Grappling with change: PR leaders convene to discuss redefinition

Effective communicators have never been more in demand. Technology and social media are redefining the way brands and consumers interact. The fact is that most marketers are still unsure of how to tread in an environment where two-way dialogue has become a necessity. This represents a major opportunity for the public relations industry, but the road ahead for agencies is also still far from defined.

It is against this backdrop of change that Campaign Asia-Pacific brings you a two-part report that examines some of the key issues affecting the industry today.

Here, we present an in-depth summary of PR360Asia, a conference that brought together a select group of some of the industry’s brightest thinkers in Hong Kong on 27 June. Hosted by Bob Pickard, the newly appointed Asia CEO of Huntsworth, PR360Asia sought to define the role and requirements of the PR industry today. Topics covered included communications in an age of customer participation; the advantages and challenges of integration; the importance of effective internal communications; content creation and curation; trust and ethics; and the ongoing struggle to attract the best talent. The conference was followed by the PRWeek Awards Asia (see list of winners and entry details).

In addition, we present the results of an exclusive survey on content marketing and its value for brands. Done in association with Ogilvy Public Relations, the research found that while there is considerable enthusiasm for developing content, developing a clear-cut strategy and linking content to concrete business objectives remains difficult. Encouragingly for PR agencies, though, they are perceived to have an advantage over other disciplines when it comes to using content to drive brand messaging and reputation. 

 

PR360Asia in-depth report:

• The definition of modern public relations
• Collaborative communications for the customer-participation era
• The profits and perils of integration
• Mahindra’s ‘Rise’
• Strategic benefits of improved internal communications
• Content creation and curation
• No shortcuts to building trust
• Better PR needed to close the talent gap

 

The definition of modern public relations

‘Grappling’ was the word of the day at the opening panel session at the PR360Asia invitation-only conference, as panellists discussed how best to re-define public relations in the modern era. 

The rapid expan-sion of social media and ad-vances in tech-nology have brought about a sea change in the industry, while PR definitions are con-stantly changing. Clients and agencies are reshaping their busi-nesses and mindsets to accom-modate this change.

“Each of us is grappling with the new environ-ment,” said Roma Balwani, chief group communications officer at Mahindra Group. “Social media is bringing reputation management to the forefront of our engagement with the audience. We have no choice but to tackle the new technologies.”

An inflection point in public relations is re-defining roles in a significant manner. “Com-munication strategies will affect even company acquisitions, and social media makes it all the more complex,” Balwani said. “Now, it’s not just about a PR professional managing social media, but mana-ging a business perception. We have to make sure we are not looking at just one dimension of PR.”

PR as a discipline, in the traditional sense, is becoming complicated. Since 2008, agencies have been seeing a deterioration of trust in corporations and authorities, leading to a seismic rise in scepticism. “In the old days, we used a triangle model in traditional PR, but now the dispersion of trust makes what we do more challenging,” said David Brain, president and chief executive for Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa at Edelman.

The erosion of trust means that PR agencies need to address problems in society at a deeper level, and they need high-calibre people for that, said Stephen Thomas, group head of corporate communications at AIA. “The world doesn’t need more PR people; it needs better ones.”

Better PR people, to Thomas, means talent who are commercially minded. Brain agreed: “To sit in with the CEO regularly, that requires PR people to have an understanding of business, and not just communications,” he said. “The grappling we have to do in our agency is recognising that our business has to change in fundamental ways, and asking: ‘Are we ready for that?’”

Understanding which drivers affect PR value is no longer enough; being able to tie it to tangible business outcomes is also important, added Rachel Catanach, senior vice-president, senior partner and managing director at FleishmanHillard. “The higher calling is for us to be solvers of business problems,” she said.

According to Thomas, AIA is “entering a very happy place”, where public relations is considered a fundamental management competency by the C-suite. “Rather than being at the end of the busi-ness planning process, we are now at the begin-ning,” he said. “It’s a sweet spot to be in.”

However, Thomas warned that the sweet spot may become sour if PR agencies forget business objec-tives when they are blinded by the lights of social media. “I don’t think being on every single social-media platform is right for every company,” he said.

Balwani also emphasised the sig-nificance of business knowledge, by describing the time when Mahindra was trying to enter the US, which sparked the be-ginning of a three-year communication strategy that incorporated more than just social media. “I had to learn about legal processes so that whenever I make a statement in public, my words are all legally acceptable,” she said. “Only when you have the business knowledge, can you become a strong PR voice.”

 

Collaborative communications for the customer-participation era

Collaborative PR is the new model of commun-ications for the customer-participation era, wherein people want to join in and be heard, said Andrew Pickup, Asia head of communications at Microsoft, in a solo presentation. 

The first evolution of marketing used to be characterised by a more transactional, low-cost interaction with the customer, and the second stage dealt with the scope of relationship marketing, he said. The current, third stream is a collaborative form, which principally focuses on efforts to include the customer in working together to achieve a common PR goal. 

“Marketing is not dead, it has just been disrupted by technology,” Pickup said. At the heart of this disruption are trends such as globalisation, the mobile-everywhere syndrome, the rise of personal cloud computing, social network growth, and the ubiquity of technology. In particular, through access to ubiquitous tech-nology, Asian consumers today are “more informed, more empowered and more fickle than ever”, he said. 

Increasingly connected not just to the brands that they follow, but more importantly, to each other, they are no longer willing to be passive recipients in the communications process. “They wish to play an active role in defining the value creation that is at the heart of all great marketing,” Pickup added. 

To measure the results of great marketing, “always look for expressions, not impressions”. This was evident when Microsoft opened up the launch of Windows 7 to “let the community do the speaking”, he said. Shared com-ments across earned and paid media were a manifestation of that ex-pression. “Because the truth lies in the com-munity, how we embrace the community is essential for brands — tech or otherwise,” he said, pointing to the growing importance of social search. 

Bing’s social element lets consumers tap into the wisdom of friends on Facebook, which features en-hanced search results with more content and an approach that is significantly different to Google’s, he said. Based on ‘best match’ and ‘social captions’ fun-ctionalities that prioritise results based on rele-vance, a Bing sidebar suggests Face-book friends who might know about a given topic, he explained.

 

The profits and perils of integration 

The word ‘integration’ tends to be overused in the world of marketing. It is fair to say, however, that marketing and communications are moving ever closer together. The implications of that transition shaped the second discussion of the day between Andrew Pickup, Asia head of communications at Microsoft; Ian Rumsby, chief strategy officer for Asia-Pacific and Australia chairman at Weber Shandwick; Mark Walters, director of communications at KPMG; and Amy Wendholdt, MD of Hong Kong at APCO Worldwide. Napoleon Biggs, chief strategy officer of Gravitas Group, moderated the session.

Wendholdt began by noting that PR companies are being asked to provide a broader range of marketing-related services. To this, Walters added that the PR agency he had formerly worked at was acquired by KPMG. The move was indicative of an overlap between consulting firms and PR agencies. Walters said that “during any transactions, there is a great deal of communications to be done, so you see a lot of companies like KPMG getting into that space”. He pointed to not just a merger of marketing and PR, but of “professional services generally”.

Rumsby said that when it comes to integration, the most important thing was to be clear on the an-chor point. Pickup said that given the complexity of Microsoft, that was sometimes hard to define. But the real point of integration, he said, was “taking a big idea, making it come alive across multiple media platforms and making it scale”.

The panellists agreed that content creation was one of the biggest reasons for the integration of services. This neces-si-tates the hiring of people from diverse backgrounds. 

Rumsby said the biggest challenge here is defining career paths. “The linear process has changed,” he said. “You need to give people the opportunity to move into different areas.” He also advised remaining true to core strengths: “There is little point in diversifying your business if you are just going to become reasonably strong at something.”

On the client side, real integration remains the exception rather than the rule. Walters said agencies can help by connecting people and encouraging much-needed collaboration between departments. The ideal, he said, would be to see structural change with all marketing and communications disciplines working from a single budget. He denied that cost cutting was a driver of integration. For it to work, he said, it has to be led by a desire for greater efficiency. “First movers aren’t looking at budgets,” Wendholdt agreed.

 

Mahindra’s ‘Rise’ 

In her presentation, Roma Balwani, chief group communications officer of Mahindra Group explained how the Indian company is fulfilling its global aspirations. Balwani described Mahindra’s journey from a US$2.5 billion company to one that is worth $16 billion as part of its ‘Rise’ programme. 

She said the whole initiative “started by accident” when a representative from Strawberry Frog sug-gested the company would benefit from a more contemporary positioning.

Indirectly highlighting the value of thoughtful internal communications, Strawberry Frog spoke to people across all levels of the company. “They held a mirror to my face and I understood what is special about the organisation,” she said, citing the example of a tractor worker who said his motivation for working was to help bring about a “green revolution” for India.

Mahindra is a company that, while commercial, also aims to promote the development of the Indian nation as a whole. This was at the heart of the ‘Rise’ concept. Balwani said CSR activities were a major part of the rebranding exercise, with Mahindra setting out to make a difference to society by funding projects — not just business ideas, but social causes as well. 

But she added that in all CSR, the outcome should be business-oriented: “You can do good, but you can’t forget the bottom line.”

She described the ‘Rise’ rebranding in January 2011 as being like a celebration that had a different meaning for all staff. The biggest difficulty was conveying this and the company’s aims convin-cingly to a “jaded” media. She described the task as “a communicator’s nightmare” and said it required a concerted effort to collaborate internally. Finally, four senior spokespeople were chosen. “The media realised we meant business and it was not all just CSR,” she said. “It was all about communicating, communicating and communicating.”

It was not all PR. Mahindra ran a full-page ad on every second page of the Times of India. But she said the whole initiative was given added strength by the strong personal brand of Mahindra’s chief executive, who has amassed a following of around 800,000 on Twitter. “We had to prove what we said was true,” she said simply.

Looking ahead, Balwani said Mahindra has the “audacious” goal of becoming one of the 50 most admired brands globally. It is extending its CSR activities overseas, such as helping to combat malaria. Having established a much stronger brand, the big next step will be building Mahindra’s position as a thought leader, she concluded.

 

Strategic benefits of improved internal communications

Effective internal communications are essential if an organisation is to get the best out of its staff. That was the unanimous message of a panel mod-er-ated by Ali Bullock, communications director for Asia at Dow Jones, and including Christian Schubert, VP of corporate communications Asia-Pacific at BASF; Georgette Tan, group head of communications for Mastercard Worldwide; and Josie Taylor, MD of Wilde Asia.

However, it was also felt that companies are still largely failing to devote the necessary resources to the internal communications and that it plays second fiddle to external public relations. 

Taylor pointed out that in many organi-sations, internal communications is seen, at least in part, to be a human resources function. “The people driving it are not necessarily experts,” Taylor said. “Part of that is structural. People think that it is cheap.” 

By taking this approach, she said, companies are squandering the chance to turn their employees into brand advocates.

But Tan said that, in her com-pany at least, external com-muni-ca-tions is now on a par with other com-mun-i-ca-ti-ons functions and apart from major financial in-vest-ment, an impor-tant part of that is regular interaction between the CEO and staff at all levels.

Schubert noted that at BASF, internal communi-cations is more important than ever as a function that supports day-to-day operations and motivates staff by ensuring they understand the direction the company is moving in.

The biggest problem, he said, is making everything relevant to people and actually reaching all employees effectively. To do that, a company needs all its operational managers to be fully engaged. “You need to ensure every manager is the perfect internal communicator,” Schubert said. “But it’s a huge challenge. When I say it’s important for us, that doesn’t mean we’re doing it perfectly. We’ve got a long way to go.”

Tan said one issue is that a lot of companies don’t take advantage of the on-boarding process to create strong connections with their staff. A coordinated effort between internal communications and human resources within the first 60 days of a person joining a company can make the difference between advocacy and apathy, she suggested.

That does not mean endless meetings. While the senior management needs to have visibility, “you can have too much face-to-face, which leads to meeting fatigue”, said Tan. 

Easily understandable e-communications are essential, and their effectiveness can be cal-culated by the amount of time employees spend on the intranet — the less the better, according to Taylor.

More broadly, Schubert said that the ultimate measure of internal communications should be the economic success of an organisation as a result of a strongly motivated workforce — but he admitted linking the two directly is “extremely difficult”.

“In the end, we need to find a way to measure how people change their behaviour [as an out-come],” he said.

 

Content creation and curation

Adam Najberg, Asia digital editor at The Wall Street Journal, moderated the next panel about content creation and curation with three panellists. 

It is not as if the idea of content marketing, or even brand journalism, is anything particularly new, Najberg said. The PR industry has always been built on a basic ability to develop content for different types of audiences — whether it is the traditional press release or the classic 30-second advertising spot, he said. What is different now is how digitally-fuelled social media action is reshaping the conventional relationship between brands and content, offering new creation and curation methods for public relations people. 

Because barriers to entry for content generation have fallen, any brand manager with access to social media platforms can create their own content and take it directly to consumers. But that content should still be professional. 

Companies like Alibaba have benefited from the services of journalists such as Jim Erickson, managing editor of Alizila. Erickson said by telling the stories behind those who operate and use Alibaba in a compelling way, he is able to give a human element to what is essentially just a plat-form. He added that a lot of production centres around ‘how-to’ video explanations, which are also highly important. 

Adrian Toy, regional head of marketing at Puma, explained how the brand was using content to offset its relatively low advertising budget. Puma started to be engaged with customers by creating an entire brand environment around the 2012 London Olympics, with live content timed around Puma-sponsored sprinter Usain Bolt in the 100 and 200-metre races. Puma also started to infuse “a bit of trendiness into athletic wear” and spent “a lot of time seeding fashion sites and fashion bloggers” as part of its content marketing mix. These blogs offered an instant feedback loop to Puma, assisting its efforts to better assess the effects of its content. 

Marion McDonald, MD of strategy & measurement for Asia-Pacific at Ogilvy Public Relations, said that 48 per cent of marketers feel they can measure content marketing, according to a survey conducted in conjunction with Campaign Asia-Pacific. “But no single form of measurement will be a silver bullet. Measures must always match busi-ness objectives,” she pointed out. 

As PR professionals, the business objectives are to improve organisational reputation and stake-holder relationships for the clients, although she admitted the industry is not focusing on those enough. “These are what we should measure, instead of vanity indicators like fans and retweets.” 

Looking ahead, Erickson predicted that content would become much more visual. But he said in-house production was likely to remain rare. “Not all companies want to be media companies,” he said. 

 

No shortcuts to building trust

In a talk that touched on many prominent social-media-driven crises of the past few years, Ali Bullock, director of communications, APAC, for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, provided all the answers about how companies can build and maintain trust in the modern connected era. That is not hyperbole or sarcasm; Bullock truly did provide all the answers. The trouble is that the answers boil down to a set of common-sense prescriptives that are extremely difficult to pull off consistently: To build trust, be trustworthy. To be seen as ethical, be ethical. If something goes wrong, own up to it and learn from it. 

“Trust is a belief,” Bullock said. “Trust is some-thing between people. Trust is something that companies have to have, but it’s the people who provide that trust.”

As Bullock outlined through copious examples, ranging from BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster to the recent criticism of Kickstarter over a questionable project, trust can be damaged in an instant.

Yet at the same time, the networks that propagate bad news also help companies recover by spreading their responses to those crises. For example, in the case of an emergency landing that happened when Bullock was with Cathay Pacific as global digital and social-media manager, lightning-fast social-media bursts from the affected passengers proved that the airline handled the emergency well and demonstrated that the company’s commitment to safety was ingrained in every employee.

Bullock also touched on black PR. While acknowledging that it is a temptation, especially in China where negatives articles can be ‘disappeared’ for a nominal fee, Bullock’s advice is: Don’t. “The simple fact is that ethics and PR are unregulated,” he said. “We have to rely on ourselves.”

Failing to follow ethical principles did not turn out well for Samsung, which was caught paying for negative reviews of a competitor’s product in Taiwan. And needless to say, that story, which in the past would have been confined to Taiwan, became an instant global story. “My belief is that trust has to be built from the very top,” he said. “You need to build a trans-parent culture. You need to enable your employees; they must also beli-eve they work for a great corporation. Beyond that, make sure your messages are consistent, all the time, every time. And finally, recognise that the world has changed forever. 

“Ultimately, your brand is in the hands of your consumers and your stakeholders,” he concluded.

 

Better PR needed to close the talent gap

Talent was a critical issue in many of the day’s sessions and the final session addressed the problem head-on. If one truth emerged, it was that the industry should be able to make a stronger case than ever that it is a good place for young talent to build a career. 

Moderated by Emma Dale, co-founder and managing director, Asia, with Prospect, the panel included Ahmer Ashraf, regional public affairs lead for Pfizer; Rene Co, vice-president of communications for Greater China and company communications and corporate branding leader with Proctor & Gamble; Emma Richards, regional VP with Waggener Edstrom; and Karen Tam, assistant general manager for promotions and marketing at Harbour City.

Richards picked up the theme early on in the session. “Ten or fifteen years ago, if you looked at where PR professionals were compared to where we are today, we’re recognisable,” she said, adding that the function is now taken much more seriously. “We’re at the cutting edge of doing new things, and we’re connected to a world where we have that oppor-tunity to set new standards and do things a bit differently.”

However, PR is still seen as very traditional, limited to event management or traditional media relations, she said. 

From her perspective as head of a talent agency, Dale agreed. “I don’t think the PR industry overall sells itself as well as it could,” she said. 

People coming into the industry want an exciting, motivating place to work, to be exposed to a wide range of skills. “But I think they think PR is just PR,” she said. “Now that it is so integrated, are we telling them that? Are we telling them they have far more opportunity than they ever did before?”

When talk turned to the retention of talent, Ashram observed that it is always a challenge. “At the end of the day, how I see PR professionals is that they’re like superhumans,” he said. “They have to be extroverted, they have to look presentable, they have to have good speaking skills — they have to have so much. You are already dealing with people who are very dynamic. So you have to make an extra effort to retain them as well.”

Richards said that her agency focuses on plugging new talent into its visions of how it wants to evolve. “Giving ownership from day one and making it very clear that they have a role to play really helps people to see what their future looks like,” she said. 

In combating talent flight, P&G’s Co advised providing a long-term series of experiences. “One of the things that we are telling our people is that in order to be good at what you do, there are things that can only come with actual experience,” he said. “You have to live through a crisis to be able to say you can manage a crisis.” He described how within a company like P&G he can offer exposure to multiple disciplines over a period of years. 

Tam echoed this advice. “If you continuously do fun things, you automatically attract people who want to be part of the team,” she said, adding that Harbour City arranges for its staff to spend time in affiliated companies in other cities.