Imagine exchanging insider information about your PR and marketing practices with your competitors - not your typical corporate benchmarking approach.
But that's what some forward-thinking communicators are doing in order to distinguish their services and brands in the industry.
For example, Anders Gronstedt is branding his one-year-old company, the Gronstedt Group, Superior, Colo., by conducting time-consuming benchmarking analyses of integrated communications practices. One such undertaking included sharing corporate information with other international businesses about his client Volvo's PR and marketing infrastructure to uncover other companies' best practices.
Such a barter system may seem risky, but Volvo execs and Gronstedt last fall visited Honda and Mercedes headquarters, to name a few. They discovered that companies integrating communications into overall business practices generally have stronger relationships with their employees and key audiences. And those ties can have incredible impact on a company's brand.
Gronstedt's work hardly is the bells-and-whistles stuff that we've become so used to in PR. It marries academia and public relations, a typically tough feat in the business world. Right now the firm has only two ongoing clients, but sees the value in putting the time and effort in up front. His work today is based on his seven-year study of 14 of the world's leading companies in total quality management. Companies include Eastman Chemical Co. and General Motors.
Gronstedt is relying on in-depth PR projects such as audits and analyses instead of hanging his shingle on traditional PR disciplines, such as media, customer or investor relations.
Gronstedt also is building his brand through pro bono speaking engagements. He recently spoke at an Internet conference for 500 marketing and PR managers in Sweden. Upcoming engagements include the Business Marketing Association, the National Investor Relations Institute and the Public Relations Society of America.
Digging for The Differences
It is an approach such as Gronstedt's that will serve to set communications firms apart as competition becomes fiercer.
"Our value isn't just good press relations - it's how we differentiate our business in the marketplace," says Ron Ricci, one of the four principals at Cunningham Communications.
Cunningham, Palo Alto, Calif., has a blue-chip list of long-term clients including Hewlett-Packard [HWP] and Motorola [MOT]. It has worked with HP for nearly a decade and with Motorola for 12 years.
With its client base, the firm has conducted more than 5,000 customer interviews that have provided raw data for a unique statistical business paragon, the Momentum Management Model. The goal is to determine what motivates consumers to buy products. That information can be difficult to easily pinpoint, but it has become CC's trademark and the hallmark of how it competes against other PR firms.
The model is based in part on determining a company's "economic footprint," what Cunningham views as its ecosystem.
"One of the things we've discovered in studying customers is that they're not just buying a product - they are buying into all the other companies and products that support a product," he says.
For instance, in its internal and external communications, Hewlett-Packard is better able to communicate the value of its $10 billion UNIX business by representing its $30 billion impact in the industry. This value is determined by factoring the impact UNIX has on software developers, third-party hardware manufacturers, and IT and systems integration specialists.
When Your Customer's Your Best Friend
PR firms may think their clients want jazzy press kits, but some experts now are viewing PR in much the way they look at advertising: whether it changes behavior by creating customer preference. Worldwide, that kind of differentiation is becoming the pearl in the oyster.
For instance, Business Wire (BW) knows that it's one in a universe of news distribution services, so it's looking for what it can do differently. Recently, it cemented more than 1,000 relationships with journalists through its "BW Press Pass".
Reporters and editors can create personal news profiles based on 31 industries and 10 news categories, including earnings, M&As and management changes. BW Press Pass forwards all headlines that match a particular profile, and a recipient can click on headlines for full text or receive an e-mail of the full text to pore over later.
"This saves me 15 hours a week," says Al Lynd of Edge Publishing Inc., Wilmington, N.C., which publishes newsletters about the telecommunications and computer industries. Lynd relies on wire services for 75 percent of his content. Sifting through wire news used to be a laborious process.
"This just makes journalists' lives easier," Lynd says. "I don't have to reach into a basket of marbles and figure out where the red or green one is." (Gronstedt, 303/494-5580; Cunningham Communications, 650/858-3700; Business Wire, 212/752-9600)