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Are you listening?

IN TODAY’S allegedly sophisticated information age, the need to communicate clearly has never been greater.  Information is valuable only when shared.  And to be shared, it has to be delivered consistently, in a manner which is readily identifiable and easily understood.

 By and large, all of us can speak.  But it is not necessarily shouters who make the most telling contribution.  Voices should not merely be heard, but listened to as well.  Complex issues must be delivered in simple, clear language.  The overriding challenge is to minimise communication breakdowns.

 The requisite proficiency does not always come naturally, but when executed well it will be a key factor in corporate success.  Skilled public relations specialists have a pivotal part to play in this process.

 Business managers take on wide-ranging responsibilities for communications, starting with internal requirements.  Their actions are also scrutinised by people outside the organisation – customers, suppliers, investors, regulators, competitors, commentators and other opinion formers.

 Tasks include improving understanding, widening acceptance and enhancing reputations.  By speaking clearly and consistently, from a united and uniform base, business aims and objectives will be so much easier to achieve. 

 Notwithstanding that different audiences will need differing styles of presentation and degrees of selectivity in content, corporate messages must never be fragmented nor massaged for the sake of effect.  Say it as it is and the identity will register positively and constructively.

 At the heart of all this is the quality of the public relations effort, keeping the cogs of business lubricated.  The primary purposes of professionally-led PR are to drive behaviour, add value and strengthen results.

Talk to Changeworks Communications about how to add value to your PR efforts, we listen!

SITTING in the press office at an international boat show, chatting with a friend who edits an important trade magazine, calm was disrupted as he tried to hide face behind hands and bemoaned: “Oh no, here comes that dreadful tense whore.”  “Tense whore,” I puzzled?  “That awful Hortense from that equally awful public relations outfit on the south coast.” 

 I did not know Hortense but I was about to see her in action as she swarmed over my defenceless pal and gushed adjectives at him, eulogising about her client’s wondrous new widget, which we all knew was the old one repackaged.  Shiny sales leaflets were thrust at him, along with a hastily personalised invitation to an afternoon press conference and champagne bash to relaunch the not-so-new product. 

 She asked me who I was.  When I told her, she spun on her heels and flew off in search of the next hapless victim.  I was reminded yet again of the chasm between journalists and many PR practitioners: so often, there is no loathing lost on the part of the former, and scant understanding shown in the case of the latter. 

 Down the years, countless books have been published giving advice to so-called PR professionals on how to work successfully with the media.  To surprisingly little avail.  ‘So-called PR professionals’ because it is not yet a profession – it is an occupation.  A pre-occupation with client-driven drivel, some might argue.

 It is not difficult to claim to be a PR person.  There are no barriers to entrance.  PR skills are not exclusive.  The knowledge base is defined loosely, with no standard model.  In spite of the efforts of the 60-years-old Institute of Public Relations and bodies such as the Public Relations Consultants’ Association, it has been inordinately difficult to enforce a regulatory framework or sufficiently high educational standards.

 Nonetheless, while ‘spin’ is the aspiration of many, successful PR builds reputations, improves understanding and can influence decisions far more effectively than advertising.  The harnessing of opportunities provided by the press, radio, television and new media can be a highly effective and cost-efficient means of communicating with and influencing target audiences.

 To succeed, it is necessary to build working relationships with the editorial media.  Taking time to understand what and how journalists write, then offering PR as a resource rather than a deflection or hindrance are ways in which trusting partnerships can evolve, with substantial payback. 

 Tell it as it is, not as you might like it to be.  After all, no business is perfect.  If it is a case of needing to return to the drawing board to improve the company, product or service, tell them how you are making it better.  Keep it simple: avoid jargon and insider terminology.  Look for and spell out the drama, allowing any genuine excitement to shine through.  Shorten it and get to the point, quickly.  By all means put on your best face, but remember that saying so won’t make it so.  Be a good listener, too.

 Top-of-the-league public relations practitioners know precisely how to enlist the support of editors, producers and compilers; they know how to provide them with the material they require in the formats they demand; they match or surpass the abilities of those with whom they are dealing.

 Quality PR also calls for in-depth knowledge of – and sympathy with – clients’ needs, their culture, aims and objectives, and the relevant marketplaces.  It requires innovative thinking and consistent strength of purpose.   Furthermore, in an industry that does not employ comprehensive standards, adopting strong ethical principles is vital.  Then, PR has the potential to become a profession.  Some day …..

EVERY ONE of today’s major industries had to emerge and evolve.  However, some have stopped growing.  Others have the shadow of decline looming menacingly.  Wherever growth is threatened, slowed or stopped it is not because the market is saturated.  Probably, it is because there has been a failure in customer relations and understanding: failure from the top.

   It is nigh on impossible to select a single major business category of today that did not go through a burgeoning era of being a so-called growth industry.  In each case, its assumed strength was attributed to apparently unchallenged superiority, with, it seemed, no feasible alternative available.  Yet one after another of such celebrated industries have retreated into decline.  More will follow, ad infinitum.

   In fact, there is no such thing as a growth industry.  Those that assume themselves to be riding an automatic growth stallion invariably fall off.  The history of the dying and dead shows a self-deceiving cycle of bountiful expansion and undetected decay.  It shows a disregard, or ignorance, of the need to mount markets and hold on tightly through innovation, change, choice and captured customer loyalty.

   Management, reaching out, must provide the customer-creating drive and customer-retention added value.  It must push this tightly focused awareness and action into every nook and cranny, exciting and stimulating colleagues each step of the way, rather than running a ‘bandwagon’ business.

   The organisation must think of itself not as one which produces goods or services, but as a conduit for developing customers – and doing those things that will make people want to continue to buy, remembering the fickleness in every marketplace.  Relationship management is all about making it easy for customers to stay, difficult to go.  The whole operation, top to bottom and back to the top, must be enthusiastically aware of the corporate style, direction, objectives, plus the needs of existing and potential customers.  If they do not know where they are going, they will never find the road to take them there. 

   Even with attitude and aptitude in place, there are dangers.  It is too easy to become obsessively responsive to fleeting customer whims and media-whipped fads; so often, there is a lack of risk-reduction market research and attitudinal surveying; sometimes, the back-office support provides insufficient ammunition for the front line troops; and within service industries in particular, there can be a tendency to reach ahead of the market, making offerings that are too complex or over sophisticated, trying to sell electronic shovels before people are familiar with using spades.

   Little in business is straightforward.  But to grow and sustain growth, managements must turn around to face their customers. 

   Professional marketing communications are crucial.  And yet saying so won’t make it so.  Products and services are selected by purchasers’ overall perceptions of the supplier, not merely by clever headlines, compelling imagery or high-sounding mission statements.  Successful marketing puts customers’ needs at the centre of every stage, every process, every activity of the business machine and its output – then presents to the outside world with unified, clear and consistent messages designed to persuade customers that they will be the beneficiaries.  (Out of sight is out of mind, is out of business.)

   This requires a totally integrated and rigorously implemented all-company approach, explained via skilled communications.  Nothing less will work.

OF COURSE you could have written that.  Everyone in business is expert at stringing words together on screen and paper, or so they think, if only they could find the time.  They know they can’t design the cover for the company’s sales brochure, update the logo, or build a new website.  These are mystical, creative vocations best left to experts.  But: writing?  Anybody can do that.

   Writing is the most undervalued of all communications skills.  It is the one to which least attention is paid – yet it is the most important.

   Believe it or not, professional writers have been trained.  Yes, they have latent talent.  In the case of yours truly, an English graduate, the preparation was in the hard-knocks arena of Fleet Street and then as a copywriter in exacting advertising agencies.  The process in the latter role would be to take a brief, research the subject and its objectives, come up with a string of headlines, narrow them down and then write the body copy.  The agency demand was for compression, precision, clarity, simplicity, rhythm and appropriate corporate style – grammatically potent, although not necessarily purist.

   This is starkly different from the writing that emerges from general business.  “I’d write it myself, but I’m far too busy,” and “Surely we have someone in-house who can write this, instead of paying for it?” are familiar-sounding remarks.  Undoubtedly, business managers spend chunks of their working days assembling words in the form of memos, reports and letters.  Secretly, they are likely to be proud of their prose and would be starkly horrified at any suggestion that their output might be written badly.  Nonetheless, to the professional eye, it is usually poor in terms of the assemblage of ideas and worse still in clarity of expression.

   Facets of writing professionally include being able to absorb – and to question – a brief, to define the most appropriate communications strategy, to create the concept, then to execute it in a tone which is compelling, precise, economical and true to the client’s corporate culture. 

   Always, the writer must transpose into the position of his or her readers, and to seem to be speaking their language.  Effective writing concentrates on those who buy the product or service, not those who make or sell it.

   This applies whether the writer is working on a total communications package or a single item.  Most certainly, it is not a task for part-timers, nor for those whose heads are filled with a plethora of other concerns.  It is not a job for the great untrained.

   You will not get through to an audience that is bored or restless.  Corporate communications programmes will never work at full power, nor deliver value for money, unless they are implemented by craftspeople who understand your corporate objectives and can help achieve them for you through the use of energetic, clear and digestible language.  Communications are not only about pretty pictures.