Seat at the Table

In today’s economic environment, public perception is the greatest asset – or the greatest liability – of any company.  But while reputation may be one of the first considerations during the corporate decision-making process, public relations professionals may not be leading the discussion.   The reason boils down to this: when it comes to reputation, the c-suite needs to talk business, not PR.  Those PR professionals able to lead a business discussions are the ones who will play the central role in managing a company’s reputation.   All others are likely relegated to a reactive mode where we are only able to communicate the decisions that others have finalized.

This leads to some important questions – how can a public relations department switch from the more commonly implemented reactive and tactical modes to an active mode where it is able to truly provide counsel during the decision-making process? Furthermore, how can PR move from merely talking about media relations to managing reputation risk and espousing the economic value around major business decisions such as customer service investments?

An active strategy for public perception management requires that a company view its relationship with public relations representation as a partnership. The PR team should be involved throughout multiple levels of the company and should be viewed as a critical component in decision-making processes. Instead of simply functioning to offer counsel when requested, the PR team should be viewed as a valuable resource – one that is engaged both at the earliest stages of business planning and at the final stages of business measurement and analysis.

Maximum effectiveness requires the PR team be placed in a position where it can truly understand how the company is seen by core audiences – primarily the company’s customers, prospects and investors. The team must be able to project the ways in which company actions will affect those perceptions and be capable of measuring any changes in audience opinions.  This is a major strategic shift, however it is one that public relations departments can facilitate through implementation of three crucial actions.

1. Introduce opinion survey and market analysis tools into the departmental skill set
Establishing an understanding of audience perceptions of a company, as well as why those perceptions were formed and what changes the company can implement that would spur positive actions amongst the audience, such as investing in or purchasing from the company, are the fundamental basis of any strong and effective strategic public relations program.

In current public relations practices, discovering whether or not the latest messaging and tactics have effectively reached target audiences and successfully affected opinions requires that professionals search for correlations and analyze data to determine how our output might have affected the audience’s opinion.

But what if we simply asked them?

Instead of establishing program recommendations according to how tactical output – i.e., media – might drive sales, programs could then based on audiences actually saying what would increase their purchase intent. Public relations professionals could then use this research to either recommend specific actions that would be required to positively impact audience perceptions or to gauge how actions recommended by other departments and business units will impact audience perception and actions. The latter can be likened to a lawyer providing counsel regarding the legal implications of business actions or an accountant similarly offering tax implications. A company’s public relations team should always be positioned to provide the valuable insights about the reputation implications of any suggested action or have the ability to contribute suggestions themselves.

Skills in areas including risk management, opinion surveys, business analysis and other tools critical to an active approach to public relations management are in short supply. Not only is there a lack of personnel with these skills, but the industry also suffers from a limited perception of its need for these skill sets. It’s easy to find a PR department searching for someone with media contacts. One is far less likely to find one searching for someone with risk management analysis and opinion survey analysis skills.

Politics is one domain in which such tools and strategies are evidently hard at work, with a high value placed on the skills and knowledge missing from many corporate PR teams. Politicians keep pollsters around precisely because pollsters provide politicians with critical information about exactly what people think, what needs to be said to affect what people think, and even how to say what needs to be said. Pollsters can then follow up, conducting surveys to find out if the program changes worked or not. Campaign managers don’t read clip books – they read survey results. CEOs may get clip books with fancy graphs, but those don’t give the bottom line – did we or didn’t we effectively alter opinions.

2. Change from PR-specific language to high-level business language
A company’s executive leadership is interested in how reputation drives bottom line metrics including sales and valuation. While the PR function may drive these metrics on a daily basis, PR language doesn’t always make that clear.

Switching from PR to business language can both raise the company’s overall level of understanding about how import the PR function actually is while also elevating the level of counsel itself. For example, instead of just talking about brand and corporate reputation, talk about reputation risk management and economic value. For programming, it’s about the reputation impact of business moves as well as the risk and economic values of that impact. When it comes to measurement, metrics should focus on audience opinion surveys with an emphasis on opinions that impact the bottom line most. This information can also concretely demonstrate how output like media coverage can drive audience opinions. The important point is that PR professionals should be speaking the same language as the senior management team at the level they are operating.

3. Provide business – not PR – counsel
Similar to the switch from PR to business language, public relations counsel should move from being just communications counsel to becoming overall business counsel. Communications is simply one portion of the total means to an end – the end being a better-run business.

This strategic move can be accomplished in two key stages. First, counsel should revolve around measurements of the reputation impact of business moves. Not only should PR professionals indicate how specific business moves affect opinion, but they should also offer recommendations for alternative moves. For example, instead of simply showing how cutting customer service will negatively impact consumer opinions, counsel can show ways in which strategies such as improving customer service scripts and lowering online response times can neutralize those negative effects.

An active approach should also incorporate program measurement that reflects more than just reputation (awareness, opinion etc) impact. It should be forward-looking in terms of recommending next steps for the business. In the example above, this would mean not only measuring communications around the changes in customer service, but also providing input regarding ways potential additional changes in customer service can continue to impact reputation.

Management may not always take action based on PR recommendations, but the smart ones will get the message that reputation (the bottom line measurement of PR) is the result of a combination of business decisions and a variety of communications methods. They’ll also realize that the job of the public relations department is to watch, recommend, and manage the company’s reputation at the highest level, not just at a tactical – i.e., media relations or blogging – level.

A shift to a financial value focused effort is a major move, but it is not without big rewards.  Benefits include bigger budgets, greater respect, more influence and the lead communications role. PR practitioners can truly take charge of a company’s reputation and prove the program’s economic value. In the end, like we see with successful political consultants, you can gain not just a seat at the table, but the seat at the table – the one right next to the biggest chair at the front.