Inside out PR
Went to meet a potential client yesterday and instead of selling him on the value of having a public image and a high media profile, I found myself warning him to not even consider embarking on a media strategy.
The reason was quite simple, he couldn't embark on a media strategy without having an internal communications strategy already in place and working well. It is imperative for any company considering a media strategy to have proven their communications ability internally first. Any communications strategy should be developed from the inside out.
The bedrock of an effective communications strategy is alignment of message, a situation where your staff & management (internal), your stakeholders & customers (semi-external), and the market (external) all have the same understanding of what your company does. If you don't have this you will forever be running on a broken leg and any external communications are going to cause more confusion than they solve.
In order to get this alignment you have to start on the inside with your staff and management. Once they are both representing the same message and projecting the same vision then move onto your stakeholders and customers and only then should you consider implementing and external communications strategy.
I'll put up a post soon on some ideas on the tools you can use for internal, semi-external, and external communications. Need to give it some thought and structure first.
posted by Crusoe at 6:34 PM
2 Comments:
Yeah dude, couldn't agree more. I remember a story that Seth Godin told at one of his seminars I attended.
It went along the lines of him and his wife sitting at home watching a new advert for the company his wife worked at. It spoke about the level of service that the staff had committed to. Seth turned to his missus and said, "you didn't tell me about this." To which she replied, "first I've heard about it."
Campaigns like that are marketing gumpf. But they're dangerous too, 'cos now the public has been alerted to look out for something that the staff haven't bought into.
Spot on...!
5:21 PM
Richard, it's a weird thing but I've spent 5 years of my life building a media communications company, and my biggest potential market for growth is internal communications.
I can't believe how companies rush into external communications without involving the staff in the messaging, or at worst selling the messaging to the staff first.
8:15 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home