The biggest issues currently facing corporate communicators
Fractured media environment, employee brand, internal communications and talent acquisition, purpose and CSR, Brexit...
Cross-cutting
Appreciation of the CEO’s brand, how to handle that, and how that ties back to reputation.
We have to put ourselves in the mindset of the CEO and the CFO more than we ever have done historically.
You are engaging with people, seeing which arguments work, which arguments don’t; you have a sense of what is going on in the outside world, and what is acceptable today may not be regarded as acceptable behaviour in two years’ time. You need to talk to a lot of people and you need to listen – it is very important to listen.
Brexit, globalisation and political risk
Issues are becoming much, much more regional.
Today it is even more important to focus on genuineness and transparency. This is not always easy for companies with complex business models, with partners and projects around the world.
Purpose and CSR
What we noticed is that a lot of people are not looking for products or services, but they are looking to make investment, to buy in to a particular brand – it supports their lifestyle and aspirations.
The commercialisation of CSR and sustainability is something which we haven’t cracked properly, really, and that is very, very important as well.
Employee brand, internal communications, and talent acquisition
Employee engagement is increasingly moving up the agenda
Brand advocacy has been going on some time, how do you make your employees … brand defenders now?
Fractured media environment
Jeff Bezos has a microphone in my living room — how do I feel about that?
We are disintermediating the business media because actually it is almost impossible to get their attention, unless it is for the wrong reasons.
The emergence of a highly informed, engaged and active set of stakeholders who are now empowered by the digital revolution.
The media landscape is changing colossally; everyone is becoming a communicator themselves.
Another interesting challenge is how to combine the BtB communication and the BtC one: it is not easy to find a single ‘narrative’, since the needs and the requests of the different actors are different.
Anti-business sentiment
There is absolutely zero appetite for positive stories about the role of business.
We can clearly see that people are against companies making a real profit.
Our shareholders want to hear how much money we have made… it is often quite a shameful thing to talk to people about the fact that we make €1 billion a quarter.
That culture is going to fundamentally shift and what that means is in our sector we are going to get a lot more use of bully pulpits.
