19960902
THE PR NEWS INTERVIEW/CORPORATE COMMUNICATION CENTER PR PLANS, DEPARTMENTS AROUND BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
September 2, 1996
Given the size and scope of Mobil Corp.'s [MOB] worldwide operations, the energy company's top public relations post always has been one of the most challenging in corporate America. In the PR community, the job has had a particularly high profile due to the well-known work of Herb Schmertz, who pioneered Mobil's groundbreaking editorial series that appeared regularly in The New York Times.
To assess the corporate communications challenges facing global businesses, and see how Mobil is responding, last month we spoke with Robert O'Leary, general manager of public relations. Reporting to Chairman and CEO Lucio A. Noto, O'Leary joined the Fairfax, Va.-based company last November after serving as vice president of public relations and advertising at Unisys Corp. [UIS]. (Mobil, 703/846-2400)
What are the major challenges facing corporate PR execs today?
The three major things I keep looking at are growing global complexities, the balancing of tactical public relations considerations with really good strategic planning, and developing and motivating people within organizations.
Corporations are making increasing use of PR in marketing efforts. Tell me how the PR function supports the marketing effort at Mobil.
PR and marketing should be indistinguishable. Public relations, whether it manifests itself in sponsorships, media relations, image enhancements, better be designed to help the business. To that end, I think it [public relations] is marketing.
Describe your worldwide PR staffing structure and working relationships.
We have public affairs people throughout the world, people that are embedded within each major affiliate. We're in well over 100 countries. There are designees responsible for public affairs in [many] countries and people in operations, like our major refineries.
What we have basically is a regional shared services concept, by which there are people tracking through a regional management team. This is consistent with other services [provided by other functions, such as legal]. We are in this case providing for linking appropriate levels of public affairs services to the [internal] clients.
We coordinate a lot of activities, and then, here [at corporate headquarters] we also have a corporate center public relations organization, which supports our executive office, and works with government relations and investor relations. It also acts, if you will, as the functional stewards for the various public relations disciplines.
Importantly, we are linked as a team. We just met as a world-wide team. The entire public affairs team [about 100 people] met together in Washington for a few days, sharing information.
Mobil has gone through streamlining and re-engineering of many corporate functions. How have you realigned the corporate public relations department?
The organization I described is a direct result of reorganizing and getting the model right. I think it is a better structure, by which we look at shared services, by which our resources are mapped to needs. There has been some streamlining of the operation. In terms of people and projects over the years, a lot of it is very consistent with the restructuring of the organization to be much more competitive.
We have structured into 11 major business groups. All of these business groups needed to be supported by public affairs and public relations. We have people getting involved with those organizations, and then the corporate center is aligned with the overall management of the corporation.
I would characterize the organization as lean, wth an awful lot of good talent.
What is your approach to development of corporate public relations staff?
When you're into a flatter organization, you must find opportunity to create a challenging environment by which people will feel stimulated and gain new experience. The way we are going to develop our people is really to broaden their responsibilities in existing jobs.
Once you know people are very good at handling [a job], we will look at the opportunity to add responsibility. That may be taking the form of special assignments, putting someone on a task force, which is going to allow them to do their jobs but also allow them to know that they [can tackle] special projects, where they can grow and add value, or add experiences to different parts of the organization.
Second, movement of people into new assignments is important for the development of our public relations talent. We look for the opportunity to move people from the corporate center [headquarters office] to field operations, and likewise look at some of the talent that is very strong in the field in some of these regions and country operations, and look to bring them into corporate [headquarters].
The third piece is competency training in some of the specific disciplines.
Today, some managers have concluded that you can have all three: faster, better, cheaper. Tell me about ways that Mobil has adapted its PR capability to achieve this broad goal.
The whole key is doing a good job of aligning activities to the business. This organization has done a very good job in setting the stage. The key is deciding on business priorities and mapping plans to these. That gets you to faster, better and less expensive.
Also, we will look at eliminating support for those things that have not been directly servicing the business. We develop measurements that are tied to the business. For example, there are certain sponsorship activities, that upon further scrutiny, we have dropped.