Communications Briefs

The only way corporate mental health initiatives can be successful is if they are aligned with communication efforts. There are several functions of corporate communications that are necessary to consider when evaluating a company’s approach to mental health.

Are you encouraging your communications team to showcase their effectiveness? Keeping a team motivated—to do their best work and to continuously improve—is a real leadership challenge. Kami Spangenberg, Vice President, Corporate Communications, RTI International, suggests giving your team the opportunity to highlight the business impact of their work to senior leaders through targeted annual reports.

Is your brand at risk? Branding carries economic risks that are, on the one hand, similar to other corporate risks—theft, fire, weather-related damage, etc.—but different in that they attack the value of intangible assets, like brands. If you are not yet affected by Brand Equity Risk (BER), it’s almost certain you will be, so you need to manage it like any other risk your organization faces.

How does an active wear brand become an activist icon? Deliberately or despite itself? Can product, purpose, profit, and politics mesh—or do they risk unraveling? And what’s the story behind the unconventional Patagonia beer? These questions and more will be answered in The Conference Board Marketing and Communications Center's April Monthly Chat.

How do you respond when someone publishes a story about you that isn’t true? Here’s how Mayo Clinic handled such a situation in August 2018 when CNN ran this: “Escape from the Mayo Clinic: Teen accuses world-famous hospital of ‘medical kidnapping.’”

Is your organization evaluating its internal communication in a way that makes business sense? Measures of internal communications often focus on intranet usage or employee satisfaction or engagement. Companies rarely measure employee attitude or behavior change, understanding of key messages, or internal communication’s impact on strategic and financial objectives. These and a range of other metrics will give more insight into the effectiveness of internal communication on business results.

How would you react if CNN ran a sensational, one-sided story about your organization? When this happened to the Mayo Clinic in 2018, their response was swift and multi-pronged. Amy Davis, head of communications at Mayo, tells the story and offers crisis management advice, starting with this: First, focus on your employees to make sure they feel supported.

In the face of data privacy compliance, do you take the easy route and do the bare minimum, or do you innovate? New research from The Conference Board Marketing and Communications Center has found that while 58 percent of the US marketing, tech, and compliance executives we surveyed agreed that regulatory compliance offers an opportunity for innovation, most haven’t yet taken the next step to actually turning customer privacy concerns into a competitive advantage.

If an industry reported in 2017 that it was 81 percent Caucasian, would you say there’s a problem? The public relations and corporate communications industry says yes and it's fighting to improve those numbers. This interview with Joe Cohen, Chief Communications Officer, Axis Capital and President, PRSA Foundation, and Judith Harrison, SVP of Diversity and Inclusion at Weber Shandwick, dives into a new book, Diverse Voices: Profiles in Leadership.

New privacy regulations are dramatically changing the atmosphere around business data and communications. What was once a mad rush to leverage consumer data is becoming a panicked effort to ensure security and maintain consumer trust.