As former White House and Hill staffers settle into private sector PR jobs in the wake of the last election, industry rhetoric once again turns to the merits of running PR
programs like political campaigns.
Loretta Ucelli, formerly the communications director in the Clinton White House, joined Edelman last March as EVP for issues and crisis management. She says the PR community
stands to benefit from political wisdom when it comes to the development of immediate response strategies, proactive messaging and third party issue validation. Today's PR
landscape looks more like politics, Ucelli says, "because there are simply a lot more elements you have to have coverage for."
While PR-cum-politics isn't exactly a new genre, political management theories are starting to permeate client-side PR departments more deeply. One idea that's gaining ground
is the contention that organizing internal PR staff around specific issues and constituencies (rather than tactical staff functions) makes for more dynamic teams.
"A lot of companies look at their corporate communications charters almost like political campaigns now, in the sense that, from an issues front, company actions are so much
more transparent," observes Weber Shandwick COO Cathy Lugbauer. She notes, for example, that WTO activism catapulted more corporations into the spotlight on trade issues. As
activists force more companies to wear their politics on their sleeves, internal PR teams are increasingly called upon to shift their weight and focus at the drop of a hat.
Packaging the Issues
It's not surprising, then, that issues-based staffing models are gaining the most ground among packaged goods, pharmaceutical and biotech companies embroiled in such
contentious debates as genetically-modified food, new drug therapies and stem cell research.
But activist pressure isn't the only force compelling corporate PR departments to regroup along constituency lines. Many companies are adopting audience-based staffing models
as a means of gaining a leg up on their competitors.
Byron Reimus, a partner with NY-based Heyman Consulting, observes that pharmaceutical companies, in particular, are increasingly allocating PR staff resources to internal
"franchises." Each franchise is designed to bolster market share among a specific stakeholder group - say, women 25-35, or patients with specific diseases, such as AIDS or cancer.
"Over the years, these companies have acquired more and more products. Now they're saying, 'We've reorganized, reengineered and downsized all over the place, and it isn't
working. Instead of moving people around, why don't we let people stay where they are, but [create overlay teams] that focus on specific constituents?'" Reimus says.
The franchise approach constitutes a departure from traditional organizational charts, which tend to group PR staff according to tactical functions, such as speechwriting,
annual report development and media relations. Plus, franchise development usually involves not only PR employees, but also marketing, R&D, legal, sales and other
departments.
"The idea is, if you really get to know a specific audience, like women ages 25-35, and engage them in dialogue, you'll start to understand where their needs are unmet," says
Reimus. "You start to create products and services to better serve that audience -- that's where the real competitive advantage lies." If a franchise-based communications program
results in a 2-3 point increase in market share among a particular target audience, that's a bankable outcome - not to mention a shrewd strategic score.
Building a Knowledge Bank
Perhaps nowhere are political PR skills more apropos than in trade associations, which, by nature, are constituency-driven. When Robert Pflieger joined the National Association
of Home Builders two years ago as senior staff VP for public affairs, his first order of business was to create staff positions dedicated to territories such as environmental and
land use communication.
"In the past, we would devote a lot of staff to the issue du jour, but we didn't have consistency from the peaks to the valleys," explains Pflieger. "Issues were managed more
from the top, as in, 'here's our big issue -- put five people on it for a period of time until it dies down and gets resolved.'" The problem is, notes Pflieger, that if you're
constantly jumping from one issue to the next, you're not building up a base of knowledge. "You're reacting," Pflieger notes. "Instead, why not give your staff time to become
vested in an issue? Then part of your job becomes to proactively educate and pitch the media as opposed to waiting for the phone to ring."
In terms of hiring trends, a movement toward issues- or constituency-based communication could hurt incumbent PR professionals, in that it's a trend that encourages recruitment
outside of traditional PR circles. "You could reasonably see the day when a company whose franchise focuses on women aged 25-35 looks to other industries, such as fashion, for
talent [knowledgeable in that demographic]," says Reimus. "It wouldn't even be as important to recruit someone with PR experience, per se."
On the other hand, Reimus notes that "PR people can be uniquely poised to do well" in a world shaped by various constituencies, because their political instincts for consensus-
building, synthesizing and facilitating processes can help cut across corporate silos to achieve landslide victories in the marketplace.
(Contacts: Loretta Ucelli, Edelman, 212/768-0550; Cathy Lugbauer, Weber Shandwick, 617/520-7053; Byron Reimus, Heyman Consulting, 212/784-2717; Robert Pflieger, National
Association of Home Builders, 202/822-0403)
Office Politics
What do other corporate PR departments look and act like? Heyman Consulting, a division of the executive search firm Heyman Associates, conducted an audit of more than 250
Fortune 500 and equivalent overseas companies and produced these findings:
The majority of corporate PR departments continue to be organized by staff function (e.g., employee communications, media relations) or by a combination of function and task
(e.g., issues management and speechwriting) and then in accordance with specific business lines.
In-house PR staff range in size from 20 to 150 (not including employee communications, IR, marketing staff and government affairs). Industries such as telecommunications,
petroleum, electronics and automotive typically boast the largest corporate PR departments, averaging 225-plus PR staffers globally.
For every full-time PR staffer at HQ, companies have 1.5 to 5 additional PR employees working in specific lines of business or operations.
Traditional barometers of corporate PR prowess - i.e., department head count and budget - are not always indicators of bottom line success. "Many of the real innovators in
corporate communications are not necessarily industry leaders, or the biggest spenders," the report concludes.