How Digitization Changes Corporate Communication

How will digitization influence the corporate communication profession? We see five areas worth contemplating.

Torund Bryhn, Director of Communications and Government Relations, Gassnova E-mail: tb@gassnova.no

Today’s buzzword is digitization. We are living in an age where internet of things, virtual reality, 3-D printing, robotics, and automation are integral parts of our society and of the communication profession.

How digitization will influence the corporate communication profession is obviously worth pondering.

At Gassnova, we see the importance of continual learning and this year we invested a substantial amount of time and resources on listening, learning and dialoguing with academia, media strategists and leading bloggers. Inspired by these conversations and the 2016 reports from the Arthur Page Society (APS), we see five areas worth contemplating as digitization takes a larger place in our organization. 1. The shift from one-to-one to one-to-many conversations.

The new way of conversing is setting new standards on to how to converse with, cultivate and manage stakeholders. Traditional meetings using one to two hours are too time consuming and too one-dimensional.

To engage more stakeholders more effectively, we have meetings around social platforms such as conferences, forums and seminars with follow-up conversations on email, Twitter and Facebook.

Showing interest and engaging in what matters to the stakeholder on social media we see as the best way to strengthen relationships. This can be sharing and liking what they post on social media, but more importantly engaging with them in conversation on Twitter and Facebook. 2. Paradigm-shift from engaging a few stakeholders to mass-stakeholder engagement and mass-personalization.

The other change we are seeing is an increase in stakeholders we need to engage.

In the past, we sought to influence the few, who then influenced the many. Now, we must influence almost everyone. A mobile user is now their own media house pushing out information that can help or hurt the organization with just a tweet.

Stakeholders are more empowered, emboldened and organized. As such, the expectation is to engage stakeholders at scale, while maintaining a trusting and personal relationship with them. We now have to be

great relationship builders and need to know everyone from journalists, NGOs, academia, government, editorial boards, and bloggers/ social media experts 3. The new age of transparency and conversation.

Communication professionals can no longer rely on pushing a campaign, image or message to create an impression with impact.

We need to engage in honest and transparent conversations in order to be heard.

Transparency and the demand for conversations in real-time adds pressure and puts demands on communication professionals to be prepared and ready at all times to manage a potential issue raised by a stakeholder.

This is why it is necessary to have a framework of rules that ensures accountability, fairness, and transparency in a company’s relationship with all stakeholders (financiers, customers, management, employees, government, and the community). 4. Demand for hard data.

Corporate leadership wants and expects more hard, data-driven, sophisticated communications measurements from the corporate communications office. The C-suite

expects high-resolution measurements including monitoring, measuring, and providing 360-degree interpretations and analyses of stakeholders and the company brand.

The corporate communications department has to master the world of big-data with its specific application to provide rich insights and foresight for the organization.

The demand to respond in real-time requires some kind of software solution as it is impossible without an automated service.

We are currently working with the IT department to review our current systems and set our sights on finding solutions and processes that help us leverage the data coming through our office to understand our stakeholders, messaging, and issues in a real-time manner.

The goal is ensuring that we stay one step ahead in a smart way. We do not want a system that is too big and does not fit the culture of the organization. We must find a solution that helps capture the right data to provide the right analyses toward the right target with the right effect in a cost effective manner. 5. The importance of going back to basics. We never forget the importance of a sound strategy and a good story line. As Michael Wolff coined a decade ago in the Entertainment Economy, all businesses, even banks and academia will need to be entertaining to thrive. We are required in some manner to entertain/delight our stakeholders so they will support our cause, or buy what we are selling. The best solution to penetrate the noise of information is to have a good story based on the company strategy – know your audience, purpose and goal. At Gassnova our number one focus is developing our storyline. We have engaged with research organizations like BI’s Centre for Corporate Communication for assistance along with other key stakeholders to help us develop our story. Digitization may demand a greater knowledge of technology from communication professionals, but the knowledge of effective communication is also imperative. Even Silicon Valley is starting to recognize this. Known for hiring predominantly engineering and tech-degreed personnel, large tech-companies are now prioritizing creative liberal arts majors. They are finding they need these graduates’ untechnical ability to “connect with end users and figure out what they want.”

REFERENCES:

• Arthur Page Society, 2016, The New CCO: Transforming Enterprises in a Changing World, http://www.awpagesociety.com/thought-leadership/the-new-cco-transforming-enterprisesin-a-changing-world. • Anders, G. (2015), That ’Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest, Forbes, 17 August, https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/07/29/liberal-arts-degreetech/#1238d19745d2

The Norwegian government established Gassnova to facilitate the Norwegian State’s participation in carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects so as to provide maximum benefit for the State or State-owned entities. Gassnova is partner of the Centre for Corporate Communication.