For various reasons – awards deadlines, summits, events preparations, life – committing to a Friday deadline has proved harder than anticipated. So, after some consultation, going forward I plan to post on a Sunday afternoon. Let’s see how it goes. As I said at the outset, this is a work in progress, and I’d appreciate any feedback. I might even conduct a readers’ poll on the best day for this tome. I also have to work out how to encourage more of you to pay to subscribe 😉, which I fear may mean cutting back on some of the free stuff.

Should corporate affairs professionals also serve as chief of staff?

That was certainly the view of David McRedmond, chief executive of An Post, at last year’s Corporate Affairs Summit in Dublin.

In a fireside chat with Eavan Gannon, director of Powerscourt Ireland (now Sodali & Co), McRedmond shared his thoughts on what the C-Suite wants from its corporate affairs function.

He said: ‘My chief of staff, Aoife Byrne, would be the person in my ear saying You need to think about gender balance. You need to think about this or that. That’s a role that, particularly if there isn’t a chief of staff, the corporate affairs person should be doing.

‘Make sure that your company is a good company. You’re responsible for your company’s reputation. When you see something that is wrong, or something that is a risk, say so and call it out. You have to be brave.’

McRedmond described the corporate affairs function as ‘my absolute totally trusted, essential link to the outside world. In any company, the most important thing that communicators can do is to be aware of, and look at, the world outside.

‘When you’re doing your jobs well, that’s what you’re doing. When you’re doing your job badly, you’re looking at the world inside your company: you’re worried about politics. You’re worried about what’s going on. You’re worried about the internal audience, thinking If I do this, what will they think?’

‘Don’t worry about the world inside, and that’s advice I’ll keep repeating, because you will certainly fail, and you will absolutely fail to add any value if you are not looking at the world outside.’

Asked whether corporate affairs professionals should couch opinions on external factors, taking into consideration what was going on within their companies, McRedmond was adamant.

‘I almost think that is someone else’s job. Try to be purist about it, say I understand there’s a cash pinch at the moment and we can’t do this, but you need to know that we will lose a lot of share because we know this really matters to Gen Z consumers, for example.

‘You have your role. If everybody is trying to manage the company, that’s not much use. The bias should be towards the information. You have to be reliable in the advice you are giving a company. If you are making compromises, the company doesn’t know that. It matters.’

McRedmond described the corporate affairs function as ‘a centre of intellectual foresight’, adding: 'Intellectual foresight is a piece that you can’t expect a chief operations officer, for example, to do. They’ve got a lot on their plate. But it’s vital. If you look at those old Porter Models of Strategy, you don’t start with the market. You start with your intellectual foresight, which is not so much the market but what are the changes in the world. What’s going on in the world? And you match that to your internal competence. What are you good at? And then you’ll find you have a market.’

But, McRedmond also conceded that the C-Suite had its role to play. ‘The cadence of corporate affairs is very important. What do I mean by cadence? Reputation management is always on. Corporate affairs is always on. If you’re having anything less than a weekly meeting with the CEO, you’re not having enough of a meeting.’

In fact, McRedmond believes that ‘a major role of the corporate affairs person is to mentor the CEO. You’re a team – a team of two – I’m generally not in favour of a one-to-one thing as it can get a bit political – but you should mentor and train your CEO in communication, and how they can communicate better.’

One piece of advice he offered, which is easier in theory than practice: make your CEOs write their own speeches. ‘Tell them It’s good for you. You might then express what you’re saying. You’ll learn what you’re saying. You’ll get better at it.’

But, if that sounds too hard, make them write their own quotes for press releases. ‘It’s four lines,’ exclaimed McRedmond. ‘You’ve got to be able to come up with four lines.’

His appearance at the Summit came shortly after An Post had been named as the most reputable organisation in Ireland over the previous 15 years, an achievement that McRedmond put down to its ‘remarkable’ postmen and postwomen.

But he added that there were some rules. Firstly, reputation matters. But you can’t chase reputation. Where do you chase it to? ‘Never go looking for somebody to say something good about you, because it’s a guarantee that it won’t happen,’ he said.

‘Secondly, and this is the one from my experience that matters most, is zero cynicism. Zero. I think the corporate affairs role ought to be the police role for that, to say We’re going to make sure that there is zero cynicism in this company, because cynicism is always about things outside, like ‘journalists are lazy’ or a stupid throwaway line. That’s poisonous. It’s poisonous to people inside.’

But McRedmond also believes it is important for corporate affairs professionals to raise their own profile. ‘You cannot do your job unless you are on social media. You need to have your own profiles, and post regularly. It gets you known and I think makes you more valuable to your company.’

He believes that, for those comms professionals looking to get a seat at the executive table or in a boardroom, raising their profile is vital. But McRedmond also said ‘broadening your role really matters’, adding: ‘I’d encourage you to look at where the gap is around that intellectual foresight space, particularly if there isn’t a chief of staff. You can move into a chief of staff role to support the CEO, and that way broaden your role.’

But he warned: ‘There is one thing you need to remember. Companies may employ 10,000 people but they still only have eight board seats. So, the reality is that it is not easy to get on boards. But I’d also say: it’s not necessarily great being on boards. It is not the be all and end all.’

The second Corporate Affairs Summit Ireland takes place this Tuesday.

INSIGHT

Met Office tackles misinformation

Did you hear about the flood that was caused by a dam being blown up? Phew! The Met Office will be relieved as that’s just one of the conspiracy theories it has had to quash recently, while constantly tackling the rumours about chemtrails. (They’re really chemical agents, don’t you know? Not condensation trails left by airplanes.)

Ever since ‘fake news’ was named Collins Dictionary’s word of the year in 2017, misinformation, disinformation and, latterly, malinformation have become major issues for organisations.

Misinformation is rapidly becoming a major issue for organisations. Indeed, in its recent Global Risks Report the World Economic Forum cited government misinformation and disinformation as one of the key leading short-term risks that could fuel instability and undermine trust in authority. For the Met Office,

For the Met Office, misinformation is a major issue. Or, as Tabitha Aldrich-Smith, associate director, communications and engagement, describes it: ‘There’s huge amounts of misinformation, like industrial misinformation really, about climate science.

‘There are loads of conspiracy theories as well as people just questioning our data. As a team, we are very challenged by that. I think it’s an emerging skill for comms teams to manage; we call it DMMI (disinformation, misinformation, malinformation) – and have created a mis- and disinformation team.’

Working with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the defence sector and external organisations, the Met Office has collated research and evidence on how to tackle the issue. It has also created a cross-government mis- and disinformation network, allowing scientists from other organisations to support each other as they tackle specific issues.

The Met Office has now created a How to spot misinformation webpage, which shares tips on critically engaging with content, as well as the handy infographic (reproduced above) following a series of workshops with different organisations, which is effectively its toolkit.

Such collaboration has refined the Met Office’s approach. ‘There’s three chunks of activity,’ explains Aldrich-Smith. ‘The Government Communication Service has a counter disinformation tool, which we’ve used, and there’s theory about beliefs and audience insight that we looked at.

‘There’s several ways to tackle it. We debunk selectively. We find counter narratives. We respond to Freedom of Information requests. We have strong social media policies, which block things, while providing information and video content to fact-check things.

‘And then we inoculate; we inform and explain. We raise awareness, to understand weather events or climate change activities, building critical thinking and asking people to check what they’re thinking, to check out the evidence. And we also support our scientists’ wellbeing, because they get the brunt of the bullying, by building networks, and creating content and lots of climate literacy.’

Aldrich-Smith describes the initiative as ‘an emerging practice’, which many in-house comms teams and external agencies will be considering. ‘It is unfortunately a full-time job for some. Others may choose not to tackle it, but there’s always some misinformation out there. This is our toolkit for how to tackle it.’

OWN GOAL

Making a crisis out of an issue

Scrolling through BBC Sounds, I came across a new podcast entitled The People vs McDonald’s. The six-part series tells the story of the longest running trial in English history, when the American fast food giant sued two activists for libel over the distribution of a leaflet entitled What's wrong with McDonald's: everything they don't want you to know.

Dubbed the McLibel Two, the activists, gardener Helen Steel and postman David Morris, ultimately triumphed, after ten years of litigation in the High Court, Court of Appeal and the European Court of Human Rights. But here’s the interesting part…

The duo had been operating for several years outside the Strand branch of McDonald’s. They had handed out a few hundred leaflets to passers-by and McDonald’s customers who, most likely, wanting a burger rather than a lecture, had scrunched them up and tossed them into the nearest bin.

They weren’t drawing huge crowds or enlisting new supporters. In short, nobody had really noticed them or paid attention. Until the then chief executive of McDonald’s holidayed in London.

As was his want, he liked to visit branches close to where he was staying – just to ensure everything worked as it should. And one Saturday night he ventured to the Strand branch, where he came upon the duo. Incensed by what he saw, on his return to its Chicago headquarters, the boss instructed lawyers to take action.

In doing so, he turned a local issue into a major crisis for the business. And a six-page leaflet, which hardly anybody had seen, into a 1,000 page judgment… and that was just the start.

The David versus Goliath story generated negative headlines and thousands of articles around the world, and ultimately spawned a series of books and documentaries about the case and McDonald’s that were less than favourable.

It cost McDonald’s millions of dollars, not to mention the wasted manhours. To no end. It is a classic example of the Streisand Effect. When your boss wants to take a sledgehammer to attack an acorn, remind him of that.

ODDS & SODS

💯 Interesting analogy describing the difference between communications and marketing posted on LinkedIn by Kyne Levingston, the former head of commercial PR at Knight Frank.

‘If I worked for an airline, the marketing director would be focused on creating the DESIRE to fly and getting bums on seats. I would be focused on building and maintaining the TRUST to fly by proactively managing our reputation.

If a plane crashed and we were plunged into a crisis, my phone would ring off the hook, and the marketing director's phone would stop ringing. The reason is simple: when TRUST is broken, DESIRE is gone, and the public’s attention focuses on the negative. You’ll never see a headline on BBC News reading All flights ran on time today. My job would then be to deal with the communications repercussions of the crash.

Assuming this is managed well, the marketing director and I would work together again to build both DESIRE and TRUST back up.’

🍀 A new report from PwC asks How much does your bottom line depend on nature? According to its analysis, 55% of the world’s GDP – equivalent to $58 trillion (that’s 58 followed by 12 zeros, which would take you 1.83 quadrillion years to count) – is exposed to material nature-related risk.

In fact, it asserts, all industries have financially material dependencies on nature in their value chains, which implies nature is now integral to a company’s business model. Another risk for corporate affairs to gen up on.

 🍆 Searching for ‘corporate affairs’ throws up some interesting results. A corker from M9News (no, me neither) reveals that corporate affairs (the other type) have increased by over 65%. No source. No baseline.

How do they know? Is there a new question in the employee engagement survey that reveals such insights? How is it worded? ‘Would you say that you and a colleague are intimate: a) never, b) occasionally, c) often, or d) only in office hours?’ Sounds like a HR nightmare.

But rest assured, according to the rigorous reporting by Saumya in M9News, ‘it is not just women who engage in affairs’… apparently married men do too. Who knew?

🏊‍♀️ The Royal Yachting Association has decided that ‘man overboard’ is an offensive term, and that ‘person in water’ should be used instead. I’m all for inclusivity, but seriously if I ever found myself in deep water, the last thing I’m worried about is pronouns.

 😒 Anthesis is putting the final touches to this year’s Purpose Gap report, but the early signs are that more employees feel that their company’s purpose doesn’t match its action than they did a year ago. But more worrying, apparently two-thirds are willing to walk away as a result. 👟👟👟

YOUR FINAL CHANCE

I’ve extended the CorpComms Awards deadline until 19 September. And that will be that. I hope this helps the last few of you to get over the finishing line.