Communication Director
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the magazine for corporate communications and public relations
asia-paci fic e dition
Number 1/2016 www.communication-director.com
Talking about trust: how to earn it, lose it and win it back
Taken for a ride? What the Volkswagen scandal reveals about trust and economics
COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR
N o 1 · 2016
Asia-Pacific Edition
You gotta have faith
GET TO KNOW THE WINNING PROJECTS AT THE SYMPOSIUM
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Waiting for you to justify my love Building trust in new markets Understanding the essentials of long-term stakeholder relations
www.ap. ex c el l enc e- awards. c om
What Asia-Pacific communicators are doing to mend your relationship with their brands
27 | 28
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editorial
Welcome, Good news for corporate communicators working in Asia Pacific: according to the latest Edelman Trust Index, five of the top six most trusting countries are all in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and developing economies at that. The finding touches on an important relationship between trust and the economy: as David Brain, president and chief executive officer of Edelman Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, writes in his article for this issue of Communication Director, if an economy is improving, people tend to confer trust on the institutions they believe are responsible for that improvement. Another reminder of the connection between money and trust is the Volkswagen scandal. The German brand is one of the bestselling foreign brands in South Korea, and the fallout of its emissions crisis – which the company hoped would be confined to the US, then the EU – has now spread to Asia as South Korea conducts its own probe into the scandal. Other countries in the region are working on their own response. Whatever the outcome, trust in one of the world’s most recognisable brands has taken a battering, with real results for shareholders, stock price, employees and more. This reminds us how important corporate communicators are to the upholding of trust in companies, governments, nongovernmental organisations and other institutions. With the VW story as a ‘worst-case’ study, who else than corproate communicators are better placed to help the region’s public and private organisations hold onto their credibility? To find out how communicators are stepping up to this challenge, we’ve turned to members of the Asia-Pacific Association of Communication Directors (www.apacd.com) who work in two industries where trust levels yo-yo widely – finance and media. Find out their insights in the Issue Focus section of this magazine.
dafydd phillips
Photo: Laurin Schmid
Editor in Chief
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Trust in the trusting region Insights into trust across Asia Pacific in the 2016 Edelman Trust Index
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Feeling the heat Practical insights from members of the Asia-Pacific Association of Communication Directors
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Building trust in new markets Understanding the fundamentals of building trustworthy relationships across time
Issue Focus 76
Trust and communications
Just one click Visual cues help create trust in online retail: an important part of building belief in the organisation
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Essentials to be a trusted communication partner Some characteristics communications leaders need to show to be worthy recipients of trust
80 70
What we mean when we talk about trust A philosopher’s take on the real meaning of transparency and trustworthiness.
Repairing broken promises What the Volkswagen scandal teaches us about the link between trust and economics
6 • leadership
12 •monitor
Give leadership
Strategic communication in Asia Pacific
Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, on the need for effective, visionary leadership
The results of the first ever Asia-Pacific Communication Monitor
8 • PR essentials
18 • risk
Asia Pacific’s most reputable
Reassessing risk? Companies in Asia Pacific still make the same mistakes with reputation risk management
Introducing the 10 most reputable companies in the region
4
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content
20 • digital
54 • interview
Brand communications in the digital age
Matthew Friedman
How technology is moving the communications goal posts
23 • Skills
A balanced approach What it means to be a trusted partner within the organisation
36 • social media
A dialogue manager in a converged world
The human-trafficking expert on what corporations can do to disentangle modern slavery from their supply chains
Using social media to build stakeholder relationships through dialogue
40 • brand
Building consumer trust in Asia Pacific Authenticity and localisation are two of the keys to winning consumer loyalty
42 • corporate responsibility
An introspective journey How Prudential Corporation Asia creates shared value
84 • communication Reader
Books New and upcoming titles for the communicator’s bookshelf
46 • event 26 • change
Found in translation What happened when Covestro emerged from under the wing of Bayer Group?
30 • CRISIS
Photos: The Kofi Annan Foundation; Oscar Nava; Private
Crisis in the sky A first-hand account of crisis communications in the immediate aftermath of the disappearance of flight MH370
Crisis and trust
APACD news
48 • THEORY
The latest developments in the Asia-Pacific Association of Communication Directors
Good news, bad news Introducing the two-factor theory of publicity, wherein organisations learn to look out for themselves
50 • Agenda Setter 34 • Career
The millennial workplace
“The next big thing”
Are you prepared for the next generation of communicators?
A new platform is set on getting more women into the executive pipeline: we hear from its founder, Amanda Gome
86 • ASSOCIATION
Five key take-aways about communicating during an emergency
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90 • private passions
Life through a lens How one communicator finds inspiration for his work in the landscapes of Japan
5
pr essentials
Trust and reputation go hand in hand. Companies that maintain their standing beyond their services or products win the highest levels of consumer trust. Produced by the Reputation Institute, The Global RepTrakÂŽ 100 measures companies from across the globe on their ability to meet expectations in seven dimensions: products and services, innovation, workplace, governance, citizenship, leadership and performance. Based on the latest RepTrakÂŽ 100, we present 10 most reputable companies in Asia Pacific.
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Photos: Daimler AG; Apple; Rolex; BMW Group
Asia Pacific’s most reputable
pr essentials
daimler AG Founded: 1886 Headquarters: Stuttgart, Germany Industry: Automotive Trust dimension strength: Products/Services Communication Director: Jörg Howe, Head of Global Communications
the Reputation Institute says: “Daimler is the company whose reputation improved the most, followed closely by LEGO, and Nike.”
Jörg Howe Head of Global Communications, Daimler AG
rolex
Apple Founded: 1976 Headquarters: California, USA Industry: : Electronics and digital Trust dimension strength: Innovation, Performance, Leadership Communication Director: Steve Dowling, Vice President of Communications
the Reputation Institute says: “Apple tops on three of the seven dimensions – innovation, performance, and leadership.”
Founded: 1906 Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland Industry: Watch manufacturing Trust dimension strength: Products/Services Communication Director: Arnaud Boetsch, Communications and Image Director
the Reputation Institute Says: “Daimler and Rolex are among the only top rated companies that might derive value from favourable perceptions as Arrogant & Tough.”
The communication department is the central interface to all information flows inwards and outwards. On the one hand, we release internal information about our cars, sales figures, sponsoring and social aspects. On the other hand, we bring external information into the company, which has an influence on our strategy. An integrated communication approach contributes significantly to our company’s reputation.
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pr essentials
BMW Group Founded: 1916 Headquarters: Munich, Germany Industry: Automotive Trust dimension strength: Governance Communication Director: Bill McAndrews, Vice President of BMW Group Communications Strategy, Corporate and Market Communications
intel
the Reputation Institute says: “Google tops on consumer perceptions of workplace and citizenship.”
Founded: 1968 Headquarters: California, USA Industry: Semiconductors Trust dimension strength: Innovation/Leadership Communication Director: Terry Anderson, Vice President, Global Marketing and Communications
canon
the Reputation Institute says: “BMW Group has been most successful at exporting its strong reputation from Germany to Russia, Australia, Italy and the UK Opportunities for future reputation enhancements lie in Brazil, India, China, Mexico, and especially Korea.”
Founded: 1937 Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan Industry: Optical products Trust dimension strength: Products/Services Communication Director: Richard Berger, Manager, Global Public Relations
Bill McAndrews Vice President of Communications Strategy, Corporate and Market Communications BMW Group
Google Founded: 1998 Headquarters: California, USA Industry: Internet Trust dimension strength: Workplace/Citizenship Communication Director: Rob Shilkin, Senior Director of Corporate Communications
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the media says: “Intel is truly a best practice example that shows how branding excellence leads to increased brand equity leading to successful growth and profitability and ultimately to company value.” Branding Institute, January 21 2014
the media says: “The success of Canon in the world of industrial copying built Canon’s image for durability and Canon cameras now lead in professional photography.” Max Brand Equity, November 1 2006
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The key is to remain in constant dialogue with all stakeholders: politicians, shareholders, customers and communities alike. What’s more, with activities in over 140 countries, the BMW Group has diverse stakeholders of all different nationalities and cualtures, spanning the entire globe.
Jan Runau Chief Corporate Communication Officer, adidas
In general, companies must be run in a way that they address the needs of all their stakeholders. Increasingly also in 2016, businesses must show that they can both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in which they operate. Corporate communication helps the adidas Group to create distinctive and appealing images with its stakeholder groups, build a strong, trusted corporate brand by showing the company behind the brands and develop reputational capital inside and outside the company.
microsoft
Photos: Daimler AG; Google; DELL; Canon; BMW Group; adidas (2); Microsoft; Walt Disney
Founded: 1975 Headquarters: New Mexico, USA Industry: Computer Software & Hardware Trust dimension strength: Workplace/Innovation/ Citizenship Communication Director: Tom Murphy, Director of Communications, Microsoft Services at Microsoft
the media says: “Trusted brands create an emotional connection with consumers while essential ones are integrated into their lives. And Microsoft has achieved this consistently across generations. The very ubiquity that perhaps renders it uncool turns out to also be its strength.” Forbes.com, May 25 2010
adidas
The Walt Disney Company Founded: 1923 Headquarters: California, USA Industry: Entertainment Trust dimension strength: Citizenship Communication Director: Zenia Mucha, Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer
the media says: “Disney maintains the highest ethical standards from theme parks to their consumer products and takes their corporate social responsibility seriously and with a great amount of pride.” Business Review US, June 10 2013
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Founded: 1924 Headquarters: Herzogenaurach, German Industry: Sporting apparel Communication Director: Jan Runau, Chief Corporate Communication Officer
the media says: “Adidas’ commitment to excel in all relevant segments differentiates the brand from competitors and ensures solid market growth, while staying true to the brand values.” Crunchbase.com, 2016
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monitor
The present and future of strategic communication in Asia Pacific Seven starting points for discussion for this year’s first Asia-Pacific CommunicationMonitor by Ana Adi and Jim Macnamara
T
he Communication Monitor series – both European and Latin American – have been providing us with exciting insights into the status and challenges of strategic communication. It was therefore only a matter of time until the research team would also focus on one of the most rapid moving and fast paced regions in the world: Asia Pacific. Questions of how communication creates value in the region as well as whether mass media are losing their leading and influential role in shaping public opinion are of great interest here. The answers can point us to new trends
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as well as to the skills that practitioners feel they need in order to adapt to be successful in future. In this respect, social media and measurement play a central role in this year’s edition of the Asia-Pacific Communication Monitor, as does job satisfaction. In this article, we look at the standout findings of the report.
Future and relevance of mass media Communicators in Asia Pacific foresee an increase in use and importance of owned media (56.3 per cent) well beyond tradi-
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tional corporate publishing and websites. As Macnamara (2014a, 2015) suggests, these include new content formats such as sponsored content and ‘native advertising’. While enabling communicators to reach more people in more creative ways and controlling their content, the rise of owned media brings multiple challenges. On the one hand, the skillset and competencies that professionals will need will change. On the other hand, the blurring of boundaries between journalism and public relations as well as between peer communications and public relations will undoubtedly raise questions about transparency and ethics.
monitor
72.8 % 56.3 % 34.9 %
Figure 1 Future relevance of media for strategic communications: earned and owned media are rising in importance;inconsistent views on paid media
-5.7 %
-17.6 %
-29.9 %
Lose importance (scale 1 – 2)
Gain importance (scale 4 – 5)
www.communicationmonitor.asia / n= 1,200 PR Professionals from 23 countries. Scale 1 (Lose a lot of importance) – 5 (Gain a lot of importance).
Communication channels and instruments Social media and traditional media are almost equally important in the eyes of Asia-Pacific communicators. Social media are rated as the most important channels in the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and China. Traditional press/media relations remain important in most countries, but are particularly important in Japan, India, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Interestingly, face-to-face communication is seen as declining in importance in a number of Asian countries between now and 2018, most notably in the Philippines (from 86.8 to 73.7 per cent seeing it as important) and Taiwan (from 58 to 48 per cent); while in Japan, China and Hong Kong for instance it is seen as increasingly important. The wide adoption of social media in Asia Pacific could well be one of the reasons for these changes.
Figure 2 Expected development of communication channels in Asia-Pacific until 2018
Press and media relations with print newspapers/magazines
76.5 %
-29.6 %
Social media and social networks (Blogs, Twitter, Weibo and the like)
46.9 % 75.0 %
+17.2 %
92.2 %
Online communication via websites, e-mail, intranets
+12.0 %
Press and media relations with online newspapers/magazines
+10.6 %
Face-to-face communication Press and media relations with TV and radio stations
73.2 % 83.8 % 71.2 % 71.3 % 66.8 %
-13.2 %
53.7 % 66.5 %
+27.2 %
93.7 % 59.8 %
-2.8 %
56.9 %
Non-verbal communication
42.3 % +11.2 %
Corporate publishing/owned media
+10.6 %
Importance today
85.6 %
+0.1 %
Mobile communication (phone/tablet, apps, mobile websites) Events
73.6 %
Importance in 2018
53.5 % 39.1 % 49.6 %
Gap
www.communicationmonitor.asia / nmin = 1,148 PR Professionals. Scale 1 (Not important) – 5 (Very important). Percentages: Frequency based on scale points 4-5.
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13
Risk
Reassessing risk? Companies still make the same mistakes with reputation risk management. Why? By C h a r l e s L a n k e s t e r
W
e are living in a perfect storm when it comes to reputational risk. Images and words go global, instantly. News is accelerated through an array of vibrant, interconnected social media channels. It follows that expectations of corporate behaviour have never been higher. And getting the response to a major issue “wrong” can have seismic financial repercussions: a recent Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer study showed that 53 per cent of corporations who experienced a crisis had not seen share value recover to pre-crisis levels a year after their initial problem. The problem? Reputation risk management is too often an administrative exercise. When faced with a full-scale crisis, management teams often discover the planning they have in place is close to worthless. Some of the more spectacular corporate misses in terms of managing high risk situations over the past few years have included Volkswagen, Malaysia Airlines and FIFA. In every case, these
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examples were high profile and globally frothy: relevant and extremely interesting at an individual level and thus of high PI – personal interest. I am going to attempt to provide a future perspective on how to mitigate risk in the first place and then how to categorise and calibrate a crisis response should this be required.
ing situation one day. Building out from this new risk philosophy, there are practical things executives can do to maintain the initiative in high risk situations.
Managing risk in three steps 1
Embracing risk A starting point has to be a wholesale reassessment of enterprise risk management (ERM). This will sound contrary, but I believe the entire ERM philosophy is, in itself, an enormous risk. Why? Because it takes a far too analytical, cold-blooded look at business, seeking to make risk an existential issue. ERM is an exercise that is large, unwieldy and largely a box-ticking process. Ask Malaysia Airlines. Thomas Cook. Or Toshiba. How well did their ERM work for them? Instead of seeing risk as an ethereal concept, embrace it; internalise the premise that your company will face an appall-
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Agree what cannot happen: this is a powerful exercise that liberates your management team from the shackles of ERM and its linear, restricted imagination. It is extremely uncomfortable to sit with colleagues who are running finance and talk about the potential for high-level corruption within your financial operations. So allow your teams to discuss what can’t happen. After the inevitable initial silliness, you will be amazed at the richness and value of the thinking that evolves from the room. Unfettered, much of what your executives tell you cannot happen will form your new scenario planning around what can.
Risk
Charles Lan kester Senior Vice President Reputation Management, Ruder Finn Asia Charles Lankester has represented Fortune 100 and FTSE 250 corporations as they managed high risk situations with his own consultancy SharpeLankester. Prior to this Charles was the global chairman, crisis practice and regional managing director, Asia-Pacific corporate practice at Edelman. He had additional management responsibility for Edelman’s Greater China and North Asia operations. Formerly, he held senior roles with Weber Shandwick and Ogilvy.
Photos: www.thinkstock.com; Joyce Yung
2 Review and renew: hold your existing crisis planning up to the light. A close cousin of ERM, crisis management planning (an oxymoron if ever there was one) is often of more harm than good. People feel they are covered by the 200-page ring-binder in their bottom drawer. In 2016, your crisis planning needs careful interrogation. Corporations often still have analogue plans that are valueless in our digital world. Hint: if your plan begins a scholarly discussion about what a crisis is, I suggest you recycle it with immediate effect. A much better approach to risk management is from the bottom up. Undertake a ground floor assessment of perceived levels of preparedness from front-line executives in communications, legal, manufacturing and other relevant disciplines. Identify “real” attitudes and beliefs towards corporate planning across
relevant executives. What do we have? Is it taken seriously? Will it work? This data paints a highly accurate picture of what risk management elements and assets are present, what need improving and what are missing. 3 Use data: a third step is to know what is going to happen, before it does. The technology is now out there to help any business or individual to achieve high levels of prediction through online data and sentiment analysis. The statistics are extraordinary; one data analytics company is currently reporting on 72 billion records and delivering predictive insight on 7.2 billion every day. Identify these organisations. Subscribe to their services. It is the best investment you will ever make.
Dynamic risk management By working through these steps, any organisation will create a far more dynamic, engaged outlook towards crisis management. It will create the most valuable asset of all: the purchase of time. There are of course many other factors vital to good preparedness, specifically leadership from the CEO and innovative, challenging organisational stress-tests with social media at their centre. What is the overriding element that will drive a successful response to a potential business-killing threat in 2016? How does your organisation treat risk? Is it a dot on the horizon, an interloper or a statistical anomaly? Or does it sit next to you, a permanent fixture and your next phone call? How you answer these questions will determine your corporation’s valuation long after the crisis has passed. It will also accurately predict whether your organisation will prevail when your world turns upside down and the CNN cameras are pointing directly at you and your chief executive officer.
•
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"A much better approach to risk management is from the bottom up."
Reputation hot spot: cyber risk in 2016 Two questions that every chief executive officer and their team must be able to answer in 2016: did we do everything we could to prevent the cyber-attack we are experiencing? Do we have the resources to fix it fast? Meeting three priorities will help answer these important questions: Priority #1: have a game plan. The media will always want to know the “who, what, when, where, why and how” about an incident. In particular, they will want to know how much data, particularly customer data, has been stolen. Priority #2: get ready to answer tough questions. Particularly if there is evidence that management did not invest suitable time, attention or money in keeping their data and networks as secure as possible. Less than optimal security levels in 2016 will not be treated kindly. Priority #3: cyber will move up the CEO agenda. Fast. There is really no way to stop a dedicated hacker, just as there is no way to stop a dedicated thief. They will break in. The choice you have to make? Did you do everything possible to stop the thieves? Or did you leave your doors (and your customers’ wallets) wide open to attack?
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Digital
Brand communications in the digital age Technology is moving the goal posts of communications. By T a n u j a K e h a r
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Photo: www.thinkstock.com
B
efore I start, please indulge me while I share a personal anecdote. I have twin nieces, Rhea and Saanya, all of eight years old. When I was their age, I played board games, as do they. But they play them on their Ipads. When Android phones were making an advent in India, one of the twins helped my brother-inlaw configure his email identification on his new android phone. Here the words of American computer scientist Alan Kay ring true: “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born”. For my twin nieces and for every generation next, today’s technology is a way of life and deeply embedded in what they consider as normal. This generation will be tomorrow’s consumers and decision makers. Another interesting facet is the ever transient nature of technology exemplified by the different lengths of time taken by different communication mediums to reach 50 million users: while radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users, television took 13, the internet took only four and the Ipod took just three. Today, communications is real-time therefore our response, as communicators and marketers, also needs to undergo a significant change. More statistics underline the changing world we live in: With 1.5 billion users, if Facebook was a country, it would be the most populous country in the world. In India today, we are in the midst of an IT and technology-based startup revolution. There are twenty-something co-founders of dotcoms with strong funding pipelines. For example, Flipkart, an e-commerce portal much like Alibaba, is just about eight years old and already valued at $15.2 billion.
Digital
Shifting the communication goal posts Technological advancements in communications have led to social media becoming a vital part of the communication mix for brand communications. Consequently, the communication goalposts are changing. Changing goal post # 1: flow of messages. Earlier, the message flow was vertical and now the message flow is horizontal. Brands are no longer the sole custodian of their brand’s messaging: that power is now shared between the brand and its customers. The customer is talking back, and brands need to listen first and tell later. Let me share an incident which occurred with a global fast food giant in Pune, India, some months back. A woman wanted to buy an ice-cream for an underprivileged child so she took him into the outlet. However, some employees of the food giant refused entry to the child and so the woman posted this incident on Facebook along with a photograph of the child. And the post went viral. Later, the incident was reported by the national press and the company issued an apology. The irony is that the said company spends immensely on corporate social responsibility activities but came across as rather insensitive when it refused the entry of an underprivileged child. So while the company spends money in advertising its products and building its brand image, such incidents, highlighted by social media, show how socially irresponsibly the company behaved in a real-life situation. There is a constant chatter and conversation happening on social media and it is imperative for every brand to listen intently. Changing goal post #2: reach. The second paradigm change is that earlier mass communications reached millions and affected thousands. Now, thanks to targeted reach, digital communications reaches thousands and affects thousands. Let me share another personal anecdote: I started my career in J Walter Thompson
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in the media planning and buying function. We made media plans for brands by optimising the reach and frequency of the message. With the advent of social media, the reach is targeted and the outcome is measurable. In fact, the reach is so targeted that often times, the product/service actually finds customers. How many times have you noticed yourself being inundated with travel adverts after you did a Google search on nice places to visit? On the downside, a part of you may ponder why someone is watching your online activities; but the fact remains that on social media, the brand can find the customer. Changing goal post # 3: customer journey. The third big shift is in the customer journey itself. This emanates from the fact that the flow of communications has become horizontal. Earlier the comments and feedback of existing customers were rarely audible or visible. Now, customer advocacy and feedback forms a significant part of the purchase funnel. For instance, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2014, 82 per cent trust the opinion of a person like themselves while only 14 per cent trust advertising.
The three-pronged goals of digital strategy To be prepared for these shifting communication goal posts, the brand’s communications strategy needs to focus on three major prongs. The first prong is the brand message: generating and highlighting the positive messages and incorporating the requisite key words so the search engines give a higher ranking are all important. It is important to build on positive feedback from customers. For example, I saw a Twitter post by a customer of a garment store appreciating the store because it had refunded his money since the size did not fit him. The positive content generated was worth more than that one sale. Likewise, it is important to appropriately respond to the negative content and
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Change
I
Found in translation From Bayer to Covestro: a case study on cross-cultural insights into navigating your way through a corporate change. By C y n t h i a C h a n
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communication director 1/2016
f you have kids or pets, you will certainly understand what separation anxiety means. Separation anxiety is triggered when kids or dogs become upset because of separation from their guardians, the people they are attached to. However, this kind of distress is not only home-bound, it happens as well in corporate world. We are not Cesar Millan, but as communicators we can help make this unnatural situation less stressful. I would like to draw on our recent experience of managing the change of my company, Covestro, formerly known as Bayer MaterialScience, which has recently emerged as an independent company from the 150-year-old Bayer Group. On September 18 2014, Bayer announced plans to transform Bayer into a pure life-science company. Essentialy, that means: • Bayer is to focus its strategy on being a global leader in Life Sciences • Material Science has the potential to deliver significant value as a stand-alone business • A demerger will strengthen both Bayer’s and MaterialScience’s capabilities to adequately invest and develop their portfolios The announcement set in motion a significant change process. A new company with a new name had to be established, somewhere around 17,000 employees around the world had to be moved or integrated into the new company, new systems and processes had to be established and a new culture moving forward had to be established. All these have to be ready to get the company to emerge onto the world stage as an independent company on September 2015. The company was further launched onto the stock exchange by means of IPO on October 6 2015.
Change
A new old company
“To become an independent company, we need a new name and a new logo. To this end we harnessed an external party for help, because finding a new name and logo is a highly complex and also legally challenging process.”
The demerger posed a big challenge to us as communicators. Setting up a totally new company might be easy, but how to establish a ‘new old’ company with 80 years of history and pre-set corporate values from the mother company? With about 30 production sites around the world, the company employed approximately 14,300 people working in different disciplines, from chemists in the research and development laboratories to shift workers at production plants. So how to minimise distractions caused by the change so that colleagues can focus on driving the business during the carveout period? Also the whole demerger took about 12 months to complete before the new independent company Covestro emerged in the market place. How to keep colleagues motivated throughout the 12-month period of transition? A corporate change as such also generates an air of uncertainty and even potential doom that looms over customers and employees. It makes everyone nervous. Customers may switch, key employees may jump ship. Competitors may go for our jugular. Somehow, we needed to make sure customers and employees remain confident in the company’s future and continue to attract talents to join the company. To effectively mitigate all these issues, we began with a stakeholder map, listing the target audience their key concerns, communication objectives, tailored key messages and communication channels. Once the stakeholder mapping was done, the next step was to turn it into work streams to figure out who will receive what and when, with a list of deliverables and key dates so that we could get updates and inputs from different parties including corporate legal, finance, accounting, tax, IT, corporate secretary and business units.
communication director 1/2016
Transparency: proactive communication in a human way Throughout the year-long change process, one of my key learnings was to “think like your stakeholders. Put yourself in their shoes”. I wanted to anticipate their concerns and questions and have direct interaction with them. Therefore, shortly after the internal announcement was made, there was a cascade of personal outreach to the different teams, from the management down to all teams in the organisation around the world. We wanted to make sure every office and production site would have the presence of key management who would tell them the announcement in person at nearly the same time, rather than them hearing the news from the media with utter astonishment. A face-to-face meeting also gave people the opportunity to stand up and ask questions, to clarify any doubts. As our CEO Patrick Thomas put it during the Town Hall meeting: “If you can’t get an answer from your manager, go to your boss’ boss or your boss’ boss’ boss. If you don’t get an answer there, make it public and seek an answer – write to an Exco member or post the question directly to me.” Globally the company also set up a platform where colleagues from around the world can put questions related to the announcement. A core team will reply individually through the platform and categorise them under different headings. We also set up a separate section highlighting everything related to human resources as that is the focus of most of the questions.
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Career
“The next big thing” Despite steady progress over the last half-century, gender equality remains an issue in the workplace, where women struggle to break the glass ceiling and take their place at the top of industry. At ANZ, Amanda Gome pioneered a programme called Notable Women that inspired women to make their voice heard through social and digital platforms. We spoke to Amanda as she expands the programme in new directions. Interview by Jan Wisniewski
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hat led to the establishment of the Notable Women at ANZ? There were two things. One, we wanted to become the leading social bank but we had a problem in that many of our women didn’t want to be social. Second, for our BlueNotes publication we stipulated that we wanted 40 per cent of the content to come from women. However, and this is a problem that I have come across in 25 years as a business journalist and a publisher, we couldn’t inspire women to be interviewed
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or to have a voice. We got nowhere near the 40 per cent so I thought, “right, I spend a lot of time explaining to women why they should change, I’m now at a bank where there is a command-control model, so I am going to get the CEO to tell the women they have to do a programme and this programme is going to show them how to be visible.” Then I realised that, with this different approach, once they actually get a taste of being visible and they understand how it assists in results with customers, stakeholders and staff, it transforms them.
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Notab l e Wom en: th e r es u lts • Social engaged leaders: following
the Notable Women programme held at ANZ, 90 per cent of participants now regard themselves as leaders in their field.
•B ecoming top communicators: over three-quarters say that they are now more confident creating content for events and 81 per cent have more confidence in presenting. • Advancing business goals: about 90 per cent say they are advancing business goals through increased professional visibility while 97 per cent are using social media for insights to meet business goals. • Advancing female leader’s careers: 71 per cent say they now have the skills and confidence to aspire to higher leadership positions. Nearly 20 per cent have been promoted in the past year.
• Advancement of other women,
changing culture: 87 per cent have become involved in initiatives to help other women build their visibility, careers and social skills.
Career
How were various aspects of the programme implemented? We started off with a trial with senior partners at Deloitte. We learnt a number of things. One was that media and communications people usually didn’t put women forward because most lacked the skills and didn’t want to. So we learnt from the pilot to include media and communications professionals in the training. We then rolled it out across six sessions that covered the various aspects they had to learn. These included constructing social profiles, learning how to be safe on social, building influence, turning a speech into a story they could post and learning how to have conversations and be authentic. The other lesson we added, which surprised me, was networking. They didn’t see networking as a good thing – many of them believed that networking meant that you were advancing yourself at someone’s expense. So we added a networking session to show them how to build really strong networks.
Photos: www.thinkstock.com; Private
Your programme could potentially pose a challenge to those taking part. Could you tell me how the employees at ANZ responded to Notable Women? At the first session they sat there very crossly with arms folded, and if it wasn’t for the CEO sending them an invitation that stated “you will attend”, they wouldn’t have been there. It really wasn’t until half way through the second session that you could see the change in the participants. They suddenly understood that they had missed opportunities and promotions. There is a real moment when they acquiesce and grab your arm and say, “I should have been doing this years ago!” From there, they’re off. Is it possible to see the tangible success of the Notable Women programme at ANZ? This was surprising. The results spread across the expected areas. For example, women are now advancing the bank’s reputation because they are having influence in their areas of expertise
and they are appearing in media and at events, and having conversations on social media. But as an example of a benefit that wasn’t expected, they began getting promoted. The participants say as a result of Notable Women they improved on actually meeting their KPIs. Because they are using these ideas when dealing with customers, they are making more sales. They are bringing in more business to the bank, they are building up much better influencer engagement with employees, they’re selling more and as you would imagine that is what gets you promoted. Now as you look to take the programme outside of ANZ, what do you perceive to be the benefits for the wider business community in Australia and Asia Pacific? I’ve done the programme for female leaders, which includes CEOs and non-executive directors, but in particularly that whole group of women just below CEO level. Companies all around the world say it is very difficult to get women into that pipeline. The system in many ways is stacked against women, but in regards to getting into the pipeline there is an issue with the women themselves. This programme gives them the set of skills – past participants have said they are more ambitious, much more confident and resilient because they suddenly feel like they are more comfortable being visible. One of the big benefits is that it is going to expand that pipeline of talent for people to select management board members, CEOs and of course non-executive directors. But beyond this we are going to hear women’s voices in business. Far more women are going to be out there in the business pages, on the business websites and will be speaking on their areas of expertise and role modelling for younger women.
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Amanda Gome CEO, Notable Media Amanda Gome is CEO of Notable Media, a communications and marketing business for executives and corporates to help them use social media, digital platforms and content to build communities, conversations and business results. At her former role as head of digital and social media at ANZ she led the bank in their digital and social content strategies.
As you mentioned in your first answer, Notable Woman sprang up from ANZ’s online platform, BlueNotes. What are the opportunities that platforms like these present for organisations like ANZ? It’s the next big thing. The advantages from a communications point of view is you can set yourself up as the thought leader or as the company who best services certain types of customer. You are directly communicating with your customers – you don’t have to use ad space, you don’t have to use enormous amounts of money for advertising. For a customer-focused site you also have the opportunity for two out of maybe 10 pieces of content to have direct lead activities. You can drive sales from this but do so in a really professional way – by talking with customers rather than forcing them to buy something. It is not just providing content that is valuable to them, but also for you to distribute that content via a social network into all sorts of communities that you wouldn’t have been able to get to in the past. It is a great way of contacting new audiences.
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Social Media
A dialogue manager in a converged world
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t was not Omar Al Mukhtar who introduced the Arab Spring to Egypt but a Google executive, Wael Ghonim, whose campaign on Facebook and the famous #Jan25 tweet that undermined Hosni Mubarak’s political regime in Egypt. Similarly, it was not a management consultant who shaped customer service benchmarks at United Airlines but a YouTube video released by Dave Carol and his band, earning more than 150,000 views for his song about how United Airlines broke his guitar during a transit from Chicago to Omaha. Social movements like the French revolution or American war of Independence were the result of intellectuals indulging in meaningful dialogue. Today, in the 20th century, we are seeing digital Darwinism – where opinion is shaped through social media discussion and results in revolution. Whether those revolutions are riot for good or bad, the fact remains that social media has taken over as central axis of socio-geo-politico- economic and business diplomacy in the world.
Dialogue model
How can you build up long-lasting relationships with dialogue partners and use social media to attract and engage quality customers? By J a y d i p C h o w d h u ry
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Dialogue and the way communications is driven across industry – or for that matter in society – is not the same as it used to be. Today, publicists, equity analysts, advertisers or even lobbyists or policy change advocates have all taken refuge to social or digital media. In their book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Rice and Jack Trout wrote that “in PR we pray, and in advertising we pay.” With the confluence of social and digital media, perhaps we have to write a new book, one that talks about a converged smart world, where customers in a crowd-shared model build communication dialogues for the brand, not the other way round. Today, news
Photo: www.thinkstock.com
Social Media
breaks over social media, followed by the conventional media. It is believed that 25 per cent of Twitter users are journalists. So, once you have built the right message in the right context you have won half the battle, as this story will surely travel across the multitude of social media word-of-mouth to land up as a big story in print press. To reach out to either a normative audience such as government and policy makers, or formative such as customers, or even diffusive stakeholders such as media or market analysts, you don’t need to pray but be prudent enough to devise effective messaging on the right social tool. Celebrities and top rated equity research analysts are paid heavily or used as influencers to tweet about a beauty product or a company’s stock valuation. Opinion building and social media activism on important policy matters have started affecting an organisation and its services in the oil, gas, infrastructure, and telecom sectors. Gone is the supremacy of television: a YouTube video is preferred over television commercials. A Facebook post is more effective than an in-house newsletter as mode of employee communications. Press releases are optimised and the popularity of online press like Huffington Post over the 'pink' press is ever increasing. These facts point to the same conclusion: the age of social media has arrived, wherein conventional media will stay with us but won’t enjoy its traditional monopoly. And as that monopoly ends, communications structures and models change from indirect to direct influence. Here, the network can follow its customers, wherever and whichever platform he or she visits. The good part of this story is that both dialogue managers and their customers are in a win-win situation, weeding out many unwanted intruders who often dilute and digress, misinterpreting core messages during the dialogue process as its flows from organisation to customers and stakeholders through conventional print or electronic media.
A change in dialogue With the influx of social media core to dialogue tools, the way communications is driven has evolved altogether to a new platform and model: • Word-of-mouth, which used to be the most influential mode of communications, is today seen as social media conversation. • Advertising (second most influential) has evolved as digital strategy. • In public relations, dialogue managers are no longer praying to media houses but opening up avenues of dialogue over a plethora of social media, and pushing customized publication over these tools and channels reaching directly to the target audience. • With these evolutions, market research is shifting to online big data; real time data mining and instant feedback to change a campaign is the name of the game now. • Customers today can view, give feedback as well as buy content or products simultaneouslyopening up new opportunities and higher levels of transparency, trust as information moves from dialogue managers to customers.
The binary code of social media Instead of zeros and ones, the binary code of social media is ‘like’ and ‘share’: these two ‘codes’ are behind any complex online social media campaign or digital strategy. Built on these two codes, social media strategy revolves around either success or failure. What looks simple can be decisive, making or breaking a brand in the marketplace with things going awfully wrong and/or going viral. On the other hand, a positive wave can change the mindset of your customers,
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“Today, we live in a real time world, where instant feedback is factored to change the plot of a movie or features of a new product.”
and result in overnight success of a brand or campaign. Up until yesterday, brand owners were not sure if their product was liked by customers while the campaign was running, unless it was reflected in the increase or stagnation of sales volume. Today, we live in a real time world, where instant feedback is factored to change the plot of a movie or features of a new product. The rule of thumb is simple: if they like, they will share, and if they share, it will go viral. So, it all depends upon ‘likeability’ and ‘shareability’ of a product or its campaign over social media.
A strategy to increase reach Link your Pinterest pin to your Facebook post, which links to your blog, which in turn features a video from your YouTube channel. This could be one out of many tactics to increase your reach but, again, the bottom line is simple: content has to be liked and shared. Accordingly, choose your medium or tools, which can be interconnected to create a chain reaction.
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Brand
Building consumer trust in Asia Pacific Authenticity, localisation and social media mastery are some of the ingredients required for building trust in Asia Pacific. By E l e n a Ar a u
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or the past three decades and following the financial recession, much of people’s trust and respect for brands has steadily deteriorated, mainly due to the fact that a lot of brands fail to acknowledge what people really want – a product or service that is meaningful and will improve their lives in a tangible way. Instead, many organisations stayed true to the old advertising principle of bigger, better, faster. Building consumer trust is in fact about knowing your audience and learning how to reach them in a way that is personal and appeals to their needs and values. There is, however, a big difference between developed and developing markets. In Asia, for example, people are attached six times more to brands than
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in Europe or USA. According to Havas Media Group’s 2013 Meaningful Brands report, there is a huge opportunity in Asia Pacific (APAC) to make a difference with much higher levels of brand attachment than the rest of the world. Among all the regions, APAC records the strongest relationship between consumers and brands with 53 per cent of people acknowledging that brands improve their quality of life. These figures are relatively high when compared with the percentages of 28 per cent and 29 per cent found in western Europe and the US respectively. According to the same report, 61 per cent of people in India trust brands, rising to 68 per cent in China. However, this figure was significantly lower in Japan (46 per cent) and Indonesia (53 per cent). Seventy-one per cent of people in Indonesia, 75 per cent in China, 82 per cent in India and 63 per cent in Japan agree that large
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companies should be actively involved in solving social / environmental problems. Sixty-seven per cent of people in India, 66 per cent in China and 62 per cent in Indonesia think that brands can play a role in improving their quality of life and well-being. The expectation of Japanese consumers was significantly lower at 37 per cent.
Favouring the local flavour Authenticity is key in Asia. When building brand awareness, the storytelling and content need to focus on a genuine and more engaging approach. The APAC consumer is mobile-enabled and socially informed, as Asia’s first generation of online shoppers evolve beyond ecommerce marketplaces, they are em-
Brand
Amplifying the message
Photo: www.thinkstock.com
“Authenticity is key in Asia. When building brand awareness, the storytelling and content need to focus on a genuine and more engaging approach.” bracing Direct to consumer sites that offer a local touch. Consumers in Asia’s emerging markets are the most socially conscious shoppers in the world. They need to trust who they’re buying from and they care whether these companies are committed to creating positive impact on their society. Gary Muddyman, chief executive officer and founder of Conversis, a localisation and translation agency that has a large number of international clients trading in the APAC region, said “As the Asian Pacific population tends to go more and more online, the rising middle class of consumers, a trend that is typical for an emerging market, tend to favour localised content. While wealthier costumers are comfortable with buying goods or services in English, what we noticed with our clients is that the middle class population tends to perceive localised ecommerce content and payment methods as more trustworthy. In general, consumers are ten times more likely to buy services or goods if addressed in their own language. This is a very important step in building brand trust.”
In building consumer trust, engagement is also a key ingredient. The power of social media cannot be underestimated as online word-of-mouth can turn a campaign from ground breaking to contagious, a cultural phenomenon or even legendary. Having a passionate brand ambassador that is aligned with your brand values can be a powerful ally to amplify your message, especially in APAC, where online influencers tend to be very popular. The threat is that online brand advocates can quickly become adversaries with the power to damage credibility and reputation if things go wrong. Therefore, it is recommended to have a communication crisis plan in place. Monitoring or intelligence gathering is an essential component of both crisis prevention and crisis response. Knowing what’s being said about you on social media, in traditional media, by your employees, customers, and other stakeholders often allows you to catch a negative “trend” that, if unchecked, turns into a crisis. Muddyman added, “If a crisis does occur, it is vital to have a holding statement ready for release as soon as possible and in the local language”. This first response should be prepared in advanced and based on a variety of scenarios to which the organisations is perceived to be vulnerable. The main massages should focus on acknowledging the problem and reassuring.
Trial by fire The way brands prepare and respond to crisis has a huge impact on the way the brand is perceived. An inadequate response could drastically diminish the level of consumer trust to a point where it is nearly impossible to build that reputation back up. On the other hand, a proper and efficient response could have a positive impact on your reputation and elevate your image.
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E l e n a Ar a u
Senior Communications Executive, Conversis Elena Arau is a senior communications executive at Conversis, a translation and localisation agency. Her work portfolio includes technology, cybersecurity and luxury accounts across the EMEA region. She formerly held executive communications roles at Dubai-based agencies Active and Matrix.
Southeast Airways are a good example of a successful crisis management. Their digital team monitors social media incessantly to anticipate any vulnerabilities so that they can prevent a major backlash. When a crisis situation did occur, with a hole popping open in the fuselage of a plane going from Phoenix to Sacramento, California, the first tweet about it was online within nine minutes. Immediate response is critical in a situation like this. As the APAC customer journey is evolving rapidly and brands are looking to grow in China, Korea or Japan, companies have to collect market knowledge with which to formulate their strategy. Localising content is key in a society where cultural values are pivotal and as a brand it is essential to understand the market needs and appeal to them with a product or service wrapped in cultural references to make it conceivable.
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Corporate Responsibility
An introspective journey
Building a new future in Malaysia with the Prudence Foundation
How Prudential Corporation Asia built a community engagement platform that not only responds to specific societal needs but creates shared value for business, stakeholders and communities. By M a rc F a n cy
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orporate social responsibility or community engagement is a topic that is increasingly attracting the attention of leaders across the business world. Each company charts its own course in this area and it is interesting to see how different companies approach community engagement. The graphic on the next page was developed by the chairman of Prudence Foundation, Donald Kanak. It depicts our own corporation’s efforts and journey in the corporate social responsibility space and eventually helped to lay the blue print for our Foundation’s strategy. Like many multinational corporations, Prudential Corporation Asia has been very active in this space since its inception in Asia more than 90 years
Photo: Oscar Nava
Corporate Responsibility
ago. To provide some context, Prudential Corporation Asia oversees the Asian operations of Prudential plc, which currently comprises life insurance and asset management businesses in 14 countries across the region, supported by more than 550,000 staff and agents. In almost each country in which the company operates it is one of the largest financial institutions, and like most organisations it has had an active approach too corporate social responsibility in each market. Six years ago we undertook a review of our efforts in this space. This was an opportunity to recalibrate and take stock of what we were doing, why we were doing it and whether it was the right approach. For us, the right approach was evaluated in terms of focus, impact, engagement, use of shareholders’ money, governance and long-term strategy. Our approach to corporate social responsibility was the same as any other business initiative. Being active in corporate social responsibility was never in question. Our engagement in this field has always had the full support of the board, and it is very much part of our culture. The organisation has always had a clear identity with how its sees itself within the community context. As a life insurer, our businesses provide protection, security and risk mitigation for individuals and families; so by the nature of our business, we meet a social need. So investing beyond the business component was a very natural extension and has been a key stone of our culture and identity for many years. Community engagement was more an opportunity to reaffirm the purpose and our role in addressing key societal needs that are beneficial for both the community and the business. To use the above chart as a barometer – like most institutions we were somewhere between corporate social responsibility 1.0 and 3.0. We were a responsible company, we made financial contributions to good causes and had some strong volunteering initiatives in many of our markets. But was it a coordinated
Corporate social responsibility is evolving and each company has its own journey.
CSR 1.0
1.0 + Financial contribution
• Do no harm • Create jobs + products/services • Abide by law • Make profit • Pay taxes
CSR 4.0
CSR 3.0
CSR 2.0
?
3.0 + Strategic engagement
2.0 + Volunteering & Community uplift
Source: Donald Kanak, ‘Raising the Bar: Strategic focus in the CSR journey’
effort? Was it strategic? Was the social engagement yielding social returns, were we maximising on our engagement, did we have an identity or defined purpose? The question we asked ourselves was what did corporate social responsibility 4.0 and beyond look like, what should it look like, and were we anywhere near achieving that?
1 Identify key social needs across Asia • What are they? • Where could we add value?
2 Leverage Prudential’s strengths and focus areas • Protection • Security • Risk mitigation
Prudence Foundation The output of this holistic review was a decision to set up a dedicated platform to drive our community engagement efforts in Asia. Two options were considered: one was to simply set up a regional corporate social responsibility function, the other was to set up a charitable entity. There is no right or wrong answer and each company will take its own path, but our direction was to establish the Prudence Foundation as a dedicated vehicle for the purpose of social engagement activities, fully funded by Prudential Corporation Asia, but separate from the business operations so there is clarity to its purpose. The strategy we developed was quite straight forward.
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3 Implement strategically • Less is more • Explore partnerships • Make meaningful, lasting solutions In terms of key societal needs we decided to focus on three areas as our pillars: children, education and disaster preparedness and recovery. Henceforth all activities in the community engagement space would fall under these three
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Agenda Setter
The millennial workplace The next generation of communicators have arrived in your office. Two of the brightest give their take on millennial wants and needs and what this means for the evolution of the workplace. By J AN WISNIEWSKI
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hether it is “The truth about managing millennials” (Forbes.com, January 31 2016), or “Why the millennials in your office hate their jobs” (New York Post, January 29 2016), or even “3 reasons why millennials are getting fired” (Inc., August 4 2015), the media is awash with coverage of the generation who are about to run the world. However opinions and facts about people born between 1984 and 1996, otherwise known as Generation Y, vary greatly. In 2013 Joel Stein infamously suggested in Time Magazine that millennials are “the most threatening and exciting generation since the baby boomers” – narcissistic, lazy and entitled career opportunists who are likely to move swiftly away from your company. On the other hand, in the same year as Stein’s Time Magazine article, PwC published its NextGen survey and suggested that Generation Y are looking for greater flexibility in getting the job done and simply less willing to sacrifice their personal lives to work, compared with generations past.
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To get an inside view of this controversial generation, Communication Director spoke to two award-winning young communicators Pia Warburton is corporate communications manager at Cook Medial Asia-Pacific. Last year, she took home the Young Communicator of the Year award at the Asia-Pacific Communication Summit for her work on a campaign to spread awareness of the harmful effects of smoking in China. Sonia Khan, press officer at the Department of Work and Pensions UK, won the equivalent prize at the European Communication Summit for her campaign that challenged attitudes deterring women from taking up roles in male-dominated industries (both events are co-hosted by Communication Director). Both Sonia and Pia contest the generalisation of young professionals that appears in media coverage. Instead, they suggest we take a more nuanced approach to defining the nature of millennials. Diversity of background and individual needs must be considered, they agree. “I don’t think you can define a generation in a couple of words and that’s why we find conflicting reports,” says Sonia.
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“In some cases we’re told we’re work-shy and lazy, in others we’re not as fun as previous generations and we’re too career focused.” Pia, meanwhile, notes that many media opinions about millennials come from Generation X and baby boomers, and should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt. “This needs to be taken into account when we look at assessments and opinion pieces on Gen Ys – how much of their own values are being projected on to evaluations of Gen Ys?” she asks.
Workplace requirements But what of the idea promoted by the 2014 Pew report, Millennials in Adulthood, that millennials are more individualistic – or self-centred, depending on your perspective? Pia puts this in a historical context: “Millennials think more individually because of the environment they are were brought up in, compared to their baby boomer parents – secure, nurtured and relatively free from war and disasters. They have the time and luxu-
Photos: www.thinkstock.com (l.); Kenneth Lim (r.); Private (r.)
Agenda Setter
ry, to an extent, of dreaming of greener pastures. Given the internet and social media, millennials are being shown more and more what success can look like.” Sonia agrees that young people’s aims differ to those of past generations, in part because of the success of their peers: “Our goalposts are different. They’re not easier or harder than those of the previous generation. They’re different and that’s how we should see them. We’re surrounded by successful millennials who are opening up their paths of success. No longer is someone’s rise to the top a secret. Thanks to LinkedIn and Ted Talks, there’s more choice and help than ever before.” The moving set of goal posts that Sonia mentions also applies to workplace desires. PWC’s NextGen report explains that millennials want flexibility in their working environment – 64 per cent of millennials would like to occasionally work from home and 66 per cent of millennials would like to shift their work hours. This generation also places value on team-orientated cultures and regular feedback with 41 per cent of millennials wishing to be rewarded or recognised for their work at least monthly, compared to 30 per cent of non-millennials. They also focus on productivity rather than long working hours with 71 per cent of millennials reporting that work demands interfere with their personal lives. The answers of our young communicators touch on these points. Sonia gives three critical criteria for what she as a millennial values in a workplace, drawing on her own experience in running an award-winning campaign: “Creativity, flexibility and support. When I suggested the idea behind #notjustforboys, my senior management team were very open to it. Having the opportunity to explore it made me value my employers more. I was given the space to be creative and to nurture a campaign that was digital first – a real unknown.” “The focus for many should be getting the job done. Once you know how to do that, you can look at whether the established professional practice helps
or hurts that. I appreciate that in some environments, certain processes are key. However, there should always be room for manoeuvre and a want to do better. Otherwise how do we respond in crisis or times that challenge these structures? Having a base is good, flexibility is even better.” Perhaps an organisation that is able to provide a solid structural foundation for its employees in their work while also giving them the opportunity to innovate and adapt when new challenges arise is the ideal millennial workplace? Pia also stresses the importance of a cooperative culture and an open man-
“Our goalposts are different. They’re not easier or harder than those of the previous generation.” agement style, shedding light on an interesting millennial dynamic, the desire to have individual freedom while feeling the support amongst a team: “An important aspect of what I value in a working environment is the people: those on my team, colleagues that I interact with within the company and most importantly who I report to and their management style. I value a boss who gives direction and at the same time trusts me to work independently and get the job done well. This is possibly one of the biggest factors when choosing a job.” “As millennials – who I believe are a generation who greatly value feedback – progress up the management ladder, we will see a change in management style towards one that will take more time in giving feedback to their staff.”
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Left: Pia Warburton, Corporate Communications Manager, Cook Medical AsiaPacific; Right: Sonia Khan, Press Officer, Department of Work and Pensions UK
Aside from the suggestion that managerial styles are transforming, Pia also addresses another popular criticism of millennials, their apparent inability to stay in one job. In a 2015 survey of global millennials by Deloitte, Mind the Gaps, two-thirds said they hoped to be working for a different organisation in five years or sooner. Pia suggests it’s a hunger to learn, not an inability to stick to a job that causes millennials to look for new opportunities: “We need to take a look at why millennials have the desire to change jobs every two to four years in our early 20s. This could be down to many factors including the desire for bigger challenges, better prospects and learning opportunities elsewhere.”
Millennials in communication With the drive to learn and to create better working practices, millennials offer organisations an opportunity for greater and more creative output. But what about the communications field in particular? What special capabilities does this generation bring to communications? Both Sonia and Pia propose the main benefit millennial communicators carry with them is their upbringing as digital natives. Sonia says, “Millennials bring a great understanding of technology to communications. As a generation, particularly
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interview
“You need to be involved in addressing this issue.” In whatever form it takes, the scourge of slavery remains tangled in the supply chains of too many industries. Matthew Friedman of the nongovernmental organisation The Mekong Club is on a mission to jolt the private sector into action with a strategy of encouragement and education to end this terrible tradition . i n t e r v i e w By J a n W i s n i e w s k i
Photo: www.picture-alliance.com
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interview
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hat does slavery look like today? It is estimated that there are 36 million people in slavery around the world. Out of that about 25 per cent of the victims are in forced prostitution. The remaining 75 per cent are in forced labour and out of that number 60 per cent are associated with supply chains. So there is a direct relationship with the private sector in this particular issue. Today, around 4.5 million women and girls are in forced prostitution. In addition to that there a lot of people who are in forced labour circumstances associated with supply chains. For example, the Thai sea food industry has around 350,000 fishermen, and approximately 20 per cent of them are in forced labour. Sometimes these boats will go out for four years at a time and these guys will work 18 hours a day, seven days a week. To get them to work that hard, they are often given stimulants. If they get injured or get ill or if the captain doesn’t like them, they are often thrown off the boats. Or sweatshops, which typically have to do with debt bondage. A person in Myanmar hears that there is work in Thailand, knocks on the factory door, the factory owner says, “I will pay you 50 dollars a month but you have to stay in the factory.” The person goes in, works for 16 or 17 hours a day for two months, asks for his money and then the factory owner says, “Well it actually costs you 54 dollars to be here. I’m only paying you 50 dollars, so you owe me money”. This form of debt bondage holds people in places for years and years.
“The expectation is that, if slavery is making our products, consumers should know this. We are seeing a change in the way human trafficking has been perceived.”
Has our understanding of human trafficking changed in recent years? For the first 15 years human trafficking was all about sex trafficking, but within the last five or six years forced labour issues have started to surface and then within the last two years, the issues of supply chains and the private sector have become emerging issues. On the supply chain side, people claim that, if you look at three or four tiers of a supply chain below the top tier, very few people know what is happening. There could be slavery down there. Legislation is being put in place in the US, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and in the UK. Both
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issue focus
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issue focus
Issue Focus
Trust and communications 68
Essentials to be a trusted communication partner 60
Trust in the trusting region
Some characteristics communications leaders need to show to be worthy recipients of trust By Aniisu K. Verghese
The Edelman Trust Index 2016 reveals important insights into trust across Asia Pacific By David Brain
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Building trust in new markets Long-term relationship building in western and eastern markets By Phil Riggins and David Ashton
What we mean when we talk about trust The importance of betrayal, transparency and the pursuit of trustworthiness Interview with Brennan Jacoby 73
Feeling the heat
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Just one click Visual cues help create trust in online retail: an important part of building belief in the organisation By May O. Lwin and Andrew Z.H. Yee 80
Repairing broken promises How the Volkswagen emission crisis shook confidence in one of the world’s most recognised brands By Thorsten Hofmann
First-hand insights into trust building from leading corporate communicators Interview with members of the Asia-Pacific Association of Communication Directors
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Issue Focus
Trust in the trusting region
The 2016 Edelman Trust Index reveals the Asia-Pacific region as one of the globe’s most trusting. However the region’s cultural diversity must be taken into account when examining citizen perceptions of Asia-Pacific institutions. By D a v i d Br a i n
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Issue Focus
First the good news
T rust is an essential asset for any business anywhere in the world, which is why we have been measuring and assessing it now for 16 years. But trust is an outcome, not a message. It is driven by behaviour first and communications second. It is a function of the tangible products and services a business provides, and the way in which it provides them. It is driven by how a business treats its customers, its employees, its partners, the environment and the communities it lives with. And yes, it is also about the way in which it communicates. In its most profound sense, everyone knows what trust is and everyone understands and has experienced how trust is earned and how it is lost. But despite this, the behaviours that drive trust are often victims of the day-to-day pressures of running a business effectively. And that is dangerous. If a company becomes distrusted, people globally are 48 per cent less likely to buy its products or services. And if it is actively trusted, they are 68 per cent more likely to buy its products or services. So measuring and managing trust should be a mission critical function for every business and every chief executive officer. At the same time, the overall findings vary significantly from market to market, proving that whilst trust needs to be part of any CEOs job, it also needs to be managed market by market.
This year trust in the four institutions of business, government, media and NGOs is up around the world, but it is only the developing economies of Asia and the Middle East that can feel good about that. First the good news: trust has recovered to pre-great recession levels around the world with NGOs regaining their number one position in most markets. Trust in NGOs to do what is right globally is at 67 per cent of the informed public (top 15 per cent of population) and 55 per cent of the general population (all respondents) – both rises of four points. Business has seen even higher respective rises of six points and five percentage points, with media and government enjoying smaller rises too.
“The behaviours that drive trust are often victims of the day-to-day pressures of running a business effectively.�
Business and government In our Edelman Trust Index (where we combine the scores for all four institutions), the top six countries are all developing economies with five of them being in Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APACMEA). This is true of both the informed public and general population. As always, if an economy is improving, people tend to confer trust on the institutions they believe are responsible for that. And with countries like Poland, Japan and Russia at the foot of the table, it is safe to infer the opposite as well. Perhaps not surprising then is that APACMEA developing economies also make up four of the global top five when it comes to trusting business to do what is right . That said, Japan remains firmly rooted to the bottom.
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Less intuitive perhaps, but now an Edelman Trust Barometer staple, is the fact that there are only six markets of the 28 we survey globally where government is a more trusted institution than business, and five of them are from APACMEA. So whilst business has an opportunity to lead in many western markets where it is a more trusted institution than government, and often more trusted to address specific societal issues than government, that is not always the case in APACMEA. Getting government on board and ensuring that your business strategy is understood and accepted in this region is therefore vital.
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Building trust in new markets Trust is won or lost through long term relationship building and, just like in any relationship, how much you put in has a direct correlation with how much you get out. By p h i l R i g g i n s a n d d a v i d a s h t o n
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very day, billions of people around the globe get up, get dressed and go to work. Why? For many it is a matter of survival. For those who are lucky, what they do for a living enriches them emotionally and psychologically – and is, perhaps, even fun. We might not like every aspect of what we do, but we do it. If we find that the negatives get to be too much, we are likely to look for another job. What does that have to do with building trust in business, you might ask? A lot. Our relationship with the companies that we buy products and services from, regulate, invest in, partner with, or work for share some common factors that are important for understanding and building trust in business generally – whether they are domestic favourites or new entrants from further afield. Trust is fundamental to a positive and strong reputation. Trust is won or lost both through long-term relationship building and in actions that occur in a heartbeat.
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issue focus
“Trust is won or lost both through longterm relationship building and in actions that occur in a heartbeat."
In this article we explore the notion of trust in business in general, and specifically with respect to cross-cultural business relationships: How do European companies looking to do business in China and Chinese companies looking to do business in Europe build relationships of trust with their stakeholders? What we find is that relationships with stakeholders are governed by many of the same rules as other interpersonal relationships. And like any relationship, how much you put in has a direct correlation with how much you get out.
The data on trust For large corporations in any part of the world, building trust across key audiences in their home market or region is tough enough. This challenge is compounded when corporates enter new regions, where the audiences, norms and behaviours are different and unfamiliar. There is plenty of data on trust in business market-by-market, with current research showing that public trust in business is increasing in many countries around the world. However, a trust deficit still exists in many European countries.1 Brunswick Insight’s own research shows that four in 10 senior in house communicators in Europe remain concerned about the scale of anti-business feeling in society.2 In China, the level of consumer trust in business is more widespread relative to most other countries. However, when it comes to identifying specific trust metrics on how a) European companies are viewed in China or b) Chinese companies are viewed in Europe, there is very little publicly available data. In the absence of this cross cultural data, it is important for communications professionals to go back to first principles to understand the building blocks of trust with the cross cultural audiences that matter to the success of their organisations.
Building trust To understand how to build trust when entering a new market, we need to focus on the building blocks of trust for any relationship, but particularly those in the corporate and professional world. The key is to realise that stakeholders are people too, no matter what role they play in their day job. When it comes to trust, we as humans are hardwired to understand when trust exists or has been destroyed. We don’t just know it, we also feel it. It is the outcome of specific behaviours and experiences. While there are many factors at play, the dynamic can be boiled down into five main areas: • Respect: we are more likely to trust in something – whether it’s a person, business, corporate partner or employer – that we feel respects our values, beliefs and feelings. Many studies show that we are more likely to buy the products of or work for a company that we believe shares our basic principles related to fairness, sustainability, or diversity. Similarly, it has often been shown that employees are more likely to be engaged and work harder if they feel their employer respects them and values the skills that they bring. • A sense of common purpose: likewise, we are more likely to extend trust to those we feel share a common purpose with us, whether that is in terms of sharing a common mission or campaigning on something that might be important to us (e.g. climate change or diversity). • Authenticity: do your actions match your words? Trust suffers when there is disconnect between how a company presents itself and the actual experience people have with it. Companies that have a clear narrative to explain their history and role in the world, with proof points highlighting a track record of consistently good behaviour are building trust from a strong foundation. 1 Edelman Trust Barometer 2016 2 Brunswick Insight/EACD, Future of Corporate Communications Survey 2015
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