The world of communications has changed
The communications landscape has seen a sea change,
resulting an environment rife with new, interactive channels and increased connectivity
and speed. In the past year, the media industry in Hong Kong and around the
globe has felt the aftershocks. Social media use has exploded, and new hybrid
media sites are popping up independently and as versions of old newspaper
empires. Traditional media giants such as Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal
have cut staff in ‘non-essential’ reporting groups. Accordingly, the PR and communications
industry has also shifted, with two stalwart giants, Publicis Groupe and Omnicom
announcing their merger last year.
In this context, there is a need for businesses to adapt the
way they communicate. Many companies in Hong Kong are asking: “how do we get
more ‘likes’ on Facebook?” But what they should be asking is: “how can we
harness the power of this new environment to drive business and create value
for stakeholders?”
In other words, it’s not enough to get in the game just to
play. To be a successful communicator; it takes strategic thinking and a creative
use of a mix of marketing and PR channels and stakeholder engagement.
What about reputation?
Before diving into strategy, it is important to take a step
back and look at the context of not only the media environment, but general
sentiment. There is much talk of reputation, but Edelman distinguishes this
concept from Trust. Where reputation is the sum of all your past activities,
Trust is the current perception and belief of what you will do in the future. At
Edelman, Trust forms the basis of all of our consulting activities, and we
invest in understanding it. For the past 14 years, Edelman and its research
subsidiary Edelman Berland have conducted a global survey on the subject. Called
the Edelman Trust Barometer, the research gages the level of Trust the public
has in the institutions of business, government, NGOs and media.
In 2013, the Hong Kong results of the Trust Barometer brought
to light a gap in Trust between institutional leaders and the institutions
themselves. People in Hong Kong trusted leaders much less, specifically those
in government and business. This year, we’ve seen a further erosion of trust in
in the institutions themselves. Hong Kong is no longer a ‘trusting’ nation.
The good news is that communications can offer companies a
way to rebuild lost Trust.
A strategic mix of channels and tools
As consultants, we work with businesses of all shapes of
sizes. We also have the luxury of operating as a 3rd party observer,
providing us with a mostly objective view of the companies that hire us.
Business leaders vary in personality and management style, but one common trait
is passion for their work. This is generally a positive, but sometimes leads to
a schema of thinking where tactics precede strategy for communications. This can
be fatal when dealing with a milieu of fast-changing and instantaneous media.
Because of this, we encourage our clients to see media as
partners not solely an outlet and to think about a mix of channels across
marketing, advertising, public relations and digital. If approached correctly,
PR can work as a kind of smart bomb, accelerating trending stories or
instigating clever memes with born-digital players such as BuzzFeed. Realizing
the power of search, too, can change the way we interact and act. Thinking
about and messaging in terms of key words and content visualization assists to
craft more impactful hybrid campaigns. Strategic planning and execution that
includes media outreach, search engine optimization and hyperlinking creates a
situation where positive messages can be amplified through channels effectively
and trust can be built.
How: ‘Show up Differently’
Edelman’s mantra for this year is ‘Show up Differently.’ Showing
up differently is a business imperative if a company is to garner both the
attention, trust and loyalty of its target stakeholders.
Consumer products powerhouse Unilever* showed up differently
this past November when it launched Unilever Project Sunlight. It inspires all
consumers to live more sustainably through the universal and beautifully
captured stories of expectant parents around the globe. Based on the insight
that having a child is a life moment where people reconsider their role in the
world and their behaviors, Project Sunlight in its first week received more
than 30 million views and sparked more than 40,000 conversations on Unilever's
social media channels.
In a world of data and algorithms, Unilever and many others
are cutting through the clutter with simple, good storytelling and the human,
emotional element of relating to one another. At Edelman, we believe strongly
that in order for our clients to achieve their business objectives and connect
with their target stakeholders, both they and we have to do as Unilever did and
"show up differently." This means, among many things, connecting in
genuine and authentic ways with employees, customers and all types of people.
It is not about being a slave to data, big or small, but rather it's about
leveraging data to guide, not dictate, a way forward.
There is a real opportunity for Hong Kong businesses to
seize competitive advantage today by showing up differently, thinking
differently and putting communications at the heart of everything that they do.
By Andrew Kirk, Managing Director, Edelman Hong Kong & Taiwan
