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EDITORIAL

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his year’s European Communication Monitor – the largest transnational survey on strategic communication worldwide – has found that linking business strategy to communication is perceived as the most important challenge for communication management within the next three years. That is hardly surprising: the challenge of f inding def initive metrics for corporate communications and public relations, to show results and to demonstrate return on investment for communication initiatives, is a perennial concern for the industry. Why wouldn’t it come under more pressure in times of tightened budgets and increased transparency? In this issue’s Storyteller section, we’ve invited a selection of experts, all writing from markedly different perspectives, to share their insights into how they def ine the value of their work, thereby building a business case for this curious hybrid of art and science – communication management. Inevitably, measurement and evaluation crop up repeatedly as a tried and trusted means of drawing a clear line between communication projects and the f inancial bottom line, with arguments for and against their adoption and effectiveness. Alongside such industry leaders as GE and AkzoNobel, we were especially eager to feature voices from the non-prof it and public diplomacy sectors – who better to speak with authority about the need to carefully weigh the return on investment of each and every statement, press release and tweet? We are grateful to NATO and CARE International for giving us a glimpse into their work in this f ield. As ever, these articles are meant to be starting points for a deeper discussion – we welcome your own views and opinions. You can also read more about the aforementioned European Communication Monitor in our annual look at its results, starting on page 30 : I hope you f ind it and the rest of this issue of Communication Director an informative read.

Marc-Oliver Voigt Publisher marc-oliver.voigt@communication-director.eu

Photo: Private

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“Words can and do cause the loss of human life every day now.”

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“Global businesses are now seeing through the mythology of public relations.”

AGENDA SETTER The latest in communication thought and practice

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Postcards from the edge Fighting the propoganda war in Ukraine

PR ESSENTIALS

Brush up the biography of your chief executive officer and transform a resumé into reputational reward

Irene Pollach

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Sources of inspiration Channeling innovation by bridging the gap between art and business

Giovanni Schiuma

Key aspects of communication

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Showcasing the CEO

The global top 50

THE STORY OF PR

Top communicators at the world’s biggest companies

Looking back at landmark communications

STRATEGIC THINKER The corporate and academic stand on communication

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Trust me, PR is dead Has radical honesty and radical transparency sounded the death-knell for public relations? Let us hope so

Robert Phillips

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The evolution of evaluation Public relations measurement and evaluation has evolved over at least two centuries

Tom Watson and Paul Noble

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More than a game

The other history Alongside official narratives about organisations, there exist unofficial, alternative stories of equal importance

Anna Linda Musacchio Adorisio

All the World Cup’s a stage, and all the official sponsors merely players

THE BIG INTERVIEW

Oliver Bartelt

Key communicators under the spotlight

How to improve personnel management and your career

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Patterns of excellence Excellent communication departments are characterised by specific structures, role models and worldviews

Ansgar Zerfass and Piet Verhoeven 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

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Paul Polman The chief executive officer of Unilever and 2014 European Communication Award winner on sustainability and more

Photo: www.thinkstock.com

TEAM PLAYER

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“CEO biographies should give the subject the opportunity to step out of the C-suite and into the limelight.”

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“The 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil was the largest stage in the world.”

STORY TELLER Looking at the important questions of communication

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Science behind the art The known knowns, the known unknowns and unknown unknowns of communications research

Gary Sheffer

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Assessing impact

Using communication capital to reconstruct the results chain of internal messages

Book Reviews

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John McLaren

Photos: flickr.com/Crystian Cruz; Picture Alliance

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Melanie Brooks

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European Association of Communication Directors

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Discovering the value of a good reputation

The latest developments in the EACD

QUESTIONS TO...

Media measurement on a shoestring Even on a tight budget, media measurement can help save lives

A round up of recent and forthcoming titles

ASSOCIATION

Measure for measure The business of communications is persuasion, and needs gut instinct, experience, guile and smarts

Why it is time to establish a new model for measurement and evaluation

COMMUNICATIONS READER

Stefania Romenti

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Deep analysis Jim Macnamara

Weighing up the impact of public diplomacy, word by word, tweet by tweet

Internal affairs

Communicators are better served by being analytical and results-driven, especially when undertaking a major project

Mark Roberts

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic

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What’s in a name?

The personal side of communication directors

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Hanane Taidi Director of Communications, PlasticsEurope

Why you need to cover both cognitive and emotional dimensions when gauging reputation

Manfred Schwaiger

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AGENDA SETTER The latest in communication thought and practice

The tragedy of flight MH17 is a stark reminder of the knife-edge tension between Russia and Ukraine. Recently, several pro-Ukraine communicators have stepped into the fray.

By Dafydd Phillips

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Photo: www.thinkstock.com

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

aunched only 48 hours after Russian troops took control of vital installations across the Crimean peninsula in March, the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre (www.uacrisis.org) was set up by a volunteer team of communication professionals from at least 10 different firms. Based on the third floor of Kiev’s Hotel Ukrayina, the Center receives support from a number of donors, including the George Soros International Renaissance Foundation, the European Endowment for Democracy and private donations.

Among the circle of founders is Nataliya Popovych, president of Public Relations Partnership, or PRP. In an interview with Communication Director, she contrasted the Ukraine’s public relations tradition with that of Russia’s. “Russian propaganda stemming from Soviet propaganda has had a long history in the making”, she says, explaining that Ukraine has no track record in developing and building up its national reputation with internal or external stakeholders. That may be in the process of changing: according to Popvych, “some crises although very painful for every nation, are the best drivers and opportunities to change the situation.”

The center’s aims are to provide a unified communications platform open round the clock, and, in Popovych’s words, to “tell Ukraine’s story”. Since its inception, the center has initiated and organised over 370 press briefings, with more than 500 speakers, among whom are government officials, diplomats, experts and activists. It has issued over 350 press releases and up to 50 daily news digests as well as over 150

STRATEGIC THINKER The corporate and academic stand on communication

TRUST ME, PR IS DEAD The paradoxes and challenges of the progressive corporate future means it is time to bury, not praise, public relations.

By Robert Phillips

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he British Royal Family has veered from public relations triumph (William and Kate Windsor) to public relations disaster (take your pick).

Recently, it has been on a high, although Prince Charles, heir to the throne, managed to prick that earlier this year with his comparisons of the Russian president to Adolf Hitler.

Charles’ Canadian moment teaches us that not only is it now impossible to control or ‘manage the message’ but also that the end of the age of deference and hierarchies is truly upon us. The British monarch-in-waiting increasingly behaves like a social activist, rather than a regal diplomat. Curiously, that puts him in tune with the real world, which sees through the obvious veneer of “spin” and asks for a return to honesty, in politics and in business, and even, perhaps, in monarchy, too.

During the writing of my book, Trust Me, PR is Dead, a number of blogs started appearing about the “death of ” many things. One was from Tom Fletcher, the British 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

ambassador to Lebanon, who subsequently contributed a chapter to the book. In a blog post entitled “Is Diplomacy Dead, Too?” Fletcher wrote: “Substitute ‘traditional diplomacy’ for ‘public relations’ and we can see a similar challenge.”

“Diplomacy has detached itself from public debate through meaningless platitudes; much of its form (summits, communiqués) was designed in 1815 for an age of monarchies and great states; and it has been slow to adjust to the next wave of disruption. Let’s be honest,” Fletcher concluded, “we are also, post Snowden, Assange et al, less trusted than we were.”

DECEPTION AND MYTHOLOGY The entrepreneur Luke Johnson once reminded me “where there’s a buyer, there’s a market”. For this reason, the public relations industry will no doubt survive for some time. But this does not make it fit for purpose. As Diogenes the Cynic saw it: “markets are places men go to deceive one another”.

Global businesses are now seeing through the mythology of public

STRATEGIC THINKER

relations and re-thinking their communications functions. One European communications director, quoted in the Financial Times in April, said of his public relations agency “I have no idea what they do for us … little except add corporate speak.”

I spent over 25 years working in public relations. I am confident that public relations is now dead. Few should mourn its passing. Its business model, dominated on the consultancy side by bloated global firms selling middle-ranking generalists and bureaucracy over leadership and senior expertise, is broken. Its philosophy – rooted in selling stuff to consumers, not speaking honestly to citizens – is exhausted. An increasingly transparent world exposes tired deceits.

I spent a number of years working on the Edelman Trust Barometer and chaired the company’s global Public Engagement group. I now believe that the shift from public relations to public engagement is not enough. Alongside this, the public relations industry has abused and exhausted trust. Trust is not a function of public relations. Trust is an outcome, not a message. It is deeply behavioural, complex and fragile, and hard-won every day, by actions, not words. Chief executive officers should beware public relations salesmen that talk trust and promise otherwise.

For the past decade, the public relations industry has obsessed as to whether social media is in fact public relations. In truth, public relations has been scavenging at the edges of social media in order to mask the inevitable financial decline of a traditional, disrupted industry. We should care little for this discussion.

It asks the wrong questions, miring the industry still further in the same

pointless introspection that peppers the relentless conversation as to whether public relations does or does not belong in the boardroom.

The real truths of the social digital age should focus on the implications of social business, the creative economy and individual empowerment – the irreversible power shifts from state to citizen, employer to employee, company to citizen-consumer. Society is more atomised and activist as a result. Power and influence are asymmetrical and therefore need to be met with asymmetrical actions, not manicured words. Individuals, not institutional authority, are driving real societal change. The old establishment (political, economic, regulatory and sometimes corporate) is mostly broken and public relations is not equipped to deal with the disparate sparks of individual power and influence that – fuelled by creativity and collaboration – are taking its place. Chaos and disorder reign. The challenge now is to find better ways to deliver high-functioning organisation within this chaos.

PROGRESSIVE THINKING Progressive thinking – and progressive business leaders – avoids the traditional rush to communicate and rejects the misplaced belief that “everything is communications” and that everything must start with a message or a narrative. Future communica-

I am confident that public relations is now dead. Few should mourn its passing. tions starts at the end, not the beginning, of a four-part process that first comprehensively re-sets the goals, values and working practices of the organisation.

For corporate goals, it is essential to ask bigger questions. For corporate values, progressive leaders think about citizens before capital. For working practices, they recognise the company as a social movement – turning the organisation inside out, embracing thousands of employees as social activists and change agents. And then, finally, for communications, they lead with actions, not words. While the future is neither corporate nor homosocial, “corporates”, complete with their activist change agents, are very much part of the future – as effective Business States, an integral component within the 21st century social contract.

Some rebels are already re-setting the agenda. Pierre Goad, global head of communications at HSBC, is one.

“Implanting messages,” he comments, “doesn’t work with 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

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STRATEGIC THINKER

MORE THAN A GAME Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win. Although this old rule still seems to apply, from a business and a fan’s perspective there is much more to football.

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he FIFA World Cup Brazil is the largest stage in the world: over three billion people watch the games at some point and it engages fans throughout the world like no other competition. It brings entire nations to a halt as people gather to watch each game; every moment is by definition newsworthy and the results can dramatically affect the mood and the economy of a country. Nothing beats the anticipation that builds before a FIFA World Cup game and no other competition offers such powerful moments of celebration, optimism and camaraderie to its fans.

At Anheuser-Busch InBev, we want own those moments.

Our brand Budweiser has a strong commitment to football globally, having served as official beer sponsor of the FIFA World Cup for over 25 years, and with an ongoing commitment through the 2018 and 2022 tournaments. In 2010 alone, Budweiser was one of the top three brands associated with the FIFA World Cup and generated millions of impressions globally in support of the brand’s various initiatives. But our natural fit and sponsorship rights are by no means a guarantee of success: it is a cluttered environment driven by significant investment and a number of brands talking football. We needed to raise the bar: we needed high impact engagement and communications. Therefore, we focused on large, unifying themes.

In celebration of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, Budweiser, the tournament’s official beer sponsor, developed a fully integrated, 360-degree campaign entitled Rise 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

As One to celebrate and honour the global unifying aspect of the world’s most popular game. Beginning with the campaign launch and running through the tournament, we paid homage to the beautiful game and its role in inspiring fans to celebrate the moments that unite us as a global football community. Budweiser’s official beer sponsorship of the tournament brings together the world’s most valuable beer brand with the number one event in the number one sport in the world. Budweiser joined the most passionate fans in their local pubs and communities to toast the tournament by hosting viewing parties in 12 countries around the world (US, UK, Canada, China, Russia, Peru, Ukraine, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates) encompassing over 3,000 events over the 30 days.

Photo: flickr.com/Crystian Cruz

By Oliver Bartelt

STRATEGIC THINKER

At Anheuser-Busch InBev, we essentially channel the majority of our resources towards a limited number of carefully selected brands. We use global brands for global markets and local champions for local markets. This is why an event like the FIFA World Cup Brazil is so interesting on both levels: because we have a major presence in 17 of the 32 countries competing in this year’s tournament we can leverage our portfolio of beer brands through local sponsorship rights in selected football markets next to the global brand approach.

As a result we have local sponsorship rights to our leading brands in selected football markets, including Brahma (Brazil), Hasseröder (Germany), Jupiler (Belgium and the Netherlands), Chernigisvke (Ukraine), Quilmes (Argentina), Cass (South Korea) and Harbin

(China). So the fans can count on Budweiser and Brahma in Brazil, as well as on Jupiler in Belgium or Hasseröder in Germany.

THE TOGETHERNESS STORY The new model for marketing treats customers not as mere consumers but as the complex, multi-dimensional human beings they are.

Customers, in turn, are choosing companies and products that satisfy deeper needs for participation, creativity, community and idealism. Stories are developed that are motivating, challenging and fun and can help develop positive attitudes. They can also create a desire. Storytelling provokes a shared response of laughter, sadness, excitement

Stories are developed that are motivating, challenging and fun and can help develop positive attitudes. and anticipation which can help build up confidence and encourage social and emotional development. Our story and our mission statement is “We bring people together”.

Why? 97 per cent of all Anheuser-Busch InBev brand programmes align with togetherness and 91 per cent are 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

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TEAM PLAYER

How to improve personnel management and your career

PATTERNS OF EXCELLENCE As the European Communication Monitor 2014 shows, excellent communication departments are characterised by specific structures, role models and worldviews.

By Ansgar Zerfass and Piet Verhoeven

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triving for excellence is an ongoing challenge for managers and researchers today.

Although many try to understand and identify drivers of success in organisational settings, there are clearly limitations for this endeavour. Each company, non-profit and other organisation has a different set of goals, stakeholders and strategies. Consequently, any search for generic factors or a golden rule is misleading. Communications, like any other social interaction, are constructed in situations which are always new. Nevertheless, insights based on previous experiences or observations can be relevant.

They can not predict future behaviour, but they guide our understanding of complex structures and enable us to build frameworks for strategising.

Until now, excellence in the field of strategic communication and public relations has been mainly defined by practitioners’ experiences – explaining lessons learned and what has been important for success for themselves – or by normative theories like the influential Excellence Theory by James and Larissa Grunig and colleagues.

This theory has tried to explain universal characteristics

Communications, like any other social interaction, are constructed in situations which are always new.

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of successful communication management by combining theories from several disciplines, which in turn have served as a touchstone for empirical research in several countries. In spite of early enthusiasm, this approach has later been widely criticised because it sets definitive standards derived from theory, whereas in practice excellence is usually a matter of being better than the competition.

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Business and management scholars, on the other hand, have long since used benchmarking approaches based on self-assessments to identify excellent organisations as well as drivers of excellence within a field. Obviously this requires both large empirical samples and research instruments with questions that are based on previous insights and results.

The European Communication Monitor 2014 has employed this method to identify excellent communication functions. The results can be used as a starting point for reflections on the structure, culture, processes and people in any communication department – in light of the specific preconditions and positioning.

THE STUDY The European Communication Monitor (ECM) is known as the most comprehensive research into communication management worldwide. Since 2007, the Monitor has improved the understanding of the professional practice of communication in Europe and monitors trends in strategic communication to analyse the changing framework of the profession.

The annual study is characterised by its depth, long-term consistency of questions and structure, and academic rigour. It is organised by a

Photo: www.thinkstock.com

TEAM PLAYER

core research team from ďŹ ve universities, supported by a larger group of academics across Europe within the framework of the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA), together with the European Association of Communication Directors (EACD) and Communication Director magazine. This partnership is supported by public relations agency Ketchum as sponsor.

The 2014 edition of the survey explored key developments in areas like job satisfaction, work routines, career development and mentoring, networking, communication leadership, mobile communication and gender issues in strategic communication. Each of the 39 questions in the online questionnaire was based on hypotheses and instruments derived from previous research and pre-tested with 44 communication professionals in 16 European countries. Amendments were made where appropriate and the ďŹ nal questionnaire was activated for four weeks in March 2014. 5,205 respondents started the survey and 2,881 of them completed it. Answers 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

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TEAM PLAYER

SHOWCASING THE CEO Biographies of chief executive officers found on corporate websites are an important focus of impression management.

By Irene Pollach

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he importance of the chief executive officer to the image of his or her organisation has long been recognised. A chief executive’s charisma, reputation and symbolic power have been found to have positive effects on corporate image. At the same time, a company’s success makes its chief executive glamorous and this glamour can be exploited for unpaid publicity, since people are easier to promote than organisations.

Chief executives appear on business magazine covers, and their performance is regularly assessed by CEO rankings in the business press. In addition to appearances in the news media, chief executives gain visibility in the financial community through conference calls and letters to shareholders.

Most importantly, companies present their chief executives and other executive members on their corporate websites, typically in the corporate governance section of the site.

These biographies translate the chief executive’s persona into a summary of achievements, attributes, and resources that are valued by the business community and make the subject appear competent. Similar to résumés, these biographies function as a conventionalised form of impression management by emphasising achievements and avoiding negative information.

In these biographies, the company’s success was directly attributed to the competence of the chief executive.

36 Impression management is defined as the process by which people seek to influence the images others form of them. One of the oldest theories of impression management is that developed by Erving Goffman, who uses the metaphor of an action staged in a theater to explain how people behave when they appear before others. He 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

argues that we are all actors presenting idealised versions of ourselves, conforming to societal expectations of what we should embody in a particular setting. We seek to manage the impressions others form of us in order to achieve performance goals, career goals or social goals.

Impression management consists of a number of tactics that are used in written or face-to-face communication. These include: entitlement (attributing positive outcomes to oneself); enhancement (claiming that the positive value of an outcome is higher than it actually is); exemplification (presenting oneself as a role model in a certain area, such as ethics); status (deriving authority from a position in a hierarchy); social attractiveness (demonstrating social desirability); esteem (pointing to others’ perceptions of one’s expertise) and prestige (derived from particular jobs through educational requirements and income).

These impression management tactics are standard behaviour patterns in business and everyday life when people seek to meet or surpass the expectations others have of them. In organisational life, impression management is particularly prevalent in résumés and during job interviews. In these situations, people try to appear competent, sug-

Photo: Picture Alliance

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gesting that they possess the desired knowledge, skills, experiences and abilities. Such impressions are constructed through written and spoken language, nonverbal cues such as appearance, and actions including performance and conduct.

Chief executive biographies on corporate websites provide ample room for impression management in order to present the subject as a competent business leader to employees, the business community and the press. From job-interview research, we know that too much impression management is detrimental to the candidate’s assessment. Accordingly, impression management in chief executive biographies is naturally restricted by the individual’s actual persona and performance as well as the audience’s understanding of what a chief executive officer should embody. And this understanding may vary across cultures.

COMPARING CONTENT In order to dig deeper into

whether and how corporations in North America and Europe present their chief executive officers, I conducted a study of chief executive officer biographies on corporate websites together with Eva Kerbler from the University of Vienna in Austria. We analysed the content of biographies from the top 200 European and North American corporations according to the Fortune Global list. Of the 157 chief executives for which biographical information was found on the corporate website, only one was female. 87 per cent of the companies published narrative biographies, while 13 per cent published tabular CV-style biographies.

Notably, these tabular CVs were predominately published

by European companies, while North American companies made next to no use of this format.

The content of all biographies was categorised in order to be able to compare biographies from North American and European companies. The content categories that were found include: previous positions held by the chief executive, the year he or she joined the company, education, nonexecutive board memberships, age, leadership functions in associations, attributions of success, awards, nominations in the business press, social stance, values, political involvement, military service, family status and hobbies.

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TEAM PLAYER

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION The arts can help organisations to renew and enrich management systems and to inspire and drive business model innovations.

By Giovanni Schiuma

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o the arts represent a valuable knowledge domain for managers? Have they any role to play in the development of 21st century organisations and in the achievement of excellence? Many organisations have already discovered the benefits of using art in order to solve business issues: Unilever has used an extensive arts programme to spur people’s change and to develop organisational culture; Nestlé has used the arts to enhance its marketing creativity and to develop communication skills; and PricewaterhouseCoopers has used arts-based training to unlock employees’ creativity energy, inspiring and challenging people to think and act differently. Many other organisations, both in the private and public sectors, are exploring the benefits of relations with cultural organisations and more generally with the creative sector in order to face problems and to support innovation. This ultimately has a positive impact on the bottom line.

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MIND THE GAP However, we are still very far from an integrated collaboration between the arts and business. A chasm separates these two realities. For example, business people largely believe that the arts are something nice to have, but also that they have nothing to offer the way in which business operates. The arts are often seen as an accessory that can deliver certain benefits in, for example, social responsibility initiatives, marketing activities, asset management (where work of arts can represent an alternative to financial investments) and training in soft skills.

On the other hand, artists can have an adverse view of business and consequently do not understand how it can be 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

a fertile soil for developing art forms, apart from merely acting as a sponsor and patron of culture. What separates the two worlds is a scepticism fueled by different mindsets. But it is exactly in these diverse mindsets that the reasons for the relevance of the arts in encouraging excellence in modern organisations resides.

BENEFITS FOR BUSINESS How can the arts offer businesses new tools for innovation capacity development?

Firstly, by raising awareness of the importance of the aesthetic features of organisational life, and, secondly, by enabling the management of the aesthetic characteristics of organistions’ working mechanisms. Aesthetics within organisations are not

TEAM PLAYER

tions still see themselves as something to be reduced to a machine-like system steered by management towards prearranged directions. But the new business age requires new principles to be integrated with the traditional ones. Today the key question for executives is not “how can I make my organisation more efficient and controllable?” but rather “how can I make my organisation more adaptable, resilient, agile and innovative?” We cannot forecast the future, but we can prepare for it by harnessing the imagination, creativity and most importantly the passion of our people.

This is the secret of organisations that will achieve excellence in the 21st century.

In order to govern value creation dynamics, organisations must be capable of managing their emotional states as well as their experiential impacts on stakeholders. Dimensions such as passion, empathy, hope, imagination and creativity will be increasingly established as the new value drivers.

The ‘four Ps’ of the arts in business are people, practices, products and principles.

concerned with beauty but about how an organisation engages and uses human-based senses in order to generate and embed intangible value into products, encourage employees to give the best of themselves and be creative, foster productivity and wellbeing, move from outputs to outcomes, and understand how to generate sustainable wealth.

Today’s business mindset has been built on the principles of scientific management. One hundred years after the definition of Frederick W. Taylor’s principles of efficiency, control and standardisation, organisa-

In order to develop these competitive factors, companies need to turn their attention to innovative managerial approaches. The arts offer a knowledge domain that can innovate management and support business innovations. The ‘four Ps’ of the arts in business are people, practices, products and principles. The arts world can enter organisations by: bringing in artists and creative people that can act as catalyst for change and disruptive thinking; by applying creative practices with the aim of renewing how traditional processes are carried out, and of unlocking people’s imagination and creativity and develop new ways of thinking; by inserting artistic products in the form of artworks or creative artifacts that become part of the workplace or are ingrained into the products and services; and finally by using principles from the art world with the aim of celebrating and focusing attention on how to humanise organisations and develop their raison d’être.

The arts can generate further benefits for business.

Through art it is possible to create and support an environment in which people are engaged with their passion and imagination, and are willing to give the best of themselves in order to cope with difficult times. The use of art influences people’s feelings and energy, sparking their personal development and changing their attitudes and behaviours.

Furthermore, art represents a unique value driver that supports the development of organisational infrastructure.

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THE STORY OF PR Looking back at landmark communications

THE EVOLUTION OF EVALUATION The story of public relations measurement and evaluation goes back over at least two centuries.

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he evolution of public relations measurement starts more than two centuries ago, with some suggesting that media monitoring practices can be identified from the late 18th century onwards, even involving staff of the first US president, George Washington.

The measurement and evaluation of public relations activity has long been an important subject of discussion and debate.

Measurement practices can be identified from the beginning of the 20th century, when ‘public relations’ began to be widely used as the description for a set of communication activities. Some methods used in the first decade of the century would be familiar to practitioners over a century later. One of these, ‘The Barometer’, was used by the first known publicity agency in the US, The Publicity Bureau of Boston. It was a card index of the attitudes of editors and media usage of publicity material. This allowed the agency to judge “whether a paper is ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ from the standpoint (of its clients)”. Historian Scott Cutlip commented on The Barometer, with considerable irony, that “public relations research is not as new as some think”.

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EARLY INFLUENCES Although Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays are often cited as influential fathers of public relations practice, it was Arthur W. Page who introduced systematic opinion research into corporate public relations and organisational communication at AT&T. He championed the use of surveys which were to be an important factor in developing a customer-facing culture at the telecommunications giant. “He deserves credit for recognising the need for feedback and encouraging development of systems to gauge the moods of AT&T’s publics. Integration of formal feedback systems into the public relations function is one of his contributions to public relations practise”, said his biographer Noel Griese.

By the late 1930s and early 1940s in North America, two methods of

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Mcapdevila/CC-BY-SA 3.0

By Tom Watson and Paul Noble

THE STORY OF PR

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Lite/GNU Free Documentation License

measurement were being established that are still widely used. Brandon Batchelor provided two examples of the monitoring and interpretation of media coverage. The first was that the Roosevelt Administration paid close attention to both publicity dissemination and its reception. “In other words, it watches carefully all changes in the political attitudes of a community”, wrote Batchelor in 1938.

He also referred to the extensive media monitoring operation of the city of Toledo, Ohio in the Great Depression. It measured some 72,000 media clippings from newspapers and found 91 per cent favourable to the city’s interests. So it can be seen that at high levels of national and city government, measurement and evaluation were taking place using methods that are still in place today.

At the same time, the connection between advertising costs and editorial space gained by press agents and publicists came into practice. This was later exemplified by Plackard and Blackmon whose 1947 book offered a fully worked example of Advertising Value Equivalence, many decades before it became a common (if dubious) practice.

MID-CENTURY TO 1970S In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a worldwide growth in public relations activity. In the UK, whose Institute of Public Relations was founded in 1948, there was discussion of evaluation in its Journal from the outset, mainly proposing analysis of clippings and documents. However, the increasing number of ‘how to’ books on public relations produced in the UK and North America rarely touched the topic.

The 1970s was the decade when books and articles addressing public relations evaluation started to

appear. Measuring and Evaluating Public Relations Activities was published by the American Management Association in 1968 with seven articles on methods of measuring public relations results. Academics then began taking the lead. A conference in 1977 at the University of Maryland chaired by Professor James Grunig, partnering with AT&T, was followed by the first scholarly special issue, ‘Measuring the Effectiveness of Public Relations,’ in Public Relations Review’s Winter 1977 edition, which featured papers from the conference.

1980S AND 1990S: DEBATE WIDENS Following on from the initial conference and academic journal discussion late in the previous decade, US journals came alive in the 1980s with papers from leading academics such as Glenn Broom, David Dozier, James Grunig, Douglass Newsom and Donald Wright. From the consultancy side, Lloyd Kirban of Burson Marsteller and Walter Lindenmann of Ketchum were prolific and drove the subject higher on the practitioner agenda. In 1990 Public Relations Review had another special edition on evaluation, ‘Using Research to Plan and Evaluate Public Relations’ (Summer 1990). Widely cited, it showed that measurement and evaluation were consistently part of academic

Some methods used in the first decade of the century would be familiar to practitioners over a century later. and professional discourse. These authors emphasised the need for public relations to be researched, planned and evaluated using robust social science techniques. It was particularly fostered by Broom and Dozier’s seminal Research Methods in Public Relations (1990).

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THE OTHER HISTORY The untold stories of individual employees and of business in general can help organisations survive turbulent times.

By Anna Linda Musacchio Adorisio

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here is a consensus among business scholars on the important role played by the largely undocumented experience acquired over the years by individual workers and business alike, and the crucial function it performs for the survival of organisations. Furthermore, leveraging past experience, expertise and other collective resources can be a determinant of organisational success during times of change.

Studies of organisational memory in the management realm follow an objectivist understanding of memory defined as stored information from the past that can be brought to bear on present decisions. As a communication scholar I have complemented this view with a more dynamic and contextual view of organisational remembering that could include communication as the locus of the organisation and its representation of the past.

If the storage conceptualisation is concerned with acquisition, retention and retrieval of information, the “storying” perspective I have introduced focuses on how the past is remembered in organisations, where “storying” as opposed to storage represents a communicative practice in which organisational members organise the selection and interpretation of the past.

A COMPETITIVE TOOL The point of departure is that of studying remembering as a human activity deeply embedded in communication, knowing that communication plays a crucial role both for the representation of the past but also for its performative and constitutive nature. We use communication to report on reality but at the same time com03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

munication shapes our realities. And here lies the strategic role of communication in representing the past and shaping our present and future.

When we communicate the past in an organisation we dynamically shape its boundaries. This is why it is crucial to understand that remembering the past deals with the social and relational context in which the communication takes place, as we remember for others and through others, but also with the historical time in which the remembering takes place. A sophisticated understanding of the past can lead to a better definition of who

THE STORY OF PR

What does this conceptualisation of organisational remembering as narrative mean for communication practitioners? It allows them to focus on communicative practices and in particular narrative practices for their role in organising the selection and interpretation of the past.

The shift from organisational memory to organisational remembering raises concerns over the forms in which it emerges and crystallises in organisational settings.

Communicators should be aware of the importance of the narrative construction and reconstruction of the past in organisations. “Narrative” can be boiled down to a communicative practice (oral or written) in which two or more people reconstruct and interpret past experience.

Narrative deals with the organisation of remembered past through the selection of what is meaningful for the person communicating it, through associations that live in the relationships between events and other events, and events and actions that make interpretation possible. Corporate

Organisational members engage in a sense making of the past that is richer in turbulent times .

we are and pays attention to the possibilities that such identity/ies can bring forth.

In my research I start by acknowledging that the past is remembered differently over time and space and that its activation represents a strategic competitive tool for companies and businesses alike. If the storage metaphor used in management studies deals with memory as an object “out there”, where remembered events are crystallised in ex post reconstruction, the proposed “storying” perspective deals with a communicative view where the living stories in the here and now continuously shape and are shaped by the organisational contexts in which they emerge.

narratives, working life stories, anecdotes and instructions become the tapestry that arises from interaction at different organisational levels and a frame within which organisational members negotiate their organisational everyday life. Narratives provide a way to gain access to the organisation of the past and can be used by communication professionals to raise questions on how such constructions is made and for what purposes.

Organisational narratives represent not only all the stories that belong to a certain organisation but also a certain way of telling them.

NARRATION AND SURVIVAL In my research of banking across different countries in the last 10 years, I have analysed materials produced by banks in the form of reports, brochures, internal newsletters, official speeches and archive material, but I have also interviewed bankers about how they remember and communicate the past of their organisation. The aim of this reconstruction was to investigate the basis of collective reconstruction of the past and the role played by narrative. One of the results of my research has been the discovery of the vital role that narrating the past plays in the survival of organisations in moments of change. Organisational members engage in a sense making of the past that is richer in turbulent 03/2014 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

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THE BIG INTERVIEW Key communicators under the spotlight

Chief Executive Officer, Unilever Interview: Dafydd Phillips

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How exactly does your Sustainable Living Plan “move beyond” traditional corporate social responsibility?

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Photo: Private

PAUL POLMAN

When you took over at Unilever in 2009, you announced new plans for doubling the company’s size while reducing its overall environmental footprint and increasing the company’s positive social footprint. How did you arrive at this plan?

Gobalisation has lifted many people out of poverty over the past few decades. Yet as the financial crisis of 2008 highlighted, it has come at a price, with high levels of government or private debt, over-consumption and too many being left behind. Frankly, any system that is not in equilibrium will ultimately be rejected, and we are seeing more and more evidence of this – from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring, to people protesting on the streets of Turkey or Brazil. In the absence of effective global governance and in the context of an increasingly connected and well-informed world, citizens expect others to step up to the plate to fill that void. With low levels of trust in elected officials and business, now is the time for business to restore trust by moving from a license to operate to a license to lead. Business can no longer be a bystander in a system that gives it the right to exist in the first place. The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan attempts to address these societal challenges by presenting a business model that decouples growth from environmental impact while enhancing positive social impact. What makes it unique is that it takes responsibility for the total value chain from “farm to fork”, and moves well beyond corporate social responsibility to an integrated company model based on sustainable growth.

THE BIG INTERVIEW

Although important, corporate social responsibility tends to focus on those operations which are under direct control of the company and are usually shorter term in nature.

Its basic premise is still about being less bad. The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan goes well beyond that. It is at the heart of our business model, covering our entire portfolio and all our operations. It is based on a total value chain approach, moving from suppliers through production to distribution and final use. It covers environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability and is built around clear commitments with the aim of ensuring we have a net posi-

Yes, with size comes responsibility. In the absence of efficient global governance business needs to step up. tive impact. For us it means a focus on key issues like climate change, sanitation, food security and poverty, with the aim of actively reversing some of the current trends. At its heart are some big goals, like moving to sustainable sourcing for all of agriculturally-based materials, improving the health and well-being of an additional one billion people, and totally decoupling growth from environmental impact. Underpinning the plan are 50 time-bound targets on which we regularly report progress.

What kind of internal messaging took place within Unilever to ‘sell’ this ambitious strategy?

Actually, this is not really about selling a concept or a strategy to people.

It’s about defining a common purpose that inspires people and relates to their daily lives. The energy and commitment it has unleashed has

been extraordinary. Employee engagement scores have moved up rapidly and the company is the preferred employer in most of the key markets in which it operates. It resonates in a world where more and more people – particularly young people joining our company – want to make a positive difference in the world and are not just driven by traditional incentives.

Unilever has a huge reach, present in seven out of ten households globally. It also relies on raw materials from tropical developing nations for the production of consumer products.

Do these factors mean that Unilever has an extra special responsibility to work towards positive societal and environmental change?

Yes, with size comes responsibility. In the absence of efficient global governance business needs to step up. Deforestation, for example, accounts for over 15 per cent of global warming. And over 50 per cent of deforestation is driven by the growing demand for food. That is why we have come together with other companies like Mars, Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, and with growers such as Wilmar and APP, to commit to deforestation-free supply chains. Taking another example, 850 million people are still going to bed hungry whilst 30 to 40 per cent of food is wasted in the value chain. Besides the moral reasons, as a foods company we have to take a share of the responsibility and use our reach to help tackle these issues.

You’ve said that “historically, too many chief executive officers have just responded to shareholders instead of actively seeking out the right shareholders”. How does Unilever conduct its shareholder relations?

Yes, we need to fight short termism if we want to solve some of the major global issues like climate change, poverty and food security. They require longer term solutions.

In this volatile environment, the average tenure of a chief executive officer is unfortunately less than five years and short term pressure is actually increasing. Too much effort goes into satisfying current shareholders with a short term horizon. This is why at Unilever we stopped giving quarterly guidance, are investing in a sustainable business model, and are actively seeking shareholders that are willing to support this. Increasingly, shareholders can see how a responsible business model is driving the growth of our business and as a result, our shareholder base has changed and we see less volatility in the stock.

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STORY TELLER Looking at the important questions of communication

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STORY TELLER

MAKING THE CASE Proving the value of communications “Science behind the art” by Gary Sheffer page 58 – 61

“Assessing impact” by Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic page 62 – 65

“Interior affairs” by Stefania Romenti page 66 – 69

“Measure for measure” by John McLaren page 70 – 73

“Media measurement on a shoestring” by Melanie Brooks page 74 – 77

“Discovering the value of a good reputation” by Manfred Schwaiger page 78 – 81

“What’s in a name?” by Mark Roberts page 82 – 85

“Deep analysis” by Jim Macnamara page 86 – 89

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SCIENCE BEHIND THE ART The journey of measurement and evaluation pushes at the limits of our ideas about the value of communications and public relations.

By Gary Sheffer

I

similar benchmarks can and should be applied to communications. Simultaneously, as chief executives increasingly care about more than traditional profit and loss measures – viewing social responsibility, the environment, philanthropy and employee communications as critical to success – they will rely on communications to monitor sentiment and reputation around the issues.

We also know that the New Model of corporate communication – as defined by the Arthur W. Page Society, which relies on identifying and activating corporate character, and then building advocacy at

Screenshots: Mazars; Facebook; Twitter

t strikes me that I could summarise this article by paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld. There are known-knowns. There are known unknowns and there are unknown unknowns. Let me start with the known unknowns first.

The fact is there is so much we don’t know about research and measurement. As communicators, we are sitting at a table with others in the company who have definitive metrics – the cost of capital, inventory turns, earnings per share, organic growth. In our line of work, we have useful and interesting criteria, but nothing as definitive as these metrics. Yet we know that the expectations upon us by the C-suite to show results and to demonstrate return on investment on our initiatives are greater than ever before. As data and analytical metrics help our organisations develop a better understanding of consumers and stakeholders, there is a greater expectation that

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Photo: www.thinkstock.com

STORY TELLER

scale – means that we must have a better understanding of our audiences. We cannot enable advocacy without first understanding what motivates our audiences to action, and that relies on research. At the same time, through this new model, it is incumbent on the chief communications officer to identify the gaps where we are not authentically living our corporate character and to measure progress in living up to it.

Lastly, we know that we are equipped today with the ability to be more effective in measurement, because we can measure more things.

In the past, most research focused on communication outputs, but over time we’ve seen a concentrated move in the direction of measuring outcomes. We are now far more focused on attitude- and impact-based measures. Measurements of trust, reputation and brand engagement allow for a deeper assessment of the actual relationship that an enterprise has with stakeholders. Moreover, with technology, measurement can move from gathering snapshots in time (scheduled focus groups) to maintaining an uninterrupted pulse on sentiment over time. In other words, research and measurement separate the art of public relations from press agentry and publicity.

When I joined GE in 1999, the only metric discussed in our communications meetings was the stock price and where we ranked on the Fortune Most Admired list, two metrics that remain important today. But by 2000, my boss Beth Comstock knew this wasn’t enough and set us on a course to conduct meaningful research into external and internal perceptions about GE, our reputation, our brand and our people. As we advanced through a tumultuous decade for our company,

we probed deeper into investor sentiment, depth of brand penetration, social media return on investment, our own employees’ view of GE and, most recently, how communications metrics can influence strategy and create commercial opportunity. Here, I want to walk you through that journey and reflect on five areas that I think we should focus on to advance the science behind the art of public relations.

I. As a profession, we need to come together to identify and agree on what determines meaningful metrics, and create a standard measurement system across all programmes and campaigns to deliver consistent, comparable data. Our credibility depends on it. In the words of the Institute for Public Relations, “we can’t afford duelling measurement systems anymore…we must develop standard definitions and metrics now or be left behind.”

The work of the Institute is a great example of the search for industry standards in research and measurement. It has established a set of benchmarks for traditional media analysis as well as social, for the communications life cycle (beginning with awareness and extending to advocacy), for return on investment and for ethics in research and measurement.

As a profession, we need to come together to identify and agree on what determines meaningful metrics.

The next step is to begin exploring additional standards, beyond traditional and social media, as requested by the industry. For example, this might include standards for employee communications and investor relations.

II. We must use the tools out there to make strategic

decisions. But, importantly, before you use the tools you need to know what metric or sentiment you should be measuring – what is the meaningful insight that should impact your strategy? For instance when determining a communications strategy in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear plant crisis we needed to understand whether the public blamed GE or thought that this was an event caused by an earthquake and tsunami. Using measurement, we were able to discern the public’s understanding of this natural disaster and who they blamed for it, and provide strategic counsel to senior executives whose instincts may have guided them in a different direction in the heat of a crisis.

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