These are interesting times for corporate comms professionals. Keir Bosley analyses the current mood music and shares his pearls of wisdom for navigating it.
It’s not getting any easier, is it?
Rapidly changing political mood music, a challenging economic context and ongoing culture wars mean that the ground underneath a business’ feet is changing. And fast.
To borrow from the Hemmingway quote that helped inspire firstlight’s very own name, “a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon”. (We’re very literary here at firstlight towers, dontcherknow.)
Managing corporate, or even brand, comms in this context is a huge challenge. We’ve been cursed with interesting times. That issue the CEO pledged her unwavering support for three years ago? Now it’s the hottest of potatoes. The market opportunity that looked rock solid 18 months back? AI has turned it a bit Pete Tong.
But in this context, the power of comms should not be undervalued. Trust is currency, and reputation is a licence to operate. They are the invisible assets on any balance sheet. And values-led employees want to know what kind of business they are working for.
Corporate comms is the magic that binds product narratives, internal comms and brand comms into one seamless story. It helps manage crises and issues and can open-up opportunities for growth.
I loved this recent article from the CEO of one of our agency counterparts in the US, encouraging corp comms to play offence not defence. This underlines that silence is not an option.
But organisations need to navigate all this with nuance and judgement. As we know from countless examples, reputations can build over time but unravel in a heartbeat.
So here’s my cheat sheet with a few quick wins that can help corporate comms in this challenging context.
In tough times, people crave clarity, especially employees. Uncertainty breeds distrust. Use this litmus test; what are we focusing on, why does this matter, what does it mean for our customers, what does it mean for our people?
Whether b2c or b2b, great partnerships always have a halo effect. Find the brands that can help you tell your story, and use these partnerships to bring it to life in a new way. Organisations, just like people, are often judged by their friends. Partnerships can add credibility, create news, open up new audiences and generate commercial opportunities. Winner.
Some people say there is no room for creativity in corporate comms. Absolute tosh. Creative thinking is the lifeblood of communication, whether you want to stand out from the crowd, bring the organisation mission to life or manage reputations in times of unwelcome focus. In this context, there are only going to be more difficult issues that organisations must navigate.
Sidebar: I’m a big fan of Maximum Effort’s fast-turnaround response for Astronomer’s recent kiss cam issue. It’s creative, funny, self-deprecating and it’s got the potential to scale to somewhere near the same level as the original video. But there’s still some useful lessons here for organisations that don’t have Gwyneth on speed-dial.
Organisations are bad – like, truly bad – at remembering the things they’ve done. Building a corporate memory is not hardwired into every business. But building and maintaining a repository of lines used around key issues or one central place where campaign playbooks and product messaging can be found saves time and effort, and makes it easier to manage the day-to-day going forward. Make one, if you don’t have one. I beg you.
People trust people, not just brands. They can humanise a business and help manage the message in the face of external criticism. The organisations with the best reputations get this and train up their senior leaders as a result, giving them storytelling skills and safe space to put them into practice. This pays off, whether it’s a conversation with a team, investors or a critical media.