PR's not just spin, it's brand management
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With Tony Hayward now having been officially relieved of his duties as chief executive of BP, the crisis management plan and communications strategy at all our own businesses should be brought under some serious scrutiny.
It is no accident that Aviva CMO Amanda Mackenzie has responsibility for PR, public affairs and internal communications incorporated into her role as well as that for brand and marketing. Unilever has also seen fit to hand responsibility for communications - and a seat on the board - to CMO Keith Weed.
PR has seen its significance to marketers increase ten-fold in recent years. At its best it brings with it a vital expertise in planning and strategic communications, a necessary grasp of reputation management and a calm and practical approach to crisis management. To read this week’s special report on PR click here.
But many marketers remain behind the curve of this trend. Chris Satterthwaite, group chief executive of Chime Communications, says that while media training and a healthy respect for integrated communications may be on the rise, companies are still far less prepared than they should be.
Sadly, what happened in the Gulf of Mexico was far more tragic than simply being a story about PR gaffes. People died in the drilling platform explosion that caused the oil spill.
However, Hayward’s lack of training and expertise in PR sure didn’t help. His blindly stupid utterances undermined any good crisis management as well as the clean-up efforts being undertaken by BP management and staff throughout the summer.
“PR has seen its significance to marketers increase ten-fold in recent years… But many remain behind the curve of this trend”
No manager should continue to see PR as spin. It’s strategy, pure and simple. And if you think you’re well equipped, I’d advise you to return to our cover story from 18 March, which dealt with the very issues BP has struggled with.
In that piece we talked about the prospect of “brand death by social media” and the new rules of “reputation rescue”. I’m still struck by a comment made by Jonathan Hemus, director of reputation management at communications consultancy Insignia. “Companies probably had 24 hours in the old days to respond to a crisis and get ahead of the game. Social media and the internet in general has reduced this to the first hour,” he said. Look back at the past 24 months and think about the enormous corporate machines that have become casualties. The Lehman Brothers, RBS, Toyota and so on.
Make no mistake about it. Reputation management is brand management.
Mark Choueke, editor
Readers' comments (2)
Rick Guttridge | Wed, 28 Jul 2010 4:24 pm
Good article and great to see the strategic role of PR acknowledged.
PR is not even just brand management, it's bottom line management and how BP's PR reacts will no doubt have a major impact on its future success.
For “brand death by social media” also read death by 1000 cuts (and RT's, LIKE buttons, blog comments etc!).
Equally as social media has reduced reaction time when responding to a crisis, its long tail effect means that bad news is no longer tomorrow's chip wrapper. This mess is going to take a long, long time to recover from even IF handled correctly.
Appointing a new US head is a shrewd move to start winning over the many US knockers of 'British' Petroleum - a truly global company with 40% US ownership!
Don't ever let anybody tell you there's no such thing as bad publicity..
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Katie Hayes, Mortimer Chadwick Gray Public Relatio | Thu, 29 Jul 2010 1:20 pm
The raft of CMO’s appointed to the board is a sign that PR is finally being recognised by the C-Suite for the strategic direction it can bring.
Social media has brought the role of PR and customer relations far closer together- and for any business the customer has to be at the centre of its strategy. In our own experience, businesses that embrace PR and involve us in planning from the start, end up with a far more robust, integrated strategy.
And when the proverbial does hit the fan, where a CEO has come to respect what we as PR’s do, they are far more likely to seek guidance and follow advice than jump right in without thinking about that strategy first.
Katie Hayes, Mortimer Chadwick Gray Public Relations (MCG PR)
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