communication director 01 2016: preview

european editionIssue 1/2016

www.communication-director.com

You gotta have faith

Talking about trust: how to earn it, lose it and win it back

the magazine for corporate communications and public relations

CommuniCation DireCtor

Waiting for you to justify my loveWhat Europe’s communicators are doing to mend your relationship with their brands

Taken for a ride?What the Volkswagen scandal reveals about trust and economics

Learning from the hackersCyber-security, data breaches and the value of vulnerability

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Editor in Chief

Welcome,

“Dismal”. That’s how Edelman chief executive officer Michael Stewart sums up the general state of trust in Europe in his article for this issue of Communication Director. A stark description, and one based on his firm’s Trust Barometer, which interviews over 33,000 people across several months. The majority of the mass popu-lation do not feel optimistic about the future; government and big business, media and non-governmental organisations all face challenges in earning credibility in the eyes of the public. But among this doom and gloom is a shining opportunity for Europe’s corporate communicators: who else is better placed to help the continent’s public and private organisations win back that credibility?

To find out how communicators are stepping up to this challenge, we’ve turned to members of the European Association of Communication Directors (www.eacd-online.eu) who work in industries where trust levels yo-yo widely. We fired off our questions to heads of communications at a leading political party, a global pharmaceutical company, a major media player and an iconic automotive brand (find their answers in the Issue Focus section of this issue). That last category is interesting – until recently, the automotive industry was one of the sure-fire bets in terms of trust: however the Edelman Trust Barometer finds that trust levels in the industry have fallen dramati-cally. Not all Volkswagen’s fault, surely, but the emission scandal that has kept it in the headlines for the past several months is a major contributing factor and a reminder that a crisis that hits one company can taint a whole industry. Often, post-crisis com-munication strategies by an unrelated company that shore up trust in the affected industry are just as compelling as those of the ‘guilty’ party. To find out more, make a leap of faith and dive headlong into this, the first Communication Director of 2016.

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10 • leadership

Give leadership

Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, on the need for

effective, visionary leadership

1/16

i s s u e f o c u s

Trust and

communications

6 • risk

We have been hacked!

How experts advise companies about the threat of cyber crime in a world

where the enemy has the upper hand

12 • PR essentials

The world’s most reputable

Introducing the 10 most reputable companies in the world

70

What we mean when we talk about trust

A philosopher’s take on the real meaning of transparency and trustworthiness.

76

Repairing broken promisesWhat the Volkswagen scandal teaches us about the link bet-ween trust and economics

80

Trust deficit

Looking at trust, tough love and today’s European media can take communicators out of their comfort zone

62

European disunion Insights from across the continent into the 2016 edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer

73

Feeling the heat

Practical insights from members of the European Association of Communication Directors

66

Building trust in new markets

Understanding the fundamen-tals of building trustworthy relationships across time

18 • CuRRent affaiRs

A helping hand

What are European corporations doing to help the refugee crisis?


32 • CoRPoRate ResPonsibility

The power of an image

Why the tattoos of Zlatan IbrahimoviĆ are part of a long tradition of

campaigning imagery

40 • DiGital

Mobile-responsive government

The top 10 social media trends for public affairs communicators in 2016

28 • Data

Neurosurgery by numbers

Insights from a chief data officer who also happens to be a neurosurgeon

26 • skills

Leading a new era of communications

A look at the transformation of a function

54 • tHeoRy

Good news, bad news

Introducing the two-factor theory of publicity, wherein organisations learn to

look out for themselves

22 • bRanD

Authenticity in business

As the president of FleishmanHillard explains, brand behaviour trumps

narrative, every time

36 • Crisis

Crisis in the sky

A first-hand account of crisis commu-nications in the immediate aftermath of the disappearance of flight MH370

90 • PRivate Passions

What military history means to me

How one communicator finds inspiration for his work in the battles

of yesteryear

84 • CommuniCation ReaDeR

Books

New and upcoming titles for the communicator’s bookshelf

44 • inteRnal

Rooting cultural values through communication

Five must-do cultural basics for start-ups

86 • assoCiation

European Association of Communication Directors

The latest developments in the EACD

50 • stoRytellinG

And then a hero comes along

Empowerment storytelling and its powerful brand impact

56 • inteRview

Anne Glover

The former chief scientific adviser to the European Commission on GM, NGOs

and the value of trust

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46 • aGenDa setteR

The millennial workplace

Are you prepared for the next generation of communicators?

r I S K

coMMuNicaTioN diRecToR duqu 2 is strongly suspected to have been a state-sponsored attack: how does that make it unique?

STEFAN ROjACHER Whoever at-tacked us used several zero-days, a tech-nique to find vulnerability in software. You have to develop this kind of attack, it is very, very expensive, worth millions of – I won’t mention a currency here. Only national services can afford such an at-tack. And it’s not only the budget behind it, but also the sophisticated technolo-gy that they used. They were interested in our technologies, how we discover malware and cyber weapons, and they wanted to know if we have the ability to unveil their technologies to operate in cyberspace. That was the motivation of the attack that we found out.

We have been hacked!To stay competitive in our networked world, organisations race to keep up with digital developments and embrace innovation. However, this also makes corporations vulnerable to digital attacks – as Stefan Rojacher found out when his company, Kaspersky Lab, was hacked by Duqu 2, a highly sophisticated platform for cyber espionage. We invited Stefan and cyber security experts jaya Baloo and Roel Van Rijsewijk to share insights into the fight against cybercrime.

The following are excerpts of interviews that were conducted separately following a panel discussion between Jaya, Roel and Stefan held in November 2015 at the EACD Forum event in London.

6 c o m m u n i c a t i o n d i r e c t o r 1 / 2 0 1 6

r I S K

What are the most common fears your clients have about security?

ROEL VAN RIjSEWIjK I talked to our executive clients all over the globe and one of the conclusions was that, although maybe 10 years ago there was an aware-ness challenge, currently it’s all on their agenda. Every CEO understands that they are completely dependent on technology and that this will only increase. Technol-ogy is getting more open and connected, the CEO is becoming more vulnerable, and he’s looking at the papers and TV and sees that threats are increasing. So they understand there is a problem.

jAYA BALOO The fears tend to be things that rarely happen but are so com-monly publicised in the press that our clients tend to worry about them. People are worried about advanced persistent

“I’d like to make sure is

that we’re not jumping on the

fear-uncertainty-doubt bandwagon

that’s used by a lot of security

vendors.”

threats, hacking by state agencies or their competitors, and they’re afraid that it’s happening on a very large scale. When in fact what they should be worried about is very basic things that they can deal with themselves, vulnerabilities that they sim-ply don’t know about. They don’t always have a very good idea about where their weak spots are, what to do about them, or very simple network system hygiene that’s required like making sure your patches are up to date and your password policy is in good order. Those are the kind of things that tend to go wrong.

and how do you advise your cli-ents to defend against threats?

jAYA BALOO It really depends on the customer and what they have to protect and who they have to protect it from.

If they actually have intellectual prop-erty to protect from competitive intel-ligence gathering by competitors intent on stealing that IP, then we won’t say to them that it’s nonsense and to stop wor-rying about it. No, it really is important to understand that company’s business in order to advise them accurately in terms of security. That being said, the generic thing we see happening is these companies want to have anomaly detec-tion, advanced techniques in place when they haven’t even done the simple stuff first. So what I’d like to make sure is that we’re not jumping on the fear-un-certainty-doubt bandwagon that’s used by a lot of security vendors and that we’re actually taking a moment to consider the nature of the threat and the ability to cover all the basics.

ROEL VAN RIjSEWIjK The problem is that 100 per cent security is just im-possible.It would be too costly and it’s an asymmetric fight. As a defender you need to plug all the holes in an ever-chang-ing IT landscape and the attackers only need one tiny gap to get in. And you don’t know what they’ll come up with tomorrow – all these technological de-velopments that we use to improve our lives or services can be used to attack in new ways. What organisations all over


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The expertise to deal with recent crises such as the plight of Syrian refugees or the Ebola outbreak is already in our hands: what we lack is effective, visionary leadership.

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Giveleadership


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rowing up in Ghana in the midst of my coun-try’s struggle for inde-pendence, I was part of a generation which

believed that with inspired leadership change, even dramatic change, was pos-sible. I witnessed it first-hand.

This experience profoundly shaped my outlook on life and gave me a sense that nothing was impossible until proven otherwise. It was an experience that was to become very powerful many years lat-er when, as secretary-general of the Unit-ed Nations, I would go to bed with a ma-jor crisis on my desk and wake up to two more the next morn-ing. Staying hopeful in such a situation can be difficult and some people have “accused” me of be-ing a hopeless opti-mist but the truth is that I know what is possible when the right people get together at the right time and set about transforming the world.

Leadership can have many faces. And leadership through philanthropy is one of them. Modern philanthropists have brought a new impetus to the culture of giving not just by donating money but with ideas, energy and their own expe-rience in delivering results. At the Kofi Annan Foundation, we have developed close relationships with some of these new philanthropists as we seek to achieve progress on some of the world’s intracta-ble problems; we appreciate and admire the drive and commitment such phil-anthropic partners bring to solve those problems.

The need for leadership

Principled leadership is the essential quality that will propel our world forward because what the world is experiencing is a crisis of leadership, not a crisis of knowledge. Take Ebola: we have known P

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about it for 40 years, yet we did nothing. Climate change and its implications is a divisive subject in political circles but the scientific community reached a consen-sus on the need to act long ago. The flow of refugees fleeing violence-affected parts of the Middle East should not have come as a surprise and yet there was an unwill-ingness to act decisively until the picture of an innocent three year old drowned in the seas off the Turkish coast made the front pages around the world.

In short: the expertise and evidence needed to solve pressing problems such as poverty and malnutrition, climate change and pollution, violent conflict

and poor governance already exists. What holds us back too often is a lack of leadership and of political will to use it to deliver solutions.

Since retiring from the position of secretary-general of the United Nations, this is what I have devoted my time to: mobilising the political will needed to overcome threats to peace, development and human rights. My experience has taught me that there can be no long-term peace without development , and no long-term development without peace. And no society can long remain prosperous and peaceful without the rule of law and respect for human rights.

The big picture

The challenges awaiting us are enor-mous. The global drugs trade, collapsing peace processes, climate change, inter-national migration, and financial flows, both licit and illicit – have one thing in common: they lack the unbending resolve

“What holds us back too often is a lack of leadership and of political will to use it

to deliver solutions.”

Kofi annan

Chairman, Kofi annan foundation

Kofi annan was the seventh secretary-general of the united nations and is the 2001 joint nobel Peace laureate. with his foundation, Kofi annan seeks to mobilise the political will required to overcome threats to peace, development and human rights. the Kofi annan foundation is legally incor-porated in switzerland as an independent not-for-profit foundation based in Geneva, switzerland.

of those who could address these issues, to do so. The result is weakening faith in democracy, retreating into unilateral-ism, ultra-nationalism, or the politics of identity. This unfortunately will produce nothing but a bitter, fragmented, parochi-al and dangerous world.

These challenges require leadership and the ability to think long-term and see the big picture. In this complex and in-terdependent world, leadership that just looks at the next elections or the next shareholder meeting is no leadership at all. These challenges also require leading by example. Giving cash is good but being an active partner for change is even better.

Margaret Mead, the cultural anthro-pologist, once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Be part of that group. Give leader-ship. •

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p r e s s e n t i a l s


Trust and reputation go hand in hand. Companies that maintain their standing beyond their services or products win the highest levels of consumer trust. Produced by the Reputation Institute, The Global RepTrak® 100 measures companies from across the globe on their ability to meet expectations in seven dimensions: products and services, innovation, workplace, governance, citizenship, leadership

and performance. Based on the latest RepTrak® 100, we present the world’s 10 most reputable companies.

The world’s most reputable

p r e s s e n t i a l s


bmw GRouP

founded: 1916Headquarters: Munich, Germany industry: Automotivetrust dimension strength: GovernanceCommunication Director: Bill McAndrews, Vice President of BMW Group Communications Strategy, Corporate and Market Communications

tHe RePutation institute says:“BMW Group has been most successful at exporting its strong reputation from Germany to Russia, Australia, Italy and the UK. Opportunities for future reputation enhancements lie in Brazil, India, China, Mexico, and especially Korea.”

DaimleR aG

founded: 1886Headquarters: Stuttgart, Germanyindustry: Automotivetrust dimension strength: Products/ServicesCommunication Director: Jörg Howe, Head of Global Communications

tHe RePutation institute says:“Daimler is the company whose reputa-tion improved the most, followed closely by LEGO, and Nike.”

The key is to remain in constant dialogue with all stakeholders – politicians, shareholders, customers and communities alike. What’s more, with activities in over 140 countries, the BMW Group has diverse stakeholders of all different nationalities and cualtures, spanning the entire globe.

GooGle

founded: 1998Headquarters: California, USAindustry: Internettrust dimension strength: Workplace/CitizenshipCommunication Director: Rob Shilkin, Senior Director of Corporate Communications

tHe RePutation institute says:“Google tops on consumer perceptions of workplace and citizenship.”

bill mCanDRewsvice President of Communications strategy, Corporate and marketCommunications bmw Group

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A helping hand

M

More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, sparking a crisis as countries struggle to cope. In dealing with the crisis, can corporations succeed with the help of NGOs where governments have failed?

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any times over the years, I’ve asked myself what it would take for me to do what millions of internally displaced

persons, refugees and migrants have done: leave behind all my belongings and hand over my life’s savings to a stranger who will take my children and I in a crowded boat across a choppy, perilous sea in the middle of the night – all in the hopes of finding some kind of safety or a less precarious life?

How long would I have had to live in a tent, in a camp with millions of other idps or refugees, with no resolution in sight to the conflict that drove me from my home, job and community, with no means to provide even basic provisions or to ensure safety and education for my children? How long would I live with my family in an overcrowded basement in some city – with scarce food, no clean water, electricity or health care?

How bleak would my sense of the future have to be before taking the des-perate decision to flee? How hopeless would I have to feel knowing that even if

I got to a safe country, my family might get stuck in yet another camp, or live in marginal conditions on the outskirts of society with only a modest chance of gaining entry or a right to stay?

One of the occupational hazards of working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – a humanitarian organisation that helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and

other situations of violence – is that we witness people confronted with exactly such dilemmas every single day. We see it all over the world. Conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere are pushing people to take horrendous journeys within their own country, across borders, across the Sahel, the Gulf of Aden, or the Bay of Bengal to name a few.


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the greatest moral and humanitarian challenges of our times and, so far, there has been a general failure to find any real lasting political solutions to the conflicts driving people from their homes. The solution to many of these problems lies in the political realm and goes beyond the specific missions of humanitarian organisations.

The corporate response

Fortunately, the basic impulse of ordinary people to ease the suffering of their fellow human beings has been in ready supply. Along the borders of jor-dan, Lebanon and Turkey massive camps house millions of refugees, along the rocky coasts of Greek islands, and along the many routes that refugees and mi-grants have taken on their way across Eu-rope, ordinary citizens have been there, helping people get to safety, offering a meal, a blanket, a bottle of water, or just a listening ear and a welcome. The national

Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, the ICRC and others are providing a humani-tarian response alongside other local and international organisations.

Local and global businesses have also stepped in at critical times. Who can for-get the cargo and passenger ships alter-ing their routes, often taking considerable risks during high seas, to rescue dozens and sometimes hundreds of people? On a daily basis, fisherman save lives at sea –

Syria is at the forefront of people’s minds because of the suffering depicted in the media, the scale of the crisis which is in its fifth year and the extreme com-plexities of delivering humanitarian aid throughout the country. My colleague, Marianne Gasser, who heads ICRC op-erations in Syria, went into these towns in january as part of a humanitarian aid convoy and she described what she saw as “among the worst I have seen in terms of human suffering. It was really heart-breaking. When we arrived we saw a lot of people on the streets, especially wom-en and children. They looked really tired and frail. We saw despair in every one of them, especially the children. They were really hungry. Everyone was approaching us asking for a piece of bread or a biscuit. Mothers were desperately waiting for baby milk because they were too weak to breast feed. We saw very difficult scenes. The suffering was intense”.

No one could hear that and argue that the millions of people who have left Syr-ia are people fleeing simply to improve their quality of life. Displaced and refugee demographics confirm this. The migra-tion so often spoken about in the news today is no longer the domain of young men or women hoping to find work and send money home. It’s entire families, or widowed women with babies, even unac-companied children, risking their lives to reach safety.

This is no short-term phenomenon and there are no quick fixes. Population movements – whether internal displace-ment in a country or refugee across borders – affects today some 60 million people globally, more than at any time since the second world war. It is one of P

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and too often, they witness what happens when no one is there to act.

When asked the question of what can Europe’s corporations do to address this long-term phenomenon more stra-tegically and more effectively, the easy answer is to ask the corporate sector to contribute financially. Contributions to humanitarian organisations responding to the needs, such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies that have community based volunteers in virtually every country of the world, or the ICRC working in war-torn countries. Of course, donations are vital to support organisa-tions that improve the lives of people living in refugee camps and in highly re-source-stressed host communities in the areas surrounding conflict. In the case of Syria, that’s Lebanon, jordan, Iraq and Turkey. Many corporations and private individuals are already giving generously, though the needs still far outweigh the resources available.

New fundraising tools are allowing businesses to connect easily to national

societies, the ICRC or other organisa-tions and give di-rectly to the caus-es that employees care most about.

Such contri-butions have a real and immedi-ate impact. But I would argue that making a lasting impact is not just about who you support or part-

ner with, but the nature of that support. One driver of the displacement and ref-ugee crisis, for example, is the wholesale destruction of water systems, health facil-ities, sanitation and power networks that support civilian life.

Repairing and maintaining these systems is an enterprise that goes well beyond annual or short-term emergen-cy funding. With today’s conflicts being largely urban and long-term, the ICRC

“Businesses are looking for deeper, more

meaningful relationships with humanitarian

organisations.”

What does it mean to be authentic in business?

When it comes to consumer perceptions of authenticity, companies must move beyond big brand promises and platitudes and be as they wish to be seen. Research from FleishmanHillard reveals how European companies engage authentically.

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ecent examples of cor-porate misbehaviour have undermined consumer trust in the brands of some of the

world’s largest companies. The Volkswagen emissions crisis re-

verberated far beyond the automotive sector. A business that seemed immune to market changes, synonymous with reputational integrity and impervious to criticism was exposed for its business ‘irregularities’. As an example of German engineering prowess and as representa-

tive of a manufacturing sector previously held up as the bastion for success, that gap between customer expectation and the actual experience was shown to be immense.

In the UK, the Public Accounts Com-mittee’s (PAC) investigation continued into the tax practices of the multina-tionals. As Google stepped up to take its

Expectations

AUTHENTICENGAGEMENT

Brandwhat you say and

how you behave

Reputationwhat others say about you based on shared perceptions

Experience

Managing

alignment

between brand and

reputation to achieve

successful business results

Authentic Engagement

“Our research proves that there is no separation between a company’s

brand and its reputation.”

Rplace on the benches, it was clear that the debate was not simply a regulatory one. Over recent years, the PAC has been heav-ily influenced by perceived negative pub-lic perceptions of tax avoidance. There is a massive blurring of lines between how a company acts and whose responsibili-ty that is. Questions have been personal as well as professional and there is an expectation for companies to pay. How the company conducts itself is critical for audience perceptions.

This all goes to demonstrate that management decisions are no longer seen

as the preserve of the boardroom. Old habits die hard; many companies remain reluctant to either communicate regu-larly (outside of the mandatory financial results) or to be fully transparent in their business practices. Yet FleishmanHil-lard’s research into authentic behaviour shows just how fundamentally impor-tant this is.

In a more demanding world, our research proves that there is no sepa-ration between a company’s brand and its reputation. And in fact, until the two are properly aligned no business can be seen as truly authentic. While compa-nies are spending extraordinary amounts of time and money on their corporate narrative, they are missing the mark on what matters most to their audiences. The Volkswagen example shows that consumers are thinking increasingly about the company behind the products they are buying and using.

So what actually matters in Europe?

Our research is split into nine drivers of reputation that fall into three cate-gories: management behaviours, society outcomes and customer benefits. Focus-ing on those drivers allows us to examine what the priorities are for audiences in each of the sectors we surveyed. It also allows us to see that overall there are certain trends:

• Consumer expectations are shifting – the former focus on customer ben-efits (innovation and value being the most important) is becoming less im-portant in shaping reputation than in the past.

• Consumers are increasingly more concerned with society outcomes, in-cluding how a company treats its em-ployees, how the organisation looks after the environment and how it works with the community it is in.

• There is an increased expectation for companies communicate about man-agement behaviours: (how company is run, how it performs and the nature of its communications).

• The research, however, shows that the gap between expectations and what they see companies de-livering in this area is growing.

D a t a


Neurosurgery by numbers

ow do you combine your roles as chief data officer and di-rector of neurologi-cal oncology? What came first?

My formal training is in clinical neurosurgery, but all through that time I had been doing data-related research. It started with molecular biology and then genomics – analysing large data sets is a part of that. That grew in scale to analysing whatever kind of data sets I could get my hands on and trying to integrate patient and clinical data with

all the other molecular stuff. Therefore, as I was evolving as a neurosurgeon and going through my training, I was also going through my evolution as a data scientist in my research. When I got to Geisinger, I was hired to do clinical neu-rosurgery and computational research in our research and development work. The latter half of that grew into a chief data officer role for our organisation. We have always been a data-rich organisation but like many organisations within recent history, we have started to realise that having a specific leadership role for data was necessary.

What are the parallels between your two areas of expertise?

There are operational parallels and there are conceptual parallels. I think operationally, clinical medicine and data science are converging . As doctors we are more ready to look to the information and analytics and at the same time the analytics are becoming more robust and capable of providing answers. It is is great to have a background in both because it really gives me a good perspective as to where the real value propositions are for the organisation and for the doctors. Now conceptually, there are things about

H

Not many people can claim to be a chief data officer and a practicing neurosurgeon. Dr Nicholas Marko

heads the data team at Geisinger Health System and is director of neurological oncology at Geisinger

Medical Center. He reveals to Communication Director how his dual roles complement each other and how the development of data science helps him

in his work – and could help yours, as well.

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D a t a


“I think operationally,

clinical medicine and data science are converging.”

neurosurgery and the way that we look at the world that are helpful for me as a data scientist. With neurosurgery we are very used to dealing with risk under conditions of incomplete information. It is always challenging when you are man-aging a patient with a brain tumour as often there isn’t clearly one answer. There are a couple of different ways you could approach it and you have to make a com-plex decision after thinking about all the technical parts and all that the individual patient values and expects. In data and in analytics, there is so much complexity that there isn’t always one right answer either. There is always risk that you might get certain things right and you might get certain things wrong. Conceptually being in a clinical field where we think about everything as lying on a distribution of risk has helped me in the data world be-cause every decision we make about what to do with our information lies along a distribution of efficacy and risk as well. just like I have to make decisions about what I have to do clinically, somebody has to make decisions about what we do on the data side or we will never get anything done.

you spoke about how these two disciplines are in some ways converg-ing. how do you see the use of data science affecting health and treatment services?

That is the key question. I think the future is actually very promising as long as health care systems continue to adopt data-driven cultures. That is clearly the way many systems are going right now – a culture where you look to data for answers. You will see doctors using com-puter-based data modelling tools to help make decisions about what we should do for patients. If you have got a patient in your clinic and you have six, eight or 10 chemotherapeutic agents that you can pick from, how do you do that? Well, you can do it based on your knowledge and experience of clinical trials. But imagine if you could sit down at a computer, in-put information about that patient and it could help give you some data-driv-

en answers about what may or may not work for that individual. That is at the level of the individual patient. I think that will scale all the way up to the level of the health care system where you will

start to see the same sort of data-driven approaches taken to help dictate how we do things operationally. For example, we may see schedules in the operating room relying more on computer-generated scheduling modules than on a series of people sitting around with papers spread out on a desk trying to figure out which operations go in which room at which time.

could you provide an overview of what data strategy is and what it means?

Data strategy is the process by which an organisation thinks about the value of its data and the application of the data and information across all operational arms of the business unit. It’s about treating data like any other limited re-source that you have in your organisa-tion. People are beginning to recognise the information that organisations col-lect through their daily operations has inherent value and that information can be leveraged to help anything from optimising operations to accessing new markets, to communicating better with clients and with employees. It is about figuring out how you are going to: lev-erage your data, making secondary use of that data to continue to add business value and how to drive your operations in a more objective, data-driven fashion.

Would you say that all kinds of organisations need a data strategy?

Any organisation needs one that finds itself in a position where they are a) an organisation that generates a lot of information in the course of business or b) they are an organisation already sav-ing their data but aren’t quite sure what to do with it yet. Small organisations with a tiny footprint or a highly-focused mission may not need to worry about a data strategy because the secondary use of data is not an important part of what they do. But anybody who is thinking about collecting their information and trying to get something out of it, or trying to leverage the information that they are gathering for something more than just its primary transactional purpose, will benefit from having a data strategy.

n i C H o l a s m a R K oChief Data officer, Geisinger Health system and Director of neurological oncology, Geisinger medical Center

Dr nicholas marko is both a clinical neurosurgeon special-ising in neurosurgical oncology and a data scientist with exper-tise in predictive analytics and high-performance computing. as a healthcare executive he focuses on enterprise data strategy, integration, and innovation. He also heads the department of data science & engineering in Geisinger’s Division of applied Research and Clinical informatics (DaRCi) where he oversees Geisinger’s big data stack and its enterprise data warehouse.

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Thepower of animage

n the complex topography of humanitarian relief, there is, or I should say there was, a country which represents a milestone in

the history of humanitarian aid. Its name is Biafra.

During the summer 1968, the Nige-rian forces bombed Biafran towns and implemented blockades leading to mass starvation. Shocking images of starving children, with bloated bellies and plead-ing eyes were diffused by the Western media. The tiny state of Biafra was swept away by the civil war but the emblematic photo published on LIFE’s cover in july 1968 remained as a living memory of their tragedy. The word “Biafra” acquired a “to-temic meaning and became synonymous with starvation and hunger” as writes Brian Horrigan in an exhibition devoted to the culture of 1968.

I was born that same year. Growing up, whenever I did not want to eat what-ever was on the table, my parents would tell me to think of the children of Biafra who didn’t have anything to eat. That re-minder marked me for the rest of my life.

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I had the chance to serve on the frontline of several humanitarian crises. Whether in the muddy streets of Prishti-na (Kosovo), in the dusty markets of Baghdad (Iraq) or on the sunny hills of Tibnin (Lebanon), I witnessed how cru-cial imagery is to bringing awareness to humanitarian emergencies. Be it through photography, television or much more recently social media, imagery enables humanitarian organisations to raise awareness and inspire donors’ generosity.

As Denis Kennedy of the College of the Holy Cross writes, “The image exists thanks to the work of the humanitarians who are out there helping the victims; con-versely the humanitarians exist thanks to the images’ power that allow them to bridge the distance between the victim and possible donors”. It symbolically es-tablished an ever-continuing symbiotic relationship between humanitarianism and images. Our challenge as humanitar-ians is to bridge this distance between the people suffering and those who can help.

A call to action

Thirty years after the Biafra crisis, I was the communication officer at the Eu-ropean Community Humanitarian Office ECHO (Brussels) in charge of the ECHO Annual Report. That year, the Report’s cover page was devoted to the Rwandan crisis. In 1996, following the Rwandan genocide, 1,600,000 Rwandese Hutu fled the country, mainly to neighbouring Zaire. This mass exodus triggered further strife within and between both nations. By the beginning of 1997, the vast major-ity of refugees who had fled in the after-math of the Rwandan genocide returned. The refugee crisis caused by an internal genocide ended with a new war.

Emma Bonino, at the time the EU commissioner for humanitarian aid and a human rights activist, decided to send a clear message to the world. To do so, she chose a rather stark image for the cover page: three Rwandan children sitting on a consignment of humanitarian aid. P

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“The despair on their faces could be that of anyone of any age. The photo does for more than words ever could to convey just how helpless people feel when faced with [...] hunger,” she declared.

The choice was controversial: some governments were shocked by that im-age and complained that we should have showed the solution (i.e. humanitarian relief ) instead of the problem. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled back into Rwanda as the international community stood impotent to change the outcome of events. The message sounded like a call to action.

A message transformed

In 2003, in collaboration with Unit-ed Colors of Benetton, I developed and launched a global communication cam-paign for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the frontline agency in the fight against global hunger.

A person died of hunger every five seconds: we needed to put hunger back at the top of the international agenda. james Mollison, the young photographer from Fabrica, Benetton’s talent pool cre-ated by the famous and controversial artist photographer Oliviero Toscani, visited WFP’s operations in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Guinea and Sierra Leone to take pictures.

All images were true, individual sto-ries of women, children and men whose only chances of escaping violence, mar-ginalisation and poverty depended on them finding food. The images used for billboards and media ads showed how food is a catalyst for reconciliation and development, a tool capable of revolu-tionising the lives of hungry individuals. A prime example of this was in Sierra Le-one, where former soldiers received food if they surrendered their weapons. One of them had a mutilated arm and had turned his metal prosthesis into a spoon to eat; his picture became the symbol of our WFP-Benetton awareness campaign entitled Food for Life.

footballer zlatan ibrahimovic tattooed with 50 names representing the 805

million people suffering from hunger.

C r i s i s

Crisis Following the sudden disappearance of flight MH370, Malaysia Airlines faced serious challenges in their efforts to engage relatives of the passengers and other stakeholders with compassion and accuracy.

b y H u G H D u n l e a v y


light MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur on March 8 2014 for Beijing, China. Approximately two hours into the flight, all contact

with the aircraft was lost and the start of the most intense search in aviation history began. At around 4:00 on that Saturday morning I was on my way to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to take a flight to Borneo for a conference. On receipt of the emergen-cy call-out message, my driver diverted me to the Emergency Operations Cen-tre (EOC) which fortunately is located at the Malaysia Airlines Flight Operations building at KLIA.

I walked into the EOC less than five minutes after the call-out. Communica-tions were already underway between the airline, air traffic control and to all aircraft that were in the vicinity of MH370’s last known position to advise of any sightings. Initially, the aircraft was believed to have gone down in the South China Sea as the last contact with the aircraft was while it was still in Malaysia airspace and head-ing towards Vietnam.

During the next several hours, the EOC team commenced their responsibili-ties. As head of commercial, I had already activated our emergency phone lines and my call centre was updated on the appro-

priate messaging to be provided to callers inquiring about the missing aircraft. On the e-commerce side of the business, the dark site was activated and all commer-cial advertising for travel on Malaysia Airlines was removed and replaced with a brief message advising customers of the emergency contact numbers in rela-tion to the missing aircraft. In parallel, the commercial team in Beijing was ful-ly activated and the emergency response procedures activated to organise hotel accommodations and bus transporta-tion to take Next of Kin (NOK) to the hotels once the news broke that MH370 was missing. Around 8:00 on Saturday morning, MH370 was scheduled to arrive in Beijing. Family members would be at the airport to meet their relatives but no aircraft would arrive. Accordingly, the first press conference took place in Kuala Lumpur around that time and the world was informed of the missing aircraft. It should be noted that up until this time there was still hope that the aircraft was experiencing communication difficulties as no distress signals or information on a crashed aircraft had been reported.

In Kuala Lumpur, the airline’s Car-egiver Team was activated and an aircraft identified to transport the caregivers to Beijing. Emphasis was placed on Man-darin-speaking staff and in addition the

airline activated our relationship with the Buddhist Tzu Chi organisation to provide Mandarin-speaking support in Beijing.

I was appointed as head of the Go Team as the most senior executive with active responsibility for all the airline’s stations. The Go Team departed KLIA around 16:00 for Beijing to the Lido Ho-tel, where the majority of the NOK were accommodated and where the first press conference in Beijing was given. Malaysia Airlines arranged bus transportation to take NOK to and from their hotel to the Lido Hotel which was designated as the primary venue where all family briefings and press conferences would take place.

Press conference

The first press conference took place around midnight on Saturday March 8, some 16 hours after the aircraft was due to land in Beijing. The press were not happy as the time was so late, the NOK were tired and extremely upset and quite frankly very angry at the airline. The fact that it takes time to organise a relief air-craft and then fly for eight hours to Bei-jing was not appreciated by any of the press or the NOK.

One of my senior colleagues who is ethnically Chinese was allocated to my

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team as we believed it would be respectful and appropriate. Unfortunately my col-league did not speak Mandarin and this lack of Mandarin skills actually worked against us rather than helped. The local Chinese thought he was being arrogant in only speaking English at the press confer-ence. Following that event, it was decided that the best course of action was to send him back to Kuala Lumpur.

The time delay as a result of the flight time to Beijing also introduced significant management and administration issues in Beijing. The majority of the NOK were already accommodated in the hotel and when we attempted to provide ID cards to identify NOK, we were faced with stiff resistance. The hotels obviously wanted to know who were legitimate NOK, who were media and who were individuals simply attempting to get a free stay in a hotel with all meals provided. This prob-lem became exacerbated over the next several days as the total number of NOK reached some 1400 people.

In a situation in which the media had also taken up rooms at the hotel (at their own expense) it was virtually impossible to separate the media from the NOK. The NOK actually assisted the airline in that they ordered unique T-shirts regarding MH370 and the NOK were very rigorous in ensuring that only legitimate NOK

were able to receive a T-shirt. The iden-tification problem was resolved by the NOK themselves.

During the next many weeks, my Car-egiver Team performed incredibly well under the most extreme pressure and often hostile attitude from some NOK. This is not to say all NOK were hostile. In fact the majority of the NOK were sim-ply overcome with tremendous feelings of grief and sorrow for their lost fam-ily members. However it only requires a small number of individuals with an agenda to collaborate and start shouting abuse and accusations to get the immedi-ate attention of the world media.

To address these issues, the airline provided separate daily verbal briefings to the NOK and the media. These were presented in English and then Manda-rin. Written versions of the briefings were also published in both languages. This also gave rise to some tense mo-ments as we rapidly came to appreciate that Mandarin as spoken by the Chinese community in Malaysia is not the same as the Mandarin spoken and written in Beijing.

Small changes in tonal expressions and the use of words that had one mean-ing in Malaysia but a different interpre-tation in Beijing caused some tense mo-ments. Similarly, I was originally using

one of my Beijing sales staff who is fluent in English and Mandarin as my transla-tor for all my family and media briefings. This was not a good idea.

My local Chinese sales staff wanted to protect me from the worst of the state-ments and accusations being shouted by the NOK. My staff would tone down the statements in their translation. This meant that I was responding to NOK questions in a manner that did not reflect the real intent of the questions. Recognis-ing this as a major issue, we attempted to contract a professional translator in Bei-jing. However this was easier said than done as the vast majority of the Chinese translators did not want to get involved in this crisis. Finally we located a translator that was willing to work with the airline. He was European but had been living and working in Beijing for some 14 years and was a registered official translator.

At my next family and media brief-ing I introduced my new translator and received some strange looks from the NOK when they saw a European stand up and be presented as my translator. All these strange looks changed the moment he started speaking in fluent Mandarin with a Beijing accent. For the first time I saw smiles on the faces of the NOK and I knew we had made a major break-through in the relationship with them.

The Caregiver Team received amaz-ing support from the local authorities

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Mobile- responsive government 10 social media trends communicators should watch out for in 2016 – especially if they work in public affairs.

b y a u R é l i e v a l t a t

Increasingly, those who look ahead have an advantage in digital communi-cations, in particular on social media. Anticipating future trends is not just fun (albeit difficult fun), it’s also vital if you want to be able to allocate your resources properly and develop an integrated com-munications approach across online and offline channels.

So, after some intensive weekend reading, in particular during the Brussels

lockdown, here’s a personal compilation of what the 10 most probable social media trends of 2016 look like, with a focus on government communicators and what they can make of these trends. The data

provided is from credible sources which you will find compiled at the end of the article. The examples mentioned come from my personal exposure to best prac-tices, including as a jury member at the European Digital Awards in September 2015.

1. Pay to play becomes more necessary than ever

Paid advertisement on social media used to be for companies and brands

that can afford it. Well, those times are over. More and more government and SME commu-nicators are faced with the difficult

decision of having to increase their social media advertising budgets, as Facebook’s organic page reach is now close to zero and there is more and more noise on so-cial media.

IAs a public service it can be difficult to

take this decision as budgets are subject-ed to public scrutiny, but I’m still looking for the study that shows that citizens or users have a negative bias when they see promoted tweets or Facebook posts from public services. After all, if the informa-tion they get is useful and relevant, then where is the issue?

According to others, however, 2016 will also be the year where ad blocking explodes. If you already use ad blocking, you may have noticed that a number of media sites in particular can no longer be accessed with ad blocking enabled.

If your website uses ads, you will need to take a business decision on how you react to ad blocking.

This article is based on Aurélie’s presentation at a seminar on digital communication in public affairs held by the EACD in Brussels in December 2015. To find out more about EACD events visit www.eacd-online.eu


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If you work in government, the pres-sure of accessibility requirements will combine with market pressure to push you to invest heavily in making your on-line services as mobile-friendly as possible.

2. Mobile is the new normal

In 2015 mobile internet access took over desktop access in many countries, rich and poor. 2015 also saw the rise of mobile-friendly ‘positive discrimination’ by some internet giants such as Google, whose algorithm now penalises web-sites that are not mobi le - friendly. So if you haven’t pressed hard on the mobile pedal yet, now is the time to gear up.

Going mobile first is not just a matter of boosting your attractiveness on search engines, it will also increase user satisfaction and the positive perception around your brand.

3. Live video and living in the moment

Some platforms such as Twitter al-ready play the instant and real-time card, but the live streaming features launched in 2015 – Periscope, Meerkat, Facebook Live and YouNow – have brought the definition of live to a new level, and at a speed unprecedented in the digital world.

Public communicators will need to find new and more efficient ways to em-bed live into their digital communication strategies if they are serious about using social media in the future. Events are a good place to start, during which us-er-generated content can turn out quite handy when you don’t have the manpow-er or the internal agility to arrange for your own live coverage.

With the news in the last few months related to terrorism and migration, and the growing discrepancy between the

“For government communicators, this

means looking at creating a seamless experience

for citizens.”

Content becomes even more personal

Paying to play becomes more necessary than ever

Mobile is the new normal

Live video and livingin the moment

In-app functionalitiesto keep you locked-in

Watch out for Whatsapp, instagram, SnapchatVisual communication

is king

A shift campaign to experience

Internet of things,wearables and VR

Government 3Ds-digital, data, design

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image design by aurélie valtat

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A g e n d A S e t t e r

hether it is “The truth about managing mil-lennials” (Forbes.com, january 31 2016), or “Why the millenni-als in your office hate

their jobs” (New York Post, january 29 2016), or even “3 reasons why millennials are getting fired” (Inc., August 4 2015), the media is awash with coverage of the gen-eration who are about to run the world.

However opinions and facts about people born between 1984 and 1996, other-wise known as Generation Y, vary greatly. In 2013 joel Stein infamously suggested in Time Magazine that millennials are “the most threatening and exciting generation since the baby boomers” – narcissistic, lazy and entitled career opportunists who are likely to move swiftly away from your company.

On the other hand, in the same year as Stein’s Time Magazine article, PwC published its NextGen survey and sug-gested that Generation Y are looking for greater flexibility in getting the job done and simply less willing to sacrifice their personal lives to work, compared with generations past.

The next generation of communicators have arrived in your office. Two of the brightest give their take on millennial wants and needs and what this means for the evolution of the workplace.

b y J a n w i s n i e w s K i

The millennial workplace

To get an inside view of this controver-sial generation, Communication Director spoke to two award-winning young com-munication professionals. Sonia Khan is press officer at the Department of Work and Pensions UK. Last year, she won the Young Communicator of the Year award at the European Communication Sum-mit for her campaign that challenged at-titudes deterring women from taking up roles in male-dominated industries. Pia Warburton, corporate communications manager at Cook Medial Asia-Pacific, won the equivalent prize at the Asia-Pa-cific Communication Summit for her work on a campaign to spread aware-ness of the harmful effects of smoking in China (both events are co-hosted by Communication Director).

Both Sonia and Pia contest the gen-eralisation of young professionals that appears in media coverage. Instead, they suggest we take a more nuanced approach to defining the nature of millennials. Di-versity of background and individual needs must be considered, they agree.

“I don’t think you can define a gener-ation in a couple of words and that’s why we find conflicting reports,” says Sonia.

“In some cases we’re told we’re work-shy and lazy, in others we’re not as fun as previous generations and we’re too career focused.”

Pia, meanwhile, notes that many media opinions about millennials come from Generation X and baby boomers, and should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt.

“This needs to be taken into account when we look at assessments and opinion pieces on Gen Ys – how much of their own values are being projected on to evalua-tions of Gen Ys?” she asks.

Workplace requirements

But what of the idea promoted by the 2014 Pew report, Millennials in Adult-hood, that millennials are more individ-ualistic – or self-centred, depending on your perspective? Pia puts this in a his-torical context: “Millennials think more individually because of the environment they are were brought up in, compared to their baby boomer parents – secure, nur-tured and relatively free from war and disasters. They have the time and luxu-

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or hurts that. I appreciate that in some environments, certain processes are key. However, there should always be room for manoeuvre and a want to do better. Otherwise how do we respond in crisis or times that challenge these structures? Having a base is good, flexibility is even better.”

Perhaps an organisation that is able to provide a solid structural foundation for its employees in their work while also giving them the opportunity to innovate and adapt when new challenges arise is the ideal millennial workplace?

Pia also stresses the importance of a cooperative culture and an open man-

agement style, shedding light on an in-teresting millennial dynamic, the desire to have individual freedom while feeling the support amongst a team: “An impor-tant aspect of what I value in a working environment is the people: those on my team, colleagues that I interact with with-in the company and most importantly who I report to and their management style. I value a boss who gives direction and at the same time trusts me to work independently and get the job done well. This is possibly one of the biggest factors when choosing a job.”

“As millennials – who I believe are a generation who greatly value feedback – progress up the management ladder, we will see a change in management style towards one that will take more time in giving feedback to their staff.”

ry, to an extent, of dreaming of greener pastures. Given the internet and social media, millennials are being shown more and more what success can look like.”

Sonia agrees that young people’s aims differ to those of past generations, in part because of the success of their peers: “Our goalposts are different. They’re not easier or harder than those of the previous gen-eration. They’re different and that’s how we should see them. We’re surrounded by successful millennials who are opening up their paths of success. No longer is someone’s rise to the top a secret. Thanks to LinkedIn and Ted Talks, there’s more choice and help than ever before.”

The moving set of goal posts that So-nia mentions also applies to workplace desires. PWC’s NextGen report explains that millennials want flexibility in their working environment – 64 per cent of millennials would like to occasionally work from home and 66 per cent of mil-lennials would like to shift their work hours. This generation also places value on team-orientated cultures and regular feedback with 41 per cent of millennials wishing to be rewarded or recognised for their work at least monthly, compared to 30 per cent of non-millennials. They also focus on productivity rather than long working hours with 71 per cent of millennials reporting that work demands interfere with their personal lives.

The answers of our young communi-cators touch on these points.

Sonia gives three critical criteria for what she as a millennial values in a work-place, drawing on her own experience in running an award-winning campaign: “Creativity, flexibility and support. When I suggested the idea behind #notjustfor-boys, my senior management team were very open to it. Having the opportunity to explore it made me value my employers more. I was given the space to be creative and to nurture a campaign that was dig-ital first – a real unknown.”

“The focus for many should be get-ting the job done. Once you know how to do that, you can look at whether the established professional practice helps P

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Aside from the suggestion that man-agerial styles are transforming, Pia also addresses another popular criticism of millennials, their apparent inability to stay in one job. In a 2015 survey of global millennials by Deloitte, Mind the Gaps, two-thirds said they hoped to be working for a different organisation in five years or sooner. Pia suggests it’s a hunger to learn, not an inability to stick to a job that causes millennials to look for new opportunities:

“We need to take a look at why mil-lennials have the desire to change jobs every two to four years in our early 20s. This could be down to many factors in-cluding the desire for bigger challenges, better prospects and learning opportuni-ties elsewhere.”

Millennials in communication

With the drive to learn and to create better working practices, millennials offer organisations an opportunity for greater and more creative output. But what about the communications field in particular? What special capabilities does this gener-ation bring to communications?

Both Sonia and Pia propose the main benefit millennial communicators carry with them is their upbringing as digital natives.

Sonia says, “Millennials bring a great understanding of technology to commu-nications. As a generation, particularly

“Our goalposts are different. They’re not

easier or harder than those of the previous generation.”

left: Pia warburton, Corporate Communi-cations manager, Cook medical asia- Pacific; Right: sonia Khan, Press officer, Department of work and Pensions uK

S t o r y t e l l i n g


eputation matters for busi-ness. According to the Rep-utation Institute there is a direct correlation between

an organisation’s increase in reputation and the rise in public support it receives. In fact, the most recent report by the In-stitute indicates that a five point increase in reputation generates as much as five per cent to seven per cent increase in public support. So, the better the public support and higher the brand awareness, the better the public image.

Although this might sound like a straightforward argument, mapping out the relationship that enables this corre-lation is more complicated than it seems. Where does public support begin and, more importantly, how can one achieve it effectively? Should an organisation con-tinue on the known path of the commu-nication mix – involving public relations,

marketing, advertising and more recently social media – or should it expand the mix to include corporate social respon-sibility, public affairs and internal com-munication among others? If so, which of these should take center stage within the organisation? And more importantly, how can they all contribute to harnessing public support?

Silos do not work anymore, especially when it comes to meaningful, impact-ful communication in today’s context. Although still seen as effective, depart-ments and silos bring complementary specialisms within communications to compete against one another within the same organisation instead of furthering the organisational objectives. Moreover, interruption doesn’t work anymore ei-ther, or at least not for long. Attention grabbing is short-lived and energy con-suming.

Storytelling is the answer. Content is King and narrative – useful, relevant and entertaining – is its new secret su-perpower. In a post-advertising world dominated by peer-to-peer communica-tion and small attention spans, strong and compelling storytelling is the only way through which organisations, insti-tutions, brands and people can break the mould.

Stories of discovery and transformation

Is it generally on social media that this new model of engagement is seen in action, especially on YouTube. Taking into account the platform’s one billion users (that is more than 10 per cent of the entire world population), its sophis-ticated search function, statistics and search engine optimisation options in-herited from Google and its increasing business and advertising solutions, this is no wonder.

Super-Pharm, for instance, used the platform to upload and share its M6 ra-zor blades story: a story of a regular guy, with a regular family and a regular job

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Empowerment storytelling and its powerful brand impact.

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“And then a hero comes along…”


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parting from his regular beard and the effect this has on him and the people around him. Created by BBR Saatchi & Saatchi Tel Aviv, this film is not an advertisement anymore; it is a story of discovery and transformation.

He receives the call – a call to surprise his loved ones and make them see him in a new light; he is in doubt – his beard was comfortable and his family accepting of it, so he doubts whether the change will be welcomed; he decides to start the quest and he receives help – a razor to smooth the process. Then he confronts his own nemesis by checking his new image in the mirror. Amid new doubts he decides to continue on the path chosen coming out of his journey renewed. He then goes on to see his family who, although surprised at first by his new look, approves of it heartily. The regular guy has his happy outcome; he reached it by receiving some help on his way to transformation. But the moral of the story is that it is only a little help that is needed for people to be happy and to make others happy.

Following a similar recipe, Procter & Gamble Romania launched in 2015 the #desteptaretele (“#smartists” = smart +

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artists) campaign for its Bonux detergent brand promoting stories of their custom-ers answering the question “What is the most valuable thing that you have”? The stories follow two women who, faced with the challenge of supporting their families, used their creativity and skills to find a way out of their impasse: while one started crafting dolls, the other designed clothes out of repurposed fabric. Both stories follow the same pattern as the Su-per-Pharm film and also share the same moral which the brand clearly states: “It doesn’t matter how much you have, but how much you manage to achieve with what you have”.

“Strong and compelling

storytelling is the only way

through which organisations,

institutions, brands and people can

break the mould.”

a transformation takes place in super-Pharm’s m6 razor blades story

strong storytelling in HsbC now, HsbC’s internal television

programme

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When Anne Glover was appointed as the first chief scientific adviser to the European Commission in 2011, her role soon caused controversy characterised by mistrust between critics and supporters of the role.

i n t e R v i e w b y D a f y D D P H i l l i P s

“If we had the trust of citizens, the demand for innovation would be enormous.”

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H ow did a microbiologist become interest-ed in communicating science in the first place?

That’s an easy one to answer. You can’t see microbes so it’s always really difficult to explain

to people how important they are. They’re everywhere. There are more microbes in the human body than there are human cells, they’re so important, but we can’t see them. So early on I thought I’ll need to start thinking about how I communicate what I do, because I’d like other people to understand so they can judge for themselves.

What were your hopes for the role of chief scientific adviser?

What I wanted to do mainly was to raise the profile of science within govern-ment. Most of the policies that we rely upon as citizens to provide us with safe foods, safe chemicals, safe products, inno-vative transport solutions, and sustain-able energy and so on have to be based on something. You could just base them on political philosophy but that would be rather fragile, because political phi-losophies change, sometimes from day to day, certainly from one government to the next. Whereas if you base policies on evidence generated from good sound science, then you’ve got something much more robust, more long-lasting, and po-tentially more efficient. And that’s also something for citizens to trust in, if they know it’s real evidence, delivered by people who don’t have vested interests or a particular philosophical direction they want to take people in. I wanted to get within the European Commission to highlight the value of that and to iden-tify how the Commission might do it better. A secondary focus was also to talk about how good Europe is at science, because the science, engineering and technology sector in Europe is really second to none. If you take all of the Member States together, we are world-beating. And yet nobody seemed to be telling that story. Those were two of the main hopes I had.

In your article for the Guardian, you described your experience as “containing elements of Quixote, Kafka and Macondo.” What kind of windmills did you find yourself tilting at in your time as chief scientific adviser?

Many times I found the experience a bit surreal, hence the references. When you go into a very substantial organisation such as the European Commission, there will be resistance to the introduction of a new post, particularly when that new post has as a remit to be challenging. What I was doing when people were developing policy was to ask “Where is the evidence

for that, where did you get the evidence, is it the most credible evidence, is there any weakness in the evidence, where is the uncertainty, how are you dealing with the uncertainty?” Those things appeared quite challenging and so a lot of people in the Commission felt that this is just one more problem they had to deal with. Although people would be outwardly very pleasant to me and apparently very supportive I was often excluded at the working end. Sometimes that was inadvertent, but sometimes it might have been deliberate. It was a slightly surreal kick-back from people who found it hard to absorb a new challenging role within the Commission at a very high level, because I answered directly to President Barroso. So those were some of the flailing windmills I had to deal with. But having said that, the overall

impression was quite wonderful. I think the Commission is full of highly talented people who generally are all working to-wards a common goal. That’s not always the case in many very large institutions. It’s quite wonderful to be part of some-thing where everybody had a common goal, which was what is the best for the European Union.

Does the European Commission make full use of the talents available within it?

What was a little bit depressing was that with all this quality at your finger-tips there was still – again you find it in many big institutions – not much appe-

tite for taking risk, for looking at really innovative and different things to do. That’s maybe because there was a little bit of a blame culture in the Commission. If something went wrong people would be very quick to point the finger, but if something went right they didn’t equally point the finger so that people got praise. If you’re working in an environment like that, most people tend to do middle of the road stuff that’s not going to upset anybody. The Commission struggles from the fact that it has grown organically throughout the period of enlargement of the European Union, and it hasn’t thought about restructuring. There would be advantage in looking at how the Commission is organised, what the daily working practices are, and thinking about how to make the structures of the Commission innovative and fit for the 21st century. Because when you don’t pay attention to big institutions and they get larger and larger, you don’t have something that’s truly efficient. And when you want an organ-isation to be underpinning innovation in the European Union, it’s quite hard to be promoting and delivering instruments for innovation when you yourself are not innovative. So the Com-mission’s got a continual challenge to see what it can do to change. Also I’m a very impatient person and I was frustrated at the length of time it took to do anything. Of course there needs to

“The Commission is full of highly

talented people who generally are all

working towards a common goal. That’s not always the case in many very large

institutions. ”

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Feeling the heatFirst-hand insights into trust building from leading corporate communicators Interview with members of the European Association of Communication Directors

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Trust deficitA personal view of the tough love between Monsanto and a distrustful European media By Brandon Mitchener

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European disunion

The Edelman Trust Barometer 2016 reveals a growing trust gap as a key challenge for the future By Michael Stewart 70

What we mean when we talk about trust

The importance of betrayal, transparency and the pursuit of trustworthiness Interview with Brennan jacoby

76

Repairing broken promisesHow the Volkswagen emission crisis shook confidence in one of the world’s most recognised brands By Thorsten Hofmann

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Building trust in new marketsLong-term relationship buil-ding in western and eastern markets By Phil Riggins and David Ashton

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Trust and communications

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European disunion The Edelman Trust Barometer 2016 reveals that the growing trust gap is a key challenge for the future.

b y m i C H a e l s t e w a R t delman’s 2016 Trust Ba-rometer reveals a large trust gap is emerging be-tween the world’s elite and mass populations with po-

tentially far-reaching consequences for Europe’s future.

The Edelman Trust Barometer, now in its sixteenth year, asks respondents how much they trust the institutions of government, business, nongovernmental organisations and media to do what is right. The survey shows that trust is ris-ing in the elite or ‘informed public’ group – those with at least a college education, who are engaged in media, and have an income in the top 25 per cent. However, in the ‘mass population’ (the remaining 85 per cent of our sample), trust levels have barely moved since the Great Recession of 2008. Perhaps most disturbing is the

fact that the mass population doesn’t feel optimistic about

the future. In more than two-thirds of the coun-tries we surveyed, less than half of the mass

population feels they will be better off in five years’ time. The largest disparities are in the US where the divide is nearly 20 points, followed by the UK at 17 points, and France at 16 points. This divide is di-rectly linked to income inequality. Nearly two-thirds of the 28 countries surveyed reported a double-digit trust gap between high-income and low-income respond-ents.

In Europe, the general state of trust continues to be dismal, especially among the mass population. There is not a single state in Europe that is a net-truster. Only the Netherlands is neutral and all of the other states are distrusters. We are seeing a lack of trust among the mass popula-tion play out in a number of ways across the region, whether it is the backlash of migration, the far-right movement in France or, in the UK, a strong movement towards Brexit which could disrupt the entire EU. The populations are having their discontent heard.

The one bright spot in this year's data is the opportunity for business to repair the trust divide. Remarkably, business is now the second most trusted of all institutions globally, particularly on the dimension of managing through change and innovation. Driven in part by the gradual recovery in the financial services sector, trust in business has increased or remained steady in 25 countries – closing in on the historic lead held by NGOs as the most trusted institution.

In contrast, trust in government has plummeted, with one-third of the gener-al population in Europe trusting govern-ment to do what’s right. While 59 per cent of respondents believe that it is the role of government to regulate, 79 per cent say

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it’s actually the responsibility of business to address societal problems. In Europe, 78 per cent of respondents say a company can take actions that both increase prof-its and improve the economic and social conditions of where it operates. Among the issues cited as most critical for busi-ness to address are: access to healthcare, protecting and improving the environ-ment, improving human and civil rights and income inequality.

Adding to this stronger position for business is the increased credibility of the CEO as a spokesperson. While employees remain most credible spokespeople over-all, CEOs experienced an eight-point gain – more than experts, analysts or a per-son like yourself. However, to continue to earn trust, the data show that CEOs will have to shift their focus from short-term results to job creation and long-term val-ue creation, both economic and societal.

Clearly it's time for businesses in Eu-rope to get off the side-lines and play an active role in addressing the problems and opportunities we have in the region. It is our job as communicators to help identify the opportunities for our sectors and companies to offer the leadership Europe so desperately needs. But as we all know, Europe’s diversity and market nu-ances means one solution will not fit all. The following are views from colleagues across the region into the state of trust in key European markets.

A tale of two Britains by Ed Williams, CEO Edelman UK

As we looked closely at this year’s find ings a tale of two Britains emerged. The Trust Barometer’s Index for the UK re-corded a trust gap of 17 percentage points between the informed publics and mass population. That was the biggest gap we have ever recorded. The trust gap is even more pronounced when you consider the attitudes of the top one per cent with those in the poorest households.

While the trust gaps for NGOs and media were high at 10 and 12 percentage

points respectively, when it came to trust in government the gap widened dramat-ically to 28 points (54 per cent for the rich group compared to 26 per cent for the poorer) and for business, even further to 32 points (67 per cent vs 35 per cent).Worse still was the inequality of hope: only 10 per cent of the poorest thought they would be better off at the end of 2016; while on the other hand just 10 per cent of the richest thought they would be worse off in 12 months’ time. We also found the divergence when it came to attitudes toward the biggest policy the UK is facing – in or out of Europe. If you are rich, you want to stay, if you are a low income bracket you want to leave.

This was our tale of two Britains. For

the top, it feels like the best of times; for the bottom, the worst of times. It’s not yet clear what this means for society, but the obvious risk is that this trust gap is filled by populist political voices or malign eco-nomic forces such as deflation.

So what can be done? There are signs of hope and most of them rest with the business community. The quickest way to rebuild trust in business is for compa-nies to make sure they are paying expect-ed levels of tax and playing their part in improving the common good.

It’s a harder task for politicians. Some of the most pressing concerns expressed in the Barometer are proving intractable: unemployment, immigration and refu-gees. But there is one area where they could rebuild trust quickly: communicate honestly. At the moment, people believe they are not getting the full picture from their elected officials. Our research shows that not a single political leader gets more than one third of the public saying they

represent ‘someone like me’. More than ever before we’re seeing a

fracture in how different parts of society view their institutions. Those of us who are in a position to do something about it should first acknowledge this new reality. We then quickly need to think about how we address it. We must start with the basics: straight-talking, genuine under-standing of the issues and remembering that trust is built on shared hope.

Italy: A renewed spirit by Fiorella Passoni, General

Manager, Edelman Italy

Gains in trust and confidence while almost everyone else is growing increas-ingly sceptical: this is the paradoxical pic-ture of Italy taken by the Trust Barom-eter 2016. Trust among Italy’s informed publics has vaulted 15 points in just two years among informed publics. Among the general population, while Italy is still among the distruster countries, it is at the top at 49 points, on par with the US.

Trust in government is still by far the lowest amongst the four institutions, but even here there’s a positive trend. Why is that? Italians are feeling that, after years of stagnation, something is final-ly changing in their country. A sense of freshness is coming from politics, where the dynamic government of prime min-ister Matteo Renzi is shaking old habits with its reformer stance. Moreover, the success of Expo 2015 in Milan, one of the biggest stories of the past year, gave Italy a healthy wave of self-confidence. But perhaps above all, the Italians are eyeing the end of a 10-year recession, with 0.8 per cent GDP growth for 2015, and in-ternational forecasts expecting a higher growth rate for 2016.

More needs to be done to completely restore trust in the future. However, the feeling that something is changing reso-nates everywhere in the Italian Barome-ter results. Another example is the five-point trust leap in traditional media, a clear sign of approval for journalists who

“In Europe the general state of

trust continues to be dismal.”


i s s u e f o c u s

Building trust in new marketsTrust is won or lost through long term relationship building and, just like in any relationship, how much you put in has a direct correlation with how much you get out.

b y P H i l R i G G i n s a n D D a v i D a s H t o n

very day, billions of people around the globe get up, get dressed and go to work. Why? For many it is a mat-ter of survival. For those

who are lucky, what they do for a living enriches them emotionally and psycho-logically – and is, perhaps, even fun. We might not like every aspect of what we do, but we do it. If we find that the negatives get to be too much, we are likely to look for another job.

What does that have to do with build-ing trust in business, you might ask? A lot.

Our relationship with the companies that we buy products and services from, regulate, invest in, partner with, or work for share some common factors that are important for understanding and building trust in business generally – whether they are domestic favourites or new entrants from further afield. Trust is fundamental to a positive and strong reputation. Trust is won or lost both through long-term rela-tionship building and in actions that occur in a heartbeat.

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“Trust is won or lost both through long-term relationship

building and in actions that occur

in a heartbeat."

In this article we explore the notion of trust in business in general, and specifical-ly with respect to cross-cultural business relationships: How do European compa-nies looking to do business in China and Chinese companies looking to do business in Europe build relationships of trust with their stakeholders? What we find is that relationships with stakeholders are gov-erned by many of the same rules as other interpersonal relationships. And like any relationship, how much you put in has a di-rect correlation with how much you get out.

The data on trust

For large corporations in any part of the world, building trust across key audiences in their home market or re-gion is tough enough. This challenge is compounded when corporates enter new regions, where the audiences, norms and behaviours are different and unfamiliar.

There is plenty of data on trust in business market-by-market, with current research showing that public trust in business is increasing in many countries around the world. However, a trust deficit still exists in many European countries.1 Brunswick Insight’s own research shows that four in 10 senior in house communi-cators in Europe remain concerned about the scale of anti-business feeling in socie-ty.2 In China, the level of consumer trust in business is more widespread relative to most other countries.

However, when it comes to identify-ing specific trust metrics on how a) Eu-ropean companies are viewed in China or b) Chinese companies are viewed in Europe, there is very little publicly avail-able data. In the absence of this cross cultural data, it is important for commu-nications professionals to go back to first principles to understand the building blocks of trust with the cross cultural audiences that matter to the success of their organisations.


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Building trust

To understand how to build trust when entering a new market, we need to fo-cus on the building blocks of trust for any relationship, but particularly those in the corporate and professional world. The key is to realise that stakeholders are people too, no matter what role they play in their day job. When it comes to trust, we as humans are hardwired to understand when trust exists or has been destroyed. We don’t just know it, we also feel it. It is the outcome of specific behav-iours and experiences. While there are many factors at play, the dynamic can be boiled down into five main areas:• Respect. We are more likely to trust in

something – whether it’s a person, busi-ness, corporate partner or employer – that we feel respects our values, beliefs and feelings. Many studies show that we are more likely to buy the products of or work for a company that we be-lieve shares our basic principles related to fairness, sustainability, or diversity. Similarly, it has often been shown that employees are more likely to be engaged and work harder if they feel their em-ployer respects them and values the skills that they bring.

• A sense of common purpose. Like-wise, we are more likely to extend trust to those we feel share a common pur-pose with us, whether that is in terms of sharing a common mission or cam-paigning on something that might be important to us (e.g. climate change or diversity).

• Authenticity. Do your actions match your words? Trust suffers when there is a disconnect between how a company presents itself and the actual experience people have with it. Companies that have a clear narrative to explain their history and role in the world, with proof points highlighting a track record of consistently good behaviour are build-ing trust from a strong foundation.

1 Edelman Trust Barometer 20162 Brunswick Insight/EACD, Future of Corpo-

rate Communications Survey 2015


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What we mean when we talk

about trust Dr Brennan jacoby is a philosopher who helps individuals and organisations understand what trust means to them.

He spoke to Communication Director about the importance of betrayal, transparency and the pursuit

of trustworthiness.

i n t e R v i e w b y D a f y D D P H i l l i P s


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s a philosopher that also consults individuals and organisations on trust, what are some of the fixed ideas your clients

have about trust that you then have to unpack?The thing that I often have to work around is not so much a misconception about trust but a lack of critical reflection about trust. I find that we recognise the value of trust and take time out to build trust, but often there's not too much emphasis placed on trying to figure out what trust actually is. What is trust, what is trustworthiness, what actually happens when trust is bro-ken? just as if we were to try to build a

house we would need to have some sort of blueprint, if we set out to build trust we need to first have some kind of under-standing about what that thing is we are trying to build. And so I often start off working with groups by saying, what is trust exactly? And then try and bridge the gap between that theoretical work and the practical every day experience.

several surveys rank companies by the levels of trust people have in them, treating trust as a definable, measur-able thing in itself. But isn’t the issue more subtle: aren’t there different de-grees and types of trust?

I would agree that such tools are lim-ited to the extent that they tend to look at qualitative and quantitative types of re-search, which is good and comprehensive, but trust is fundamentally a human phe-nomenon and, just like with other things about human relationships, it can't always be quantified. Sometimes studies that try to measure trust ask, "How much do you

71

trust so and so to tell the truth? How much do you trust doctors, lawyers and so on to tell the truth?" But when we think about trust in our day to day lives, we're not just basing trust on how much we expect someone else to tell the truth. It might be a difficult to articulate feeling of being at ease around someone, or a lack thereof. It might be an explicit choice to trust, despite feeling unsure. But sometimes it might not be so cognitively chosen and it might be something that we do without thinking. So yes, trust comes in a lot of different forms. But one theme that runs throughout all the work I do is a very felt kind of vulner-ability that is essential to trust.

do companies find the concept of vulnerability threatening?

Definitely and I don't think it's unique to the companies that I work with. Per-haps it's just part of being human and be-ing self-protective. But in the sort of work world we have, certain circumstances can conspire against our pursuit of vulnera-bility and our willingness to be authentic. This is particularly prevalent if we're in an environment that's very dog-eat-dog or competitive, or if we're in a leadership role where we feel that if we were to let our guard down and show vulnerability those following us would feel insecure as well. However, in the last 10 years or so there’s been a real growth in appreciation for the value of vulnerability, and in the West we seem to be coming out of a time of the Victorian stiff upper lip. I think what makes trust trust is in fact a vulner-ability to being betrayed. That’s what sets trust apart from things like cooperation or reliance. I can count on a taxi driver to take me to work, even if I don't think

he has good will towards me. And if he doesn't do a great job of getting me there I might feel let down or frustrated but I probably won’t feel betrayed because I'm not really trusting the taxi driver, I'm just relying on him or her. But in a friendship or a close working relationship sometimes trust is more essential, and that opens the door to not just being let down but feeling betrayed when things don’t go very well.

is betrayal the antithesis of trust?I don’t think it’s the antithesis. I would

say instead that distrust would be, or a lack of trust which can come about either through a neutrality of not feeling very strong trust for someone, or trust not being very relevant to a situation. I would say that is the antithesis. I would call betrayal rather an enemy of trust. Though it’s im-portant to note that betrayal is not always negative where trust is concerned. Normal-ly betrayal isn’t good, but sometimes trust needs to be broken. If it’s an unhealthy trust, if it’s someone trusting too much, or if trust has been placed for negative ends, sometimes the betrayal can actually be a sign of trustworthiness. Think of a whistle-blower in a corrupt organisation where everyone trusts each other to keep the company secrets and not betray those to the watchdogs. In that situation most of us would probably find something cor-rupt about that trust. And if one employee were to betray those secrets with the intent of trying to reform the organisation, then we might think there’s something to that person that makes them trustworthy. So it’s quite a complex relationship between betrayal and trust. In general I would say betrayal is the enemy of trust, but some-times it can be a friend as well.

is there such a thing as too much trust?

Because as we’ve seen trust can be abused, trust is not always best and so we should aim not for trust but for well-placed trust, which I would argue is trust placed in the trustworthy, or placed for the sake of a good cause. A third type of well-placed trust is trust placed in some-

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“I think what makes trust trust is in fact a vulnerability

to being betrayed."

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Repairingbrokenpromises

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The Volkswagen emission crisis has shaken confidence in one of the most recognised brands in the world: it also highlights the link between trust and economics.

b y t H o R s t e n H o f m a n n

ll was still right with the world nine years ago when VW’s former chief executive officer Martin

Winterkorn presented the new slogan of his automobile empire in the glossy context of the Frankfurt Motor Show – bursting with pride and with a broad grin on his face. “VW – das Auto” was a cool, dry and rational statement that under-scored the powerful, dominant status of the Wolfsburg-based corporation. Buying a car from Wolfsburg suggested down-to-earth honesty and the absolute reliability of a product that many had come to be-lieve in and even take for granted since childhood. The company was able to rely on a solid foundation of trust.

After all, business can only work

I s s u e F o c u s


based on trust: if you’re going to engage in business dealings with someone, you have to trust them. Customers have to trust a bank, for example, otherwise they would all rush to withdraw their money and the bank would collapse. In a glo-balised world with a surplus of products, trust in a brand acts as a guide that reduc-es complexity. Without this mechanism there would be no so-called “love brands”, no advertising industry and no market-ing, either. And yet the trust factor tends to be left out of the economists’ equations.

The most severe crisis in VW’s histo-ry powerfully illustrates just how closely linked the variables of trust and econom-ics are. Trust is in fact the most relevant factor of all when it comes to business relations.

Back to the roots with a five-point plan?

After the scandal of manipulated ex-haust emissions, the question of how to painstakingly rebuild trust is not easy to answer. The company’s management in particular is moving on very thin ice in the way it is dealing with this issue. After all, the worst crisis in the history of VW was by no means the result of an isolated occurrence or the obsession of a single development engineer. The deliberate and unscrupulous deception of customers and systematically planned installation of software to optimise exhaust emissions was a high-risk gamble with the corpora-tion’s most vital attributes: honesty and trust. So the main question now is to what extent will the company put its words into action and successfully embark on the long and difficult path back to estab-lishing trust once again. VW has set itself clear goals: the five-point plan presented by CEO Matthias Müller seeks to clarify thoroughly how the scandal came about. The core of the message behind this is: we have understood. We will change funda-mentally. We will solve the problem and repair the damage to our reputation.

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The first recalls are to start in Janu-ary 2016: The announcement that recalls would start in 2016 was followed by ini-tial action with the Volkswagen Amarok. This laid the basis for demonstrating a consistent and rigorous approach in following up on communicative an-nouncements with operational measures. However, the communicative dilemma in customer contact and over-stretched repair garages are minimising positive resonance. The wave of VW recalls start-ed at the end of january has so far been uneven and imbalanced. Unlike in Eu-rope, customers in the US have not re-ceived clear information about how the recalls are to be organised. As a result, customers are beginning to sue local deal-erships and the garages are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the recalls, having reached their limits in terms of staffing. This makes communication look unco-ordinated. VW now has to consistently carry out further trust-building meas-ures and not allow its actions to appear ineffective.

2

Investigation of the manipulations: Chief executive officer Matthias Müller contin-uously emphasises that the truth has to be established so as to be able to learn from past mistakes. Open, honest com-

munication is the basic requirement here – after all, trust is always a matter of common sense. Swift acknowledgement of errors and the resignation of VW gran-dee Winterkorn were the first important steps here. In order to ensure that these measures come across positively and re-store trust in the VW brand, however, it is vital to adhere rigorously to a commu-nication strategy – but Müller made a regrettable, cardinal error here by mud-dying the waters in a single interview at the world’s most important motor show. To give a radio interview when overtired and unfocused stating that “no lies” had been told and describing the systematic manipulation of exhaust emissions as a technical problem comes over as cyni-cal and ethically questionable. It defeats everything that had been said before and makes previous apologetic gestures look misleading. It also destroys the delicate basis of newly established trust: from the customer’s point of view it places a ques-tion mark over management competence and even suggests potential complicity.

3

Corporate restructuring and programme of cost cuts: The programme of cost cuts and the complete restructuring of the compa-ny and its brands are measures resulting directly from the crisis. However, VW still needs to show clearly how it intends to prevent manipulation in the future. Comprehensive clarification is therefore required, along with continuous com-munication. Nonetheless, restructuring measures will only be comprehensible to the public at large if they establish trans-parency as to how manipulation is to be prevented in the future. The new manage-ment must take care to ensure that a pro-gramme of cost cuts is not seen as a way of penalising the “innocent” workforce. The latter should not be made to look like the victims of a disastrous failure on the part of management.

“Trust is the most relevant

factor of all when it comes

to business relations.”

I s s u e F o c u s


TrustdeficitOf trust, tough love and today’s European media.

b y b R a n D o n m i t C H e n e R

I s s u e F o c u s


hen I went to get a mas-ter’s degree in journal-ism, lesson one, day one in the World Room at Columbia journal-

ism School in New York was a lecture about trust: in this case, journalists’ and authorities’ trust in the stories told by the apparent victims of horrible crimes. I remember vividly the account of one story -recent at the time – in which a white woman in the South claimed that a black man had stolen her car at gunpoint with her two children buckled up in the back seat. The car was later discovered, submerged, in a nearby lake with the two children drowned in the back seat. A manhunt was launched for the pre-sumed child murderer and the search lasted weeks – until police interrogation revealed that the mother had made the whole thing up. In fact, she drove the car into the lake herself and drowned her own two kids because her new boyfriend didn’t like children. [Pause for the horror to set in]. The moral of this story to wan-nabe journalists at Columbia was simple: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Or, in other words: trust no one.

The same lecture, repeated to gen-erations of American journalists at one of the country’s best journalism schools, has contributed to a culture of quality

W

journalism designed to prevent reporters from falling for the trap of charismatic victims claiming injury or injustice at the hands of allegedly dastardly villains. One-source stories were frowned upon at best, and often banned from publica-tion altogether. Anonymous quotes were used sparingly, and only if the editor knew who the source was. Fairness and accuracy in reporting meant interviewing as many sources as possible in order to arrive at a good approximation of the truth. With the dawn of electronic media databases, major newspapers encouraged reporters to correct every mistake, know-ing that this would ensure credibility and trust with people reading stories not just on the day of first publication, but years later in a database. Intense competition among news agencies closely linked to the biggest newspapers also contributed to a culture of fairness and accuracy in re-porting that built trust in the news media.

Sliding standards

Now fast forward to Europe in 2016, where budget cuts have reduced many news organisations to skeleton staffs, fact-checking is rare, ’balance as bias’ and clickbait are depressingly widespread and Twitter and Facebook compete with broadsheet newspapers for scoops. Competition with always-on online and social media has reduced many news organisations to writing ‘he said’ stories one day and ‘she said’ rebuttals the next – if they even bother – for lack of the serenity to do any better the first time around. The same phenomena exist to some extent in the US, too, of course, but high-quality news organisations such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Bloomberg and Dow jones Newswires (to name just a few) continue to apply journalistic standards that put their European counterparts to shame. To cite just one example, The New York Times runs corrections every single day, including many which are almost comi-cally marginal to most readers, whereas

many European journalists and news-papers routinely refuse to correct even serious mistakes.

Sinking journalistic standards pose a serious challenge not only to profession-al communicators, who need to ensure that their employers’ points of view are reflected in key media coverage, but also – and more importantly – to democracy. Politicians base legislative and regulatory decisions in part on who’s making the most noise at any given moment. Sinking standards also jeopardise the ability of ordinary citizens, who lack the time and resources to fact-check everything they hear, see and read, to make informed de-cisions in their daily lives. Bad journalism begets bad decisions at all levels of society and, as was the case for the manhunt in the American child murder case, distract public authorities from finding the real threats to society.

A favourite fall guy

Monsanto Co., where I’ve headed the European corporate communications function since December 2012, has cer-tainly made many mistakes but is also a frequent victim of bad journalism and the bad decisions that follow it. For better or worse, the name Monsanto is inextricably linked with genetically mod-ified (GM) seeds, an area in which it’s the world leader. Food safety authorities have agreed with Monsanto for years that GM seeds and crops are no more dangerous for people than their conventionally pro-duced counterparts (and may even be healthier). But 20 years of fearmonger-ing by environmentalist pressure groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the

“Bad journalism begets bad

decisions at all levels of society.”

communication director 01 2016: preview

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