Brussels – Page 4 – Steffen Moller

The bane of the online communications consultant

It’s fun, it’s effective, it’s multifaceted and it’s on a steep upward trajectory. All in all, in Brussels and elsewhere, helping clients navigate the online space is a pretty good thing to be doing right now. But it’s a double-edged sword in some ways:

The implementation part has so many variables that it’s easy to get bogged down in dull, irrelevant nitty-gritty and lose track of your true objectives. Sure, you need to get things right, but often, strategic communications veers too far into sheer project management. The key here is to keep the role of the strategist and the project manager separate, and for the strategist to have more visibility.
One of the keys to a successful communications programme is integration. What you do online and offline should be closely aligned, but it’s often hard to get right because of the way communications teams are structured. Web, regulatory and media people are all kept separate, and as hard as you may try to put everyone around the same table, it often doesn’t happen. On the consultant side, discipline is also important here. You may understand the web inside out and be tempted to overlook the other stuff. Don’t do it.
Closely aligned to this is appreciation of the web consultant as a communications professional (my pride takes quite a hit sometimes on this…!) With some clients, it’s an ongoing struggle to remind them that online communications is primarily a strategic exercise, not a technical one. You have more in common with the business, regulatory, marketing and communications people than IT. All credit to IT, but they do something entirely different.
Then there’s the web doubters on the client side; people who aren’t quite sure of the value of online communications. Advocacy and media work have worked for years and are still relevant today, so why fix it if it ain’t broke? The fact is that the model is, if not broken, in need of an upgrade: old-school tactics are still relevant, but they need to be backed up. People are a lot more cynical, opinionated and engaged than ever before, and a well-executed online programme will help you cater to this part of the equation and in turn make your media work and advocacy more effective. As a consultant, what do you do about the doubters? You treat the sell as ongoing: you constantly have to re-explain the concepts, what you’re doing and why it will work. And most importantly, you need to identify your eChampions on the client side who strongly support what you’re trying to do and will mobilise on your behalf and join the challenge to win over the naysayers.
There’s the web doubters, but there’s also two types of know-it-alls that often present a challenge. First, the old-school communicators who treat the web as just another channel and simply transfer their understanding of the offline world to it. They think a website should look like a brochure; that a blog entry should be structured like a press release; or they’ll struggle with two-way nature of the web and simply use it as they would a megaphone. Second, there’s the (usually, but not always) junior communicator who has been handed responsibility for online comms because they like technology and are comfortable with it. What often arises in these cases is that they act as if they’ve got a new toy and spend lots of time setting up Facebook fan pages and tweaking things in Photoshop, but they’ll do nothing to help you reach your communications objectives. In fact, they may even be detrimental in that respect. What to do? As in the point above, the ongoing sell – or ongoing education even – becomes essential.

And a final point. The web is big and complex; it’s all happening so FAST; you need to keep track of the other channels AND try to keep up to date with the issues; and you need to deal with the points cited above – in particular the ongoing sell. To get it all right requires a lot of patience; and you’ll need to read a lot every day to stay on track. But it’s worth it in the end.

Agencies and the commodity temptation

The role of the communications agency in political hubs such as Brussels, London and Washington is crammed with potential for exciting work. Issues experts and communications specialists join forces to formulate strategies that help organisatons navigate a complex political landscape…. a landscape that may involve all sorts of players from the pesky blogger to the virulent politician picking up steam in the press, cross-border nuances and awkward political realities, the sudden PR calamity…

It’s a shame then that agencies often fall into the commodity trap, where the goal goes from helping a client reach their business and communications objectives to doing just enough to rack up billable hours. The toolbox – reading up on the latest developments from whatever relevant government department, media monitoring, basic content production, website maintenance, event logistics and so on – become the commodity.

Sure, the dirty work has to be done, and I understand the temptation: the long hours, the lacklustre client, the short-term targets all conspire to lure you into simply doing enough to meet the requirements.

The problem is that as a communicator, you don’t have the luxury of the lawyer or the chemist, who perform tasks which are second-nature to them but which no one would ever dream of replicating without the apposite credentials. Everyone thinks they’re a communicator, and unless you’re challenging clients by offering them added-value thinking, they’ll think they can do it themselves (or get someone else to do it more cheaply.)

So what do you do about it? There’s no trick: it’s all about frame of mind and thinking to yourself that you sell brainpower, not items in a toolbox. So once you’ve developed a strategy and it’s in execution mode, don’t let it go: track your client’s issues on an ongoing basis and constantly revisit your business goals -> communications objectives -> strategy -> tactics chart to ensure that you’re proactively offering them smart ideas that will help them meet their goals. It’ll keep them happy and no doubt help get you more business (and what’s more, it’s a lot more fun and challenging for you, the communicator.)

Explaining an issue from a target's perspective, not yours

A problem that often arises when an expert needs to explain an issue to their target – be it a policy-maker, influencer or a member of the general public – is that the expert develops their approach from their own perspective, rather than that of the target. Policy-makers are asked to make decisions based on a ten-minute minute meeting, or more likely, ten-minute briefings based on research conducted in twenty minutes by their assistants, and yet experts come at them with key messages and the like thought up by a room-full of know-it-alls.

It’s far more effective to work backwards and start from the target’s perspective. Ask yourself, first, what are the basics that my target doesn’t understand, and second, what questions are they most likely to have. If you don’t know, conduct a poll amongst friends and colleagues who don’t know your issue and ask them what their layman’s perspective is. Only once you’ve dealt with that, start imparting your expertise.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t often happen in Brussels: it’s where the policy-buff and communicator conflict I often write about comes into play. At company, association and especially agency level, most of the people tasked with communicating an issue are into the policy bit – which is fine (and necessary) – but they’re not really into the communications bit. Result? In the end, output that is probably very good, but doesn’t do a jot to win over the target of their communications because it hasn’t explained the basics before veering into high-brow.

Image source.

Picking an agency

Parallel universe. I work for an organisation and I’m eager to enlist the help of an agency to help me communicate around the issues that matter to me in Brussels. I know that picking the right agency might help to ensure that the public, regulatory and media playing fields treat me fairly, but I want to make absolutely sure that I pick the agency that’s right for me.

What would I look out for?

An agency whose starting points are my business and/or communications objectives, not the size of its address book. 20 former Commission officials or MEP assistants on your staff? I don’t care. I’d rather you understand what I’m trying to achieve and set that as your starting point.
Is the agency committed to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs?) It must be, even though I wouldn’t expect them to be defined by the first meeting. The commitment matters though, because in an unconventional and unpredictable place like public-policy land it’s too easy just say “oh well, it was out of our control, what could we have done?” With a commitment to KPIs you show that you’re really keen to win campaigns, not just make money from them.
I’d want the people who I meet to be intellectually curious, and passionate about communications and politics. They have to be if they need to learn a new sector and a new organisation from scratch and do their job well. Plus they’d be more interesting to work with and more likely to pursue my account as an intellectual challenge rather than simply looking to tick boxes and send invoices.
Must be firm believers in integration: an agency should consider all tactics – be it advocacy, media work, online campaigning – equally important parts of the same parcel i.e. my organisation achieving its goals. It might be an expert in one area, but it should never think that area is more important than all others.
Sounds obvious, but I’d really want an agency to make an effort when I meet them. If it’s using regurgitated material, only tells me about existing client work or thinks it’s a shoe-in because of its reputation, I’d not be impressed.

Some questions I’d ask:

What are my key issues?
How would you approach them?
What would you do to really understand my issues?
What’s the work you’re most proud of?
Who would work on the account?

A model: four pillars of online engagement

I think I should start blogging. Twitter looks interesting. Think a Facebook fanpage will work wonders. Videos on YouTube are just up our alley. And so on. These are the kinds of things going through the minds of plenty of communicators at any sort of organisation in Brussels (and elsewhere for that matter) who work on issues and policy areas in which they want to exert some influence. And for good reason. The tools are cheap and cheerful, they’ve been proven to work, they fit an age of public relations in which engagement and humility are the order of the day, and what’s more, they’re fun.

However, as enticing as the tools may seem and as easy as you may think it will be to just try, test and see, I’d stress that rather than dive in and use the tools from the off, it’s imperative to have a long-term online engagement plan and to take a step-by-step approach that will help maximise the potential of your efforts.

I’ve developed a basic 4-pillar model which can be applied to a lot of organisations seeking to engage online. By no means am I introducing any brand new concepts, but I think the model is handy in that it puts the various elements of engagement in the order in which they should go if an organisation starting anew wants to make the best of the opportunities on offer. Here goes.

1. Making sense of what’s out there: web as hub

This involves two bits: first, the listening piece (one of the prime social media clichés but oh so necessary), and second, making the listening set-up public via aggregation or hyperlinking.

The listening bit simply means that you perform a thorough analysis of what offline stakeholders are up to to online, as well as find online players who might not have an offline profile. You set up a dashboard so you can follow what they are communicating on a daily basis, and once you feel that you have a really good idea of how the issue is unfolding online, who the key content creators and influencers are, you make that knowledge public i.e. you “counter the fragmentation” and become the player that makes sense of the issue online and isn’t afraid of showcasing other stakeholders who might not tow the exact same line.

2. Start communicating: “show me, not trust me”

This is when you actually start communicating yourself in this new space; where you start showcasing action rather than staying quiet and hoping that people will trust you – hence “show me, not trust me”.

By performing step 1, you’ve got a good understanding of who the players are and what’s expected, you have some goodwill, and you’re unlikely to make any dumb mistakes. So you’re well placed to develop a strategy to communicate using social media within this space to showcase yourself, your take on your issue, and your people via, say, blogging or video (choice of tools is secondary, it largely depends on where the activity is, what your sector is etc.) In addition, you should use the space to show your third-party advocates, and remember, always remain respectful and honest.

3. Stakeholder dialogue

Steps 3 and 4 are the organic evolution of steps 1 and 2: they rely largely on the involvement of the online community which you can not control, so it’s about creating the right circumstances for that community to thrive rather than introducing a new set of tools.

By bringing information together and beginning to engage using the tools yourself, you should hopefully have begun a process by which an online conversation has taken off in which you are an important contributor. To get to this next level, where real dialogue is taking place, you need to carry on what you’re doing i.e. communicating a message that resonates and to make sure you are constantly feeding the conversation by replying to people’s questions and comments, and remember to always respond to community concerns and interests rather than spouting key messages.

Assuming you are doing all of this well, you have a fantastic opportunity to be leading and shaping “stakeholder dialogue” and thus take a thought leadership position on your issue.

4. Community and mobilisation

This is the holy grail of online communications. If steps 1-3 are successful, you may have created a community of people who mobilise on your behalf: these are people who support your position and spread your message for you without you actually being involved. In practice, this can involve anything from people simply sending your material to others, urging others to follow you on Twitter or sign a petition, to actively approaching legislators themselves.

As a benchmark on a huge scale for “community and mobilisation” I’d cite the Obama presidential campaign. It wasn’t the millions of Facebook followers who got Obama’s message directly in their Inboxes who were the root of the success, but the core supporters who mobilised on his behalf, whether by sending newsletters, arranging events or knocking on doors and so on.

Sure, Obama is Obama and we’re talking about a US presidential campaign, but on a smaller scale, the model is still relevant. By engaging with people, getting them excited about your issue, and giving them the right tools and content, you too can turn your supporters into ambassadors.

I’ll be following up on this post in the coming weeks to expand a little more on the 4 pillars. Would appreciate feedback.

Digital adoption by Brussels agencies

From a post on the “Behind the Spin” blog:

PR agencies currently fall into three distinct camps: consultancies that are embracing and actively creating the digital PR future by retooling their businesses; consultancies that believe digital calls for traditional techniques to be transposed to bloggers and via networks such as Twitter; and those that are standing still.

The post refers mainly to PR agencies in London, but I wonder if the same is true for PA/PR agencies operating in the Brussels bubble? I work for an agency that operates online and have never been at a traditional agency, so this is speculation on my part, but I’d say it sounds about right.

I suspect the “standing still” camp may be a little bigger in Brussels than London however, due to the nature of PA more than anything else. Most PA professionals have political backgrounds and are sector experts, not communicators. I’m not saying it’s a problem per se, except that their expertise is often not aligned with that of communicators, as some agencies don’t integrate especially well to the extent that they maintain a PA and comms hierarchy where the two disciplines are actually kept quite distinct rather than being two fully integrated parts of the same communications toolkit.

In addition, for Brussels (perhaps London as well) I’d add one more group to the three above: consultancies that want to embrace the web, understand its importance and what it can do, are tip-toeing, but are not fully committed because they struggle with how they would adapt their business model (I’ve heard this a few times.)

Like I said, this is largely speculation on my part. I might be wide off the mark, so I’d be curious to hear what other agency people have to say about this.

Countering fragmentation in Brussels by integrating and aggregating

There’s too much fragmentation going on in Brussels. First there’s internal fragmentation of communications within organisations. Marketing are doing this, product guys doing that, issue specialists saying X, PR saying Y. Surely companies need to be better integrated. In particular, marketing and PA especially need to be telling the same story far more. Why? Because selling to consumers and legislators is a lot more similar than it was a few years ago. Marketing back then would have said: we’re cheaper and/or we’re better. PA would have said: we’re providing jobs and innovation. Now? They’re still saying that, but they’re both also saying “our company is a model citizen because of X, Y, and Z” and in this respect, there needs to be a lot more collaboration.

Beyond that, there’s what I’d call external fragmentation on issues, which is totally different, but is still about fragmentation, so I’ll put it in the same post. Call me lazy. What do I mean? That when looking at an issue for a client or prospect, everyone is always struck by the mess: multiple players at national level and pan-European level, public and private entities, associations and pressure groups, old media and bloggers. Even within the Commission say, DGs can have totally different priorities on an issue. People are talking about pharma this week: it’s now largely under DG Enterprise, but DG Sanco want it because surely Pharma is about health, they say. Whatever the outcome, fact of the matter is that their approach would be quite different.

In communications terms, what this fragmentation of players results is in turn a fragmentation of content and story which frankly makes an issue appear far more complex than you as an organisation want it to be. It’s hard to thrive within complexity because your story is one of a thousand; legislators might not have the time, the nous nor the willingness to really understand it well.

So what should you do about it? You create your own story that is tangible and relatively easy to digest of course. In addition, and more importantly, you should be the one player that makes sense of the fragmented landscape, and you can do it online. How? You become your issue’s portal by aggregating and hyperlinking content from all stakeholders in one online HQ available on your site – whether they’re private, public, competitors, pressure groups, media or bloggers.

What’s the point?

You’re doing people a favour by making things easier. They’ll appreciate it.
Making things easier will also enable people to understand your take on an issue more clearly, as well as understand it within the context of other stakeholders.
The base assumption is that your argument is valid and that most of the content you bring in backs up your story. Assuming that’s the case, the outside content you bring in will give you the 3rd party credibility you crave.
Becoming the focal point for web content will enable you to own the discussion online, naturally making you a key stakeholder rather than just one of many. Search comes into it too. By becoming an online hub, others will link to you and you’ll get better a search ranking on your key issues.
You’ll showcase both sides of the argument (again, assuming your side is strong) and thus prove that you’re a fair and open player.
You’ll have taken step one of the the four-step approach to online engagement. I’ll be building on this in the coming weeks, so watch this space.

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