Strategies for Staying on Top

How do you reach the top?  How do you stay on top? In essence, how do you creative competitive advantage? The answer, in my opinion, is by changing the way we approach the Public Relations business.

Discard the old, outmoded view of communications as just operational output.  And recognize that today, communications MUST be a strategic driver.

In the old, outmoded model — with communications as operational output — we were essentially working as manufacturers, turning out lots of standard widgets.  Our job was to produce press releases and press kits, collateral materials, seminars and so forth. 

It still is and forever shall it be.  But we need to be more than manufacturers.

In the new paradigm — communications as a strategic driver (which I’ll refer to as CASD) — we keep the factory floor alive but we also move to the boardroom.  When communications is a strategic driver — communications is along side other key functions, including finance, sales and technology. It’s at the center of policy and product development. It’s at the start of all new organizational initiatives.

While the widgets still have to be sold, what we’re selling FIRSTis our experience and expertise.
For example, one of our clients started a non-profit company to democratize education through the Internet.  The product was a Web site competition for high school kids.  Each entry illustrated a learning principle, e.g., "what makes a curve ball curve?" The initial planning meetings before the idea became a product or a company included PR, scientists, educational leaders, finance people and Internet gurus. Together we shaped the company AND the product.

Here is the influence communications had. Let's look at CASD in action:

We named the product ThinkQuest because we thought it had the right educational flavor. We made sure the rules of the competition were easy to understand and multi-disciplinary so the program would apply to kids’ favorite subjects — whether math, social studies, music, science and other areas.  We helped structure the organization so that it was communications-focused (both inside and outside).  The CEO had to be a spokesperson to key constituencies. We shaped the marketing program so the product would reach 60,000 schools, and teachers would be
trained to motivate action.  The Web site would be student user-friendly.  It wound up being the Web site with the most hits in the world.  The winner selection process would have independent celebrity and academic judges.

All of the other disciplines around the table observed our contribution.
 
Thus, if you take the CASD route, you are at the decision point — thereby enhancing the value of the communications function.  Value will migrate to communications because communications will deliver value.

However, communications as a strategic driver requires a special kind of practitioner.  CASD professionals are smart, empathic and quick.  They’re focused … but have a broad vision.  They are both creative and analytical.  They understand all of the marketing disciplines and can counsel management on which ones to apply where.  They understand the science of persuasion and building support. If you attain this profile, it will be recognized at all levels of the company, and value will migrate to you.

I can see us all saying that the CASD route sounds worthwhile. But how do we get there from here?

There are five essential steps:

1. Reset your clock
2. Learn on the fly
3. Act only on what matters
4. Let the customer choose
5. Replace monologue with trialogue

Let's look at each, in turn.

Step #1: Reset your clock

Time is the one luxury that no CASD professional can afford.  We have to move rapidly. We all realize this.

It is a lesson the U.S. Postal Service has not yet learned.  They can’t get our birthday cards to their destination fast enough to suit us … that’s why more than 40 million of us sent out electronic greeting cards last year.

I serve as a director on the board of a SMALL company, and we just had a meeting the other day. Their customers no longer wanted to wait to receive their 15-page brochure in the mail.  So, the PR person created a five-page version that could be e-mailed to customers and prospects.  The chairman wanted to know what we thought.  Well, our client, Booz•Allen Hamilton — a global leader in management and tech- nology consulting … with 11,000 employees on six continents and more than $2 billion in billings last year — Booz•Allen has a TWO-page brochure that it e-mails to clients.  If a big company is moving faster than a tiny one, what they say about small and nimble is not always true.

Fierce competition makes speed and anticipating customer needs more critical.  It may be a just-released fact on the Internet about your client’s competitor. But you found it and got it to the client first.  Rapid implementation.  That is the name of the game.

Speed is also a critical component of Step #2 on the road to CASD.

Step #2: Learn on the fly

What does that mean?  You have to be prepared to shift strategies on a moment’s notice if you see an opportunity or a reason that makes sense.  Then you need to counsel your client accordingly.

Not many of us could say we anticipated the dot-bomb disaster. Yet everyone saw a weird value system develop.  How profitable a company was became less important than how visible it was.  It raised eyebrows, but few recognized this craziness for what it was and, among those who did, how many changed their strategy because of it?

In the post-9/11 world, security is a very important issue.  Yet, how many of us have made an effort to broach the subject of crisis planning with our clients and customers?  At risk is the security of a company’s core business, its people and its networks, both computers and alliances.

The recession has sparked a client need for less fuzziness and more proof.  Perhaps there is a need for more quantification than PR typically provides. We integrate direct marketing and telemarketing into our techniques.  Aquick e-mail survey of those who attended a conference.  A call for action on a product just introduced.  The client is getting immediate measurement.

Short-term thinking has its place ... and it's an important one. And it should be part of every long-term plan.

Step #3: Act only on what matters

Someone who believes in communications as a strategic driver acts only on what matters.

Many industries suffer from “marketing myopia,” according to Theodore Levitt, once a leading Harvard professor.  Railroads stopped growing, he said, because they misunderstood the nature of their business.  They thought they were in the railroad business.  In fact, they were in the transportation business.

Last year, customers bought over a million drill bits. None of them wanted to buy a drill.  All of them wanted HOLES. 

The people who buy cameras want MEMORIES.

The campaign to remove graffiti in NewYork subways was motivated by research that showed it was the symbol of the decline of the city.

Let us be the people to bring such to our clients’ attention.  That’s when you’ll be identified as a CASD professional.

Step #4: Let the customer choose

Let's face it ... your customers expect to choose. Their lives are filled with choices: MAC or PC ... live teller, ATM or online banking ... NBC, MSNBC or MSNBC.com. According to the Progressive Policy Institute, an estimated 50,000 new products are introduced every year in the US.  It’s mind-boggling, this universe of choices.
 
Surveys show that if you give customers less choice, they buy more.  Give them more choices and they buy less.

A real value that you can provide to your customers is making it EASIER for them to choose.  Provide toll-free numbers and Web site interactivity. Teleconference or videoconference.

Make sure there’s a structure in place to feed back market intelligence.  We assess customer satisfaction levels regularly, with the Makovsky QC program.  It exposes glitches that can be fixed before they grow into real problems and it's been a VERY effective tool. I recommend it to you. It's explained under "ClientKeeper" on our Web site at makovsky.com.

Step #5: Wherever possible, CASD pros complement Monologue and Dialogue with Trialogue

You’re all familiar with the concepts of monologue and dialogue, right?  Monologue is a one-way communiqué: for example, a brochure or newsletter, advertising or press release.  You send it out and you hope it gets received and/or read by the customer.

Dialogue is slightly more interactive.  It’s generated by one party, but is predicated on the involvement of the target audience.  Seminars, surveys and direct response are examples of dialogue.

At Makovsky & Company we’ve coined a new word, Trialogue, to describe a new kind of ccommuniqué: the continuous flow of information among and between all of your constituencies as well as your own.  Your audiences are talking to each other and you.  The goal is to start a word-of-mouth epidemic.

Trialogue — including such techniques as viral marketing — is exponentially more effective.  It carries the endorsement of third-party influentials and yet travels rapidly among groups.

Let me give you an example of Trialogue.  In a program targeting African-American women with messages about breast cancer, urging them to take mammograms, Georgia Sadler — a nurse and CASD professional — tried working through churches … not effective.  But leveraging the power of beauty parlors?  Ahome run!  Why?  Because, for these African-American women, salons weren’t just a place to get your hair done.  They’re community centers.  And salon owners and hairdressers are respected members of the community, who can deliver important health messages credibly.  She discovered and trained these salon owners.  The women were talking among themselves. Mammograms went way up. Goal accomplished!

We can influence the conversation and ignite “epidemics” that carry client messages far and wide.

So that’s how you make the journey from communications as operational output to communications as a strategic driver.

To recap the steps to success if you want to make a shift from communications as operational output to communications as strategic driver…

You should:

1. Reset your clock
2. Learn on the fly
3. Act only on what matters
4. Let the customer choose
5. Replace monologue with trialogue

It’s a new world out there.  “Right here.  Right now.  Tailored for me. Served up the way I like it." ... if your customers' expectations were spelled out on a billboard, this is how they would read.

Not every job requires that communications be a strategic driver.  Sometimes — it’s true! — we just manufacture widgets.  But those of us with a CASD perspective understand that a new world requires new ways of thinking.  And we appreciate the benefits:

• Asecure position at the top
• Greater vitality in our marketing discipline
• Arise in revenues and value

Makovsky is a full-service, award-winning, global communications firm with divisions in Technology & Telecommunications, Financial & Professional Services, Investor Relations and Health Sciences.

The firm has been consistently cited by The Holmes Report(formerly Inside PR), the leading professional journal, as one of the nation’s premier agencies.  In its most recent Agency Report Card issue, Makovsky was ranked among the:

• Top Business-to-Business Marketing Firms
• Top Investor Relations Firms
• Top Mid-size, Full-service Firms

Previously, Makovsky has been cited as “Best Managed Agency in the U.S.” and among the best in “Strategy,” “International” and “New York.”

The firm is consistently given an edge for its corporate and product branding expertise and best practices approach to client programming. Client surveys continue to recognize Makovsky's quality performance, outstanding professionals and strategic skills.

To effectively serve clients throughout the world, Makovsky + Company founded IPREX, a corporation of partner public relations firms in more than 35 major markets and 19 countries, including Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim.