The Rise and Evolution of the Chief Communications Officer

The Rise and Evolution of the Chief Communications Officer

“I don't think the term PR helps our industry. I love working in communications as we can have impact in every area of the brand and business.”

 

Today’s chief communications officers represent a new breed.

As traditional newsrooms continue to shrink and brands are becoming media companies, senior communications officials must be more well rounded and business focused than ever before.

Gone are the days of the PR director serving as a cog in the marketing mix, charged only with obtaining media impressions and mitigating issues. Today’s CCO is a credible member of the C-suite, directing content and channel strategy to engage internal and external stakeholders in a way that achieves business results.

Building the brand and protecting its reputation still serve as the core focus of the CCO, but given today’s convergence of paid, earned, shared and owned media in an always-on digital environment, achieving those goals requires a broader and more progressive approach than in the past.

A quick scan of this year’s Holmes Report Influence 100 reflects the depth and breadth of today’s senior communications leaders. Innovation, sustainability, engagement, social responsibility, marketing, integration, brand and global are just a few of the many capabilities that now appear in the titles of today’s senior-most in-house communications officials.

In order to truly match the complexity of the current communications landscape, today’s CCO should be well versed in and equipped to direct a diverse portfolio of strategic initiatives, including:

Corporate Social Responsibility

As an increasing number of brands have come to realize that doing good is also good for business, they’ve also realized the necessity to tie their CSR efforts back to a broader company narrative. For Levi’s, sustainability is at the heart of its CSR story, and the brand brought that story to life in a very unique and newsworthy way through its Field of Jeans activation as part of its naming rights sponsorship of the San Francisco 49ers’ stadium.

Creative Communications

Creative and communications never used to live in the same sentence. Times have changed, and in a big way. Communications leaders are driving more unique and creative ways to tell brands’ stories than ever before, and are even being recognized at Cannes for their efforts. Included among those bringing home Lions this year was Chevy, who received multiple awards for its creative real-time approach to the trending topic #TechnologyAndStuff. Another noteworthy show of creativity in real-time was EA’s reaction to the “Tiny Titan” glitch in its Madden NFL game.

Data and Analytics

The treasure trove of data now available to brands to help create news and tell their stories in more unique ways is a true asset. Just in the past year, Nike used running data to create more than 100,000 personalized videos summarizing the years of Nike+ users, and Fitbit used heart rate data from its users to show how fans in Boston and Seattle reacted to the Super Bowl in real-time.

Digital and Social Media

Many brands with a progressive approach to communications are now leveraging digital and social platforms to break news in creative ways. For example, the Sacramento Kings recently announced a new draft pick’s jersey number through a tweet with an embedded GIF, Chevy issued an all-emoji press release and Nike took to Snapchat to launch the KD 8 by letting fans follow Kevin Durant on his launch day journey.

Employee Engagement

Companies with forward-thinking communications leaders are also harnessing the power of technology to give employees new ways to voice their opinions, interact with and amplify company content. A few examples include REI creating an internal platform for employee discussion called the REI Campfire, Target giving employees the #TargetScoop platform to consume and amplify company news and IBM developing an entire suite of employee advocacy tools to drive reach and adoption of its products and services.

Global Activation

As digital and social media have made the world a much smaller and more connected place, the need for brands’ stories to be translated and localized globally has increased dramatically. Many CCOs now direct a hub-and-spoke model, where the overall brand story and individual campaigns are built in the hub and then translated to local regions to execute in a locally relevant way. One event that provided a significant opportunity for global activation was the 2014 World Cup, and Google took a unique approach. With a business objective of driving awareness of and traffic to the Google Trends product, the brand developed a Google World Cup Newsroom to leverage social intelligence to track trending World Cup news in real-time, then marry that information with pertinent search data to create multiple pieces of content for each match. To ensure the content matched the global nature of the event, the team leveraged a global footprint to translate every piece of content into the local language of regions around the world, and engaged influencers and media across the globe to interact with and amplify each piece of content.

Interactive Financial Communications

Managing financial communications is nothing new to today’s communications leaders, but the approach to packaging and distributing financial news continues to evolve. For example, Warby Parker drove a positive news cycle based on its creation of an interactive annual report that gave anyone the ability to use the brand’s tools to create their own annual report. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts has extended its earnings story into social the past several quarters by developing infographics that show how player earnings unfolded during the quarter they are reporting on financial earnings.

Social Customer Experience

As protecting brand reputation still lives at the heart of the CCO’s focus, the migration of customer service conversations to social media has placed social customer experience squarely in the remit of today’s communications leaders. CCOs must ensure those on the frontlines of customer experience are armed with the brand narrative, messaging, voice, tone and social FAQ response materials to guarantee a consistent experience across all brand channels. Customer experience teams must also be staffed appropriately and have the right tools and platforms in place to ensure a quick and accurate response strategy. One brand that is leading the charge in social customer experience is Microsoft’s Xbox, which created @XboxSupport and through a dedicated team and focused strategy earned the Guinness World Record for Most Responsive Corporate Account on Twitter.

Social Executive Communications

Executive communications in the past meant pitching the C-suite for earned media opportunities plus speaking engagements at relevant conferences. That’s still part of the gig, but the transition to a digital and social world has given communications leaders a way to connect their brand’s leaders directly with relevant stakeholders through emerging platforms. LinkedIn, for example, has become a leading platform for executives to tell their stories directly to the audiences that follow them. Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh leveraged LinkedIn to post his “Dirty Jeans Manifesto,” which received significant media pickup. Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard J. Tyson also took to LinkedIn to post his thoughts on race relations at a time when it was the talk of the nation. But LinkedIn certainly isn’t the only emerging platform available to brand leaders today. Many CEOs have taken to multiple platforms to engage with key stakeholders, and President Obama even gave an exclusive Q&A to YouTube influencers last year.

“PR” continues to be phased out as a term of the past; describing a once-narrow field of lone media relations focus. Today, the role of the chief communications officer is increasing in both importance and remit – guiding a brand’s storytelling efforts to all relevant stakeholders in order to achieve business objectives.

*Disclosure: Chevy, Electronic Arts, Fitbit, Google, Kaiser Permanente and Levi’s are FleishmanHillard clients.

Alessandro Giaume

Innovation Passionate | Lecturer | Book Author | Book Series Director | Mentor

7y

Giulia have a look

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