Understanding Corporate Communication and PR

I have a bit of a confession for you. I love those nature documentary TV shows, movies and things, anything to do with nature, especially Africa. I'm fascinated with Africa. I just love all those nature documentaries. And one of the things I'm especially interested in is what's called symbiosis that exists between some of these animals. Like you have these big hippos and these birds that live basically on top of the hippos and around the hippos, and they have this mutually beneficial relationship that the birds... help take care of bugs and other things that would bother the hippo otherwise, and the hippo provides protection and things for the birds. It's just this wonderful relationship between the hippo and the birds, this, again, symbiotic relationship that benefits both parties in the, you know, course of nature. And in truth, organizations really aren't that different. There exists a symbiosis between an organization and a community in which it resides in which it serves and and so public relations then has an important role to play in the role of corporate communication to help develop and maintain and you know ensure the smoothness of that symbiotic relationship between the organization and the community and the public's that it serves so in this video we're going to talk a little bit about corporate communication and we're going to focus primarily on external communication it will touch on internal, but we have a separate video for employee relations and you can check it out. But so this is going to focus primarily on external communications, but how this corporation or organization works with the community around it, how we communicate that, the importance of that, and the role that public relations plays in that function. So in truth, corporate communication comes down to a really a very simple equation, sort of the, or this is the sort of balancing. if you want to think of it that way, that basically, you know, trust is important for that organization. It's important that the public be able to trust them, your customers trust you, your employees trust you, that there exists a level of trust between an organization and the various publics that it serves. And so it's a really simple equation to get to that sort of positive balance of trust. You need more positive news stories and more positive impact than you have negative. You want the positive to outweigh the negative, in other words. And that will then... cause the trust to slide down toward where you want it to be. And, you know, these publics will have more trust in your organization. So we want to then both create circumstances where that's the case, and then also publicize those circumstances that would kind of, you know, provide that positive impact in the community and provide that positive sense of trust. and in gender trust through those positive news mentions and positive relationship building elements that exist between the organization and the community. So if we look at the specific functions then of corporate public relations, and we think of corporate communication or corporate public relations, whatever it might be called at the organization where you're working, and it could be different if you're in a nonprofit or in a government agency, maybe a public information officer or whatever it is. But basically we're talking about any function of public relations that where you're you're you are the middle person between the organization and the public and really publicizing what that organization is doing so some of the different functions though may involve identifying and engaging key stakeholders this could be employees it could be investors it could be customers it could be just people who live nearby physically live nearby wherever your organization is at there are lots of different stakeholders as we've talked about before in public relations that we have to be concerned with. So we want to identify those stakeholders first and then engage them in a positive way. So that's a function of corporate PRs to both identify and then engage in some way those key stakeholders so that we develop those and cultivate those positive relationships. We also want to secure effective media coverage and ideally effective positive media coverage, obviously. We want to develop relationships with people in the media and the different media outlets. And so we can get our news out there when it's appropriate and so that we can kind of shape the story and shape the narrative around our organization and can cultivate those positive feelings, those positive relationships within the community through the kind of gatekeepers of the media. So we need to secure effective media coverage. We also want to be developing thought leadership opportunities. So thought leadership is basically Anytime you can put somebody from an organization who's an expert in something in front of a public crowd, that's thought leadership in essence. Or you can publicize some research that you're doing that's going to benefit the community or benefit your customers or whoever. It's those types of things. So giving a speech, having your CEO or somebody. significant in the organization, give a speech on their area of expertise to a community group would be an example of thought leadership or publicizing some research that can be publicized that's happening within your organization and the positive impact that it's going to have on the community and on the world if that's the case. But we want to develop these thought leadership opportunities to not only put our people out in front of the world, but also to develop their... Their world, the world of the people who have relationships with our organization, with our customers, with our clients, with our community, with our peers. We want to develop those thought leadership opportunities so that we can demonstrate the quality of our organization and the positive impact that our organization has. And then in general, we've talked about corporate social responsibility in other videos, but we need to develop and promote corporate brand. what we call corporate brand through corporate and social responsibility. All right. So we want people to, when they think of the brand of our organization or our company, we want them to have positive thoughts. We want to develop that positive brand, right? That says that to, you know, for example, when you think of whole foods, just, you know, the first thing that comes to mind for most people would be, or many people would be, oh, okay, it's nutritious. It's good for the environment. It's good for, it's good for us as people. They're looking out for us. And so they have a sort of that that's their brand, that they're sort of health conscious and and concerned with the environment and things like that, as opposed to, you know, Amazon in some ways has a corporate brand that says you can get what you want and you can get it quickly. But their corporate brand has also taken a hit in recent years in terms of they don't necessarily treat their employees the way some people think they ought to. Maybe their packaging is not so great for the environment. And so when you're ordering multiple things and they come in six different boxes. Gosh, what impact can that really have when you have millions of people doing that around the country, around the world or whatever? So their corporate brand has taken a hit in recent years in terms of, yes, they're efficient and they're large and they're cheaper. But are they really good for the community? Are they good for the environment? Are they good for their employees and so forth? So we need to focus on our corporate brand and develop that corporate brand through corporate social responsibility. So whether that's through organization, what we're doing. In our company, we're making donations, we're being responsible in terms of the environment and things like that, or whether it's through our employees, supporting our employees'volunteer efforts and supporting them in their own organizations, their pursuits, and supporting their development or whatever it is. However we're doing that, we want to develop our corporate brand and promote that corporate brand through corporate social responsibility. And finally, the... sort of the last category we're going to look at here is that public relations in the corporate world oftentimes involves managing issues and crises. This is something we'll get into in a later video here. But the difference between these really is that managing issues is proactive, trying to anticipate things that might be coming down the pike, ways that things might be affected. And so we're trying to manage those issues proactively and get in front of them. head them off if we can, but if not, then get in front of them and determine how we're going to deal with those things. Or crises, which are more reactive. They're not proactive. Crises are things we don't see coming. And they're issues that we have to respond to on the fly a lot of times, and we have to respond quickly in order to be effective. So in both of those areas, though, public relations is involved in managing both the issues and crises within an organization. That's another function of corporate PR. So as you can see, public relations in the corporate world takes on a lot of different focuses. It's a lot of different areas. There's a lot of different hands in a lot of different cookie jars when we're dealing with that, which some people find really exciting. Other people find not as engaging. They like to focus more on one thing or another. And the larger the organization, the more likely you're going to have the people, somebody's going to focus on each one of these things specifically. If you're in a smaller organization, you might be responsible for all these things. But if you're in a large organization, you'll probably have more of a division of labor, and you may be focusing more on one of these things than the others, or a couple of these things, just depending on the size of the organization and the structure of that organization. But public relations could theoretically be involved in any of these tasks. One of the things we mentioned was corporate branding. So I want to take a minute to look at corporate branding and take a look at what that looks like, and some key elements for corporate branding. You know, branding is just, as I mentioned before, branding is just establishing, you know, essentially the identity of your organization. What are you going to be known for? When people hear the name of your organization, what's sort of the first thing that comes to mind or the thing that they attach with your organization or attach to your organization most readily? So when we think about corporate branding, it's important to keep a few things in mind. First of all. You want to pick a lane. You want to decide. You want to shape that narrative of what your organization is going to be known for. What is your brand? And then be very specific in picking a lane with, you know, how are you going to approach that? Are you going to, for social media, let's just take social media, for example. Are you going to be the really engaging social media brand where you're kind of, you know, are you going to try and be funny? Are you going to try and engage people that way? Are you going to be really serious? Are you going to be factual? Are you going to be? whatever, you know, what, and how does that tie into your overall brand? Is your brand that you're a fun organization that you have a fun product or service, or is it, is it more serious and you need to be a little more buttoned up and, and we need to pick a lane, decide what is our brand and stick to that, you know, stick, stick to that unless we decide to make a conscious change and then switch over to another lane. Right. But, but otherwise we want to stay in our lane and make sure that everything we're doing is really pointing back to that specific. brand. You also need to know your audience. You need to know whether or not your audience has a sense of humor or whether or not they're more serious or whether they're going to be on social media or whether they like something a little more traditional. So when we're trying to establish our brand and promote that brand, we need to know where our audience is going to be, where we're going to find our audience. And when we're thinking about audiences, don't forget about your internal audience. Be sure that your employees understand what your brand is as an organization, that they're... in line with that, that they support that. And so we want to make sure that internally we have all of our ducks in a row in terms of branding as well, that our employees are aware of our brand and conscientious of that and following the policies and principles that we have in place in order to maintain that brand. Don't be afraid to lean into whatever it is. You know, once you pick that lane, really lean into it. If you're going to be funny, be funny and be funny consistently. make sure that you're funny and not just that you think you're funny, but other people think you're funny. If you're going to be serious, if you're going to be, you know, the, you know, whatever it is, whatever your brand is, lean into that, really go for it. Don't, don't take half measures here when it comes to branding. You really have to be all in on whatever your brand is going to be. And finally be consistent. Again, that's sort of touching on what we've been talking about here, but be consistent. Don't try and Constantly jump back and forth between funny and serious and all these other areas. Decide who you are as an organization. Really lean into that and then be consistent with that. Have that follow through with all of your different methods of communicating with your audiences and with your publics. Be consistent in who you establish that you are and who you communicate to your publics that you are. What kind of last aspect of... public relations in a corporate world I wanted to look at real quick was just financial communication. Sometimes as public relations people, we are specifically tasked with communicating something related to finances regarding that organization. So that's not uncommon at all, whether it's internal or external. So financial communications can be a little different. So a couple tips or points that I wanted to throw out there for financial communications. First of all, a public company means public relations. If you work for a, and you're representing a publicly traded organization, publicly traded company, or an organization that claims to serve the public good, then you need some public relations. You have a community that you're serving, and so you need to be aware of that. And so public relations are important anytime when you have a public company who's either traded publicly or doing business publicly and engaging with customers publicly. If that's the case, you need to be aware of and consider the public relations aspect of things for your organization. I also need to remember, coming back to this, that media matters. Media are the gatekeepers. They share a lot of information. They control a lot of the narrative and help you develop that narrative and get the word spread. So media matters. It's important to develop relationships with people in the media and have clarity in what that relationship is. Don't let those lines get blurry, but keep a very clear but vibrant relationship active with the different media outlets that might affect your organization. You also need to be focused with investors. If this is a publicly traded company, you're going to have investors. You have to have a plan for how to communicate with investors about money. What information are they entitled to? What information would be good for them to know and support our case and those types of things? And what's the best way for me to communicate that to them? So lots of things to think about when we're dealing with investors as well. And then finally, not to keep beating a dead horse here, but corporate social responsibility. People want to know that we're good stewards with the money and not just using it wisely within the organization, but we're using it in a way that benefits the community. That's very important. So anyway, engaging in corporate and social responsibility. It's an important aspect of financial communications for a public relations person as well. In the end, we can see that this all really comes back to relationships. Again, developing relationships, building relationships, cultivating relationships, maintaining relationships, and utilizing those relationships to the best interest of the other party and yourself. But people really make up these chains, and this chain that leads you from effective public relations to engagement with your communities and your publics and things. The people aspect is very, very important, whether those people are internal employees or whether they are people in the public that you're serving. We need to remember that these relationships depend on people. Organizations don't build relationships with one another, not the buildings and things. It's the people within those organizations that really develop those relationships. If you have questions about corporate communication or about anything else related to public relations, please feel free to email me. I'd enjoy. communicating with you there. In the meantime, I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of corporate communication and have a better understanding of the different functions that are served in that particular field or vein of public relations.

I have a bit of a confession for you. I love those nature documentary TV shows, movies and things, anything to do with nature, especially Africa. I'm fascinated with Africa.

I just love all those nature documentaries. And one of the things I'm especially interested in is what's called symbiosis that exists between some of these animals. Like you have these big hippos and these birds that live basically on top of the hippos and around the hippos, and they have this mutually beneficial relationship that the birds... help take care of bugs and other things that would bother the hippo otherwise, and the hippo provides protection and things for the birds. It's just this wonderful relationship between the hippo and the birds, this, again, symbiotic relationship that benefits both parties in the, you know, course of nature.

And in truth, organizations really aren't that different. There exists a symbiosis between an organization and a community in which it resides in which it serves and and so public relations then has an important role to play in the role of corporate communication to help develop and maintain and you know ensure the smoothness of that symbiotic relationship between the organization and the community and the public's that it serves so in this video we're going to talk a little bit about corporate communication and we're going to focus primarily on external communication it will touch on internal, but we have a separate video for employee relations and you can check it out. But so this is going to focus primarily on external communications, but how this corporation or organization works with the community around it, how we communicate that, the importance of that, and the role that public relations plays in that function.

So in truth, corporate communication comes down to a really a very simple equation, sort of the, or this is the sort of balancing. if you want to think of it that way, that basically, you know, trust is important for that organization. It's important that the public be able to trust them, your customers trust you, your employees trust you, that there exists a level of trust between an organization and the various publics that it serves. And so it's a really simple equation to get to that sort of positive balance of trust. You need more positive news stories and more positive impact than you have negative.

You want the positive to outweigh the negative, in other words. And that will then... cause the trust to slide down toward where you want it to be.

And, you know, these publics will have more trust in your organization. So we want to then both create circumstances where that's the case, and then also publicize those circumstances that would kind of, you know, provide that positive impact in the community and provide that positive sense of trust. and in gender trust through those positive news mentions and positive relationship building elements that exist between the organization and the community.

So if we look at the specific functions then of corporate public relations, and we think of corporate communication or corporate public relations, whatever it might be called at the organization where you're working, and it could be different if you're in a nonprofit or in a government agency, maybe a public information officer or whatever it is. But basically we're talking about any function of public relations that where you're you're you are the middle person between the organization and the public and really publicizing what that organization is doing so some of the different functions though may involve identifying and engaging key stakeholders this could be employees it could be investors it could be customers it could be just people who live nearby physically live nearby wherever your organization is at there are lots of different stakeholders as we've talked about before in public relations that we have to be concerned with. So we want to identify those stakeholders first and then engage them in a positive way.

So that's a function of corporate PRs to both identify and then engage in some way those key stakeholders so that we develop those and cultivate those positive relationships. We also want to secure effective media coverage and ideally effective positive media coverage, obviously. We want to develop relationships with people in the media and the different media outlets.

And so we can get our news out there when it's appropriate and so that we can kind of shape the story and shape the narrative around our organization and can cultivate those positive feelings, those positive relationships within the community through the kind of gatekeepers of the media. So we need to secure effective media coverage. We also want to be developing thought leadership opportunities. So thought leadership is basically Anytime you can put somebody from an organization who's an expert in something in front of a public crowd, that's thought leadership in essence.

Or you can publicize some research that you're doing that's going to benefit the community or benefit your customers or whoever. It's those types of things. So giving a speech, having your CEO or somebody. significant in the organization, give a speech on their area of expertise to a community group would be an example of thought leadership or publicizing some research that can be publicized that's happening within your organization and the positive impact that it's going to have on the community and on the world if that's the case.

But we want to develop these thought leadership opportunities to not only put our people out in front of the world, but also to develop their... Their world, the world of the people who have relationships with our organization, with our customers, with our clients, with our community, with our peers. We want to develop those thought leadership opportunities so that we can demonstrate the quality of our organization and the positive impact that our organization has. And then in general, we've talked about corporate social responsibility in other videos, but we need to develop and promote corporate brand. what we call corporate brand through corporate and social responsibility.

All right. So we want people to, when they think of the brand of our organization or our company, we want them to have positive thoughts. We want to develop that positive brand, right?

That says that to, you know, for example, when you think of whole foods, just, you know, the first thing that comes to mind for most people would be, or many people would be, oh, okay, it's nutritious. It's good for the environment. It's good for, it's good for us as people.

They're looking out for us. And so they have a sort of that that's their brand, that they're sort of health conscious and and concerned with the environment and things like that, as opposed to, you know, Amazon in some ways has a corporate brand that says you can get what you want and you can get it quickly. But their corporate brand has also taken a hit in recent years in terms of they don't necessarily treat their employees the way some people think they ought to.

Maybe their packaging is not so great for the environment. And so when you're ordering multiple things and they come in six different boxes. Gosh, what impact can that really have when you have millions of people doing that around the country, around the world or whatever? So their corporate brand has taken a hit in recent years in terms of, yes, they're efficient and they're large and they're cheaper. But are they really good for the community?

Are they good for the environment? Are they good for their employees and so forth? So we need to focus on our corporate brand and develop that corporate brand through corporate social responsibility.

So whether that's through organization, what we're doing. In our company, we're making donations, we're being responsible in terms of the environment and things like that, or whether it's through our employees, supporting our employees'volunteer efforts and supporting them in their own organizations, their pursuits, and supporting their development or whatever it is. However we're doing that, we want to develop our corporate brand and promote that corporate brand through corporate social responsibility.

And finally, the... sort of the last category we're going to look at here is that public relations in the corporate world oftentimes involves managing issues and crises. This is something we'll get into in a later video here. But the difference between these really is that managing issues is proactive, trying to anticipate things that might be coming down the pike, ways that things might be affected.

And so we're trying to manage those issues proactively and get in front of them. head them off if we can, but if not, then get in front of them and determine how we're going to deal with those things. Or crises, which are more reactive.

They're not proactive. Crises are things we don't see coming. And they're issues that we have to respond to on the fly a lot of times, and we have to respond quickly in order to be effective. So in both of those areas, though, public relations is involved in managing both the issues and crises within an organization.

That's another function of corporate PR. So as you can see, public relations in the corporate world takes on a lot of different focuses. It's a lot of different areas.

There's a lot of different hands in a lot of different cookie jars when we're dealing with that, which some people find really exciting. Other people find not as engaging. They like to focus more on one thing or another.

And the larger the organization, the more likely you're going to have the people, somebody's going to focus on each one of these things specifically. If you're in a smaller organization, you might be responsible for all these things. But if you're in a large organization, you'll probably have more of a division of labor, and you may be focusing more on one of these things than the others, or a couple of these things, just depending on the size of the organization and the structure of that organization.

But public relations could theoretically be involved in any of these tasks. One of the things we mentioned was corporate branding. So I want to take a minute to look at corporate branding and take a look at what that looks like, and some key elements for corporate branding.

You know, branding is just, as I mentioned before, branding is just establishing, you know, essentially the identity of your organization. What are you going to be known for? When people hear the name of your organization, what's sort of the first thing that comes to mind or the thing that they attach with your organization or attach to your organization most readily? So when we think about corporate branding, it's important to keep a few things in mind.

First of all. You want to pick a lane. You want to decide.

You want to shape that narrative of what your organization is going to be known for. What is your brand? And then be very specific in picking a lane with, you know, how are you going to approach that? Are you going to, for social media, let's just take social media, for example.

Are you going to be the really engaging social media brand where you're kind of, you know, are you going to try and be funny? Are you going to try and engage people that way? Are you going to be really serious?

Are you going to be factual? Are you going to be? whatever, you know, what, and how does that tie into your overall brand?

Is your brand that you're a fun organization that you have a fun product or service, or is it, is it more serious and you need to be a little more buttoned up and, and we need to pick a lane, decide what is our brand and stick to that, you know, stick, stick to that unless we decide to make a conscious change and then switch over to another lane. Right. But, but otherwise we want to stay in our lane and make sure that everything we're doing is really pointing back to that specific. brand.

You also need to know your audience. You need to know whether or not your audience has a sense of humor or whether or not they're more serious or whether they're going to be on social media or whether they like something a little more traditional. So when we're trying to establish our brand and promote that brand, we need to know where our audience is going to be, where we're going to find our audience.

And when we're thinking about audiences, don't forget about your internal audience. Be sure that your employees understand what your brand is as an organization, that they're... in line with that, that they support that. And so we want to make sure that internally we have all of our ducks in a row in terms of branding as well, that our employees are aware of our brand and conscientious of that and following the policies and principles that we have in place in order to maintain that brand. Don't be afraid to lean into whatever it is.

You know, once you pick that lane, really lean into it. If you're going to be funny, be funny and be funny consistently. make sure that you're funny and not just that you think you're funny, but other people think you're funny. If you're going to be serious, if you're going to be, you know, the, you know, whatever it is, whatever your brand is, lean into that, really go for it.

Don't, don't take half measures here when it comes to branding. You really have to be all in on whatever your brand is going to be. And finally be consistent.

Again, that's sort of touching on what we've been talking about here, but be consistent. Don't try and Constantly jump back and forth between funny and serious and all these other areas. Decide who you are as an organization.

Really lean into that and then be consistent with that. Have that follow through with all of your different methods of communicating with your audiences and with your publics. Be consistent in who you establish that you are and who you communicate to your publics that you are.

What kind of last aspect of... public relations in a corporate world I wanted to look at real quick was just financial communication. Sometimes as public relations people, we are specifically tasked with communicating something related to finances regarding that organization. So that's not uncommon at all, whether it's internal or external. So financial communications can be a little different.

So a couple tips or points that I wanted to throw out there for financial communications. First of all, a public company means public relations. If you work for a, and you're representing a publicly traded organization, publicly traded company, or an organization that claims to serve the public good, then you need some public relations.

You have a community that you're serving, and so you need to be aware of that. And so public relations are important anytime when you have a public company who's either traded publicly or doing business publicly and engaging with customers publicly. If that's the case, you need to be aware of and consider the public relations aspect of things for your organization.

I also need to remember, coming back to this, that media matters. Media are the gatekeepers. They share a lot of information.

They control a lot of the narrative and help you develop that narrative and get the word spread. So media matters. It's important to develop relationships with people in the media and have clarity in what that relationship is.

Don't let those lines get blurry, but keep a very clear but vibrant relationship active with the different media outlets that might affect your organization. You also need to be focused with investors. If this is a publicly traded company, you're going to have investors.

You have to have a plan for how to communicate with investors about money. What information are they entitled to? What information would be good for them to know and support our case and those types of things?

And what's the best way for me to communicate that to them? So lots of things to think about when we're dealing with investors as well. And then finally, not to keep beating a dead horse here, but corporate social responsibility. People want to know that we're good stewards with the money and not just using it wisely within the organization, but we're using it in a way that benefits the community.

That's very important. So anyway, engaging in corporate and social responsibility. It's an important aspect of financial communications for a public relations person as well. In the end, we can see that this all really comes back to relationships. Again, developing relationships, building relationships, cultivating relationships, maintaining relationships, and utilizing those relationships to the best interest of the other party and yourself.

But people really make up these chains, and this chain that leads you from effective public relations to engagement with your communities and your publics and things. The people aspect is very, very important, whether those people are internal employees or whether they are people in the public that you're serving. We need to remember that these relationships depend on people. Organizations don't build relationships with one another, not the buildings and things. It's the people within those organizations that really develop those relationships.

If you have questions about corporate communication or about anything else related to public relations, please feel free to email me. I'd enjoy. communicating with you there. In the meantime, I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of corporate communication and have a better understanding of the different functions that are served in that particular field or vein of public relations.

Transcript for:Understanding Corporate Communication and PR

Transcript for:
Understanding Corporate Communication and PR