How to help your CEO value PR
Published 2003
How PR stands in the corporate pecking order - its budget, its place in the structure and its influence - is almost entirely influenced by how the CEO regards and rates public relations.
And how a CEO rates PR doesn’t necessarily have to depend on the CEO’s personality - whether he or she has an ego and wants to be ‘out there’ as the public face of the organisation.
PR is still a valuable resource for even the low-key profile CEO - perhaps even more so!
PR is a business tool that every organisation has to use these days in order to communicate with its various stakeholders. And PR has no vested interest in hiding or obscuring negative aspects of a corporation such as failed contracts or poor financial performance.
PR is also the tool that can help CEOs avoid much of the negativity or skepticism that is applied to many corporations today. Indeed it can be argued that many corporations hurt in recent times through poor or misleading disclosures probably have a CEO who listens to legal or financial heads rather than his or her PR head.
Here are some ways to make sure that your CEO values PR.
By demonstrating that:
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Reputation is a key CEO function
Make sure that the CEO understands the importance of reputation for the organisation and that its one of his/her most important tasks.
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Reputation is built and managed through PR.
Ensure you are armed with best practice international material showing how PR is used by CEO’s to build, manage and maintain reputation.
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PR is the key link with stakeholders
CEO’s have to be more mindful of stakeholder attitudes than ever before. So if you can prove that PR is the source of valuable, and correct, insights into stakeholder attitudes you are already half way towards gaining the CEO’s attention.
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PR is the most appropriate tool to communicate consistent corporate messages.
Increasingly CEO’s worry about conveying different corporate messages. PR has to show that is capable of managing and controlling messages to audiences as diverse as investors and employees.
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PR has the maturity and business acumen to foot it with all the senior executives -and the Chairman.
If PR is to be the trusted ‘right hand’ of the CEO then the person who runs it has to be able to hold his or her own across the top strata of the company. PR therefore has to prove its worth to the heads of other departments.
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PR can become a key personal tool of the CEO.
The CEO has to be confident that the PR head can draft speeches, prepare presentations and discuss issues of the most sensitive or personal nature. This comes back to PR’s role in message development and the delivery of these messages to diverse audiences.
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PR can ‘tell it like it is’.
PR has to be the utmost trusted source. In a corporate environment where too often a CEO is told what others think he or she would like to hear the PR head has to the one person the CEO can always rely on to ‘tell it like it is’. As we said earlier, PR can do this because it has no vested interest in ‘covering up’.
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PR has the confidence and trust of the senior management team.
You won’t keep the ear of the CEO for long unless you also win the confidence and trust of those in senior management team. Making them aware of the value that PR can add - and how your work with the CEO will make their life easier - is equally important.
However achieving all of this is not necessarily a one-person task.
The smart operators know that often the key to success lies in knowing what other resources to bring in.
The legal counsel often relies heavily on outside counsel. And the CFO’s tax strategies will usually come from employing the best external tax advisors. And both the legal counsel and CFO will make sure that the CEO not only knows this but gets to hear the external advice first hand from time to time.
A similar situation exists with advertising. Gone are the days of large corporations creating and developing their own advertising campaigns. The marketing or advertising manager uses external resources such as media planners and creative teams to both develop and deliver the corporation’s advertising campaign.
Likewise for the head of PR. It’s unlikely that he or she can win and maintain the trust of the CEO solely on their own. They will want to not only use the resources of their internal team, but also to consider the use of external consultants, especially if this can directly and specifically add value to the advice given to the CEO. |
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