Who Are The New Integrators?
Finding holistic communications consultants in the changing world
By: Louis Capozzi, Chairman Publicis PR and Corporate Communications Group
If you go to a foot doctor and complain of headaches, it is said, he’s likely to find something wrong with your feet. The same holds true for communications. Ask an advertising agency for advice on a communications problem, and they are likely to recommend a 30-second spot. Ask a sports marketing firm and they will put your logo on a race car.
As integration has become the holy grail of communications, clients desperately seek unbiased advice on how to deal with the increasingly difficult environment of the 21st century. The decline of advertising effectiveness, increasing audience skepticism, unbelievable noise levels and the 24/7 realities of the Internet all fuel their frenzy.
There’s plenty of agreement in the communications and marketing communities about the need for unified strategies that form the foundation for all the elements in the communications mix. But who should lead the development of those strategies? After all, putting together a team with representatives from all the communications disciplines might lead to a strategy “without prejudice,” but only if the team leader is truly objective.
Clients need communications programs that are “wisdom driven.”
Until recently, the “golden rule” has applied to leadership of these integrated teams – “he who has the gold, rules.” On brands where there’s $100 million in advertising on the table, along with a PR program and some ‘below the line’ promotional work, there has been little doubt the advertising agency would take the lead on the integration team. If it’s a multi-million dollar Olympic sponsorship, the events managers lead. In a bet-your-business takeover defense, the PR team is out in front.
But the current environment mandates that we reexamine this default model. We may understand the need for integration, but most communicators haven’t even scratched the surface on how to properly build an integrated program. Quite often we are starting from the wrong place and using the wrong terminology. Integration has to be more than picking the right tool from the toolbox. Our model needs to ensure that strategic business planning remains in the center. Hand in hand with strategic business planning is finding the people who will lead with a management orientation – The New Integrators.
What kind of skills and abilities are required of these “New integrators?”
It’s time for a new model. Instead of competing for budgets, communications firms from all disciplines need to learn how to work together. The New Integrators must be the focal point for finding the right solution, implementing it flawlessly, and measuring the work, regardless of which discipline is employed.
Public relations consultants are uniquely qualified to lead in this new environment. Here are some of the reasons.
- Sensitivity to Multiple Constituencies: The digital age has ushered in a new need for transparency for any successful organization. On the one hand, micro-segmentation is a new option, on the other all of the audiences are interconnected and your interactions with them must assume full interaction and transparency among them. Everyone sees everything.
Consultants who focus on a “bulls-eye” target audience – often called “consumers” – won’t cut it. Working with multiple audiences is like being a plate spinner in a circus – always hitting the wobbling plate. Public relations consultants offer a sensitivity to multiple constituencies – employees, the community, government, AND customers, that must be a part of a The New Integrator’s DNA.
- Comfort With Lack of Control: In the digital environment, you have to give up control to gain power. The analogy is that if you have a friend who’s always telling you what to do, they won’t be your friend for long. The same thing is true of brands and companies. This is a disturbing notion to agencies who have worked only in strictly controlled communications disciplines like advertising or promotions, where every word, every comma, and every pixel is tightly managed. Public relations consultants know how to embrace this new world and work with it.
- A Global View: Globalization adds to the complexity, and to the need for a broader view. Look at the example Al Reis points to in his book, The Fall of Advertising, The Rise of PR. A global food company might be wrestling with the obesity issue in the US while in Europe their big issue is genetically modified ingredients and in Africa the problem is malnutrition. Many public relations consultancies are part of global networks which allow them to deal with all of these in an environment where all the global audiences are exposed to each other’s messages.
- Communication without prejudice: As anyone knows who has tried it, producing excellent advertising is a very tough job. Making a 30-second TV commercial that works and selling it through a gauntlet of approvals is enormously challenging. But this tactical skill does not necessarily grow the broad strategic perspective required of The New Integrators.
Advertising, though, isn’t going away – because publishing isn’t going away and it needs advertising to support its business model. So, advertising has to change. What has to change the most is the mentality of the people. Public relations consultants bring a broader view to client challenges and create an opportunity to change the mentality.
The new model must be advice-centric. The client’s problem, analyzed and interpreted from the broadest possible communications perspective, must be at the hub of the effort. Team members from multiple disciplines can contribute to and enrich the advice, but in the end the disciplines support the advice, they don’t drive it. Public relations consulting is advice-driven. We counsel our clients not just on what to say, but most importantly on what to do to align their interests with those of their key constituencies.
The BRIC Markets – A New Chance to Get It Right
Look to China or Russia or India for the new model. The so-called BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have the chance to jump over old technologies to new models – just like jumping over wired telephone networks to wireless – jumping over gasoline directly to hybrids or hydrogen. Maybe communications in China can jump over the old model too – miss completely the bad days of disjointed communications – and go right to some new model. If they do, bet on public relations consultants to play a major role – especially those with a public affairs orientation. After all, in a communist country the role of the government is disproportionately important.
It’s time for a new tone as well, from selling to factual. From ‘big bang’ to continuous conversation. From ‘shovel ware’ to tailored. As Richard Edelman has said, “we need to admit complexity and contradiction.”
The bottom line is this: the training and skills required to deal with this complexity are hard to find. Many of the individual disciplines of communications – especially advertising and other ‘controlled communications disciplines’ – don’t teach the skills required.
But our firms need to step up to the challenge. In order to make the most of this dramatic new opportunity, we must change as well.
A New Set of Skills
First, our industry needs step up to the need for measurement and accountability. New models are needed for tracking, evaluating and analyzing the results of our programs. We need to understand the impact and influence of our work has on audience attitudes and behavior, and the factors that drive the change. As Jack Welch, the venerable former Chairman of General Electric is famous for saying, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t do it.”
Second, firms need to attract more and better talent to the agency business. Future agency leaders must be:
Business people – capable of handling higher-level business relationships and understanding the businesses and industries they serve;
Strategists – whose work is rooted in strategic audience insights that line to overall business objectives and goals;
Marketers – who understand all aspects of the marketing mix in order to seize opportunities and leverage the elements;
Scientists – who fully understand the importance of research and know how to measure a program’s value and impact; and,
Globalists – who are accustomed to and appreciative of the differences across cultures and geographies.
Public relations firms have an enormous opportunity ahead of them to lead the next generation of marketing and communications activities around the world – to become The New Integrators. Maintaining a broad view, building experience, staying on top of technological change and recruiting the best people with next-generation skills will take our industry where it has the potential to go.
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