The top executives at United Airlines, Ford Motors, British Telecom and Palm all resigned this fall, and it isn't over yet. The average tenure of the corporate CEO has dropped
steadily in recent years, and now stands at just 33 months. So there's sure to be more turnover in the near future. At the same time, media coverage of CEOs ramped up steadily
throughout the 1990s, according to CEOTrack, Burson-Marsteller's quarterly tracking system of CEOs in the news. In 1990, U.S. CEOs got mentioned in the news an average of 26 times
per day. By the second quarter of 2000, top executives were getting 88 mentions a day.
That means when a CEO ends his tenure, the PR shop often is left holding the bag. Employees, investors, analysts and customers all want reassurance. To meet that challenge, the
PR department has to lay the groundwork well in advance.
In order to give diverse stakeholders peace of mind, "you first need to be aware of those groups' perceptions and concerns," says Suzanne Hogan, senior partner in the New York-
based identity and brand strategy consulting firm Lippincott & Margulies. "That means you need to be monitoring the perceptions of all of those groups on an ongoing basis,
before the issue of a change in leadership ever comes up. If you are checking on that all along the way, you will have an understanding of some of the weak areas where the former
CEO did not deliver. When the new person comes in, a brand message can be created around that."
The CEO Brand
The new top dog also will come with a "personal brand." That can be a double-edged sword, according to Vince Powers, president of Boyd Tamney Cross Public Relations in Wayne,
Pa.
"If it is someone who has already built their own reputation and is well-known in their industry, it can make the job of the PR person a lot easier in terms of positioning the
CEO and talking about what this person brings to the table," he says.
On the down side, the new CEO may already be typecast, or may be too strongly associated with his or her previous corporation. In that case, "draw on the success they have had
within the industry, but without tying them specifically to that one company," says Powers. "Talk about what they have done in terms of product, in terms of employees and revenues
and customer operations --- all the things that are transferable to the new position."
In these days of mega-corporations, the CEO's personal brand may be of greater importance than the impact of a leadership change on the corporate brand. With CEOs in a
perpetual game of musical chairs, successful corporate brands should be able to endure regardless of who is steering the ship.
Technically Speaking
There are some notable exceptions, of course. For instance: What would Microsoft be without Bill Gates? In fact, observers say, the technology industry is perhaps the most at
risk for experiencing a corporate brand setback when a CEO leaves. "In a fast-developing sector with a lot of innovation, the CEO is often the messenger of product introductions
and things like that, and so there tends to be a lot more awareness of the CEO's link to the brand than there is in other sectors," notes Mark Curran, managing director of the
global marketing practice at Ogilvy PR Worldwide.
By comparison, "you have these huge packaged-goods companies like Proctor & Gamble, where there are hundreds of brands in their portfolio and the consumer is not even aware
of the company that is creating the brand, let alone the CEO," he said.
Thus the PR shop in a tech firm can walk an especially difficult road, especially given the lightening-fast pace of change in that industry. Iomega, for instance, recently had
its second CEO change in two years, "and when that happens in the industry where the CEO is highly visible, Wall Street is going to see that as a sign of something amiss," Curran
says.
Still, there are ways to deflect the fallout. "If you have branded effectively, the culture and the way people work will be so permeated with this brand that it does not matter
that the CEO is gone," says Anne Bahr Thompson, executive director of planning and strategy at Interbrand, a global brand consultancy in New York City.
One way to lay the groundwork is to have the CEO share the spotlight. When Lou Gerster took the helm at IBM, for instance, he played the front man for a while. "But once the
organization was stable and its brand image was very positive, IBM's PR department started pushing coverage for the eight people behind him," Hogan says. "Now, in the event that a
change should take place, the financial community and investors and customers all know there are eight key people behind the CEO who will move the brand forward without
faltering."
If that kind of brand stability already exists when the CEO leaves, all the PR shop has to do "is to communicate the values of the company and show how the new CEO is either
keeping those values consistent, or shifting them in such a way as to be consistent with the consumer base," Thompson says. "The job of PR is to take the new CEO's initiatives and
show how those are reflective of the values the company already embodies."
(Contacts: Vince Powers, [email protected]; Suzanne Hogan, [email protected]; Anne Bahr Thompson, [email protected]; Mark
Curran, [email protected]; James Lukaszewski, [email protected])
Playing with the Big Guys
Want to keep your job after the new CEO takes the reins? Get on board with his or her agenda, urges James Lukaszewski of The Lukaszewski Group.
Your job is to support the CEO's program. To do that effectively, you have to have a seat at the executive table. "You have to be in the arena with the combatants," Lukaszewski
says.
"Many of the things PR people worry about are immaterial at that level," he adds. "If you walk in the door and say, 'What are we going to say to reporters this afternoon,' that
is not what is on the CEO's mind today. He is thinking about how he can keep four vice presidents from killing each other and get them to focus on the business at hand."
Once you're on the same page as the boss, the best thing you can do is get middle management on board with you. Too often "you have the CEO and the new core people come in, and
PR never makes this communication filtration move down to the people who do the work every day," says Lukaszewski. "There has to be a communications strategy that gets this
information out to the internal managers first."