Cd 04 2013 auswahl

COMMUNICATION

������������������������������

DIRECTOR

����������������������������������������������������������

�������

�������� ��������� ������������������������� ����������������������

������������������������ ����������������

��������������������������������� ������������������������������

�������������������� �����������

���������������������������������� ������

���������������������������� ������ ������������������������������������� ����������������������������

EDITORIAL

A

ccording to a recent study titled What Makes a Chief Communications Off icer Excellent?, “giving ongoing support to the C-suite” and “trusted advisor to the chief executive off icer” are two roles that characterise a successful chief communications off icer. In organisations across Europe, communication directors are inching closer to the executive board – whether or not this is a welcome development is just one the questions raised in this latest issue of Communication Director. What we’re concerned with here is the new portfolio of roles and responsibilities that def ine today’s communication director (or chief communication off icer, or head of corporate communications or whichever nomenclature is preferred: you’ll f ind several in this issue). The argument goes that the role of the communication director has gained in stature because of the increasing extent to which intangible values determine the degree of business competitiveness. Whether or not this means that communication directors should have a seat at the executive table is subject to considerable debate within the profession: this issue of Communication Director presents contrasting views. There seems to be complete agreement all round, however, on the increased importance of reputation as a job-def ining responsibility: a 2012 survey by the Korn/ Ferry Institute of Fortune 500 companies, titled The Chief Communications Off icer, found that 87 per cent of communications heads are responsible for corporate reputation; what’s more, for 20 per cent of them, reputation is a new addition to their responsibilities. Along with the other new tasks required of the communication director (tasks you can read about in this issue’s Storyteller section) the communicator’s role as guardian of the corporation’s reputation fundamentally establishes the importance of the communicator’s role, and as such contributes to the professionalisation of the trade.

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

Photo: Moritz Vennemann

3

03/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

36

24

“It is important to come up with a quote that will make the journalist’s ears prick up.”

“Lobbying represents a dilemma for most organisations.”

TEAM PLAYER

AGENDA SETTER

How to improve personnel management and your career

Communication ideas in the eyes of experts

06

The game as campaign A new corporate game brings oil exploration to life

PR ESSENTIALS Key aspects of corporate communication and public relations

10

32 36

The secret of being a good media interviewee?

Be interesting

Top communicators at Europe’s biggest companies

Laura Shields

STRATEGIC THINKER

THE STORY OF PR

Revising in plain sight The do’s and don’ts of editing your organisation’s Wikipedia page

Looking back at landmark communications

40

Responsible lobbying Governments and corporations should come clean about their lobbying activities

28

A humbling experience Lack of trust is a major communications challenge, especially for large infrastructure projects

Sebastian Sass

04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

Lessons from Lincoln An unlikely source of inspiration for social communication and informal social networks

Mike Klein and Jeppe Vilstrup Hansgaard

44

Howard Viney and Paul Baines

4

Going on the record

Europe’s top 50

Marcia W. DiStaso

24

How to leverage diversity for bottom-line impact, making organisations better and stronger

Marie-Gabrielle Cajoly

The corporate and academic stand on communication

20

The consequences of diversity

Litigation PR: blessing or curse?

The Dreyfus affair is one early, positive, example of litigation public relations

Alexander M. Schmitt-Geiger

48

PR under the Northern Lights A look at Finland’s rich history of public relations, including its suprising story of gender balance in communications

Jaakko Lehtonen

58

74

“The communication director needs to be a kind of personal sparring partner to the chief executive officer.”

THE BIG INTERVIEW Key communicators under the spotlight

52

“Communicators need to be very sure about their contribution to the organisation.”

78

Anne Villemoes Danish Crown’s director of corporate communications shares her outspoken views about her work

Calculate and clarify It has never been easier for communication directors to measure and evaluate their work

Jim Macnamara

84

STORY TELLER

Agreeing on a new role What qualities go toward creating a great communication director?

Jonathan Harper

Looking at the important questions of communication

58

Updating the profile Several new developments have directly affected the work of the communication director

88 COMMUNICATIONS READER Book Reviews

Herbert Heitmann

62 66

Three leading communication professionals discuss changes and challenges in their roles

European Association of Communication Directors

92

The learning curve

A strategy for the communicator

The latest developments in the EACD

QUESTIONS TO...

Skills like strategic thinking and leadership are essential for communication managers

Elisabeth Schick

70

ASSOCIATION

Views from the top

The personal side of communication directors

98

Alexandra Seidl Head of Communications, Roche Austria

Communications is at a crossroads: the profession needs its own strategy

5

Photo: Uygar Ozel

Pierre Goad

74

Filling the void How do communication directors prepare for board-level roles?

Anne Gregory

04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

AGENDA SETTER Communication ideas in the eyes of experts

THE GAME AS CAMPAIGN An ambitious new corporate game brings virtual oil exploration to your fingertips, as well as introducing a major dimension of an established brand.

By Dafydd Phillips

G

amification is by now a tried and trusted technique to engage audiences, whether customers or employees, in brand-building or marketing activities. But what about communication programmes that involve games specifically designed to raise awareness about the company, to improve retention and increase engagement levels?

Can they achieve solid communication goals while maintaining the player appeal of popular computer games?

From August 2012 to June this year, Danish conglomerate Maersk Group, best known as the largest container ship operator in the world, developed and globally launched Quest for Oil, described in an official press release as “a real time strategy game with integrated mini games, the first of its kind”. The game presents players with a series of complicated tasks – locating sources, drilling, deciding on tools and measuring the suitability of soil – while at the same time going head to head with competitors in a race against time. The stated aim is to give players a sense of the heavy technology behind the complex search for oil, an underreported branch of Maersk’s operations and one which the company hopes that this game will highlight.

Frequent user-testing helped the team decide on the difficulty level of the game.

6

GAMING GOALS According to Anja Andersen, brand manager at Maersk, the idea for the game initiated from a marketing and branding need to tell the story of Maersk’s oil and energy business. “The idea was to create something totally new with Maersk as the sender,” she told Communication Director, “something not seen before from an oil and energy company, something which would engage the general public and invite people into this world of oil and drill04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

ing.” There were serious communication goals involved with the game: shedding light on the complexity of oil drilling, being used as a digital tool in schools (an educational package is being developed to be distributed in high schools first in Denmark and then other target countries), and, surprisingly perhaps, recruitment: “Maersk needs people in this area,” explains Andersen, “and aims to recruit almost 3,000 people over the next couple of years, so we wanted to tell the story of our two core businesses in this field, Maersk Oil and Maersk Drilling. These are exciting jobs with innovative and high tech equipment and which you could be part of if you want to work for us.” In the game, three job representatives appear as advisors and are mirrored in the press kit, which details the real-life advisors working at Maersk and the many different job types you can find in this industry.

To help develop the game, Maersk turned to Danish games developer Serious Games Interactive and the two strove for a satisfactory compromise in the age-old struggle between what is desired by the client on the one hand, and what the service provider decides is possible on the other. As Anja describes, “we had weekly meetings in the eight months of production where we from the internal perspective said

AGENDA SETTER

what we wanted and the vendors as external experts told us what we could get.” The trick was to create a game with genuine insights into the business, without getting bogged down in overly-technical details – in other words, to remember the fun part of gaming.

Although she describes the experience as positive, Anja admits that there were challenges along the way in deciding on a shared language within the gaming world, with “Maersk on the one hand making sure its brand, key messages and knowledge where integrated into the game, and the game developers on the other hand, focusing on their métier and not compromising their insights into how games work on users in terms of strategy and excitement.”

Photo: Maersk

DESIGN, DIFFICULTY AND DURABILITY To gauge the look

and feel of Quest for Oil, Serious Games Interactive researched games in similar genres to see what worked both visually and in terms of gameplay, while also working closely with experts from Maersk in making sure that the visuals had affinity with the company’s current corporate design.

According to Simon EgenfeldtNielsen, chief executive officer of Serious Games Interactive, finding the right balance between the strategic dimension of the game and the range of mini-challenges was not easy: “This was actually one of the most difficult things to get working, because we didn’t want one to get in the way of the other. We didn’t want it to feel like playing a slow game like chess and then switching to something fast-paced like soccer. We found a good balance in the end, where what is there doesn’t feel out of place.” Frequent user-test-

Images taken from Maersk’s Quest for Oil game

ing helped the team decide on the difficulty level of the game: the finished product is designed to hold the interest of professionals in the field as well as curious beginners.

As Simon explains, the game is designed “so an expert in oil exploration will have a much better chance of winning than a novice, although the novice will be able to pick it up, especially in video clips explaining the facts behind the gameplay. Of course the expert will also need to figure out the game but the seismic analysis, for example, is really not trivial and you will need to understand the finer details 04/2013

COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

7

LEADERS Those who make the decisions

EUROPE S TOP

5O

Heads of communication at the 50 biggest European public companies, and their views on the function.

1

HSBC Founded: 1865 Employees 260,591 (2012) Headquarters: London, UK Pierre Goad/ Charles Naylor Job title: Co-Head Group Communications Start date: 2011

2

Royal Dutch Shell Founded: 1907 Employees 87,000 (2012) Headquarters: The Hague, Netherlands / London, UK To be announced

Company rankings taken from Forbes Global 2000; employee ďŹ gures from Wikipedia

PR ESSENTIALS

3

Volkswagen Founded: 1937 Employees 549,763 (2012) Headquarters: Wolfsburg, Germany

4

Stephan Grühsem Job title: Head Group Communications, External Relations & Investor Relations Start date: 2007 Previous position: Head Communications, AUDI AG

6

BNP Paribas Founded: 2000 Employees 200,000 (2011) Headquarters: Paris, France

Alexander Bespalov Job title: Head Information & Communications Department Start date: 2003 Previous position: Deputy Plenipotentiary Envoy, Russian Federation President

5

Bertrand Cizeau Job title: Group Head Brand, Communications & Quality Start date: 2012 Previous position: Brand Director, Communication & Advertising/Member of Executive Committee, BNP Personal Finance

In addition to coaching the top management, our function now strives to empower the whole organisation in order to allow every employee to become an ambassador of the company.

Photos: HSBC; Private(2); GAZPROM; Graham Trott; Private; BP/Graham Trott; Private

Emilio Galli Zugaro Job title: Director Group Communications Start date: 1992 Previous position: Journalist

9

ENI Founded: 1953 Employees 78,686 (2011) Headquarters: Rome, Italy Stefano Lucchini Job title: Senior Executive VP International Relations & Communication Start date: July 2005 Previous position: Head External Relations, Banca Intesa Group

Total Founded: 1924 Employees 97,126 (2012) Headquarters: Paris, France Yves-Marie Dalibard Job title: Vice President Corporate Communications Start date: 2005 Previous position: VP Communication, Paribas

Emilio Galli Zugaro, Allianz

Allianz Founded: 1891 Employees 151,340 (2010) Headquarters: Munich, Germany

BP Founded: 1909 (as Anglo-Persian Oil Company) Employees 85,700 (2012) Headquarters: London, UK Peter Henshaw Job title: Group Head Communications Start date: 2011 Previous position: Corporate VP Communications & Public Affairs, TNK-BP

7

8

Gazprom Founded: 1989 Employees 393,000 Headquarters: Moscow

A good communicator must be prepared to leave the beaten path and be a good listener. Close contact with management and all divisions of the company is tremendously important.

Maximilian Schöberl, BMW

10

Nestlé Founded: 1866/1867 Employees 339,000 (2012) Headquarters: Vevey, Switzerland Rudolf Ramsauer Job title: SVP Corporate Communications Start date: 2008 Previous position: Chairman of Executive Board, economiesuisse

04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

11

STRATEGIC THINKER The corporate and academic stand on communication

REVISING IN PLAIN SIGHT Your company’s Wikipedia page will be evaluated by the media to determine if anyone using a company computer made edits. The key is transparency.

By Marcia W. DiStaso

O

f all the information sources available on the internet, one of the most widely used is Wikipedia. Since its founding in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia has developed into one of the most popular websites across the globe. It is currently the seventh most popular website in the world following Facebook, Google, YouTube, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, and Baidu.com.

This online free-content encyclopedia is based on an openly edited model. This means that Wikipedia is written collaboratively by the public along with select anonymous unpaid volunteers known as “wikipedians.” According to Wikipedia, anyone with internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except those deemed to have a conflict of interest.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales describes the conflict of interest issue this way: “There is a very simple ‘bright line’ rule that constitutes best practice: do not edit Wikipedia directly if you are a paid advocate.” His comment refers to the Wikipedia conflict of interest policy that prohibits public relations or communications professionals who work for an organisation from directly contributing to their Wikipedia content. This also applies to those working for a public relations agency or Wikipedia firm hired by an organisation.

The bright line rule is not a formal rule at Wikipedia. In fact, it is in direct conflict with two of the five pillars or fundamental principles by which Wikipedia operates:

20

• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, • Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view, • Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute, • Editors should treat each other with respect and civility, and • Wikipedia does not have firm rules.

04/2013

COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

This leaves public relations and communications professionals with a conundrum. How should Wikipedia be handled? Unfortunately, the answer is not simple.

WHY WIKIPEDIA MATTERS Wikipedia is used across the globe in 285 languages with over 22 mil-

STRATEGIC THINKER

Grafic: Wikimedia.org

lion articles. It has had approximately 470 million unique visitors with 77,000 active visitors. With so much activity, Wikipedia was recently credited as being better for breaking news than Twitter. Search engines give Wikipedia articles high prominence and while most newspapers have policies against

using Wikipedia as a source in articles, Reuters Handbook of Journalism encourages journalists to use Wikipedia as a “good starting point.” Little wonder then that so many people use Wikipedia. A 2010 Pew study found that 53 per cent of Americans who are online use Wikipedia and a 2011 study found

that 60 per cent of European doctors use Wikipedia for professional use.

Although once criticised for its accuracy, a 2005 study in the scientific journal Nature found Wikipedia articles were about as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica for the natural science articles analysed. My research has found that the content in Wikipedia is much more detailed than Encyclopedia Britannica. It also contains more content about corporate social responsibility and legal and ethical issues. In another study, my co-author and I found that being considered one of the best companies in the US does not exempt companies from negativity on Wikipedia, and no matter how good a company’s reputation there is more negative content than positive.

In 2012 I conducted a survey with 1,284 public relations and communications professionals and found that only 21 per cent of respondents were familiar with the rules. The survey also found that 60 per cent of respondents who were familiar with the Wikipedia article for their company or recent client indicated it had factual errors. Indeed, the relationship with Wikipedia is a strained one.

While both public relations and communications professionals and Wikipedia want accurate articles, accomplishing this can be difficult. My survey found that 23 per cent of respondents said making changes to articles was near impossible and 29 per cent indicated that their efforts were never productive. Using the Talk pages is not as easy as it may seem, since 24 per cent of respondents indicated that they never received a response and 12 per cent said it took weeks to hear anything.

TREAD CAREFULLY Current challenges with Wikipedia have come from a long history of media attention.

Editing wars in politics have been fairly common where those involved in campaigns are found to be editing their own along with their opponent’s articles. Most claim not to know the rules, such as when Joe DeSantis, adviser to Newt Gingrich, was criticised in a 2012 CNN article for disclosing his affiliation but making direct edits to Newt Gingrich’s page. In December 2010, the UK public relations firm Bell Pottinger was caught editing Wikipedia articles for its clients. While they contend that they only added true content, Wales was quite vocal in his disagreement of how the editing was handled, stating, “I’ve never seen a case like this. In general when I speak to public relations firms, they have ethical guidelines that would prevent this kind of conduct.”

While the bright line rule indicates that the appropriate way for communication professionals to make requests is 04/2013

COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

21

STRATEGIC THINKER

L

obbying represents a dilemma for most organisations. On the one hand, organisations should seek to influence government departments or regulators whose actions affect them. On the other, any lobbying-like communications appear suspicious to the media and ultimately the general public. This suspicion makes government nervous over business involvement with government decision-making which then makes organisations nervous about engaging with government.

Gradually, a vicious circle develops where a legitimate corporate activity looks illegitimate. How can organisations negotiate a path through what is either a dangerous threat to organisational reputation if they do lobby, or organisational performance if they do not? Also, what is the role of the communications director in this discussion?

RESPONSIBLE LOBBYING Lobbying may be the archetypical dirty word, but introducing transparency and promoting its market-making benefits should change perceptions.

24

By Howard Viney and Paul Baines

04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

LOCATION MATTERS Perhaps one of the biggest challenges is that attitudes to lobbying appear to vary depending upon location. Washington politics appears to depend upon lobbying, a guilty secret that everyone is aware of, whereas Brussels politics appears to embrace and encourage lobbying, an open engagement between government and business which might provide a template for other political centres such as London, where lobbying is neither truly encouraged, tolerated nor forbidden but rather appears increasingly to be an accident waiting to happen. It is this uncertainty as to what role lobbying can or should play in a representative democracy which prompts us to make a case for lobbying. In addition, we aim to

STRATEGIC THINKER

explain why transparency and openness can provide a win-win-win scenario for government, business and society.

We start with a problem we believe is at the heart of the question: the public’s mistrust of the concept of lobbying. Mistrust derives from the image that has been built up around the lobbyist as a furtive influence peddler engaged in undesirable, improper and even inappropriate activities, seeking to buy influence with government to protect the interests of a shadowy client. The implication is that public well-being is being undermined by lobbying, wherein well-resourced organisations use their resources to protect market failure, or imperfections in the market. This means that organisations acquire greater value for the delivery of their products or services than they would in a wellfunctioning competitive market, which would favour the consumer.

From an economic perspective, lobbying is evidence of ‘rent-seeking’ behaviour (manipulating the social or political environment to generate profit) which is seen less favourably than ‘market-making’ activity (creating new markets and demand to generate profits).

Market-making increases the sum of wellbeing in an economy by increasing employment and encouraging growth. Rent-seeking behaviour has the opposite effect and represents exploitation of existing strength to no-one’s benefit except the corporation. Using this line of thought, the lobbying company is clearly a corporate villain.

THE BENEFITS OF REFORM The nail has been further hammered into the coffin of lobbying’s reputation due to its frequent association

with the bribery of public officials – an illegal act – or the making of excessive campaign contributions – which is not always illegal. High profile examples have compounded the problem. Many organisations make contributions across the political divide at elections, favouring no one party but seeking to influence all.

However this represents one side of the argument, albeit the side most often debated. The other side proposes that organisations play a significant role in a representative democracy, supporting government in the creation of effective laws and regulation and assuming much of the cost.

At the very highest level, organisations can co-create new laws and regulations. This may be looked upon disapprovingly in some quarters, but if a new technology is emerging

Organisations play a significant role in a representative democracy. or new ethical dilemmas are created by a medical development, would tax-payers be willing to pay for government to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver a wholly objective opinion? We suspect not. Co-creation with organisations leading the technological change is frequently a necessity on many levels.

Similarly, organisations already play a very important role in the provision of information in developing more standard laws or regulation, offering opinions at the request of government during the policy development phase of the legislative process. From this perspective lobbying activity plays an active and positive role in a representative democracy.

MAKING A CONTRIBUTION However, the key question is the self-interest involved in lobbying. The inevitable suspicion is that organisations are only motivated to act when their interests are challenged. But is this necessarily a negative act? Individuals faced with a planned new building project, for example, have a legitimate right to make their voices heard and would feel justifiably aggrieved to have that opportunity denied. Why does this not apply to organisations? We believe it should apply to all organisations, but the challenge is in how that message is communicated and what organisations must do to ensure that the message is credible and legitimate.

The European Commission has championed transparency in interest representation since its lobbying green paper in 2006. One interesting observation is that its code 04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

25

TEAM PLAYER

GOING ON THE RECORD Lights, camera, action: make sure your interview technique strikes the right note, every time.

By Laura Shields

I

36

f you ask most journalists what makes a good interview, they will almost certainly tell you it is one that isn’t boring. This may sound horribly flippant but what it really boils down to is ‘usability’. Whether it is print, radio, web or television, how interesting an interviewee is will determine whether or not they have wasted the journalist’s time or are worth including in the final story.

We all know why organisations and individuals agree to interviews, but their value to journalists may be less clear.

We are constantly told we live in an age where Twitter has killed the ability of traditional media to break news.

For example, the British government chose to announce the most recent cabinet reshuffle entirely by Twitter. This is clearly not the whole story but the advent of Twitter begs the question: what is the added value to the journalist of a one-to-one interview if it is not to break news?

This is the point at which the inevitable clichés about Frost-Nixon, Le Paige-Mitterand and Flynn-Byrne are raised, with phrases such as ‘penetrating’, ‘entertaining’, 04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

‘riveting’ and ‘rapport’, usually following close behind. And it is true that some of these chess-game interviews do transcend the day to day grind of journalism and make it into the cultural canon; but of course most interviews don’t.

One reason is that the time and money that news organisations put into show-stopping interviews based on the dynamic between journalist and interviewee are in increasingly short supply.

As news organisations slash the number of staff journalists they employ, a shrinking number of hacks are being forced to process more and more information rather than strike the kind of interview gold which will make their careers.

TEAM PLAYER

The only reason for journalists to take time out of their day to interview you or your spokesperson is to get original quotes or insights for a story they have already started.

And that really is it. A print or web journalist could copy and paste straight from a press release or Twitter if they weren’t interested in being original. A journalist only wants to speak to you in person if he or she thinks they can get something interesting from you. And this is true for all journalists whether they work in television, radio, print or web. Of course, what the journalist and the interviewee consider interesting may or may not be the same thing.

A lot of my new clients complain that journalists have not been interested in what they had to say and only wanted to ask leading or difficult questions designed to trap them. One client once told me he lost control of an interview after a journalist asked him the same tough question three times which he found unsettling, particularly as he ended up saying something he didn’t want to but that he suspected the journalist had been looking for all the time.

Depending on the interview topic, this aggressive tone should sometimes be expected. But there is also a close correlation between how quotable you are being and how difficult the line of questioning becomes.

STICKY QUOTES It is not just evasive politicians who

Photo: istock/ VladKol

DEALING WITH JOURNALISTS Brussels, where I live and work, is a microcosm of what is going on in journalism as a whole. In 2005 it had the largest press corps in the world with around 1,200 journalists. Today it has less than 800. The demand for their stories has not gone down but there are far fewer journalists to write them. Brussels is not alone in seeing cuts; most mainstream outlets in Europe and the US are under huge financial pressure.

Combine this with the usual journalistic demands of competition and deadlines, and it is not surprising that some of the most memorable interviews of recent years are carcrashes or stunts rather than chess games.

get rugby tackled by tough questions in an interview: if the interviewee is being bland the journalist has to get mischievous to find something they can use. And this can often get the interviewee into trouble. So to be a good interviewee it is important to come up with a quote that will make the journalist’s ears prick up; that is to say they will know it when they hear it and they will have no choice

It is important to come up with a quote that will make the journalist’s ears prick up. but to use it. This means it cannot be a regurgitated position paper, an advertising slogan or jargon-filled sentence with multiple sub-clauses. It should be clear, fresh and plausible.

Also remember to use spoken language and not something that could be from a marketing document. Have you ever heard the chief executive of Audi proclaiming “Vorsprung Durch Technik” or of Honda that this is “What Dreams are Made of ”? No you have not, because it would sound ridiculous; no one talks like that in an interview.

This is a particularly important warning in the digital 04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

37

THE STORY OF PR

LITIGATION PR: BLESSING OR CURSE? Weighing up the objectives and success factors of a relatively young field of communication.

By Alexander M. Schmitt-Geiger

44

I

s litigation public relations a blessing or a curse? What kind of reply could you possibly expect from a public relations professional specialised in this field? However, I do not want to take the easy way out. As a lawyer and owner of an agency specialised in litigation public relations, I retort: “It depends on a variety of factors!” At the end of this article I will give you an answer, which I hope will satisfy most readers.

04/2013

COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

PURPOSE OF LITIGATION PR The legal dispute between Apple and Samsung was for many years a hot topic in the media. It resulted in an import ban, with even President Obama intervening. All because of a patent law dispute between two corporations, something quite commonplace for large

THE STORY OF PR

Photo: istockphoto.com

companies. But the dispute’s strong hold on the media reflects the fact that legal disputes are more and more frequently fought out in the public sphere. If the media are interested in a particular litigation, the dispute will be resolved in two spheres: before the court and in the media. The same parties clash with one another in both spheres. What happens in one sphere may influence the course of events in the other sphere (though not necessarily).

However, it is a problem that the legal and media disputes adhere to different principles. Factual arguments play a predominant role in a court setting whereas decisions in the public sphere are quickly made and driven by emotions. A verdict may comply with current law but still violate the broad public’s sense of justice.

Therefore, legal disputes may lead to the seemingly contradictory conclusion that one can win a legal dispute but still lose one’s good reputation, and vice-versa.

And this is exactly where litigation public relations comes into play, as it guarantees professional reputation management before and after legal disputes.

ROOTS OF LITIGATION PR The use of media in legal disputes is not a novel concept. A famous historical example is the Dreyfus affair which took place in France from 1894 to 1899. The French officer Alfred Dreyfus was accused of treason. As a Jew of German descent, Dreyfus made a perfect bogeyman for French society at the time and was sentenced to life-long imprisonment and sent to the infamous penal colony at Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana in South America.

His wife and brother strongly op-

posed the verdict and rallied intellectuals to their cause.

One of them, Émile Zola, composed an open letter on January 13 1898, addressed to the French president, Félix Faure. In this famous letter, entitled “J’accuse”, Zola exposed the full range of the lawsuit’s inconsistencies.

Published in the newspaper L’Aurore, the letter sparked a public debate. In the end, Dreyfus was released, rehabilitated, promoted to the rank of major and made Knight of the Legion of Honour. Zola’s article created such a strong public pressure on decision-makers in politics and justice that they felt compelled to completely reverse the judgement.

Despite this continental example, the US remains the cradle of litigation public relations, for this is where the profession of litigation public relations consultant originated in the 1980s. Since then, this discipline, at the nexus of law and media, has become established in the US. It is also gaining a foothold in Europe: the creation of agencies specialised in this field reflect this trend, as does the publication of numerous and university theses.

Unfortunately there remains a lack of figures demonstrating this, which may be attributed to the industry’s high level of discretion.

AREAS OF APPLICATION Litigation public relations

is used in all kinds of legal disputes. For companies, it may become relevant in corporate law disputes, such as product liability suits, capital market lawsuits, insolvency proceedings, merger and acquisition litigation, licensing procedures and employment law disputes. If the focus is on members of the board, criminal and civil proceedings will play a predominant role, centering on the board member’s entrepreneurial and private liability. Examples of this are the various proceedings against the former board members of the European private bank Sal.Oppenheim,

Litigation public relations is used in all kinds of legal disputes. headquarted in Cologne. If, in contrast, the focus is on a legal dispute involving a celebrity, then inheritance or family law-related proceedings come to the fore, alongside criminal proceedings and civil law disputes. The lawsuit must be relevant for the media, irrespective of the legal field. This implies that the legal dispute must meet defined journalistic news criteria. The focal point of the lawsuit should be on (alongside sex and crime) a vast amount of 04/2013

COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

45

THE BIG INTERVIEW Key communicators under the spotlight

ANNE VILLEMOES Director of Corporate Communications, Danish Crown Interview: Dafydd Phillips

When talking about Danish Crown, you do not shy away from words like ‘slaughter’ and ‘killing’, and have even coined the phrase ‘We kill for a living’. How important is this kind of direct way of communicating?

It is not a secret that when I got on board with the company exactly eight years ago, they were in what you would call “bad standing” in terms of media, consumers and activists.

They had just been through fairly huge media attention to do with hygiene and cleanliness of their slaughter factory.

The worst thing I believe you can do is to try to hide what it is you do, and my very firm principle is that we have a production that we can show to anyone who wants to see it. And if there is any corner of the business where people would say “we really don’t want to have a television crew there”, then we change the way we produce. Transparency to me is a key thing in our production, and if you have transparency then you also have to be willing and able to put the right words to it.

Does this transparency trickle down through the whole organisation, not just the meat processing part?

It has trickled down quite a lot over the past eight years.

This is a 126-year old company owned by farmers, and I will admit that when I first got into this business there were are-

52

At the end of the day food is an emotional thing, it connects people. as where it was a little backward, and I had to communicate a little more forward than would have been the choice of the company. But over time they have come to see how this has changed the standing we are in with society and politicians.

04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

What has also been very important to me, being responsible for reputation in a company that produces consumer products, is having an eye-to-eye level in our communication. For instance, everything in the annual report is written in journalistic terms and can be read by anybody. It has had an immense impact and today nobody doubts whether it is important. We took home a total of nine awards for the annual report last year.

Danish Crown has also relocated jobs to countries outside Denmark. How difficult has it been to communicate this move?

This is a very good example of being transparent and standing by what you do. During my time with the company, we have relocated 7,000 workplaces, so that today we have a little less than 9,000 employees in Denmark and 16,000 abroad. Eight years ago it was the other way round.

Every time we have closed down a Danish facility we have communicated this. At the beginning they were a little scared of touching the subject, but if a closure is carried out correctly and responsibly, then there is always a reason for it and it is up to us to make sure that reason is put out there every time we do these things.

We have become quite good at almost chanting the message that the workplaces abroad are the reason we still have Danish workplaces, they are not an alternative. We didn’t do it for the fun of it. We are explaining the difference in the level of salaries and cost production and also the need to be competitive when you are an export company, explaining to people that we export 90 per cent of what we do and we are competing in markets where you have slaughter facilities from all over the world. In my eight years I have been part of closing

THE BIG INTERVIEW

down 27 facilities in Denmark, we have got a pretty good routine when it comes to doing these things.

Photo: Ian Jones

Your background is journalism. How has that helped you with your job today in corporate communications?

If I’m going to spend time and effort producing communications, why not create something that I know people will want to read, see and dive into? At the end of the day food is an emotional thing, it connects people, and so for us it is a matter of telling a story that reaches people on an emotional level, but never taking it to a place where it becomes marketing.

That can be a fine line sometimes It is a very interesting subject. Right now we are seeing a tendency to-

wards these things changing. Several companies have seen this and put marketing under communication in order to keep storytelling a part of it. Classic marketing, like ads and television commercials, still has a role to play when it comes to very distinct product marketing, but in terms of creating loyalty in the long run, I think that storytelling creates identity, and sometimes I see marketing get it a little wrong by not being strategic enough. Who are you going to use to front your product? If that does not make sense then it doesn’t create the impact that you want to create with that kind of money. So what we see internationally is that marketing becomes a part of the communications department, because that way you get a more strategic approach to the way you act and communicate.

Is that the way it is set up in Danish Crown?

No. It is a big debate. We are seeing a change in the old way of thinking that “we have several brands but we don’t want people to know that they all come out of the same company”. In this day and age, everyone knows, everyone can look it up and find out. I also faced that approach 04/2013 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

53

STORY TELLER Looking at the important questions of communication

56

04/2013

COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

STORY TELLER

THE NEW PR PROFILE The changing role of the communication director “Updating the profile” by Herbert Heitmann page 58 – 61

“Views from the top” by Dafydd Phillips page 62 – 65

“The learning curve” by Elisabeth Schick page 66 – 69

“A strategy for the communicator” by Pierre Goad page 70 – 73

“Filling the void” by Anne Gregory page 74 – 77

“Calculate and clarify” by Jim Macnamara page 78 – 83

“Agreeing on a new role” by Jonathan Harper page 84 – 87

57

04/2013

COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR