Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

As social media continues to grow, most businesses are investing is some sort of social media outreach. Take Pepsi - they strayed away from the traditional TV Superbowl ad and invested their money and time on the "Pepsi Refresh" social media campaign. The general thought is that the more messages you put into cyberspace, the more viral they become, right?

Well - don't be fooled that social media is the only place to invest your marketing dollars. According to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in peers (those strangers congregating online) is down almost half from 2008 - 45% to 25%. We owe the diminishing trust to the economy, but also to the growing number of social media outlets and "friends" that we acquire. Let's be honest. How many of your online "friends" are actually people you'd call up for advice or trusted information? People are becoming skeptical in what they hear because it's like a game of telephone - information being passed from one user to another via social media networks. Who knows where it started? The message can become misinterpreted, leading to false information and increasing distrust, no matter what the channel.

I'm not advocating against social media or peer networks, but just be smart about it. It's never a single-source solution. When developing campaigns, make sure you do some research on your target audience. Are they online? Will they trust what they hear through the online grapevine? How else can you reach them? Do what you can to keep messages from the source intact. Advocate your network to spread messages to their REAL friends, not just strangers or acquaintances online. Word of mouth still has a lot of clout.

A person could be forgiven for head-scratching after reading the results of a survey by Gallup in late January. When asked, "What worries you more, too much regulation of business by government or not enough regulation of business by government?," 57% said too much regulation and 37% said not enough.

What's going on here? All the recent polls show trust in corporations at or near historic lows. According to Gallup's survey about six months ago, only 22% expressed trust in banks and only 16% said they trusted big business.

Okay. So it's fairly safe to say that Americans are skeptical that businesses have their best interests at heart. But here's where the Obama Administration and Congress may be going off track: citizens don't believe that the answer is in regulating and legislating businesses into doing the right thing.

And by the way, according to Gallup, there is a dramatic split in how Republicans and Democrats view this. More than 8 in 10 Republicans are against more government regulation, compared to about one in three Democrats who are against more regulation.

The takeaway for businesses? Do more to show your commitment to your customers. Don't misread that. The takeaway is not to SELL more to customers. It's to do more to show your commitment to your customers. Better service. Better explanations of your policies. When something goes wrong, do your level best to fix it. Be in touch, even when you're not trying to get more business.

It's all about being a step ahead of the needs and desires of customers.

Do we need more regulation of banks? You bet. That system rewards risky behavior - at the expense of Main Street investors. But being a step ahead of your customers will be viewed far more favorably by most Americans than more government regulation.

While watching President Obama's first State of the Union address, I found myself wondering, "What if he had tackled some easier issues earlier and gotten some small wins under his belt? Would it have made a difference if he had developed a better working relationship with Congressional Republicans before tackling the complex task of healthcare reform? Would he have had more success if he had tempered his ambitions early?"

I don't know the answers and it's easy to be the Monday Morning Quarterback on politics. But I do believe there are lessons we can learn from Obama's first year to inform how we build new client relationships. Here are four:

• Trust is earned, not assumed. I sometimes have the sense that agency people believe clients should take their advice because, well, we're the experts. That strikes me as arrogant. No matter what your agency or personal credentials are, you have to build trust in each individual client relationships. That means backing up your recommendations with facts and research. Doing what you said you would do. Assuming accountability.

• Nurture relationships. It's easy to get focused on doing the work and forget about building the relationships and processes to execute. The best way we've found to build relationships is to ask questions. Learn how your client contacts like to work. Understand their priorities. Find about their typical day. Know how they are evaluated and how the work you are doing fits into their goals. From this starting point, you can build a relationship that will sustain the rough patches.

• Score quick wins. Working with your client, identify early opportunities for success. Within the first 90 days generate quick wins. The wins will help establish trust and build momentum for the long march. If you haven't had any wins in 90 days, chances are the relationship is in trouble.

• Keep focused on the goal. Some would say Obama failed in communicating the big picture to the American people. That he allowed the healthcare reform debate to get into the weeds without keeping people focused on the challenge and the potential. We often face the same challenges in client relationships. We get distracted by tactics and get off course. One way we have approached this is to keep our top three goals for the client's organization front and center in all communications. We have posted it in meetings and used it at the top of recommendations and reports. Repetition helps.

The good news is most client relationships don't start with presidential-level expectations, a 24-7 news cycle or with an opposition party. Paying attention to a few basics upfront a can set the stage for a successful first year.

Trust is one of the hardest business resources to measure – and one of the hardest to do without. A difficult economic climate raises the stakes on trust, because there are more questions in the air. Will you make payroll? Cut product lines? Be there to pick up the phone this time next week?

 

With the tone of the business news lately, it’s hardly surprising that trust in business itself is at a low ebb. The worldwide PR firm Edelman has just published its tenth annual “Trust Barometer,” and the numbers are striking: In the United States, 77 percent of people trust corporations less than they did a year ago. Only 38 percent trust business to do what’s right, a 20 percent drop from last year. And only 17 percent say they trust what a CEO says.

 

In an environment like that, even the most forthright and respected enterprises risk being tarred with the brush of widespread anti-business sentiment. How can you redouble your efforts to win trust from your customers, suppliers, investors and business partners? How can you set yourself apart?

 

At Capstrat, our CEO, Ken Eudy, has a saying: “You can’t communicate yourself out of something you behaved your way into.” And a failure of honesty is one of the hardest behaviors to live down. In every scandal, from the Oval Office to the baseball diamond, it seems people end up suffering less for what they did in the first place than for trying to cover it up. And in business, you don’t even need to have done anything wrong for even the appearance of double-talk to erode public confidence.

 

To make sure your communication plan is always building and strengthening trust among the audiences you depend upon, keep these tips in mind:

 

·         Clarity. Transparency is always a foundational principle of business. Avoid the temptation to be transparent only when it’s convenient or when the news is good. Some organizations refuse to acknowledge difficult news. Good or bad, be honest.

·         Open channels. If you don’t think people will feel better just hearing “boring” updates from you, imagine the alternative – a silence they’re left to interpret on their own. Imagine your messaging not as a one-way pipeline, but as your end of an ongoing conversation. Consider using social media tools to energize the exchange.

·         Look inward. External stakeholders aren’t the only people whose trust you rely upon. Your employees have concerns too, and being honest and comprehensive with them is essential to preserving morale, retention and productivity.

·         Right hand, meet left hand. The employees who receive your internal communications see the same outside newspapers, Web sites and news broadcasts that everyone else does. And messages you consider “internal-only” will eventually find their way beyond your walls. Don’t get caught trying to sell internal and external messages that don’t align with one another.

·         Manage the medium. Consider the information you need to deliver, and then decide the best vehicle for communicating it. Sometimes – and, in employee communications, often – this means doing it face to face.

 

Remember that transparency isn’t just for crisis situations. It should be a watchword for everyday messages – things you consider positive and negative, important or mundane. Every time you give someone the unvarnished truth, you earn a grain of trust. Over time, they pile up.

 

If you want to see what everyday transparency looks like in action, consider this: You just did. We opened this article with a reference to original research done by one of our competitors, a major player in the public relations industry. Why? Because we knew the news was out there, and that if you were interested in this topic you’d find it anyway. By engaging the subject head-on, we didn’t detract value from what we had to say; we added to it. No matter what business you’re in, you have opportunities every day to apply the same principle.