That customer service representative sitting in her cubicle answering the phone all day - is she part of your integrated communications plan? What about the blogger who's waxing
un-poetically about your industry? Or the marketing director down the hall - what are the chances you'll co-chair a "brand summit" for the company with her?
Depending on your perspective of branding and integrated communications, the answers to these questions will vary. There's no right or wrong answer. The challenge is figuring out
the best questions to ask to move your organization forward in the eyes of your stakeholders. It stands to reason that you should know what your customer service reps are hearing from
customers, and what their own views are about the company for which they work. But how many PR professionals are integrating customer service/customer care into their communications
plans?
During the December Thought Leaders Roundtable hosted by PR News and VMS, internal communications was identified as an untapped area for improving integrated communications. About
a dozen PR executives from corporations and agencies in Charlotte, NC, gathered to discuss the future of integrated communications and PR's role in moving the needle.
The good news on the integrated communications front is that the shift is taking place - at least in the organizations represented at the Roundtable - toward a multidisciplinary
approach to communications. The silos of marketing, advertising, sales and PR are breaking down, slowly but surely.
"Integrated communications is clearly the wave of the future," said Angela Jeffrey, vice president of Editorial Research at VMS and Roundtable co-facilitator. "Our own research
shows that more and more companies are actively engaged in changing internal processes to enable the cross-pollination of creative thoughts and are approaching communications
measurement more holistically."
The journey toward that end, however, can sometimes be painful. Rose Cummings, executive director of corporate communications at SunCom Wireless, said that at the Brand Summit
she organized for her company's top executives, all pillars of marketing were present and everyone walked away with buy-in of the communications plan for the year. "We are living and
breathing integration," said Cummings. For example, a PR activity was recently paid for out of the ad budget, because, said Cummings, "we approached the situation as a team."
The PR News/VMS Roundtable explored a range of topics from paid vs. unpaid media to employee communications to social media and its effect on communications. Represented at the
Roundtable were senior communicators from Bank of America, Food Lion, Lending Tree, SunCom, Trone, Wachovia, The Onder Group, Eric Mower & Associates and Time Warner Cable.
Tom Eppes, senior partner at Eric Mower and Associates, recalled a client's "moment of truth" that affected the brand. "A major manufacturer had a product issue [product returns
and complaints]. We found that the way the customer service people handled the call had much greater impact than what was happening through their PR or advertising efforts." And the
customer service people were beaten down, so instead of just putting more advertising into the problem, Eppes worked with the client to fix the internal issues first. "After that, we
put ads out. The net effect is we now look much more broadly at business problems than traditional tools would suggest."
Rebecca Anderson, VP of corporate communications at LendingTree, said while it would behoove marketers, sales executives and others in her company to know what PR is up to, she's
aware of the need to self-educate about the business drivers of her company. "We need to become CMOs in our own right, even though we will build upon our own knowledge bases, and will
go back and execute our own pieces," she said.
At Trone (previously Trone PR and Trone Advertising), integration is the "hot topic," said Mary Leigh Wallace, account supervisor. "The challenge, though, is making it work in
reality, to put it into practice."
Measuring Your Worth
Proving PR's worth to senior management is an age-old issue and a hot topic among participants. "We struggle with how to measure our worth to management," said Jennifer Darwin,
communications manager with Wachovia. "Management is asking for measurement on how we build the business. The ad side doesn't get questioned like this."
Anderson, of LendingTree, said, "If we can't measure it, we don't do it." The challenge is measuring all areas of the campaign, from marketing to advertising to sales. "Everyone
needs to have skin in the game. Our employees' own goals have to be integrated into everything we do in PR."
Wachovia's Darwin echoed what most PR pros would tout: that unpaid media is more credible than paid media (advertising). Doing the research to prove this to senior management is
key. "We have called our customers and polled their response - and media outreach is more powerful than the ads they are seeing. News is number 3; advertising is number 8...so our
company's money is better spent with [PR]."
However, there will always be a place for advertising. "Many stories that our clients want [coverage of] just won't sell with the media, so you have to buy those stories through
advertising," said Eppes. "Any product or service offering that is 'me-too' in nature won't get editorial."
Measuring integrated efforts is tricky. "It's difficult to get people to figure out what makes them do what they do on a particular day," said Kirkland Ahern, assistant VP of
communications with Wachovia. "A survey is a method, but it may not tell you what you need to know."
So, what are some other ways these top communicators are integrating their communications efforts? First, all employees need to "live the brand," from the customer service rep to
the CEO. Start with employee surveys and never stop tapping into employees for ideas and suggestions. "We've always considered our employees our number 1 ambassadors," said Cummings.
If the SunCom employee surveys pan out negatively, "just a few months later, it hits the customer base," she said.
Cross-disciplinary training is another useful tool in building integrated teams. Cummings said practitioners with backgrounds outside of PR often lend a much-needed perspective to
the team. "We try to look at practitioners with other backgrounds like financial, business management, statistics."
To Blog Or Not To Blog
Social media, including blogs, consumer-generated media and such community sites as MySpace and Facebook, present a new challenge to communicators, and the jury is still out on how
to tackle the digital terrain. Roundtable participants agreed that putting blogs into context is the first line of business. Is it really necessary to respond to every blogger talking
about your company? (No). Do you need to know everything that's being written about your company or your market? (No). Does your CEO need to be blogging on a daily basis or at all?
(No).
As one participant noted, "a lot of the online chatter doesn't matter, but it can matter. So set the expectation that you miss things here and there," and be prepared, at least, to
address a negative blog entry or to place a video on YouTube if appropriate. Be aware of what's out there and how it can affect you, and even help you, with PR efforts.
"Audiences in the Internet age are indivisible," said Michael Clement, SVP of corporate communications at Bank of America. "Reaction time is critical because of the speed of
information."
"Digital brings it all to a head," said Jessica Graham, director of public affairs at Time Warner Cable. "But if you've got relationships with folks, you are not as vulnerable."
To find out more about the PR News/VMS Thought Leader Roundtables, e-mail PR News Group Publisher Diane Schwartz at [email protected] or Angie Jeffrey at [email protected].
Contacts:
Kirkland Ahern, [email protected]; Rebecca Anderson, [email protected]; Mike Clement, [email protected]; Rose Cummings,
[email protected]; Jennifer Darwin, [email protected]; Tom Eppes, [email protected]; Jessica Graham, [email protected]; Mary Leigh Wallace, [email protected]