CONSIDERING A REBRAND? COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR VIM Group ensures brands are consistently delivered the magazine for corporate communications and public relations around the world. european issue Number 4/2015 We bring unrivalled and independent experience and www.communication-director.com knowledge. Implementation of your brand properties across all touch points, both digital and on the ground is our business. The unwritten contract Building tust through corporate governance Issue IMPACT PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY VALUATOR™ VALUATOR™ VALUATOR™ European 2015 · 4 o N TOR C IRE D ATION C OMMUNI C Hidden powers Revealing the model corporate citizen Complex We’ve had the pleasure of working with... solutions for complex problems Backing up How corporate social responsibility vision with data drives growth Tracing the evolution of sustainability reporting Delivering your brand promise LONDON AMSTERDAM FRANKFURT www.vim-group.com VIM_Advert_2015 29-07-2015 A joint program with In cooperation with DIGITAL STRATEGY EMScom THROUGH AUDIENCE INSIGHT Executive Master of Science in Communications Management Are you digitally prepared for change? High-quality face-to-face learning in an international network You don’t have to be big to disrupt... and disruption doesn’t have to be big – re-engineering 54% Management 13 years work 41% Europe 78% Corporation Average your entire business may not be on the cards for 2016. 32% Top management experience 37% Switzerland 11% Public class size 20 Small, effective changes can have big results, you just 14% Staff 22% Rest of the world 6% NGO / NPO 5% Agency need to know where to make them. Average data of the last fi ve years’ classes Make your strategy audience-focused Understand your customers’ journeys. Experience mapping will highlight the most effective way to solve audience pain points and reinforce positive moments of truth. The millennials have spoken What do you have that they want, and how do you communicate with them? Make sure you’re transparent and honest, and digitally prepared. Freestyle Interactive has over 20 years’ EMScom courses at a glance experience helping businesses perform better online. Organizational behavior / Strategic thinking / Financial management / Societies, communities and governments across Contact [email protected] and Asia / Leading organizations across cultures / A behavioral approach to organizational policymaking / Decision making let us make the internet work harder for you. in negotiation / Global human resources management / Complexity and dynamism in the global economy / Corporate governance / Organizational identity and reputation management / Stakeholder management / Brand management / Public affairs / Financial and investor relations / Sponsoring and marketing partnerships / Digital communication / Mar- keting communications / Crisis management / Communication law / Change management / Persuasion / Leadership / Research methods for corporate communication / Quantitative methods / Team building / Capstone consulting project @freestyleint +44 1926 652832 EMScom / USI Università della Svizzera italiana / via Giuseppe Buffi 13 / 6900 Lugano / Switzerland www.freestyleinteractive.co.uk phone +41 58 666 46 02 / [email protected] / www.emscom.usi.ch Freestyle_CD_A4_Advert_Artwork.indd 1 11/11/2015 17:10 EDITORIAL Welcome, Do you pay your bills on time, clean up after your dog and make sure old papers go straight into the recycling bin? Are you first in line at the polling booth, always ready to lend a helping hand to your neighbour and never slow to volunteer? Then congratulations, you’re (probably) a model citizen. But what if “you” happen to be a corporation? What defines good behaviour when profit margins are your scale of reference? The concept of “corporate personhood” helps answer this. Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation shares some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by physical humans. Its growth as an idea in recent years raises important questions about what we can and can’t expect from companies in terms of how they behave in society. Make no mistake, this is an impor- tant issue: as the must-see documentary The Corporation (2003) points out, 150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. But today, it is all-pervasive, replacing the Church, the monarchy and political movements in other times and places as today’s dominant institution. As one of our Issue Focus articles explores in depth, corporations have extraordinary power and influence over our lives: it is up to us as individuals to guard against this imbalance of power and ask corporations to do more than pay lip service to corporate social responsibility and sustainability. Communication leaders from companies as diverse as Vedanta, Ben & Jerry’s and Coca Cola show how their corporate citizenship measures are more than skin-deep: we also look at how corporate governance helps companies earn their license to operate, and how corporate reporting has evolved to become a key communications tool that loudly affirms the corporation’s ability to play a positive part in the local community. After all, isn’t being a good neighbour what citizenship is all about? MARC-OLIVER VoIGT Publisher Private Photo COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR 4/2015 3 78 The evolution of 4/15 corporate reporting The development of new approaches to reporting corporate sustainability 66 Turning values into ISSUE FOCUS value How to align social mission 82 with your products and create Corporate positive change for the world Collaborate and citizenship and empower Corproate social responsibility responsibility goes more than skin deep – it can change public policy 70 The unwritten con- tract in corporate governance 74 86 Showing trust in employees brings unexpected benefits Setting standards Changing the rules for progress Demanding corporations Integrity, innovation and ethics adhere to responsible conduct can ensure your social license is the responsibilty of citizen to operate stakeholders 6 • agenda setteR 20 • RePutation Brands on screen Seeing in the dark How the digital revolution is changing Reputational risk is around every product placement across all platforms corner. A strategy to indentify, qualify and respond to risk is key 24 • BRAND 10 • PR essentials An American icon in The campaigns that China inspired us to care Translating a brand – even one of the A look at some of the world’s landmark world‘s most ubiquitous – requires more charity events than just language skills 4 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR 4/2015 CONTENT 44 • socIal MedIa A propaganda of fear Recent terror attacks that have 28 • CAREER shocked the world are fought as much The communications on social media as on the streets labour market Emerging trends for European communi- 48 • CRISIS cators and the managers who hire them A guiding light An ethical perspective guides public 33 • Internal relations through crisis to safety Power to the people Communicators can drive employee 50 • content MarketIng engagement through a shared sustainability mission The real world of 60 • IntervIew storytelling Gabriele Zedlmayer What will the glorious reign of content Corporate citizenship, sustainability and marketing actually look like? the importance of a diverse board 54 • Investor relatIons 90 • coMMunIcatIon reader Will the real IR officer Books please stand up? New and upcoming titles for the Uncovering the different roles of the communicator’s bookshelf investor relations function 92 • ASSOCIATIon European Association of 36 •DESIGN Communication Directors The strategy behind The latest developments in disruptive innovation the EACD Applying the rules of design to systems, strategies and experiences 98 • QuestIons to Always forward, never 40 • THEORY backward PR goes pop Lina Jakučionienė on the unique com- munications landscape in the Baltic Representations of public relations in States Wikimedia Commons/Chris Rand; Private; www.thinkstock.com (2) www.thinkstock.com Private; Rand; Commons/Chris Wikimedia popular culture challenge its Photos professionali standing COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR 4/2015 5 AGENDA SETTER Brands on screen Product placement is advertising that arrives when you least expect it. The digital revolution has made it that much more pervasive By Jan WISNIEWSKI ave you ever walked out of the cinema with a burning desire to buy something? Or maybe wondered why your favour- H ite television characters prefer a certain brand of cereal? This could be a result of product placement – the (in)famous marketing technique that has inspired many an internet listicle detailing its most sore-thumb moments. Despite its sometimes unwelcome intrusion into our viewing habits, product placement grew to become an $8.25 billion industry in 2012. Not bad when you consider that many such deals are arranged using a no-money-exchanged barter agreement. And now the digital revolution has brought about a change in the nature of product placement that may see it be- come more ubiquitous than ever before in its colourful history. 6 COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR 4/2015 AGENDA SETTER Big business companies. Says Leo: “Brands were open- ing up branded entertainment divisions This success led to a change in the in Hollywood to be close to film and tele- practice in the 1980s and 1990s. According vision producers.” to Leo Kivijarv, “brands would hire place- ment agencies like AIM productions to Product placement around negotiate product placements when prop personnel would reach out for products the world to fit