HELLO
For this edition we were delighted to speak to the incomparable Emily Maitlis right as the United Kingdom’s General Election campaigns began. By the time you read this, the UK may well have a new Government – regardless, Emily’s wise words are worth a read –particularly (I think) with regard to that other looming election across the Atlantic.
It’s an election-heavy year for many of us in this industry, and Hanover senior advisor Brian Hayes also studies the results of the European elections and what they might foretell for each of us.
Four years after lockdown, Hanover director James Mole, head of media at NHS England at the time of the pandemic, reflects on his time on the frontline of Covid communications, and the lessons he learned.
And – as we work in an industry with a lot of public speaking – we ask journalist, author and stand-up comic Viv Groskup for her top tips to own a room.
That’s just a flavour of what’s inside, along with the usual reflections and insights on politics, journalism, AI and digital.
As ever, on behalf of Hanover Communications, a big thank you to everyone who contributed, colleagues and friends alike.
And if you have any questions, or want to learn more about us and how we could partner with you, please do get in touch.
Enjoy,
Emma Gorton, Managing Director, Hanover Communications egorton@hanovercomms.com
INSIDE REWIRE #2
Emily Maitlis
Talks politics and podcasts in a turbulent world.
The pandemic pact Marissa Mes on the threat to global health.
How to own the room Viv Groskop’s five fail-proof public speaking tips. 28 30 32
Rise of the robots
Gary Cleland cuts through the noise around AI.
Worlds apart
Is femtech the answer to closing the $1 trillion women’s health gap?
Shifting sands
Poppy Newton on digital transformation in the Middle East.
Business in Saudi Opportunities and challenges in a transforming kingdom.
Kamal Ahmed Talks about the changing nature of leadership.
Ai auditing Tackling misinformation in a virtual world.
12 16 18
The legacy of Covid
James Mole writes on his time on the pandemic frontline.
IPOs and geopolitics
Ailsa Renton writes on going public at a time of global tension.
24 26
Peaks and troughs
Michael Schutzer-Wiessmann on the ground in Davos.
The pace of change
Sinéad Bell writes on the pitfalls of flux in a business.
TEAM REWIRE
Editor: Hugh Morris
European elections
Brian Hayes writes about the rise of the right in Europe.
22
Behind the byline with Scott D’Arcy, Deputy Chief News Editor at PA Media.
Editors at Large: Gary Cleland, Emma Gorton
Art Director: Sam Stocking
Marketing Manager: Emily Cockerill
Director of Marketing: Laura Roberts
Contributors:
Erin Archer, Sinéad Bell, Brian Hayes, Jeremy Lawrence, Marissa Mes, James Mole, Poppy Newton, Ailsa Renton
WE HAVE TO START ASKING QUESTIONS
On the eve of an election, Emily Maitlis talks to Hanover about Trump, Labour’s Ming Vase and breaking news as a podcast.
When Hanover invited Emily Maitlis for a wide-ranging conversation centred on an unprecedented global election year, Maitlis’ profile as a veteran broadcaster who has covered national votes across decades was somewhat shadowed by a new Netflix show.
‘Scoop’ – a docudrama on Maitlis’ now-infamous interview of Prince Andrew – had just arrived on UK screens and for those weeks, the election, in the UK or otherwise, was far from anyone’s mind.
Privately, those organising the event with Maitlis – part of Hanover’s The World Rewired event series – were planning to make sure the conversation could be hauled back to a pivotal political year and away from the controversial royal. As it was, all it took was serendipity.
On the evening of the event, three hours prior, Rishi Sunak stood in the Downing Street drizzle and called the election.
“It was bad planning,” she told Gavin Megaw, Hanover President, at the event in central London. “Rishi Sunak is standing there saying, ‘we’re the ones with a plan’. They didn’t even plan for an umbrella.”
“Rishi Sunak is standing there saying, ‘we’re the ones with a plan’. They didn’t even plan for an umbrella.”
TOP: Emily hosting the Conservative Leadership Hopefuls Debate At The BBC in June 2019.
ABOVE LEFT: Emily with her News Agents co-host Jon Sopel.
ABOVE RIGHT: Emily at Hanover’s The World Rewired event.
“The beauty of an election campaign is that you don’t know when you’re going to get your moments”
“And so the election began, in less than auspicious circumstances,” said Maitlis. The presenter of The News Agents podcast, who will host Channel 4’s election coverage this year, said that there was a sense that Sunak had given up by calling an earlier than expected vote.
At the time of writing, the campaign is just a fortnight old but already the conversation has moved on and Labour and the Tories have settled into a typical tit-for-tat back and forth.
And while the polls have long showed Labour in the lead, Maitlis said the result is by no means a done deal and believes the polls will narrow up to the day of the vote.
Maitlis, who has covered elections for BBC, including for its flagship news programme, Newsnight, for decades, said the election has brought back into focus the role of journalism in politics. “We have to start asking questions,” she said. “We have to start interrogating Labour on what they say they are going to do.”
Discussing what has been called Labour’s “Ming vase strategy”, which reflects caution in saying too much by not saying much at all, Maitlis said the vase was yet to come out of the cabinet, but that it must.
“The beauty of [an election campaign] is that you don’t know when you’re going to get your moments,” she said, “you never know when Sharron Storer is going to confront Blair about the NHS, when John Prescott is going to punch someone.”
This, while the beauty of politics, especially an election, raises the question of how podcasts operate in such a fast-paced news environment. Maitlis, whose podcast on Global, The News Agents, launched with peers Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall to much fanfare in 2022, said the Westminster rumour mill poses a particular challenge when it comes to veracity and speed.
On the day the election was announced, rumours were growing stronger for some 24 hours, but this has happened before and come to nothing. But Maitlis knew they had to do something. “The rumour was not going away so we did something we did ahead of the Queen’s death,” she said, “we kind of pre-empted the thing that everyone thought was going to happen.”
“We recorded a piece on the election and we said we might have got this all entirely wrong but we think you should know that everyone is talking about it. We took our life in our hands a bit because you could be proved wrong very quickly but we decided we had to discuss it because we are the place that people come to see if what everyone is talking about is garbage.”
“And that is the anatomy of how a podcast breaks a new story in this day and age.”
And while all eyes are on the UK currently, it is hard to ignore the impending election across the Pond. At the time of writing (the problem with a magazine issue in an election year), Donald Trump has been found guilty on all counts in his “hush money” trial but is awaiting sentencing. Will the outcome impact the vote in November?
“I wouldn’t put money on America having gotten Trump out of their system”
“It’s really hard to imagine Trump going to prison,” said Maitlis. “Everybody in America probably thinks he’s guilty of the things he’s been accused of, but he may well still be president. To find those things not mutually exclusive is a brand new place. I wouldn’t put money on America having gotten Trump out of their system.”
But as America so with the UK, Maitlis said her for an election campaign, “you need to go into it with your eyes wide open, but with your mind open as well. I am always very aware of the herd mentality,” she said, and forces herself to scrutinise if the story everyone is talking about is really the key take. “We have to be honest with ourselves,” she said. “If only so much could be said for those running for office.”
THE PANDEMIC PACT
Cooperation on global health is under threat in a world increasingly polarised, writes Marissa Mes. Will countries compromise and unite?
The World Health Assembly (WHA) is the decisionmaking body of the World Health Organization (WHO). It meets every year, with 194 Member States descending on Geneva to review and vote on its strategic direction. This year’s agenda featured the usual suspects: antimicrobial resistance, universal health coverage, noncommunicable diseases, but contained in one item was something more critical – the willingness of countries to tackle the next global pandemic not alone, but together.
The gruelling race up to the WHO Pandemic Agreement kicked off in late 2021, when Member States agreed to draft and negotiate an international instrument to strengthen global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. At its core, this agreement intends to help the world respond to the next pandemic in a more effective and equitable way, learning some of the lessons from 2020.
The WHO has introduced a similar agreement only once before in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted in 2003 to tackle smoking in the context of global public health.
The process of drafting and negotiating a new legally-binding WHO agreement is essentially the pinnacle of health diplomacy, something akin to the Olympics. Member States have put forward their best and brightest to take on the challenge as part of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) – a team of negotiators from all regions of the world, putting years of training and networking to the ultimate test.
So how are our athletes doing? Since the establishment of the INB, we’ve seen Substantive Elements, a Working Draft, a Conceptual Zero Draft, a Zero Draft and countless revisions to the negotiating text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. If that isn’t dizzying enough, add to the mix 100+ global leaders publicly calling for “urgent agreement”; 58 charities and health experts calling out EU and US politicians for “patent hypocrisy”; and countless far-right influencers and conspiracy theorists claiming the WHO is trying to control our bodies and privacy.
Despite down-to-the-wire negotiations, the INB failed to deliver the Agreement at the 77th WHA in May, where Member States were hoping to review and vote on it. The INB’s mandate has therefore been extended for up to a year, meaning negotiations can continue until the next WHA in May 2025, kicking the decision into the long grass.
THIS
AGREEMENT
INTENDS TO
HELP
THE WORLD RESPOND TO THE NEXT PANDEMIC IN A MORE EFFECTIVE AND EQUITABLE WAY.
One hurdle in the negotiating process is the false narrative that the Agreement would give the WHO the power to control the actions of Member States. More than 100 influential global leaders (including Ban Ki-moon and Sir Tony Blair) signed a public letter addressed to Member States, taking a swipe at the false claims, outlining that “countries themselves have proposed this instrument, countries are negotiating it, and only countries
will ultimately be responsible for its requirements and its success or failure”. This has done little to quell misinformation, with large, coordinated protests against the Agreement taking place outside of this year’s WHA.
Other hurdles include the disagreements over R&D (Article 9), the transfer of technology and know-how (Article 11) and pathogen access and benefit sharing (Article 12). This is where we see the greatest clashes between the Global North (countries like the US, Japan and EU Member States) and Global South (countries like South Africa, the Philippines and Brazil). The former is fiercely protecting Intellectual Property Rights for pandemic-related diagnostics, vaccines and medicines, while the latter is pushing for greater transparency, affordability and access to innovation in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The proposed Pathogen Access and BenefitSharing (PABS) system is a major pressure point. During the pandemic, many LMICs shared pathogen samples and genetic sequence data, which helped companies in the Global North develop vaccines, medicines and other products to tackle the pandemic. Access to these products was delayed in many of countries that initially shared pathogen data, in part because supply was bought up by Global North countries. The PABS system would offer a potential solution, acting as a global platform to share data on new pandemic pathogens and fairly distribute any resulting innovation. It would be managed by the WHO and populated by Member States.
For LMICs and civil society groups, the PABS system is a non-negotiable pillar of health equity. In their eyes, it’ll make sure that Global South countries receive the benefits of collecting and sharing pathogen data that helps the rest of the world. Many high-income countries – which typically have a strong life sciences sector – have opposed the proposal. They feel that setting up a brand-new system to upload and share pathogen data will slow down the development of new treatments. From their perspective, data-sharing mechanisms already exist, and the Agreement should focus instead on ways to ringfence and deliver new treatments to LMICs.
Critics of the current draft Agreement worry that it won’t deliver on its promises – language has been dialled down, provisions have been removed or made voluntary, and monitoring and accountability structures remain unclear. With the pandemic now four years ago and no global agreement in place, experts fear that we will fall back into a pattern of “every country for themselves”, disproportionately favouring those with the money and power to respond to a future pathogen.
CRITICS OF THE CURRENT DRAFT AGREEMENT WORRY THAT IT WON’T DELIVER ON ITS PROMISES.
Where will we land in the coming year? The INB faces some difficult compromises in the road ahead. The optimist hopes that they find middle ground, emerging with a joint gold in the health diplomacy Olympics. Without compromise, they are at high risk of missing the podium altogether.
HOW TO OWN THE ROOM
Viv Groskop knows how to speak in public. Thankfully, she has five fail-proof tips for those who do not, writes Hugh Morris.
There is an alchemy to performance. When it comes to public speaking, turning up and being heard, it is the magic of effortlessly engaging your audience and leaving them hanging on your every word.
Thankfully, Viv Groskop, journalist and author, stand-up comic and all-round confidence coach, has an uncanny ability to demystify the art of owning a room, pulling back the curtain on what it takes to get your message across in a compelling –and memorable – way.
In a conversation with journalist Jessica Salter at Hanover’s London office, Viv imparted some of the wisdom she’s gleaned from interviewing some of the most impressive people on the planet (Hillary Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Google CEO Matt Brittin, Succession’s Brian Cox), teaching senior executives in the City how to show up and pivoting her career from Daily Express hack to champion of the unheard.
Here we share five key takeaways from the event.
1
PUSH YOURSELF TO LEARN NEW SKILLS
When testing whether comedy was something she genuinely wanted to pursue, Viv did it by tackling 100 stand-up gigs in 100 days, which, by her own admissions is a tad extreme. But the principle is clear: push yourself, stress-test your ambitions and throw yourself into something new. It’s sink or swim, but when you succeed you emerge newly confident in your ability to handle what might have before been or seemed daunting. This is as true in learning comedy as it is training yourself to master speaking in public. Once you’ve tackled it 100 times, it will become second nature.
THE POINTLESS PEN 2 3 4 5
SEEK THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE ART
While Viv made it clear that learning how to own a room comes from a sense of inner calm, she also said she adopted a researchled approach to mastering her performance. By studying the videos of her heroes, such as Joan Collins, Viv built up a mental bank of little tricks and tips for how to show up well, providing a foundation of confidence she could always tap into as she perfected her own style. This is an approach we approve of at Hanover, as we always ensure our methods are backed up by thorough strategic insight.
BREAK THE CIRCLE
Less a point about performance but more about social interaction in general, or more specifically, the dreaded networking. As Viv explains, when you walk into that drinks party and scan without success to find a familiar face, remember that everyone is in the same boat. No one *really* likes networking and this means shared sympathies are easy to find. Viv recommends that instead of standing back and waiting for the conversation to come to you, approach a circle of people who have already made those tricky opening connections, and simply tap someone on the arm to join in. If the people are then rude enough to ignore you, they don’t deserve you.
HOLD
It is an age-old conundrum for anyone speaking publicly: what do you do with your hands? Viv’s answer is to hold the ‘pointless pen’. Using a pen as a prop while speaking achieves two things – one, it provides you with an anchor, keeps your hands busy and lends a certain purpose that comes with gesticulating (gently) with a fixed point. And two, it will push you to streamline your notes to something that can be only glanced at and deters you from reading notes from your phone, which, though accepted in 2024 as a legitimate alternative to cue cards, still gives the sense to many that you’re in the middle of texting a friend.
CREATE YOUR OWN MICRO-MEDIA TRAINING
Practice makes perfect, but very few people get regular opportunities to test their performance credentials for real, in front of senior executives, the world’s media or the scrutiny of select committees. How then do we try out what we might learn on paper?
Viv recommends creating our own micromedia training moments. She says there are plenty to be found in our daily lives: initiate toasts when out with friends, take the floor in an internal meeting, give thanks at a family dinner. These little trials will train you to have comfort with the uncomfortable, when all eyes are on you. What’s more it is a good test for another of Viv’s pointers: learning how to finish speaking. She says, to save you from drifting, petering out with a mumble, always know how you are going to end what you plan to say before you begin. And, of course, don’t ask everyone to raise a glass, then initiate applause…
THE L EGACY OF COV ID
James Mole, former Head of Media at NHS England, now Director at Hanover Health, writes on his time on the pandemic frontline four years on – and what he’s learned since.
“CAN YOU GO OVER
TO THE
EXCEL
CENTRE?
WE’RE OPENING IT AS A HOSPITAL”.
That phone call is how my day ended on 23 March 2020, hours after lockdown had been declared. Nobody who lived through that night –or the era it opened - will forget it.
I was Head of Media for England’s NHS and that call I received from a colleague was the latest escalation in what had already been a short but intense year, as it became increasingly clear that Covid would turn our world upside down.
Today, the social, economic and public health hangover isn’t even close to being over; Covid continues to define so much about our life, even four years on from that fateful Prime Ministerial address.
Alongside impacts such as financial scarring and lengthy treatment waiting lists, Covid also leaves a legacy of what governments and scientists can do when the pressure is on and jeopardy demands the extraordinary. And for better or worse, the power of communication was a defining part of that.
COMMS AS THE PRESCRIPTION CLARITY OF PURPOSE
When the virus first hit, communication was the only tool at policymakers’ disposal. The first vaccination was a year away and any semblance of effective treatment six months. And so, simply speaking to an anxious population was the backbone of public health policy in spring 2020.
In the UK, the Government’s “stay at home, control the virus, protect the NHS” mantra had an immediate and profound effect as cases – and deaths – rose and is a case study in powerful communication having a direct impact on people’s lives.
The visuals from Wuhan and New York – of deserted streets – and from Lombardy and Madrid – of overwhelmed hospitals – were more effective than any planned campaign could ever be, but we still needed domestic messaging and voices. And so, overnight, dry and reserved experts became public figures, whose words from the Downing Street dining room shaped the behaviour of an entire country.
In truth, it was only when we neared the vaccination programme that we found what we needed: yes, a medical breakthrough, but really a story to tell that could inspire an exhausted world. And one that, in truth, is a blueprint for any sort of communication campaign, whatever the challenge.
You need absolute clarity of purpose. Understanding who your intended audience is and what you want them to do when they hear or see your story is crucial.
If you know what you want the world to look like, organising internally becomes straightforward as you have clarity of a shared objective.
Our purpose as an organisation in 2020 was simple – to keep people healthy during the pandemic. So, to support the vaccination campaign, we had to maximise awareness of the delivery of the programme and the simplicity of the ask: how, when and where people could get their vaccine and therefore avoid serious illness.
Images from the creation of the NHS Nightingale Hospital at the Excel Centre in London.
MAKE PEOPLE YOUR STORY
Next, focus on people.
Human stories are the most powerful tool for most communication challenges, particularly in healthcare. This is why the most successful message delivery vehicle for Covid vaccines was the testimonies of people like Maggie Keenan, the 92-year-old grandmother of four and first person in the world to receive a vaccine: ordinary people that others can relate to who told our story for us.
Margaret Keenan, 92, receives her spring Covid-19 booster shot at University Hospital Coventry on April 22, 2022.
We amplified the human elements – why the vaccine meant she can now go outside with confidence and how the jab returned her independence. We then ensured we found new and interesting ways to tell the same story: on repeat.
The truism that your message is only landing once people are bored of hearing it, could have been invented for the pandemic. The importance of longstanding public health communications principles – clarity of purpose, compelling story, told repeatedly – was never more true than during Covid.
LESSONS FOR POLICYMAKERS
In a post-pandemic era, we are now seeing how those years have been responsible for bringing to the mainstream a number of new and emerging trends in communications and healthcare provision.
On the positive side, the longstanding and incremental rise of social channels as a platform enjoyed a boon during the stay-at-home era, with traditional news providers like Sky News turning to TikTok not just to amplify their content but to deliver it.
Less positively, concerns about misinformation rose significantly as the decisions of individual people and communities had a direct and immediate impact on health and policy during periods when the virus was spreading.
Misleading information, whether deliberate or accidental, has always been a feature of public communication, but experiencing a public health crisis at a time of such huge volumes and speed of content sharing, was a challenge for everyone and highlighted the value of clarity and trust.
Activists from the World Wide Rally for Freedom and NHS100K protests march down Regent Street on January 22, 2022.
AN UNWANTED LEGACY
Four years on from the first lockdown, thankfully and understandably, most people just want to forget about the pandemic and the impact it had on all of us.
For policymakers, communicators and healthcare leaders though, to move on entirely would be a mistake. There are legacy challenges which simply can’t be left behind – economic and health system strain – but there are lessons which could easily be ignored but shouldn’t be.
In health care, the importance of disease detection infrastructure, the agility of science-industry-healthcare partnership, and the creativity of R&D, are all a silver lining to the Covid cloud and must be protected and built on, not just ahead of future pandemics but for everyday healthcare.
In communication, what we were reminded of during Covid was how important it is as communicators to understand, define and tell clearly your story. This is not a nice-to-have but a fundamental tool of public policy.
Working from home is one of the legacies of the Covid pandemic.
NEW WAYS OF WORKING, BORN OUT OF NECESSITY
In healthcare, we saw approaches to medicine and science that had been slowly gaining traction, burst into the mainstream.
Medical products developed using messenger RNA – a technique that prompts cells in the body to create a form of virus, rather than introducing a weaker version of the disease as traditional vaccines had worked – were the basis of both the Pfizer and Moderna Covid jabs.
The technology, overnight a topic of mainstream conversation thanks to the pandemic, could potentially revolutionise medicine, offering researchers a platform to develop blueprints for the body to get protected against major diseases including cancer.
Covid also showed that ways of working between the pharmaceutical industry, government and regulators could be agile and effective in ways that would be unthinkable in ‘peace time’.
The development in the UK of a globally successful treatment for Covid happened because regulators, the health service and industry acted fast to adapt the development and approvals processes for medicine.
The redeployment of an existing treatment, dexamethasone, for the new virus, was enabled because all interested parties worked together to review data together in real time before using the existing R&D networks within the NHS and academic organisations to get it to frontline care quickly.
These alternative and novel ways of working when the pressure’s on should provide a blueprint for how we operate in healthcare in calmer times.
GEO IPO POLITICS AND YOUR
IPOs are fraught at the best of times – going public at a time of global tensions requires nerves of steel, writes Ailsa Renton.
AS GLOBAL IPO VOLUMES LANGUISH, FALLING 45% IN 2022 AND A FURTHER 8% IN 2023, ACCORDING TO EY, THE UK IS NOT ALONE IN TRYING TO REVIVE ITS STOCK MARKET.
Among the challenges is an increasing fear of the sensitivities of geography, with wars being waged in both Ukraine and the Middle East and investors alert to a swell in global political and economic uncertainty.
For anyone thinking of listing, addressing association with scrutinised markets early on is therefore crucial.
In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the National Security and Investment Act (NSI) are alert to the activities of foreign investors, closely monitoring investments and acquisitions, as seen by Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer’s intervention in Abu Dhabi-backed RedBird IMI’s bid for the Telegraph Media Group. To what extent, then, does an investor relations officer (IRO) need to worry about the relationship its business has with any given market attracting scrutiny?
It is no secret that in recent years Gulf countries have looked overseas to diversify portfolios away from oil. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has significantly increased its international investments, including $45 billion and nearly 50% of the capital committed to the SoftBank Vision Fund. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala announced in 2021 its £10 billion Partnership for the Future investment in priority UK industries, and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) has invested heavily in European assets, including Harrods, Paris Saint Germain, the Ritz and Credit Suisse, to name a few.
As the global economy limps from year to year, this is all evidence of the widening search for wealth in alternative sources from relatively new – but increasingly significant – market players. As with any entrants, it is vital that any businesses looking to IPO not only do their due diligence, but prepare a narrative that fits and manages their stakeholders as well as prospective investors; this is all the more vital when dealing with markets under more scrutiny than others.
The reason? Readying for IPO is a significant expense (according to British Business Bank, the process can cost up to 8% of the amount hoped to raise). It is worth laying the groundwork to ensure all goes smoothly with your stakeholders, from investors to regulators.
First of all, acknowledging and talking to your connections is crucial when preparing to list. When it comes to divulging involvement in a market that has a reputation for political tensions or human rights issues, for example, you must address your association head on. Fail to do so and you risk losing control of the narrative, which could be more damaging to your IPO in the long-term, narrowing your pool of prospective investors. A carefully planned proactive media campaign and targeted stakeholder engagement needs to be implemented so you’re in the best place possible ahead of an IPO.
Shein – the Chinese retailer now headquartered in Singapore – and its New York IPO is a good lesson. Shein had been tainted by its ties to China and was challenged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission on national security grounds ahead of its IPO. They are now considering London. This shift in approach towards contested markets as investors seek clean, uncomplicated deals is becoming more and more common.
Another transatlantic example is how US Senators targeted TikTok CEO Shou Chew for the platform’s connection to China during the big tech Congress hearing in January, citing data security as the primary source of concern. In the UK, the government debated using the NSI as a means to compel SoftBank to list Arm in London; similarly, when serving as business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng blocked Beijing Infinite Vision Technology from buying vision sensing technology from the University of Manchester.
Most commonly, concerns –at least those stated publicly –revolve around national security.
With increased political scrutiny comes media interest and those on the back foot risk trial by Fleet Street. Transparency of intent is key, not for all markets, but certainly for US and European stock exchanges in the current climate. So then is the need for IROs to determine where its geopolitical risks lie, and know how to address them.
NEW POWER BALANCE...
NEW MANDATE
WHAT DO EUROPE’S ELECTION RESULTS MEAN FOR THE EU’S FUTURE?
BRIAN HAYES, FORMER MEP AND HANOVER SENIOR ADVISER, EXPLORES THE IMPLICATIONS.
Europe has gone to the polls and the results are in. The newly elected MEPs will meet in Strasbourg on 16th July and so begins a new mandate that will re set the EU agenda for the next five years.
The European Parliament is important, and its MEPs know the influence they can bring about in shaping EU policy from the Commission and from the Council. The EP has grown in stature and power since 1979, when the first directly elected Parliament came about. This time the EP has gone from 705 MEPs to 720 and half of them are new!
So, what do the results tell us and what do we expect to see?
Despite all the pre-election predictions, the centre ground of the Parliament has broadly held its own. The European People’s Party (EPP centre right) has increased its vote and seat share, Socialists and Democrats (S&D centre left) seem to be returning the same number of MEPs, and the Renew group (Liberals) are down, but that’s mostly due to the poor showing of President Macron’s party in France. Unlike five years ago when we saw the green wave, this time the European Greens have lost about one quarter of their MEPs. Down but not out.
Those to the right of the EPP, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the Identity and Democracy group (ID) are likely to have about 130 MEPs - buts it’s not a surge. It was also a very good day for independents or new MEPs yet to decide on group affiliation.
They are collectively over 100 strong. Expect a lot of horse trading here as the main groups try to entice new MEPs into their political family.
The most likely outcome in the power play that will follow is for the existing broadly based coalition of the EPP, S&D, Renew, possibly with the Greens, to remerge as the controlling group of the new European Parliament. The big advantage that the EPP/S&D/Renew alliance has is that they are all pro-European. They will want to do a deal because they want the EU to work. There are positions to be filled from the EP President, Vice Presidents, Committee Chairs to coordinators.
There is nothing to be gained by having a standoff between the Parliament and the EU Council on a Commission President Nominee that goes beyond September.
THIS TIME THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT HAS GONE FROM 705 MEPS TO 720 AND HALF OF THEM ARE NEW!
Each group will want to hear directly from the new Commission President Elect. It’s a secret ballot –so anything can happen. But I expect Ursula von der Leyen, the existing Commission President, to be the choice of the EU Council for another term. She will need at least 361 votes out of the 720 MEPs. She comes from the biggest European Party (EPP) in the Parliament and has the support of at least 12 EU heads of government. Expect to have a nominee from the EU Council summit meeting by the end of June.
The real test in asking how these election results have changed the political landscape happens when the new Committees begin to meet and do their work on proposed legislation. That’s when new alliances can emerge, committee by committee. The overarching political deal between the pro-EU parties in Parliament is a deal on broad policy objectives, and especially on jobs. The real deal is the committee work, and we are still to hear what the new priorities of the new Commission will be. Will those new Committees, with more right leaning MEPs, push back on some of the EU regulatory agenda?
I do expect some push back on the EU Green Deal. I also expect a new EU Defence and Security Commissioner to reflect the new priority around EU-wide security. There will be renewed focus on getting the EU Migration pact agreed by each Member State, and getting it operational by 2026 at least.
While the clear ambition of the Letta Report is around resuscitating the EU Single Market, will the EU relax state aid rules to respond to growing protectionism from the US and elsewhere? Europe wants to generate its own energy, so as not to depend on Russia; it wants manufacturing to be rebuilt in the EU so that supply lines can function; and it wants a capital markets union (CMU) that helps use existing EU capital to assist EU business successes. All of these will play a big part in a new Commission programme.
But first it’s raw politics for the next few months as key positions are decided upon. A settling in period for the new Parliament and a time to set new priorities. Despite the size of the European Parliament and its enormous agenda – things will settle down by the Autumn.
THE EXISTING COMMISSION
PRESIDENT, URSULA VON DER LEYEN, MUST WIN 361 VOTES TO BE RE-ELECTED FOR ANOTHER TERM.
BELOW: A member of DIE PARTEI holds up a satirical protest sign at a Greens Party campaign rally in Cologne.
Scott D’Arcy
‘Behind the Byline’ captures the compelling stories and experiences of senior journalists throughout their careers, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of journalism. In this series, we explore the challenges, highlights and insights gained along the way.
This issue, we speak to Scott D’Arcy, Deputy Chief News Editor at PA Media.
What story is gripping you right now?
The death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has sparked a fresh wave of condemnation of Russia just as the second anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was marked. It remains to be seen how and where the conflict will go but, with the prospect of a new UK government and a Trump return to the White House early next year, it’s a story you cannot afford to take your eyes off.
What story will dominate 2024?
The run up to the election has dominated the first half of the year and I think the change it brings will dominate the second. From budgets through foreign policy and elections, every development will be seen through the looking glass of the reshaped political landscape.
The way society consumes news has changed –what shift has had the biggest impact?
In the same way as the internet shook up the business model of traditional print news organisations, social media is now disrupting the new normal of publishing news online. We know young people are getting more and more of their news through apps like TikTok and established brands are trying to get in on the act.
How will we consume news in a decade’s time?
AI will likely have a lot to do with it, for good and ill. Deepfakes, mis- and dis-information and even innocently edited phone photos and video will proliferate, so it’s about how journalism deals with those challenges and how news organisations can overcome low public trust.
If you could be a journalist at any point in the last 200 years, when would it be and why?
Probably the Sixties, simply so I could see England win the World Cup (and Spurs lift a trophy).
What was your first story as a journalist?
One of my first stories was an interview with a local boxer, who had won national titles, talking openly about being diagnosed with prostate cancer and encouraging men to get checked.
What is the greatest threat to journalism?
Polarising dis-information - the deliberate spread of fake news – is not a new problem but now, with the internet and social media, it can spread far quicker than those trying to check it and expose it can act.
Corporate responsibility and social purpose are becoming more important for business. How does the media decide what is genuine and what is ‘reputation washing’?
The first question I’d ask is ‘why are they doing this?’ and the second question I’d ask is ‘is it backed by action?’ The answer to those two questions can help indicate whether the company is being genuine or not.
What is your favourite story to have worked on?
Favourite probably isn’t the right word but I am most proud of my work planning for and covering the Queen’s death – it was a monumental task and of course a huge team effort.
What would you say to a 12-year-old considering a career in journalism?
If you think telling the truth is important and get annoyed when people don’t, consider being a journalist.
And what advice would you give a young person considering a career in PR?
Do something you care about so the work will feel more fulfilling.
Sinéad Bell, Hanover’s Head of Internal Communications, writes on the pitfalls of flux in a business.
WE ARE EXPOSED TO A HUGE VOLUME OF INFORMATION EVERY DAY; WE ARE LEARNING ALL THE TIME. A STUDY CONDUCTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (UCLA) FOUND THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON CAN LEARN AND RETAIN UP TO SEVEN NEW PIECES OF INFORMATION EVERY HOUR.
While there are factors that affect our processing ability, such as age and cognitive function, this statistic suggests that if you are awake for 16 hours, you should be able to learn 112 new things every day.
In spite of this, there are some lessons in humanity that have endured. For one, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin explained in his Theory of Evolution that...
“SPECIES MUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS IN ORDER TO SURVIVE.”
The same is true of business. The world around us is changing all the time so organisations too must evolve to thrive.
I’m sure most know this. But while we can all agree evolution is essential that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Humans are in fact hard wired to feel uncomfortable in the face of change. We find comfort in routine; we impose structures for a sense of security. So, when it comes to change management, how can we implement disruption without unsettling a workforce?
I have two core philosophies on the subject. First, you need to take your time. You can’t rush it. Greek philosopher Socrates said:
In terms of what good looks like: effectively handling change means your employees have clarity on why it is happening, how it will impact them as well as the business, and what it will mean in the long term. You can’t just tell them once and tick a box, this story needs to be told – and brought to life – repeatedly, over time.
My second philosophy is that change never happens in isolation. While we refer to “change projects”, they should never be planned – or indeed implemented –independent of everything else taking place in the organisation. For one, this can make it stand out like a sore thumb and make employees feel discombobulated before you have said a word. Whether you are restructuring, introducing new technology, or changing your leadership team, your messaging needs to be mindful of context, and you need to communicate through pre-existing internal channels you know to be effective. If you do have a project team working on the change, they need to have ties into other relevant teams and be alert to the bigger picture at all times.
Outside of these two philosophies, there is a current trend in internal communications that is also worth being aware of – and that is “employee voice”. If you believe the change you are making may not land well with your employees, it may be tempting to limit their opportunities to share feedback. This is a huge mistake. If they are not telling you, they’ll be telling someone else – whether that’s colleagues or worst-case scenario, the media.
“IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW SLOWLY YOU GO, SO LONG
Recent research suggests that employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered at work and perform their best.1
CURRENTLY, JUST OVER HALF OF EMPLOYEES (53%) BELIEVE THEY HAVE A VOICE WITHIN THEIR COMPANY.
Women and young members of staff are more likely to feel “voiceless”. If you want your employees to feel bought into your culture, your purpose, your mission, why wouldn’t you give them an opportunity to share their views – even in the face of a change? There are ways to capture feedback in a more contained way, such as via managers, in focus groups or via surveys, but if you are giving them the opportunity to amplify their voice, make sure you show – somehow – that you are listening. 1. 50 Statistics
PEAKS...
Michael Schutzer-Wiessmann is on the ground in Davos, a globally vital event that constantly disproves its doubters.
‘Davos Man’ – the coinage that belongs to Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington and refers to any member of the global elite in relation to the World Economic Forum’s annual knees up – has been said to be running out of road.
At its most basic level, Davos is a four-day conference bringing together the most important people in the worlds of business, politics, academia, activism and increasingly – to add a splash of much-needed colour to a canvas of corporate grey – entertainment and showbusiness. But for the news-consuming public, the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum (WEF) falls somewhere between a talking shop for plutocrats and a real-life meeting of SPECTRE. Davos runs the risk of appearing out-of-touch and incongruous.
However, such complaints are ultimately just noise as long as influential people still rock up. Which they continue to do in their droves – world leaders (Presidents Macron and Zelenskyy), captains of industry (JPMorgan Chase’s ‘rockstar’ CEO Jamie Dimon), billionaire investors (Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio), media moguls (Washington Post CEO Will Lewis), Silicon Valley tycoons
(OpenAI wizard Sam Altman and Salesforce chief Marc Benioff) – all descended on the Royal Family’s favourite skiing resort this year.
Davos matters as the convener of power and influence. And so it follows that, as advisors in the business of influence, communications agencies have at some level a responsibility to clients to offer a bespoke Davos service, getting them in the room with the right people and preparing them thoroughly to get their key messages across loud and clear.
At Davos just gone, Hanover – across its Advocacy and Corporate teams – did just that with Meredith Whittaker, President of the Signal Foundation. Meredith’s will be a name familiar to anyone interested in the world of technology regulation.
A leading campaigner on user rights and privacy, Meredith was a senior figure at Google who organised against claims of sexual misconduct in the business and what she saw as the company’s unethical pursuit of AI. As she told the Today Programme in an interview secured during Davos, she has “seen AI from the inside”
DAVOS MATTERS AS THE CONVENER OF POWER AND INFLUENCE.
and is concerned with the “significantly concentrated power in the hands of a US-based tech oligopoly” that it has engendered.
Meredith’s success in securing media coverage around a topic she is passionate about – including with Tortoise Media, CNBC and WSJ – serves as an important reminder to encourage clients to speak openly about what motivates them and, simply, why they think the way they do. Personality is obviously a big part of this, but it is just as much an intellectual question, especially somewhere like Davos, where detractors would argue that homogenous corporate-speak rules.
Learning number two from our work at Davos is as one might expect from a global networking event. It was absolutely vital to be fleet of foot. With engagements from dawn until dusk and the day carved out into 15 minute chunks, but with travel across a congested ski resort to be wrestled with, the importance of a team able to schedule, manage and control logistics became almost as key as one that can manage crises.
A DAY IS CARVED OUT INTO FIFTEEN MINUTE CHUNKS.
I think we sometimes forget that there is always flexibility and possibility – even with an event as apparently closedoff and Grade A as Davos – to make things work in spite of everything, from time to space. Again, a lot of our job is making things happen for our clients and opening doors for them, and our Davos project with Meredith was a stellar example of this.
During this year’s conference and indeed since, AI has occupied more column inches, airwaves and policy papers than perhaps any other phenomenon in the last decade. Even at Davos, the issue was one that stood out and Meredith was in demand across a range of events, roundtables and interview opportunities. And while a path for the future of the technology is still being lit, it felt all the more important to be supporting Signal in their efforts to broadcast a crucial side to the conversation. This, if anything, brings home the value that remains in a perpetually busy and crowded news agenda, including Davos, and supporting clients there.
So long as you are speaking to issues from the heart, while there is the chance to make a difference, there remains value in being there, and doing so.
POPPY NEWTON TALKS ABOUT HOW THE DIGITALISATION OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS SPEEDING UP.
Digital transformation is a phrase I have heard a lot throughout my career. Powered by technology, such transformation for businesses is the shift to a digital-first experience – whether that’s for your employees, your partners or your customers. In communications, this often manifests as traditional media channels giving way to the digital and social media era.
Before moving to Dubai, I worked in London for five years, with clients across the UK and Europe, and during that time witnessed a gradual realisation among businesses that a strong digital presence to reach and resonate with your target audience was no longer a nice-to-have –it is crucial.
I’m now seeing the same thing happen across the Middle East, and quickly.
KIDS IN ARABIA
The younger generation were born into the Google era. Those now aged 20 have never known life without Facebook. Their lives have been dominated by technology and connectedness.
80%
of Qataris aged 18-24 prefer to consume news digitally, while only rely on print media.
3.5 9%
According to a report by Northwestern University in Qatar, This movement was accelerated by the pandemic. With lockdowns and social distancing measures in place, audiences sought news and entertainment from the comfort of their homes, with users in the MENA region averaging over hours a day on social media at the height of the pandemic, according to GlobalWebIndex; that’s more than a day a week in total.
In the UK, this figure was 70;30, respectively, according to a 2023 YouGov study.
Digital and social media platforms cemented themselves as the go-to sources of information, offering immediacy, convenience and interactivity. This digital surge propelled the Middle East population to explore diverse digital platforms, in the same way it did in the UK, accelerating the transition away from traditional media.
The readership of traditional news publications –especially print – is declining, with Gulf News ending their legacy weekend editions in 2023. In the words of Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Editor in Chief: “We are constantly battling the sharks hunting in our territory: Google and Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to name a few are fishing for ad revenue in our waters.”
THE TRUST PRECIPICE
Trust in traditional media has been gradually eroding –and this is globally, not just in the Middle East. Scepticism towards mainstream media has grown due to concerns about impartiality and sensationalism, while the rise of social media platforms and digital news outlets has empowered individuals to seek information from multiple sources, fostering a sense of media literacy and critical thinking in the region. We’ve not only seen a rise in influencers and content creators, but importantly a rise in citizen journalism – challenging the role of established media outlets as the sole arbiters of truth.
In an era where people want live information and diverse perspectives, traditional media outlets are often criticised for being biased or not presenting the full picture – particularly when it comes to extremely sensitive and emotive moments such as the current Israel / Palestine conflict. Individuals are turning to social media platforms for real-time accounts from those affected. For example, Motaz Azaiza – a Palestinian journalist in Gaza – has gone from 1 million to over 19 million followers in less than six months.
PROOF IN THE PUDDING
Social media allows for greater reach, laser-targeted, measurable campaigning, and contextualised content in local languages. Businesses have been witnessing its benefits – where mass conversation and engagement can ladder up to their business objectives.
Most recently, Visit Saudi’s digital-first campaign that leveraged the influence of footballer Lionel Messi reached 747 million people globally – website visits more than doubled, Google and YouTube searches increased by 12-15% and Visit Saudi social media followings increased.
Last year, The Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (RAKTDA) launched their social media and programmatic centric campaign – ‘Get More’. Aiming to drive brand affinity in key markets and increase reach and awareness in new geographies, the campaign wanted to position the Emirate as an attractive summer destination. Through highly creative campaign assets that appealed to traveller preferences, the campaign exceeded industry benchmarks generating more than 336 million impressions and a total of 1.2 million clicks. The Emirate received 1.13 million annual visitors – the highest-ever number of arrivals exceeding prepandemic levels.
Communications leads are quickly realising that the challenge with print media is that it doesn’t offer robust analytics to feed back into the business. Digital and social media can give tangible, quantitative results such as impressions, clicks or video views. And this is what c-suite want to see – value for money and return on investment.
CATCHING UP
As Middle Eastern audiences embrace digital and social media as their primary sources of information, businesses and communications professionals are learning to rewire their strategies to future-proof and adapt to this evolving landscape.
What does this involve?
1. 2. 3. 4.
Prioritise social media as highly as traditional media within a communications strategy.
Develop an up-to-date digital strategy that ensures a consistent tone of voice, a deliberate channel approach and a clear content strategy for both your company pages and your senior executives’ profiles.
Consider optimising your website in terms of user experience and content to improve your SEO and take back control of your own news and opinions.
Use paid media budget for paid advertising on social, where the targeting tools on offer are unparalleled.
By recognising these shifts and leveraging the unique opportunities offered by digital platforms, businesses in the Middle East will effectively engage with their target audience and stay ahead in this changing media landscape.
World$ Apart
Is Femtech the answer to closing the $1 trillion women’s health gap? Erin Archer writes.
We’re only half-way through 2024 and there have already been landmark moments for women’s health.
In the US, a menstrual pad with a removable strip to collect blood samples for clinical tests has received FDA clearance, while in the UK, new priorities have been set for a Women’s Health Strategy. At Davos, experts discussed closing the existing women’s health gap. However important and positive these increments are, they are each a drop in the ocean when compared to the fact that women still live a quarter more of their life in poorer health than men.
This gap has been created over generations and, as well as harming billions of lives, has economic and social consequences.
CONSULTANTS
MCKINSEY RECENTLY PUBLISHED A REPORT SUGGESTING THAT INVESTMENTS TO FIX THE WOMEN’S HEALTH GAP COULD BOOST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY BY $1 TRILLION ANNUALLY BY 2040.
They identified four primary areas that need to be addressed: science, data, care delivery and investment. The Femtech industry – a subcategory of Healthtech using technology to address women’s health issues –is already contributing to women’s health in all of these areas, yet its impact is yet to be fully realised.
Take data for example: one condition impacted by limited data and research is endometriosis, a long-term, debilitating condition caused by tissue growth. Widely known to be mis- and under-diagnosed, women can often be left feeling isolated and ignored. In the longterm, more research must be conducted to understand the cause of endometriosis, but for those already experiencing symptoms in the short-term, tracking apps like Frendo provide immediate support that healthcare professionals often can’t offer.
By providing women with the ability to monitor, track, and provide data on their symptoms, Frendo helps educate women on their condition, empowering them to advocate for their own health. It also leaves them with a wealth of knowledge on how symptoms may affect women differently and brings lesser-known symptoms to light. But the potential of apps like Frendo is broader than patient support, and the impact that these technologies could have on both industry and the health system are untapped.
HISTORICALLY, THE UK HAS STRUGGLED TO TAKE ON NEW INNOVATIONS AT SCALE. SHADOW SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE WES STREETING HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THE “PEDESTRIAN PACE” TOWARDS INNOVATION SOMETIMES SEEN BY THE NHS.
However, if apps like Frendo were integrated into the health system, the data collected could help improve outcomes for women. It’s well known that short consultation times limit a patient’s ability to get the care they need, particularly with conditions which are hard to diagnose. Having this data readily available through an app could maximise the short time
available during a consultation, help a clinician to spot patterns in symptoms and increase confidence in referring patients for a laparoscopy for a formal diagnosis.
The pharmaceutical industry should also consider the potential of partnering with Femtech. The data gathered through female-driven healthcare apps could support industry’s understanding of how symptoms may present differently in women of different ages, ethnicities, or points in their cycle, which may support in developing better treatments. It could even bring lesser-known symptoms to the fore, improving our understanding of the condition overall and leading us to a potential cure.
This is just one example of what could be achieved, and of course comes with many hurdles to navigate, but it begs the question; why aren’t we doing more to support the rise of Femtech, and what could we do to improve the environment in the UK?
Ultimately, it requires a collaborative approach. By investing in Femtech, we’re investing in women and girls and their future health, but we’re also investing in wider society.
Currently,
80% of the $1 trillion gap is generated in women of a working age.
Recent research suggests that the UK loses due to lack of workplace support for women’s
150 MILLION WORKING DAYS
health.
If we only consider the impact that improving women’s health could have on women themselves, we undervalue the potential higher economic and social returns, benefits we could begin to realise with a whole-hearted support of Femtech.
WILL KILLER ROBOTS TAKE OUR JOBS?
Gary Cleland, Group Managing
Director,
Corporate, Digital & Strategy, cuts through the noise around AI and outlines five ways it might change communications.
In the past 24 hours at the time of writing, a brief glance at the headlines across a selection of news publications paints a picture of a world largely confused by the potential of artificial intelligence (AI). To give an idea, AI will… improve football coaching; create millions of jobs; make millions of people unemployed; unlock the cures to killer diseases; and unleash nuclear war.
AI – potentially the saviour of humankind, if it doesn’t destroy us.
It’s a lot to wrestle with and while it has provided the wannabe philosopher-class of communications professional with a lot to talk about, arguably a lot of the conversation has failed to help the head-scratching client planning their year ahead.
I argue that, as an agency, our immediate AI mission is no different at this stage to our other functions – how can we provide value and impact to our clients.
To this end, Hanover has launched a partnership with InferenceCloud – an AI provider with years of experience producing tools squarely focussed on communicators. InferenceCloud was co-founded by Mark Seall, formerly head of Digital, Data Analytics and Artifical Intelligence at Siemens.
We have a suite of tools designed to help communicators with today’s job, while they’re planning for tomorrow. In that spirit, here are five things I would advise communicators to consider while scratching their heads. First – ignore those who are overly cynical. New technologies inevitably have their evangelists, and it does feel as though we’ve heard it all before when it comes to transformative new capabilities.
This is real, the potential is enormous and it will transform a lot of what we do in communications. Do we know exactly what and how it will do it –of course not. But the scope of what is and will be possible is too incredible not to make an enormous difference.
But – and this is the second point – the pace of change and adoption of new technologies is always slower than those at the forefront of the sector expect. Simply, if people feel their current way of working is fine for them, they won’t necessarily change it just because something new comes along. Video conference was widely available pre-Covid, and most meetings still revolved around conference calls. Because it seemed to work, until it didn’t. There is less need for panic than we may be led to believe.
Your starting point (and my third point) should therefore be which are the bits of your job which don’t work effectively for you. Typically we find these are things which either take up more time than most comms leaders would like, or cost a lot of money relative to the return. Often when working with communications function we will audit these functions/services and use that as a starting point to make an immediate difference. This is not about removing people, this is about freeing
people to do what they are best at – and so improving the overall performance of a team.
Often we will find that smart use of AI can make a difference in research and insights, audience analysis, reporting, measurement and planning. Smart, quick, actionable results.
Fourth – think about those areas of the job when you must act quickly – for me, that often means issues management. A considered use of AI tools can help your organisation be better prepared, and respond more effectively, to an issue when it breaks – as well as track the fallout and predict how it will play out more accurately.
Embedding AI into your issues preparedness work, including desk top simulations and your crisis response protocols, will soon be considered essential.
And finally, most of the above describes the first wave of a new technology – namely when it is used to improve the things that we do already. What is impossible to predict fully are the ways in which we will do things differently – the new opportunities that simply didn’t exist before, and the new threats to reputation that such powerful technology enables.
So execute for today but plan for tomorrow – build time within your organisation, and through your network and wider colllaborations, to talk about what might be coming next. Because it is coming.
If you’d like to discuss Hanover’s AI product suite or discuss any of the above please get in touch –gcleland@hanovercomms.com
HOW TO DO BUSINESS IN SAUDI ARABIA
There are opportunities – and challenges – aplenty in a transforming kingdom, writes Jeremy Lawrence.
THE VIEW FROM SAUDI
Take any flight to Riyadh these days and it will likely be full of corporate types tapping away on their laptops.
With Saudi Arabia having spent over $2 billion on consultants in 2022 alone, these are boom days for businesses eager to get a slice of the dazzling array of mega projects announced since Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (or MbS as he is known) became Crown Prince and De facto ruler of the nation in 2017.
Make no mistake that what has happened in Saudi since then is nothing short of a historic transformation in the Arab world’s biggest economy – and society. How did it happen and what does it mean for opportunities in the Kingdom?
REMAKING A NATION
MbS was a surprise choice to get the job of effectively running the country. Despite being the seventh son and aged just 32, his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, was wise enough to know that drastic change was required in Saudi, which was heavily reliant on oil (accounting for c. 40% of GDP, Saudi requires a fiscal breakeven price of $80-88 per barrel). In 2017, the economy was slowing, mired in a mindset of entitlement and low productivity.
In societal terms, this was a nation with little in the way of public arts or culture, where women were largely excluded from both economy and society. And it was becoming an urgent problem as the population, 60 per cent of which is under 30, was growing restless amid a sclerotic establishment attitude to reform.
MbS quickly proved himself to be a moderniser intent on radically reshaping the kingdom. He set about restricting the powers of the religious police and improving
women’s rights; he ended the ban on female drivers in 2018 and weakened the male-guardianship system in 2019. It is astonishing to think that a country that banned cinemas until 2018, and where women and men could not previously mix in a coffee shop, now hosts huge international DJ parties where tens of thousands of young Saudis dance until the early hours.
Much of these changes are encapsulated in Vision 2030, the Saudi program aimed at reducing the economy’s reliance on oil through investment in non-oil sectors including technology and tourism.
Backed by revenues from the $700 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), $1.25 trillion worth of property and infrastructure projects have been announced under MbS’s watch, according to real estate agency Knight Frank.
Seen in this context, Cristiano Ronaldo’s weekly $4.43 million weekly salary playing for Saudi Pro League team Al Nassr is but a drop in the ocean.
ALL ABOUT GEN Z
It should be no surprise that the ambitious Vision 2030 goals have been enthusiastically welcomed by the nation’s youth. This engaged, educated demographic is driving Riyadh’s transformation into a cosmopolitan global city with a vibrant identity.
The success of these initiatives might partly be attributed to the concerted efforts to send talented students abroad after 2005. By 2013-14, almost 200,000 Saudis were studying abroad. Most of them (87 percent) were fully funded by the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme (KASP). Those young men and women returned to a nation propelling itself to a new era where international influences mesh with local traditions.
For all the mega-developments and money being spent, something genuinely new is happening that feels unique to the region. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that Saudi’s 32-million population is two-thirds local, so they don’t need or want to imitate other cities.
Take a trip to any contemporary art studio or fashionable hangout and you’ll see that young Saudis, though international in their outlook, already have a lot to draw from within their own culture.
All of which is to say that while it’s easy for outsiders –especially western outsiders – to dismiss these many changes as reputation washing, spend any time around young Saudis – especially women – and you’re struck by how much they value the new opportunities that have arisen in recent years.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
The first thing international businesses thinking of entering the Saudi market should do is study the key areas of Vision 2030. This is the framework for massive investments in infrastructure, technology, renewable energy, tourism, and healthcare. Each of these areas deserves its own article. For now, suffice it to say that the opportunities are all staggering in scale and are all sectors ripe for international collaboration.
However, navigating this landscape isn’t without its challenges. Cultural sensitivity remains paramount. Respecting local customs, attire, and social norms is obviously crucial for building trust and ensuring smooth operations. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of cultural nuances that must be learned by experience. Seeking guidance from experts and local partners is invaluable.
The regulatory landscape, while improving, still requires careful navigation. Understanding complex procedures, legal structures, and potential hurdles is essential for business endeavours. This can be, to put it charitably, an interesting challenge. New entrants have also bemoaned issues with late payments over the years. Again, this is improving, though due diligence, adequate cash reserves, and lots of patience, are all recommended.
It pays to be on the ground, too. A law recently passed requires firms to set up a local base in the kingdom or risk losing out on government contracts. However, companies with foreign operations below SAR1 million ($266,000) can operate without local headquarters. And what ‘headquarters’ actually means is still open to interpretation, as many international businesses with
happily established UAE-based regional HQs are trying to gauge.
It should also be noted that Riyadh, the capital, isn’t the only player in town. Jeddah, a port city with a long history of immigration as the gateway to Mecca, has a distinct entrepreneurial spirit, and offers a different business culture to navigate. And then there is NEOM, a vast $500 billion project covering an area the size of Belgium that is a whole world in itself.
PEOPLE PERSONS
The key takeaway from all this is quite simple. Succeeding in business hinges on relationship building. While 41 percent of the population is comprised of expats, the majority of companies are run and staffed by Saudis, unlike other Gulf countries, so that means understanding what makes them tick. Broadly speaking, Saudis value personal connections, so fostering trust and rapport with local partners is the only ticket to long-term success. Don’t think that the locals aren’t aware of the flood of newbies arriving with dollar signs in their eyes, a flashy PowerPoint presentation selling some product or service, and a return flight to catch.
Local expertise, boots on the ground, and strong networks are vital to bridging cultural gaps and paving the way for success.
And here’s the thing: Saudis are fun! They’re highly educated, international in outlook, but with a culture of welcoming hospitality that is still very much part of their DNA. This is a tech-savvy, globally connected generation representing a vast consumer base of 36 million Saudis and 493 million people in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA), more than half of whom are under 30.
If you’re in Riyadh, drop by any coffee shop in The Diplomatic Quarter, which adds a modern twist to classical architecture and is set among lush, tree-lined streets. Here, well-dressed young Saudi men and women pour out of offices and studios at lunchtime to take a break at fashionable coffee shops and art exhibitions. It feels as contemporary and of-the-moment as in any other world leading capital city, but with its own unique character. And it’s a scene that would have been unthinkable even five years ago.
Lessons in
KAMAL AHMED, FOUNDER OF THE THE NEWS MOVEMENT, DIRECTOR OF AUDIO AT THE TELEGRAPH AND ONE OF THE UK’S MOST RESPECTED JOURNALISTS, REFLECTS ON THE CHANGING NATURE OF LEADERSHIP AND THE LESSONS EXECUTIVES SHOULD LEARN.
The big trends that businesses need to think about really carefully are trust, transparency and the notion that they are built on honesty.
The change is the interconnected world. When I started in my career, businesses lived in castles. Every now and again they would open the castle gate and put out some product, and then close the gate and get on with their day. That is not possible now.
We live not just in a digital world, but in a social world. And the difference between those two things is that in a digital world there’s lots of information, in a social world there is a lot of conversation. And the conversations are what can be so damaging for businesses if their purpose, and what is over the door, is not the reality within the organisation.
The key is that what you say and what you do have to be aligned. That comes down to culture. It comes down to behaviours. It comes down to the types of leaders you have, and the types of colleagues you have and how they behave.
I grew up in a generation in journalism which was led by the line leader, kind of an army system, the notion of a hyper expert leader that was always a nonsense.
That’s not how people are. I am not meant to know everything. It’s understanding that, and allowing that to be part of your response mechanism by listening to all relevant opinions.
You have to be able to deal with the fact that however good you are at your job, however brilliantly skilled, things will go wrong. Sometimes mistakes will be made, and you’ve got to be able to say, ‘I made a mistake’. Then you can build and move on.
If I go right back to the start of my career, one of my first big journalism moments was working for Scotland on Sunday and going to cover the Dunblane massacre. An appalling story. And I remember driving back from Dunblane to Edinburgh and having to stop my car on the side of the road because I was in floods of tears.
You learn from moments like that. How is that you can allow the emotion but not be overwhelmed by it?
Feeling is part of resilience, as well as being able to respond technically to challenges. I think if you can work your way to that type of understanding, you can then have a much better sense of how you can use resilience to your advantage.
Watch Kamal’s film at hanovercomms.com
Resilience
FAKE OR FACT?
Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum labelled misinformation and disinformation the most severe short-term risk the world faces.
The challenge to the democratic process, as almost three billion people take part in elections, has been much discussed. But businesses must also be conscious of the potential for commercial and reputational damage to occur as a result of falsified, manipulated or simply untrue information being spread, particularly online.
AI AUDITING A VIRTUAL WORLD.
For CEOs and communicators, it can be difficult to know where to begin. This is why Hanover, alongside its AI partner InferenceCloud, has developed an AI-powered misinformation audit to provide clients with a perspective on their own misinformation risk. 1 2 3 4 5
HOW DOES IT WORK? IT’S A FIVE-STAGE PROCESS...
INTRODUCING OUR “AI AGENTS”. WE USE AI TO ANALYSE EVERYTHING YOUR BUSINESS SAYS ABOUT ITSELF, ACROSS ALL COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS, TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF HOW YOU ARE ACTUALLY PRESENTING YOURSELF TO THE WORLD.
OUR AI AGENTS THEN ANALYSE WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS SAYING ABOUT YOU – ONLINE, ACROSS TRADITIONAL MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MEDIA. THIS ANALYSIS PROVIDES YOU WITH TWO THINGS: A BENCHMARK OF HOW EFFECTIVELY YOUR MESSAGE IS CUTTING THROUGH, AND – IMPORTANTLY – A MAP OF POTENTIAL TOPICS WHICH ARE MOST AT RISK OF MISINFORMATION.
WE THEN PRODUCE CONTENT RECOMMENDATIONS DESIGNED TO HELP MITIGATE AGAINST THE THREAT OF MISINFORMATION BEFORE IT HAPPENS.
WHERE MISINFORMATION ALREADY EXISTS AS A RESULT OF THIS SWEEP, OUR TOOLS CAN TRACK THE IMPACT THAT THE SPREAD OF MISINFORMATION IS HAVING BY MEASURING HOW THE GAP BETWEEN YOUR MESSAGE AND HOW YOU ARE PERCEIVED IS WIDENING.
FINALLY, WE ARE ABLE TO TAKE YOUR COMMUNICATION STRATEGY AND TRANSFORM IT – QUICKLY – INTO A SUITE OF CONTENT DESIGNED TO MATCH THE SPEED OF MISINFORMATION AND MITIGATE ITS IMPACT.
A standard corporate statement will not be effective against a fast-spreading lie being told about your business. Prepare, and know how to respond using the very latest technology available to communicators.