I’ve been especially struck by the friendliness of everyone I’ve met. There’s really a special feeling of warmth and of energy here. I love the vitality of Lima. And such a beautiful location, just a great setting, above the Pacific.
What a fabulous place to convene this year.
On the flight over from London, where I live, I was flipping through the in-flight movie selection. On offer was Precious, The Blind Side and Up In the Air. It occurred to me that this was a pretty fair summary of the current state of our worldwide economy. Despite all that . . . this is such an incredible time in the history of our industry.
I want to speak about that this morning. I want to speak about an industry that not all that long ago was sometimes seen as the party planners, or the place you went to get a company or a celebrity some “free publicity.” With maybe a T-shirt or a cap thrown in for good measure. I have a story! I’ll come back to it in a few minutes. . .
But that really was how many clients and the public – possibly even my parents – saw public relations.
Even many PR practitioners saw themselves that way.
No more.
Now, with a click, the world is there on the screen in front of you.
Now, we are a sophisticated, deeply creative, dynamic and – very digitized – profession. We are the creators of credible content. We’re often the spark that ignites – or puts the sizzle into a hot conversation. We defend and protect reputations on which the fortunes of global companies rise and fall. Today, we are either in the boardrooms where critical decisions are made, or we are, at the very least, consulted before those decisions are made.
With integrity, with intelligence, with drive, with inspiration, and with passion, we tell our clients’ stories to a world now linked at warp speed, in a 24/7, instantaneous news cycle.
For those of us who have been in this business for a while, have experienced its transformation, it is thrilling to be part of the arc of this historic change.
Now, speaking of history, if you will indulge me just briefly . . . like a lot of us, I travel a lot. And I love it. On many levels, it’s been a large part of my personal journey in this business.
Along with the globalization of our clients, of our industry and of my international agency, I’ve become global, too.
I love to learn about the many places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit. Not surprisingly, I’ve been doing a bit of reading about Peru.
I was fascinated to happen upon an account of the Chasqui. In the time of the Incas – the Peruvians in the audience no doubt know this – the Chasqui were young men who moved information throughout the empire. They did it on foot. They were runners. They were, in fact, among the most extraordinary runners who ever lived.
They covered the Incan road system, which was in itself incredible. It wove through the Andes, along the coasts, down mountain passes, over rope bridges. And they did it all with amazing stamina and amazing speed.
Five hundred years ago, the Chasqui could rival an Olympic athlete today. They ran in relays, each at full-speed for as much as ten miles at a time. They ran at heights as extreme as 17,000 feet.
The Chasqui might warn a general about an uprising. They moved official records throughout the empire. Whatever needed to be – communicated – they got it done.
Now they also somehow managed to get fish from the Pacific Coast, more than 200 miles away, to Incan royalty in Cuzco . . . fresh fish, 200 miles, in time for supper. Think about it. Same day, fresh fish, no ice back then, of course, from the Pacific into the mountains.
Apparently, there were rather severe consequences if the Chasquis didn’t get the fish there in time for dinner. That fish had to be fresh.
And, apparently, if even one original word in a message got left out once it reached its destination, well, the Chasqui were punished rather severely for that, too.
In our day and age, we share the passion . . . to get the job done and to communicate . . . with, hopefully anyway -- a rather different motivation.
We need to get our stories to their destination too.
And they need to be, well, not just fresh enough for dinner.
Everyone in this room knows that in our business same-day delivery often just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Now, we’re talking about a news cycle that never stops. That is measured in minutes. Or in less time than that.
Our stories, our words, our pictures, need to get out there faster than ever before.
The relays we run span the planet.
In this digital age, we are all linked, all the time, everywhere -- at the speed of an electron.
We communicate in a world in which virtually everyone can hear what everyone else has to say pretty much right away -- and then all the time -- forever.
With a click, anyone can get everything you or your client has ever done – or is accused of not doing -- from that electronic archive.
It’s all out there, information races down electronic highways in the blink of an eye.
We live -- in amazing times.
So amazing, in fact, that some of us are, I’m afraid, an endangered species. The outgoing marketing chief at Unilever -- Simon Clift – recently told the Financial Times that the rapid rise and influence of Facebook, Twitter and other social media is creating what he memorably called “a lost generation of marketers.” Clift made the very astute observation that our kids have grown up in this YouTube world, and too many brands are being managed by people who have had to play catch-up to learn it.
There’s also a little enterprise called Facebook you may have heard about. It’s already profoundly and permanently changed how we communicate with one another. But it’s just getting started.
Facebook recently unveiled its new social plug-ins known as “open graph.” What it does is nothing less than transform the entire Internet into one vast social network.
Facebook will now be able to seamlessly integrate into any other website or blog. For all of us – that means unimagined insight into where consumer heads, and hearts, are at.
Now I don’t want to ignore the fact that there are privacy issues.
When the Internet is more than ever a matrix of infinite touch points, how much consumer insight – is too much insight?
Is anything just not anyone’s business anymore? At least once you’ve put yourself out there?
Well, the trade-off, of course, is that if you put yourself out there, on Facebook, on Twitter, on you-name-it, the pleasure of connection comes with the potential problem of people who want to know about you, perhaps finding out more than you want them to know.
A balance will have to be struck. That will be an ongoing process. That will require standards. And integrity. And approaches we all adopt together, as an industry. To do what’s right.
At the same time – as Facebook goes, so goes Twitter. And Foursquare. And Yelp. The proverbial genie is out of the proverbial bottle. The personalization of the Web is here.
It’s not a new frontier. We’re already deep in the middle of the woods. Anyone looking at what’s going on through binoculars – is missing something big. Obviously.
Companies that haven’t already been hacking their way through the underbrush of digital PR for some time will be tripping over the tangle -- when too many others have already cleared a path.
And digital and word-of-mouth and “buzz” marketing and all the other new ways to communicate that were probably introduced or invented just a few days ago -- that’s not so much the future of our business – as the present.
More and more of us are deciding to just get that thing that the guy at work said worked so well. Or the little old lady next door.
Or that review you read on the Internet by some anonymous person who also bought that kind of camera. Or car. Or -- calliope. It’s all out there. If something exists, someone has an opinion about it and the means to tell the world about it.
Did you see the recent McKinsey report that further confirms what PR has been saying about itself for a long time, ever since Edward Bernays established the business nearly a hundred years ago?
The report concludes that fully half of all purchasing decisions are driven by a recommendation from a friend, or from a relative, or from another trusted source.
Consumers, in short, are being empowered as never before.
Social networking is a modern-day megaphone. That sound you hear all around you is all sorts of people, everywhere, shouting from the rooftops about how they feel about that new washing machine, or medicine, or tomato sauce.
Marketers are abandoning old media in droves. Do you sit there anymore and watch the commercial? Or do you fast-forward through it. It’s already an old question.
But beyond the strong returns from digital advertising, the smartest marketers know it’s also so important to get into the conversation. In order to earn the attention of everyone talking, and conversing, and shouting .
Companies can no longer just talk – or shout – about how special their product is.
The specialness of each and every consumer is now just as big a deal.
Because the fact is, privacy concerns are real. People – billions of people – also want to be profiled on the internet. They want their preferences to be known.
Products have to conform to the preferences of individual consumers.
We’re used to a universe of friends, family, and strangers who consider our posts and tweets about what kind of coffee we just drank – significant. Worth knowing about. Fun to know about.
And . . . we expect similar attentiveness from companies.
Anyone with a product to sell needs to be in that conversation. And the most creative marketers are finding ways to do it. Authentically, transparently, respectfully. Responsively. Interactively.
But continuously, too.
It sells products. It sells presidents.
In 2008 a guy name Barack Obama won the White House in large part because of a grass-roots, cyber movement.
That was a politics of listening. And then creating a dialogue.
We’re talking about profit. But profit – from listening. And then creating a dialogue.
At the speed of an electron.
Times of change – and of transformation.
Yes, “the era of mass is over, in some respects” – that’s what the Chairman of Magazine Journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism said about the announcement that 77 year-old Newsweek magazine is up for sale.
Mass media may be in a death spiral, but spin – that old PR cliché -- is dead.
Transparency, on the other hand, is very much alive. Transparency, along with authenticity, are the twin coins of the realm.
Does a company have to reveal everything? Of course not. But a company more than ever has to continuously, consistently tell a story that’s real, and rich.
Our stories have to stay one step ahead of the stories that are already being told about our clients through so many channels, and from so many directions.
If a client has something to hide, well, just be assured that chances are, it will get out there.
Because the fact is, again, everything gets out there sooner or later.
Smoke and mirrors doesn’t cut it.
With so many mirrors out there, in fact, so many opinions claiming to reflect what a company is all about, the reality now is that:
A brand is – what a brand does.
Actions speak louder than words.
And reputation increasingly is brand.
Sure, what you do, what you sell, still matters.
But how you are perceived to do what you do, how you sell what you sell – that’s more important than ever before.
The story you tell – and sell – has never mattered more, now that so many more are able to tell their side of the story. Whether what they have to say is legitimate, or not.
Anyone, in Lima, in London, in Timbuktu -- in Tashkent, and more on that last city in a moment -- anyone is just a Google search away from anything a client, has ever done, or is alleged to have ever done.
Whether it happened five minutes ago – and definitely five hours ago -- let alone five years ago.
For public relations, for what we do, the moment has never been richer with challenge – and with possibility.
It is an extraordinary time to be in this business.
What hasn’t changed is that the heart of what we do remains -- connecting. In Japan, a connector – that is, someone who is well-networked, known by many, trusted by all – is said to have a “wide face.”
So, we – we with the wide faces -- we build relationships.
We connect clients to customers. And to all our clients’ important stakeholders.
As our client, Bill Margaritis from FedEx says, public relations is the only – the only – marketing discipline that manages the interplay between a client and all its stakeholders (government, the financial community, suppliers, employees and, yes, the customer).
That is the power – of PR.
You can’t completely control a client’s message. But what you can do, what you must do, is connect. In a matrix of possible connections that has never been so complex, varied, and always switched on.
In the wilderness of information in which we live, you must, as never before, be in the conversation.
The conversation being relayed all over the world.
All the time.
Now I don’t want to date myself too much here. But as I said, I’ve been very lucky in my career to have had something of a front row seat on the growth of our industry in the past quarter century.
I was born in a little town with just one stoplight. In Essex, Connecticut, in New England U.S.A. I may have dreamed when I was a kid of seeing the world, but I never could have imagined just how far this profession would take me. From little Essex, my one stoplight, one horse town, to – well, Peru. And so many other places where the need to tell a story effectively – clearly, concisely, compellingly – has never been greater.
We earn a brand’s reputation. We create and protect relationships.
Relationships are how we connect.
Amid the cross-currents of opinion moving through all the channels, we don’t break-in . . . we, increasingly, join in.
A recent New York Times piece pointed out how frequently Hollywood now relies more on PR to sell a movie than on big advertising campaigns. It’s more effective on every level. More cost-effective and more effective at filling seats.
At Disney, for example, there is a mandate for advertising and PR to coordinate. If the PR team for the company’s ABC unit can get an article about a TV show in TV Guide, the network will make sure not to buy advertising space for the same show in the same edition of the magazine.
Disney has even developed its own, proprietary computer program to help determine how revenue is generated from PR.
That piece in the Times cited the launch of a recent horror film. Paranormal Activity it was called. Not a single billboard was purchased for the film, as would have been routine just a year ago. Tens of millions of dollars were saved by not bothering with a national television campaign.
Instead Paramount relied entirely on PR to drum up interest, on blogs and in the traditional media. Now I’m not sure if anyone in this audience has seen Paranormal Activity. I must admit I haven’t been able to fit it into my schedule just yet.
But having said that . . . this movie, launched virtually without advertising, hasn’t done all that badly.
It cost $10,000 dollars to make. So far it’s earned – more than 100-million dollars. Notice that word: earned.
Increasingly, that really is what it’s all about for companies. Earned reputation, the viral spread, the credibility that is inherent when someone is writing or speaking favorably about you even though they’re not getting paid to do so.
Someone writing or speaking about you who is in the conversation.
In the flow of it.
It is a global conversation.
But if the needs of so many businesses are global, because they have expanded their business globally, they haven’t necessarily developed a global brand.
This is I think a very key point for all of us.
Mergers and acquisitions create global reach. Supply chains thread across the planet. Sales are global.
Reputation, on the other hand, still needs to be managed locally. And reputation, as I said earlier, increasingly is brand. It is who you are as a company to the customers who buy, or don’t buy, what you sell.
Your success as a company will rise or fall as much on the strength of your reputation as on the quality of what you sell.
Reputation must be managed, 24/7, with a global vision, in a global economy.
Any company that is not structured for global brand stewardship is putting itself at risk.
We live and work in a world in which everything communicates. Everything connects. Or disconnects -fails to connect.
In a world and in an economy and in a media environment in which a brand is what a brand does. And everyone is watching.
PR is reputation and reputation increasingly is brand as much as what a company sells . . . from Texas – to Tashkent.
Tashkent is the capitol of Uzbekistan. A couple of years ago, through an affiliate, Ketchum had the only PR consultancy there. That’s now expanded to five other companies, I believe. Which in itself says something about our industry.
I was walking to school with my girls just before my first trip to Uzbekistan. I asked them to guess which country Daddy was flying to.
It begins with a “u” I said.
“Yew Nork” my little one said right away.
Her nine-year-old sister then piped up, not unreasonably: “United States.”
Nope, said I, Uzbekistan.
Now, in Uzbekistan, it turns out, when it comes to PR in the 21st-century . . . they’re not in it for the T-shirts, caps, or party planning either.
Now as I said earlier, I do love to learn about the places I go.
I learned that Uzbekistan is the world’s second-largest exporter of cotton.
I learned that it is one of only two double land-locked countries on the planet that is a country completely surrounded by other land-locked countries.
The second?
Begins with an L? . . .
That would be Liechtenstein.
Now, I also learned about the consumption of something called a – Lamborghini. This is a concoction in a martini glass. Which is set on fire. Then it is drunk through a straw.
This, then, is followed by the drinker being hit in the head with a baseball bat.
It’s a drink with a kick.
When the bats came out that explained why everyone with a Lamborghini in front of them when I walked into the bar . . . had been wearing a construction helmet.
Travel does broaden the mind.
But -- to get back to the subject at hand. . .
What public relations professionals talk about in Tashkent is what we are talking about right here. Connections – and the power of PR.
A man named Akmal Saidov is the Managing Director of our Affiliate there. He doesn’t offer caps and party planning.
He did tell me many clients first come to him thinking he will. Or some variation of it. Many still think PR amounts to putting up a bunch of banners.
But they quickly realize that what’s on offer is media relations – and social media. Akmal and I are Facebook friends. There is a bit of re-education on this front too, in a culture used to paying for press.
But Akmal told me his clients learn fast what’s really of value to them.
Relationships. Connections.
Just as we sometimes do, selling against advertising, Akmal asks a prospective client a simple question:
What do you believe more, an ad on TV or an article in the newspaper?
And then he talks about credibility.
And trust.
And I thought – in Tashkent, a million miles from London, from New York, from Lima – as professionals, we aren’t separated much at all, Akmal and me.
So, whether you’re here, in Lima, or in Tashkent, or anywhere else in public relations right now -- what needs to be done?
How do we tie it all together? What are the key things we need to do for our clients in the world we live in now so that what radiates out to the world as a brand – its reputation – connects.
Cuts through the noise. Breaks through.
Well – there’s nothing to it.
(A colleague of mine at Ketchum recently laid it out.)
Our clients need to be, and we need to help them become - nothing more or less than . . . globally scalable, locally relevant, fully integrated, multi-stakeholder, reality-based, real-time, issues-oriented, digitally engaging, creatively bold, socially responsible, results-delivering, on-budget, and precisely measured.
Nothing more. Nothing less. In the world we live in now.
Let me move through that cascade with a bit more focus.
Everything required of us as consultancies must enable the following for our clients:
To be globally scalable. For a client to be globally scalable they need to drive consistency in many countries. That means quality talent and high standards in many countries. That means common standards. Across borders. Across oceans. And across continents.
At the same time, companies need our help to be locally relevant. Clients need in fact hyper-local knowledge and insight. Provided by deep local relationships, and connections.
As consultancies, we need to listen in to the world, to the planet, on behalf of our clients. And we must have a 24/7 ear to the ground on main streets from Lima…to St. Petersburg, Russia, to St. Petersburg, Florida, and from Beijing, to Bogotá, and everywhere in between.
Globally scalable, locally relevant. That needs to be integrated.
And we need to encourage and help enable clients to be fully integrated. There must be integration within a company, discipline to discipline. It must be driven by a culture of collaboration, encouraged by our holistic management of corporate reputation. A company cannot manage just part of its reputation. As so many more consultancies are brought into the C-suite of companies, fuller integration enables more efficient, effective, more successful, and even happier, companies.
Companies that communicate well within their own four walls across disciplines tend to reflect that in the image they present to the marketplace. Companies that build a consistent message create a kind of connective tissue throughout their organization, are healthier, more harmonious. Our presence as communicators can and should encourage this.
Following on from that, this consistency of communication is also critical to ensure that clients are effective multi-stakeholders. The view needs to be a 360-degree view. Encompassing employees, investors, and policy makers.
Companies must also be for real. Reality-based. Again -- transparent. Communicative. Spin . . . is dead. In the world we live in now, in which a brand is what a brand does, that means an equal focus on everything it does -- 60-degree vigilance, as well as 360-degree communication. Across town and across the world.
And if companies must keep it real, they must also be aware that things happen in real-time. Everything happens fast. Real fast. Response times must reflect that. There’s no lag time. Companies must be provided the resources to respond with agility. To dive into news as it happens. It is necessary to become a part of the conversation as it is breaking out.
Being out ahead is really just being there in the first place. Positioning begins more before the fact than ever before. After is too late. That may seem obvious, but it didn’t used to be, necessarily, not too long ago. But then the news went 24/7. And then the news went digital.
Sometimes catch-up, of course, is inevitable. But if you’re catching up to a news cycle moving at warp speed, you need to be able to build on a compelling and persuasive story you have already been telling the world. It’s all breaking news now. The brand of 21st century news is in fact precisely that. Breaking news, all the time, however contrived that may be a lot of the time. That’s the way it is.
Which in turn contributes to how we must be issues-oriented. Because everything is now marketed through issues. Through that lens. The controversy lens, the breaking news lens. The public policy lens. Strong public affairs skills must be integrated into every campaign.
And every campaign, and everything we do, is, of course, digitized. We must ensure that our clients are digitally engaging.Search engines are the number one media. That’s where the action is, that’s where the eyeballs are. That is the filter. The first filter that opens eyes and ears to the conversations that are going to be listened to. Those are the conversations we must monitor – and fuel.
And we must do it in a way that is creatively bold. Clients need content that is a magnet. That breaks through. This requires from us creative risk taking. Educated, smart, but daring storytelling.
And we must tell a story that is socially responsible. Perhaps no aspect of reputation management right now is more capable of severely damaging a company than whether it is considered to be socially responsible.
That means responsible in how you make money, not just in how you spend it. That means real actions, genuine trustworthiness, woven into a company’s DNA. Action on behalf of the environment. The disadvantaged. Integrity in business life. Alliances with nonprofits.
And speaking of money, we are also in, as if anyone needs reminding, a very cost-conscious moment. Maybe a cost-conscious age, in fact. This may not change for a while. Companies must be on-budget. Everyone is under tremendous financial pressure. Which means, of course, those of us in this room too. That demands a commitment to fiscal responsibility. Discipline. Transparency. Creative boldness – in a financially conservative time.
Which leads to the last two in our list of nothing more – nothing less. One is basic . . . and one a bit more new to our industry.
First, every business we support must be truly results delivering. Must show R-O-I. This is basic, it’s essential. Campaigns must be focused on business outcomes.
What’s changed to an extent loops back to what I said about being reality based, in real time. More than ever in our industry, the business outcomes we deliver for clients must be capable of being precisely measured. We are in a metrics-based world. We must bring to bear the most advanced measurement techniques.
Now everything I just took us through – both what our companies need to be and how we need to help our clients – is about connecting up to the worldwide conversation. You’re either in that conversation – or you’re, so to speak, out of it. If your point of view is not present, that makes you vulnerable to being, at best, ignored . . . and at worst, damaged, when a reputation is suddenly challenged.
The Power of PR is our unique ability to enable that connection. To manage it, to embolden it, to sustain it.
Even the fiscal discipline demanded of us is now shaped and driven by the larger, global conversation about corporate financial responsibility. Companies must be listening, and talking back.
Companies must be connected by the power of PR.
Connected, to seize all the opportunity out there . . . to build partnerships of unprecedented sweep, daring, and precision.
When we get it right, when we win, in Tashkent or anywhere else, that means a connection has been made.
That is the power of PR.
It takes skill, creativity, determination. It takes brains – and it takes heart. You have to talk a good game, write a good game, visualize a good game. And you have to listen. To just about everyone and to just about everything.
You have to be connected to the world and the people in it and what they are doing and what they need and want to do and what they dream of doing.
Our power lies in the relationships that PR uniquely creates and protects.
We build reputations that are sustained on what companies do for the common good.
The world is an amazing place. And what we do in it, shaping the conversation, informing the decisions that affect billions of people, is just an incredible thing to be part of.
Sometimes I know we all feel like we’re running awfully hard. It can be tough to catch your breath in this business today. Everything moves very fast.
But for a guy from a one stoplight town, it’s a pretty great thing to be part of.
And . . . it is a lot easier on the legs, and the lungs, than those 17,000 foot mountain passes.
Our way of moving messages around is a lot more fun too.
Which . . . takes me back to the 3rd paragraph of this discussion, when I mentioned a moment early in my career in which PR was considered a superfluous extra – a throw in.
It was 25 years ago, and the occasion was a joint pitch with an advertising agency. And it went on and on. Not unlike this speech you may be saying to yourself. Until finally, crammed onto the last line of the last slide along with, literally, a list of add-on’s and sweeteners, was PR.
I mean, public relations came after, literally, “T-shirts, caps and visors and other stuff.” Other stuff!
If ever I harbored a sneaking suspicion that to the ad guys – and to some unwitting client prospects – that PR was the poor relation to advertising – that was the moment that confirmed it for me. And, truth be told, I have been motivated by that chip on my shoulder ever since.
We’ve come a long way.
If you love people, if you love learning about them and what they do, what they think and behave, what they care about, and helping them communicate – and connect – public relations is a powerful, often inspiring profession.
And there’s never been a greater time to be in it.
I look forward to speaking more with all of you – connecting with you -- through the course of this congress.
Thanks very much for listening. Buena suerte!
Jon Higgins
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