Talking About The Companys Soul

The invisibility and remoteness of most companies are the main handicap. People who feel they know a company well are five times more likely to have a favourable opinion of the company, than those who have little familiarity. Opinion Research Corporation (USA).

Stephen King, the guru of brand-building, highlighted four pressures facing both branded goods and companies in the 90s. The first is the rapid rise of individualism, not only in developed economies but also in Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America. This results in a more confident and discerning consumer. The second is the demand for quality and value-addition both from products and corporations. Witness the acceptance of terms, such as, greening, eco-consciousness and social responsibility. The third change vector which will demolish a number of barriers to equality, is the new technology.

 

The microelectronics revolution has spawned myriad innovations and categories. The informatted age created new tools and techniques to address discrete markets through databases and simultaneously fragmented consumer segments further. The media and communications industries have exploded with both choices and vehicles growing exponentially. Ever increasing competition and the accompanying product proliferation is the final nail in the corporate coffin. Now corporations face selection by consumers, retail trade, investors, academia, and other businesses through the many links available. Never before have corporations been offered so many sophisticated media options for the delivery of their product, services and corporate messages. And never before have corporations found it so difficult and costly to rise above this clutter and send the kind of clear, positive messages that are critical to corporate growth and prosperity.

It is this paradox that is spurring advertising, public relations, marketing and communications managers to examine microscopically the value of traditional media like print, television and the emerging technologies of cable and the Internet and to hone the images and text to be transmitted. In pursuit of cost-effectiveness, companies are repackaging their annual reports, financial information, corporate advertising, product advertising and hundreds of other forms they use to communicate and convince.

As a result of these efforts, the overall quality of individual communication material has risen dramatically. So has the cost of designing, producing and delivering these materials. Despite this commitment to quality, a growing number of companies find that the payoff is too small.

As options increase, the task of deciding what to say and to whom grows tougher Each product or brand makes its own case for a share of the company budget to deliver its message. Inevitably, messages proliferate and can very often contradict. From an over-all corporate perspective, the packaged goods consumer gets one message and the individual shareholder gets another. As a result the financial analyst may be left unimpressed or confused and consequently the best efforts of the company team become counter-productive when it comes to marketing the corporation.

As companies realise that they can no hope to be everything to everyone, cutbacks follow. Rupees may be shuffled from one medium to another, product advertising may be reduced. Financial communications may suffer, investor relations may weaken temporarily.

Meanwhile, the largest cost item of all may be overlooked. As the company responds to media options, to increasing clutter and costs, to crises and opportunities, the corporation's equity in its unique identity, in its very existence, is being ignored if not eroded. In the middle of hectic product marketing activity, who is marketing the corporation?

Challenging the corporation today is the need to develop innovative, cohesive and cost-efficient ways of communicating productively with the many and varied public related to it. Ways that complement and supplement each other by addressing common umbrella corporate communications objectives. Ways that pull together the variety of the modern corporation's existence into a meaningful, expressive and credible whole. Ways that make marketing products and services an integral aspect of marketing the corporation itself. It is not the easiest job in the world, but it is the essential underpinning for efforts to enhance communications productivity.

It demands the commitment of top management. It often demands the services of an independent consultant, one with no vested interests that will bring to the assignment objectivity, proven expertise and broad-based experience in corporate communications. This objectivity and professional expertise can help the corporation evaluate and assess its unique strengths and gain an unbiased understanding of how the corporation is perceived. It can help bring into focus what the corporation is today and where management wants it to be in five or ten years; help devise a corporate philosophy consistent with the sense of future direction, and help implement a corporate strategy for achieving long-term objectives.

Without this objective communications audit, and without a clearly defined sense of corporate purpose, loading the media channels or refining the tools by which the corporation disseminates information to its audiences can only prove costly, frustrating and ultimately counter-productive. All of us would like to have some neatly wrapped package labelled communications productivity which the corporation could immediately acquire and implement. But there isn't. The productive corporate communications program can only be developed after an objective audit and analysis of the corporation's unique situation.

For one corporation, increased communications productivity could involve examining and restructuring its media mix. For another, it might mean imposing order on the proliferation of brand names that are confusing customers, confusing institutional investors and dissipating promotional rupees.

While cohesion and harmony in brand identification are desirable, that cohesion must emerge out of the underlying cohesion of the program, the robustness of the research on which it is based and the role assigned to that program in the corporations pursuit of its long term goals.

There is also the critical factor of accelerating change change within the nature and structure of the corporation itself, compounded by mergers, acquisitions, new product and service are as - and in the environment within which the corporation competes for survival and growth.

Filling the communications channels with new and different messages may be a response to change. But it is not the management of change, without which communications productivity will be negated.

There are a number of points about implementing communications productivity that need to be kept in sharp focus: the necessity of top management commitment and involvement; the need for an objective and professional audit of the corporation's range of communication tools; an assessment of the corporation in relation to the total environment in which it competes; the critical role of an unique sense of corporate purpose and direction guiding all messages; a continued monitoring of that sense of purpose and direction in the face of increasing change.

A brief look at one corporation (disguised to respect client confidentiality) who felt the need to seek new and more effective ways of communicating with its

audiences will serve to illustrate these factors.

At first glance, Amalgamated Chemicals, with annual revenues exceeding Rs 1,000 crore and with an average return on assets of 15 per cent, would seem to be an unlikely company to re-evaluate its communication strategies. The company was well known on Dalal Street and industrial consumers were aware that the company's name and products were amongst the most established in the industry. Yet, as Amalgamated top management realised, the dominant image of the company in the eyes of institutional investors and the public was not only out of line with emerging reality but it did not position Amalgamated to carry out its long-term international growth plans.

Amalgamated was not communicating how it had changed. It was perceived for what it had been, not for what it had become and for where it was going.

Amalgamated's management recognised a communications problem and acted decisively to overcome it. A communications consultant assessed current communication practices and perceptions. After a thorough audit and analysis, an agenda and action plan was created to position the company for sustained growth in the years ahead.

A new corporate logo and corporate slogan became the visible indicators of the well researched, professionally planned communications strategy. There were thousands of other short and medium-term changes in internal communications, news letters, signage, factory layout and decor, employee facilities, etc to reinforce the quantum and direction of strategic change at the grass-roots level.

Communications problems, and appropriate solutions, are unique to every company. But the building blocks of communications productivity remain virtually unchanged:

A rigorous audit of what the corporation is and wants to be.

A vigilant analysis of changing values and expectations among the company's publics.

A goal-directed agenda for the management of change.

A realistic action plan for creating a clear, positive corporate identity through an expertly developed corporate communications program.

An outline for evaluating current communications programs.

Can we clearly and precisely state the kind of company we are?

Do we know our corporation's unique strengths and weaknesses?

Can we identify in which areas our company should seek growth?

Have mergers, acquisitions, diversifications, and the creation of multiple profit centres strengthened our corporate presence? Or, have they diluted effectiveness in functioning as a corporate entity?

Is our price/earnings ratio dangerously low - attracting hostile take-overs?

When we approach lending institutions for capital, do they see our true strengths and understand where we are headed? Or is each approach a start from scratch, an uphill road leading to an unconvinced source?

Is our management assessed on Dalal Street not just for its ability to produce earnings each year, but for its qualities of strategic vision and leadership?

Are we getting credit for our advanced technology, energy-efficient operations, increased productivity, lower staff turnover?

Do we stand out against our direct competition?

Do the government and media look to our executives when our industry is being discussed in Parliament, or industry articles are being written?

Are we fragmenting our communications efforts by telling one story to financial analysts, another to consumers and a third to employees?

Are our promotional efforts packing, trial interiors, plant sites, advertising, news letters, vehicle signage fragmented?

Are our brands organised into a cohesive, mutually supportive system? Or do perhaps 5 or 10 different brands take off independently, yielding no carryover value and thus escalating brand promotion costs?

Are the communications efforts of our companies and/or profit centres integrated into a total communications system, carrying a unified corporate identity to many people and places?

Does our corporate identity our name, symbol, and perception reflect accurately the intrinsic nature of our company today?

Does our corporate identify reflect history where we have been rather than where we are going?

Have we communicated our vision of the corporation to staff at all levels - from divisional and plant managers down to maintenance and technical workers?

Does Dalal Street really understand our company? Or do they see us in terms of our most viable products or divisions?

Does senior management recognise its responsibility as the mainspring of our corporate identity?

In an economy which tends towards the service sector, where even tangible products have a substantial service element associated with the offering, the

Company brand will be the key differential in the marketing mode. The discriminators are people for corporates and not attributes or benefits. Therefore, all staff will have to reorient themselves as brand builders.n

The author is a strategy consultant based in Mumbai.