and external forces are in a constant state of flux. What was effective last month or yesterday can be totally ineffective – or worse counterproductive –today.
That’s one of the key reasons that applied common sense delivers value in your organization’s public relations and communications program.
########
Corporate Communications Its All About Delivering Value - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Marken's Website.
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Over the years hundreds of highly respected professionals, analysts and educators have developed comprehensive and sometimes complicated descriptions of public relations and corporate communications. There have been heated discussions regarding the separation of public relations from advertising, public relations from marketing and the role public relations should play of the organization.
What is most counter-productive has been public relations desire to distance itself from the distasteful task of actually “selling” the company, its propositions, its products, its technologies and its services. If it doesn’t help perpetuate the company what value does it serve…regardless of the definition?
We recently read one of the clearest, most concise and easiest to understand descriptions of public relations. It stripped away all of the rhetoric and all of the lofty philosophy…”effective public relations is simply applied common sense.”
Common sense says that a company must achieve sales and must produce profit if it is to survive. If it doesn’t survive then it stands for nothing and is worth nothing. Done properly public relations adds value by employing people, by providing a return to shareholders, by supporting our governmental institutions and by delivering product/service value to customers.
Common sense says that for programs to be successful the must be founded on business objectives, not “PR” objectives. They must focus on the company’s brand equity, not on individual products. This branding activity must extend beyond media relations, charitable giving, legislative relations and other niches.
Accomplishing all of this is no easy task. It means that the organization’s PR team – internal or external – has to truly understand – and be involved in – building and promoting the company’s brand franchise. Some people like to refer to this process as integrated marketing communications (IMC). We prefer not to apply some self-limiting label but rather to think of it as doing what is necessary to ensure the company survives and prospers.
It requires public relations people to become involved in building trust with all of the firm’s buyers and sellers. Don’t think you can go to senior management, plead your case and get a mandate to be responsible for the establishment and vocalization of the company’s total activities… won’t happen.
Start slow and take small steps. Public relations is a service and support function. Advise and assist in branding activities online and offline. Become involved in assisting purchasing, HR, sales activities, face-to-face encounter training, trade show activities, web activities including customer service/customer support and other efforts that involve the company’s brand franchise and the organization’s bottom line results.
Too frequently PR people waste their efforts because they are so busy “practicing” public relations they forget their primary mission. All too often the success or failure of their “practice” is weighed by the pound…how many print, audio and video clips and how many web site mentions/hits. Since they weigh more, too many PR people justify that fifty hits that don’t further the company’s goals are obviously worth more than five that support and extend the company’s brand franchise.
Wrong!
Effective public relations is much like a three-legged stool: a) understanding the company’s anchor value, b) understanding the customer value proposition(s) and c) understanding the marketplace positioning of the products or services. Understanding the three will help the company will help tangibly produce sales and profits and long-term benefits.
Anchor Values
The company’s anchor values should control and guide every strategic and tactical PR activity. From the first day it opens its doors every firm is based on specific purposeful and fundamental values that highlight the company’s strategic ambition, direction and plan for the future.
Without a good understanding of these values we contend that it is impossible for public relations to honesty and effectively deliver for the company. Without a clear understanding of what the company is trying to achieve public relations simply goes through the motions. By being on the same wavelength they can ensure the right basic message is always delivered, that it is delivered to and through the right channels and that it achieves the desired impact and objective.
Customer Values
The second leg of a sound PR program is to clearly understand what the anchor values mean to the consuming public. This means you have to translate the company’s values into general and product/service specific customer values and benefits.
All too frequently PR people tend to list the tangible, technical and functional benefits and stop. Often referred to as specsmanship, the focus is a one way stream from the company to the marketplace rather than taking the time and effort to understand and project this information in consumer terms.
More importantly PR people often list the tangible values and stop. Even in business-to-business there are intangible values – the emotional areas that are satisfied. In the early computer days there was a common – never listed line item on purchase orders – intangible value that no one was ever fired for buying from IBM. In recent history, Intel Inside has been used by PC and notebook manufacturers to give the buying public added reassurance with their system purchases.
Intangible and tangible customer values must continuously support each other and support/reinforce the company’s anchor values.
Positioning
The third leg of the PR program is product/service positioning which will vary from market segment to market segment. If the dotcom trials and tribulations of the past year have shown us anything it is that there is no such thing as one global market.
Using Intel as an example, there is a different positioning proposition for dealers, first time buyers, corporate buyers, professional users, software developers, video/multimedia developers, manufacturer management, engineers and buyers as well as other markets.
The same positioning process holds true for consumer products and business/consumer services. Auto manufacturers tailor different messages for dealers, fleet buyers, people in different age groups, men and women and even different nationalities. Online services that survive are quickly learning to micro manage their positioning messages. Service organizations like legal, financial, venture capital, market research and yes even public relations are tailoring their messages to specific market and client segments.
A Program with Legs
When a PR program is based on clearly defined anchor values, customer values and positioning the actual implementation and tactics are easier to manage and carry out. Or to put it in the vernacular of the day…it’s a program with legs or a program with traction.
Suddenly it becomes easier to establish and manage the relationship with the company’s many audiences. Not slam-dunk easy but easier.
The most difficult aspect of the program will be the internal management issue. We increasingly live and operate in an instant results, instant gratification environment. No part of the public relations or communications program is instant. It requires consistency and continuity.
Too frequently management is willing to approve a given tactic or activity and immediately expect positive results – sales, favorable legislation, increased stock valuation or similar ripple in the time/space continuum.
The effort or activity may build awareness but awareness seldom develops an initial relationship and certainly doesn’t develop a long-term relationship. That only comes with a consistent and continuous program.
At the same time public relations people have to continuously manage, monitor and question every tactical aspect of their programs and the individual messages. Internal and external forces are in a constant state of flux. What was effective last month or yesterday can be totally ineffective – or worse counterproductive –today.
That’s one of the key reasons that applied common sense delivers value in your organization’s public relations and communications program.
########
Corporate Communications Its All About Delivering Value - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Marken's Website.
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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