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Getting to the Next Stage

Observations from Ketchum
Partners

Today's business environment presents a slew of areas that can snare corporate executives, and the growing importance of corporate social responsibility is one of them. Public relations can play a major role in helping businesses and their leaders get to the next stage, whether it is recovering from a setback or maximizing CSR initiatives. In this roundtable discussion, Ketchum partners address both topics.

Robert Burnside, Partner and Chief Learning Officer	Sean Fitzgerald, Partner and Managing Director, Ketchum West	Peter Fleischer, Partner and Senior Counselor	David Gallagher, Partner and CEO, London
Denise Kaufmann, Partner and Global Account Director	Jerry Olszewski, Senior Partner	Barri Rafferty, Partner and Director, New York	Lorraine Thelian, Senior Partner, North America

From a public relations standpoint, what do you see as the key to an individual or company being able to restore public image after a major setback?

Robert Burnside: In difficult times, the CEO is an icon for the health of the firm. His or her personal moral qualities stand as a proxy for how others judge the firm's health. Personal preparation to demonstrate the right mix of confidence and humility is critical.

Lorraine Thelian: Be truthful, acknowledge mistakes immediately and discuss what steps will be taken to make things right. In addition to being the right thing to do, if done immediately and transparently, it serves as a disarming prelude and takes the wind out of any attack. 

Barri Rafferty: Absolutely. Another key thing to keep in mind is that the public today is savvy to spin and more responsive to humble apologies or proactive responses. They also look at speed of response and are not willing to wait. They will fill in the gaps with assumptions and begin rumors to fill the void.

David Gallagher: Our affiliate agency in Scandinavia has a great model, which they have shared with us, on this question. If you look at credibility and visibility on an X-Y axis, the upper right quadrant is most desirable – high credibility and high visibility. After a setback, there is a tendency to shift left – to high visibility, low credibility. The implication? Take yourself (or brand or company or cause) down to low visibility, work on restoring your credibility, and then seek the high visibility opportunities. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is arguably a great example. After losing a hotly contested election, he took himself out of the limelight, invested himself in a cause he cared deeply about, and later found his way back into the spotlight, where he is possibly stronger and more credible than before his defeat.

What advice do you have for clients that are expanding their CSR efforts? What are the key things they should be considering?

Thelian: Get involved in an initiative that is sustainable within the organization over a long term. This probably requires the initiative to be something that is complementary to the organization's business and culture and engaging to employees, rather than simply the passion of just a few leaders of the organization.

Peter Fleischer: Be authentic in your choices. Select causes that link naturally to the essence of your brand, deliver on your brand promise to your customers and that inspire your employees and other stakeholders. Here’s a case in point: Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, never knew his birth parents and spent his whole life shuffling from foster home to foster home. He dropped out of school to work in a restaurant that became his surrogate family. That was the idea behind Wendy's: a quality, family-style restaurant that made hamburgers the right way. When he became successful, he formed a foundation to help kids like himself. The entire Wendy's system has adopted that cause, raising tens of millions of dollars to find permanent loving homes for foster children.

I often tell this story to clients as an example of a gold-standard CSR initiative. It’s hard to imagine a cause more authentic, more inspiring, more linked to brand essence and more powerful in telling the brand story. While other brands may not have something quite as compelling in their DNA, the Wendy's story can inspire them to dig a little deeper to ensure that authenticity is a key factor in their CSR journey.

Denise Kaufmann: Any CSR efforts must be rooted in the company's overarching business philosophy. Many companies still look at CSR as corporate philanthropy, but that is only one dimension of what being a "socially responsible" company is all about. All actions are under scrutiny, including how management runs the company and how they treat employees. Their actions have to make strategic sense for their business model or they will not be authentic.

Sean Fitzgerald: First and foremost, a company must complete an assessment of its own vulnerabilities in its selected category of CSR activity. For instance, if a company aggressively commits to and touts a "green" initiative yet continues to run operating facilities that severely pollute the environment, it likely will damage its reputation to a much greater extent than the green CSR initiative could ever hope to improve or repair.

Jerry Olszewski: Corporations should be deliberate about their CSR commitment and approach it with the same sophisticated analysis as their business strategy. Once there's a commitment to a CSR platform, invest in it with time and money, measure its success and, maybe above all, stick with it. There are no quick fixes in CSR.