Kirk Stewart, who this week resigned as VP of corporate communications at Nike Inc., the $12.3 billion sports and fitness company based in Beaverton, OR, loves to spin - a basketball, that is. An huge sports enthusiast, Stewart played three years of varsity hoops at USC.
And although the National Basketball Association didn't beckon, since graduating, Stewart has climbed to the top of the PR game. Before joining Nike in 1997, Stewart spent 16 years at PR powerhouse Manning, Selvage & Lee (and was chairman and CEO for the last
four years of his tenure). He's a member of the Arthur W. Page Society, a trustee of the Institute for Public Relations, and he is also involved with The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College. Not one for hanging at the beach, Stewart already is mulling job offers
from the corporate and agency sides, saying he anticipates landing his next gig pretty soon. Meantime, PR News spoke with him about some of the PR profession's front-burner issues.
What are the top priorities for senior corporate communication execs moving forward?
Finding talent is certainly the No. 1 challenge for corporate communications execs; the second one would be measuring impact - how do we really demonstrate that
what we do adds value and has a business benefit? The profession has been struggling with measurement for a long time, and I'm not sure anyone has figured it out yet, but that shouldn't prevent us from trying. We're pretty good at measuring output but not outcomes, and that's
where the work needs to continue. The third would be the changing media landscape, and what appears to be a lessening of importance of the mainstream media. [PR pros] have to ask themselves how that impacts what we do and how we respond.
Getting a so called 'seat at the table' is no guarantee it will be permanent. How do PR managers maintain a presence in the boardroom and convince the decision-makers that PR has value?
It's something you have to earn every day. It's about having a point of view and being able to express that point of view persuasively. It's also about providing advice and counsel that's consistent with -- and reinforces -- the overall business objectives of the enterprise. The
counsel should be in the best interest of the organization -- not an individual or individuals -- and being able to articulate that in a compelling way. There will be times when the CEO will agree with you and times when he or she won't. You have to fight for what's important
and know when to compromise.
How vital is measurement to winning bigger PR budgets or is there only so much science you can bring to what is essentially an art form?
It's not the be-all/end-all of our business. I do think we need to get better at it, but I don't think the future of
this business -- or bigger budgets for agencies or bigger staffs for corporate PR -- is contingent upon being able to demonstrate, scientifically, the impact we have. There's way more to this business than just that, and the 'art' that you refer to is still an important part of what we
do. It's a matter of putting [measurement] in its proper perspective; the profession is not over-revving on it. It all depends on the company you work for. At Nike, we tend to operate much more with our heads, hearts and guts than we do with data. The fact that we
can't measure everything we do is not that big a deal here, quite frankly.
How can the profession improve agency-client relations and what is often confusion about how the two sides define strategy vs. tactics?
To me, the agency-client relationship boils down to 'do you deliver what you say you're going to deliver?'
Whether you call that 'strategy' or whether you call it 'tactics,' I'm not sure that, at the end of the day, it's all that important. Agencies need to bring a unique and informed perspective that someone inside may not necessarily have, and that's where some of the difficulty comes
in. It's hard for agencies to really understand a company's culture and brand, and that's always been the challenge. But trying to do the best you can to bring that perspective is crucial.
The U.S. Supreme Court punted the ball when it got the Nike v. Kasky case two years ago. Do you think the issues surrounding Nike v. Kasky issues will re-emerge and, if so, what impact will it have on the PR
profession?
Two things have happened since the Supreme Court sent the case back to the California courts. (Nike eventually settled the case with consumer advocate Mark Kasky for $1.5 million.) One, a lot of companies have continued to do corporate social
responsibility (CSR) reporting and haven't been sued, including Nike. Second, the statute under which the lawsuit was brought in California underwent some fairly important modifications this past November. Now, to bring a lawsuit under the statute, a plaintiff has to be
injured or harmed in some way. Before, you didn't have to be an injured plaintiff, and you could bring a suit on behalf all the residents of California; now, you can only bring a lawsuit on your own behalf.
Even with the changes, we're all still stuck with the California Supreme Court definition of 'commercial speech,' which is a very, very broad definition and includes anything a company says about itself that reaches a Californian. As a result of Kasky, communications
departments and legal departments at companies have been working much more closely together to mitigate any potential risk under this statute.
Do you think the Ketchum/Department of Education/Armstrong Williams scandal has taken any toll on the profession? Also, what's your take on how the trade groups responded to the scandal, and did they miss an opportunity to change the perception of
PR?
That, along with the Fleishman-Hillard situation (see PR News, Jan. 26), certainly didn't help the overall reputation of the business and, for some people, it reinforced negative perceptions they already have [about PR]. In terms of how the profession
responded, Arthur W. Page Society had an excellent seminar [about the scandals] and a very interesting dialogue about these issues surrounding the scandals.
But I've always been reluctant to be too critical of others, whether it's agencies or other corporations that [may be in hot water]. Largely, because nine times out of 10 I don't have 10% of the information about the situation, it's disingenuous to be critical of situations in
which you don't have all the facts.
Stewart's Scorecard
Kirk Stewart, who resigned this week as VP of corporate communications at Nike, spent nearly a decade as head of PR at the sports and fitness giant. Here, he shares some of
the PR lessons he learned during his tenure. Although Nike is one of the most visible companies in corporate America, the lessons apply to PR managers working in companies of any
size.
- What you do as a company is more important than what you say. Substance must always precede communications.
- Increased transparency equals increased credibility and trust.
- You must be engaged with the external stakeholders. Engagement is not a spectator sport.
- The importance of taking responsibility, critical self-assessment and humility.
- The complexity of balancing the reputation of the corporation and the image of the brand.
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