Presentation: Reputation and Public Affairs in Brussels

I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks back that I was slightly unsure of how to approach the presentation on reputation I was due to give at the Public Affairs Action Day.

In short, we all know reputation matters in Public Affairs, but there are multiple potential scenarios at play: some PA professionals struggle with reputational issues yet only have a PA remit, others can do more far-reaching reputation management beyond Brussels, while others have an excellent commercial reputation which they need to “translate” for a Brussels audience. And within each scenario, there are many nuances: trade association vs. company, for instance.

I ended up focusing on principles and ideas applicable across the board, but shied away from real “reputation management” seen as an exercise beyond mere communications. I also presented a few findings from Fleishman-Hillard’s imminent Authenticity Gap study, which compares how industries are expected to perform vs. how they actually do perform across nine drivers of reputation. Any questions, fire away.

Reputation & Public Affairs: inseparable bedfellows? from Steffen Moller

Public Affairs and corp comms: making them work in tandem in a policy town

Organisations, including agencies, often have separate public affairs and corporate communications functions in Brussels (not Fleishman-Hillard). It’s a tad peculiar, given that PA is a communications discipline, and that the comms piece is increasingly important: good PA must incorporate more elements of disciplines such as reputation management and branding than before, while the proliferation of channels means there are far more ways to reach policy-makers, and often in more markets. Combined, there’s no doubt that success isn’t easily attained with traditional PA tactics alone.

So why are the functions often still kept separate?

• Culture. By and large, PA professionals tend to value knowledge (policy-based), while comms people think communications strategy and output (audiences, content, engagement, measurement etc.)
• Comms people weren’t required back in the day: there were fewer target audiences and channels, even PA people could do it properly! These same PA people still rule the roost and are loath to change their ways.
• Structurally, the fact that the disciplines were separate means separate silos developed. Hence the Brussels phenomenon where companies have their European HQs out by the airport and a PA office near the Parliament.

So what should organisations looking to assimilate their PA and corporate communications functions in a PA town do? As is often the case in this blog, there’s no definitive answer, but a series of thought starters:

• The bleedin’ obvious: combine the corp comms and PA teams.
• Bring in new blood to stir things up, especially senior corp comms talent.
• Focus on avowed generalists who bridge the PA and corp comms gulf most comfortably.
• Position the corp comms folk as thought leaders and have them lead a series of first-rate internal training sessions (PA folk are smug and will inherently think they’re more cerebral – this may help!)
• When possible, make a corp comms specialist head of PA too…
• Make it about more than corp comms and PA: build bridges with marcomms, even if they’re in a different country.
• Do the boring stuff to support this: create processes e.g. monthly calls, annual meetings to exchange best practice (based on very clear templates and agendas to ensure relevance).

Brussels policy blogging: don’t bother if…

There’s a real shortage of blogs that deal with a specific policy area, written by experts in that same area operating in Brussels. Given this dearth, given that policy-makers use the web to inform themselves on policy issues, that a blog is a highly flexible medium that allows for anything from a short two-liner to a full-on analysis, that a blog can allow for an ongoing narrative that no other medium could allow for, lots of organisations trying to communicate their views on a variety of issues are losing out by relying only on tried and tested position papers, meetings and the like (I’ve previously written about the reasons for the shortage of policy blogs in Brussels over on Public Affairs 2.0 – if you click through, I recommend that you read the comments too.)

Still, some blogs do get launched, and in this post, rather than argue for more policy blogs, I’d like to make another point, possibly born out of the frustration at seeing a number of valiant efforts fail. Despite the undoubted value of blogging – if done well – don’t even bother if:

• You aren’t allowed to talk about anything interesting (or don’t want to, or can’t legally do so.) You work on topical and/or contentious issues and have views, so EXPRESS THEM: that’s what people care about. Blogging about your CEO’s pet CSR initiative and about how useful your product or service is a waste of time. It’s not going to “educate policy-makers and their influencers” – it’s going to make them never ever visit your blog again.
• No one can really be bothered to write. Blogging sounds like a good idea, you sort of see the value, but you sure as hell aren’t going to write; nor are any of your colleagues. A blog needs to be fed regularly and requires an author (or authors) who are real people and who represent the organisation. Yes it’s an effort; yes it’s a commitment. If you see it as an add-on which your agency can run for you, don’t bother.
• You’re going to write in a vacuum. A blog offers an opportunity to connect to other people and sources. Whether you just link through to lots of good 3rd party content, or even better, connect to others writing about the same issues in Brussels or (more likely) at national level by linking to their content, you’ll add credibility to your blog, drive traffic and hopefully even build relationships. Just writing about your own stuff is a wasted opportunity.
• You aren’t going to market it properly. Don’t think people will magically show up. Sure, good content is the clincher, but you need to constantly promote your blog. That can mean anything from advertising to SEO to everyone within the organisation simply just referring to it whenever they can.

How many organisations actually have the will and flexibility to avoid all of the above? Sadly, not that many (unless they’re facing a crisis.)

“All we need is more face-time with MEPs”

Heard this week in Brussels. Perpetrator? A lobbyist for arguably the most hated industry in Europe. When, when, when will PA professionals realise we’re in 2011, not 1981. If you’re universally loathed, many a policy-maker – even those who side with you at heart – will not care what your report says, how many people you employ or what percentage of European GDP will go down the pan if they don’t let you carry on with business as usual. And while they keep chipping away at your business, you carry on trying to get as much face time as possible and your only KPI remains “number of meetings with policy-makers.” What do you think? That they didn’t hear you the first time? That leading a war of attrition will bore them into submission? Have you thought of teaming up with your leadership, business units, corporate comms, marketing and whoever else matters to overhaul your reputation? Probably not. Your loss.

“If only they knew what we were really like they’d be nice to us”

This statement underlies a significant proportion of the comms briefs which agencies receive in Brussels. The thinking is as follows – “Pressure groups are more effective communicators and have shattered our reputation because we’ve never spoken up. Now, after 20 years of keeping quiet, we’re finally allowed to communicate. Excellent. Once we’ve said that our product is safe because the report we funded says so and/or that our industry employs X million people in Europe, we’ll be fine.”

No you won’t. The myth that misinformation amongst the elite drives policy that damages industry is one of Brussels’ biggest crocks of s***.

First, people – including MEPs or whoever – are entitled to a difference in opinion. Your product may be safe/beneficial, but the alternative is so too and is biodegradable to match. Or cheaper. Your industry may employ X million but the alternative industry employs Y million.

Second, believe it or not, public opinion matters. Sending your MEP a report won’t do if his/her constituents loathe you, even if they believe every word of your report. So the far bigger part of the puzzle becomes ensuring that whoever influences said MEP – constituents and whoever else – changes their mind. That calls for far-reaching reputation management programmes and a lot of perseverance. Daunting, but bury your head in the sand at your peril.

Develop a content strategy to succeed in Public Affairs

As PA professionals, we know our issues. Intelligence is our lifeblood: we understand the multitude of factors which determine how an issue might progress over time, we know who’s who, and so forth. However, we’ve developed a habit over the years of going straight from knowing our stuff to delivering it. We’ve kidded ourselves into thinking we’re not like marketing, corporate communications or consumer PR folk who need to tell a good yarn.

Meaning what? That our output often isn’t adapted to our audiences. We provide a 100 page document when someone wants 10 bullet-points. We talk about clean air when people would rather hear about the economy. We try to get a meeting when our target audience is looking us up on-line.

So what should we do about it? Learn from the marketers, corporate communicators et al: use insights to better analyse our audiences, differentiate the message, develop a gripping and relevant storyline, test the message, vary the output, vary the channel. In short, develop a content strategy which turns your intelligence into a compelling narrative, and then deliver.

PA and corporate communications converging: comparing London and Brussels

One of the running themes of this blog is that PA as we once knew it – the government relations centric model – is being superseded by one where government relations lives side by side with a range of other communications disciplines. An organisation’s reputation, often beyond Brussels, is increasingly important in determining how that organisation is perceived by decision makers, as is the extent to which it is aligned with public opinion on any given issue.

However, when I was asked just last week by a London-based Public Affairs professional to what extent corporate communications and PA are converging in Brussels, my reply was: probably not as much as in London.

That is not to say that I’ve done a volte-face on the statement above. However, the extent to which corporate communications and PA converge is not consistent: it depends on the nature of the issue. The more the issue is in the public domain, the greater the convergence, and the fact of the matter is that fewer issues are in the public domain in Brussels than in London.

In a previous post, I outlined three issue realities and the appropriate digital response, and I think the same separation is pertinent here. The three are, in short, the very technical issue which only a few policy wonks know about, the slightly less technical issue which is being discussed widely in policy circles, and the issue which affects a lot of people and has people talking beyond policy circles.

Arguably, only the latter reality requires highly proactive corporate communications, and the fact of the matter is that more issues fall into that bracket in London than in Brussels.

Why? Generally, because there is less interest in and scrutiny of the legislative process in Brussels than there is in London. Here are a few reasons why that might be:

• Many of the meatier issues which tend to attract public interest are beyond the EU’s remit (immigration, tax, social security, most foreign policy etc.) Instead, the EU deals with many highly technical and – in the eyes of most people – dull dossiers.
• MEPs have low profiles nationally and in their constituencies: they don’t necessarily need to prove themselves to their electorates based on issue alignment and so probably make decisions based on facts and figures more so than their MP counterparts, who are perennially busy courting voters.
• The way legislation is put together in Brussels is based heavily on compromise and attaining the lowest common denominator in a drawn-out process, which is frankly less interesting (slow; fewer dog-fights).
• A red thread here is the fact that the UK media has little interest in EU affairs, meaning most stuff passes under the radar in any case.

Anything I’ve left out?

Your first priority online: become a resource

In PR/PA anno 2010, the web is acknowledged as being an absolutely integral part of the communications mix, but quite often for the wrong reasons. PR professionals who view their job through the prism of media relations have transferred their thinking to the web, but replacing journalists with bloggers and the like. They view the opportunity purely in having more influencers to tell a story to; they’ll even ignore the web entirely if they find there aren’t high-profile bloggers interested in their issue.

To be honest, it’d be tricky to run a blogger relations campaign or build community on most issues. Sorry, but there just isn’t enough critical mass yet. That doesn’t mean the web has no value in these instances though! We’re moving from a world of push to one of pull. People’s first point of call? Google. So when they do search, you need to have a presence: and an impressive one at that. So forget about the external influencers for just a second and start thinking of yourself as one instead. You reach the end-user DIRECT through search. Grasp the opportunity.

p.s. and even if your issue could warrant a blogger relations campaign or a community-building approach you STILL need to build a great presence before engaging, or you won’t be taken seriously (the four pillars of online engagement maps out the steps in a little more detail.)

Diagrams: Brussels PA-Corp Comms channel splits

How do most organisations operating in the Brussels PA-Corp Comms space approach their work? By and large, via channels operating in splendid isolation: lots of focus on advocacy (yes, I’m calling it a channel), a fair bit on media, and a tiny bit on web communication. Lots of it may be very good, but it’s poorly integrated.

How would I like to see them operate? With all channels neatly placed within the same circle, treated as part of the same larger “comms” framework on any given issue.

p.s. the web circle is not bigger than the media and advocacy circles because it’s more important, but because the web acts as the integrator that brings the rest together, beyond its own individual benefits as a channel. Whenever you engage in the media or through advocacy, it should be supported and channelled via the web also.

Online engagement: Brussels audiences’ five standard questions

Here are five questions which I’m invariably asked when organisations are thinking about exploring online engagement but aren’t quite sure what they’re getting themselves into. They’re not the most interesting or strategic questions, but are understandable stumbling blocks which hold organisations back and need to be answered. Here goes.

1. Won’t we get attacked by the other side? What if they say things we really don’t want anyone to hear?

Maybe, but in any case, you can moderate, so if there’s something you really don’t want to expose, you don’t have to (read a recent post about angry commenting trolls here.) Having said that, don’t moderate too much. If you remove everything that isn’t rose-tinted, what’s the point of engaging? View it as an opportunity. There are people out there who dislike you no matter what. There are others who aren’t so sure about you, but if you actually respond to their concerns, you might even win them over.

2. OK so we can moderate, but aren’t we going to get inundated by thousands of hateful attacks every day? So much so that we’ll end up spending all our time moderating?

In my experience, nobody has ever been attacked in this way (don’t flatter yourselves: people have better ways of spending their time!) I’ve heard of instances of automated responses by angry pressure groups, but have never experienced it myself. In any case, these people had your email addresses before: were you “attacked” then?

3. We’re only a small team with a small budget: do we really have the resources to do this properly?

Sure, proper online engagement is time intensive, but so are conf calls, meetings and writing reports no one reads. View it as an opportunity, not something you could do on top of all your – supposedly – far more important tasks. This might actually be the most important thing you do (although this depends on the nature of your sector or organisation.) In any case, if you plan properly, it needn’t take up too much time. Have an editorial plan in place so you organise publication properly, and give yourself a timeslot for the actual work like you would for a regular meeting or whatever else, and you will find it just becomes part of your working day.

4. How do we target people in multiple languages?

The perennial comms nightmare in Europe. It depends on the nature of the organisation in question and what you’re trying to do. If your key target audience is French-speaking but your organisation primarily operates in English, it’d be hard to recommend against trying to communicate in both languages. As a starting point, I’d certainly recommend against overstretching i.e. trying to engage in multiple languages; but to what extent this is the case really depends. Conversations shouldn’t be translated, so I wouldn’t ever translate blog posts, tweets, forum entries and the like; but I would not recommend against a mixed basket approach where a few languages are in use on the same platforms (but not more than three….) For instance, a blog could have posts in different languages, each tagged by the language in question so that a user can select to view all posts written in any given language in one list. Again though, this is complex issue and there’s no right or wrong answer apart from don’t overstretch…!

5. How do we know if engagement works? How do we measure success?

Another perennial question, and one which I’d (controversially) say is relatively easy to answer, even though ROI calculations for engagement (and comms in general) are notoriously contentious. I’m not saying that it’s easy to guarantee success or that it’s easy to define very clear ROI measurements – it’s not at all – but there are so many things you can measure in quantitative terms online, that you can develop a very substantial set of KPIs which you can follow and improve on an ongoing basis. So when the question arises, your response can be: with press releases, you get clippings; online, you get viewing numbers, behavioural and trending figures, you’ll know who said what, when and where; and you’ll know how many of your key targets viewed your content. Plus you’ll have qualitative input which you’d ordinarily have needed polling to assess because you can measure word of mouse (as opposed to traditional word of mouth…) i.e. you’ll know what people think because they may comment about it. The bottom line of the sell is this: my professional opinion is that this will work, but don’t just take my word for it; with you, the client, we’ll develop a very detailed set of KPIs which will be exact indicators of success. Given that they’re so substantial, you’ll know very clearly whether the programme is a success or not; far more clearly that any of the other communications channels you use.

Are people totally won over? No, the novelty of engagement and the “loss of control” it entails is still a big leap; but at this point people tend to be willing to take their first baby steps.