The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

– Marcel Proust

I’ve been fond of that quote for many years, and it leaps to mind again now as my boss Jody moves to a new a position as the executive director of marketing and communications at The Children’s Hospital in Denver. Jody has worked at the same financial services company for 18 years, so it’s understandable that she’s feeling some trepidation along with her obvious excitement.

I had similar doubts when I left a 10-year tenure at a publishing software company to enter the financial services industry, but I managed to survive the transition without scars and I’m confident that Jody will survive and thrive in a new industry as well.

Surviving

Surviving is the easy part. While many companies try to hire people with relevant industry experience, the core skills of public relations — building relationships, telling compelling stories, thinking strategically about influence and the impact of actions and words, expertise with tools and tactics — are completely transferable.

Any time you change industries (or even categories within the same industry) you have to learn new jargon, new issues, and new business drivers, but if you have a passion to learn and a passion to communicate what you’ve learned, communications skills are transferable.

Thriving

Moving into a new industry is also an opportunity to bring a fresh perspective to an organization. It’s the perfect time for a communications executive to examine a company’s messages without the curse of knowledge. When you know something intimately it’s hard to imagine not knowing it and therefore hard to communicate in a way that’s compelling to the uninitiated.

Ask questions and examine assumptions. Fresh perspective is a fleeting gift to a new employer, and you may find that your new colleagues learn as much from you as you do from them. As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki reminds me from the sidebar of this blog, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

I think Marcel Proust and Shunryu Suzuki would have found plenty to talk about over coffee (or tea) and I think they’d agree that new jobs in new industries can bring exciting discoveries, both for employers and employees.

Congratulations and best of luck, Jody.

Photo credit: Duff_sf

I’m sure that the people who post lawyer jokes on the Internet would be amused that Google finds 666 thousand results. There are plenty of people who think lawyers are evil, but in the world of corporate communications, lawyers are a fact of life. And you know what? I don’t have a problem with that.*

But apparently a lot of my peers do. I often hear complaints about having to send documents through legal review. They take forever! There are always so many changes! They don’t understand what we’re trying to do!

In my experience, corporate lawyers and communicators have very similar goals. The corporate general counsel wants to protect the company from legal risk and corporate communications wants to protect the company’s reputation. Bottom line, you both want what’s best for the company.

When you put yourself into an adversarial relationship with your legal advisers, you shouldn’t be surprised when they’re… adversarial. And if you find yourself dealing with the same legal issues time after time, take the hint. Talk to your attorneys and get an idea of their concerns.

If you find yourself in petty squabbles over AP stlye, explain your point of view, listen to theirs, and come to a working compromise. Present your case well and there’s a good chance they’ll come around to seeing things your way.

On the other hand, if the issues are more substantive, stop and think about better ways that you can achieve your goals without making the layers uncomfortable. They’re usually uncomfortable for a reason.

Once you understand each other’s point of view, you may actually find that they’re your allies in the board room. With Corporate Communications and the General Counsel working together, who can stop you?

P.S. Shout out to some of the corporate lawyers I’ve enjoyed working with: Alan, John, Liza, Susan, Tanya, Tim. Thank you.

1. * Gasp!

Back in January, I pointed to a Siegel & Gale survey of 1,214 American homeowners and investors that looked at consumer perceptions of complex language in marketing communications and contracts.

To recap briefly, many consumers believe corporations use complex language and industry jargon to intentionally deceive and hide risks from them. People don’t trust large corporations, and 84% of all consumers say they are more likely to trust a company that uses jargon-free, plain English in communications.

Jargon isn’t credible

If you work in the corporate world, you know that business-speak and industry jargon runs rampant in day-to-day business communications. It creeps into marketing materials, sales presentations and press releases, often looking something like this:

We’re thrilled to partner with XYZ company. We’ll leverage their leading-edge technology, thus adding value to and enhancing the synergies between the best-in-class solutions we offer our customers. This same out-of-the-box thinking will help us utilize our resources and ultimately shift the industry paradigm.*

I’m wondering… does anybody believe this crap? Does anyone seriously expect a reader to be able to extract meaningful information from those words? And if you don’t believe it when other people spew it, why do you inflict it on others?

Plain English is good for business

Simple, clear language is powerful. It promotes trust in your organization, and people buy from companies they trust. More than 75% of consumers refuse to buy from a company they don’t trust. Plain language helps people find and understand information more quickly. People who understand more make fewer support calls, so your company saves money.

To quote Strunk & White, vigorous writing is concise. Be positive. Be active. Be personal. Plain English is the best way to help your readers understand your content and act on it appropriately. It sells.

Simple language is compelling. Use it wisely.

Photo credit: Joe Nangle

1. * Thanks for the sample gibberish, @xagoeson!

There may have been a time when executives routinely read these pre-interview tomes, and there are still circumstances when they’re valuable, but I think that most briefing books in their current form are a waste of time and money.

More relevant briefings

Briefing books perform an important function. They provide subject matter experts with the information they need to prepare for an interview. Very often, however, they’re stuffed full of irrelevant material because… well, just because. Briefing books have to provide lots of information because that’s the way it’s always been done, right? Wrong. They’re only helpful if your executive or client reads them.

Here are a few things you can do to provide more concise and relevant briefing documents.

Send it early. Sending you’re an executive an eight page briefing book thirty minutes before the interview is a good way to ensure that they won’t read it. Whenever possible, provide briefing materials at least 24 hours in advance.

Change the name. Your busy executive doesn’t have time to read a book, so don’t call it a book if you expect them to read it. Just call it a briefing.

Put it in the body of an e-mail. There’s no harm in attaching documents with supplementary information, but put the most important information right in the e-mail where your executive will see it. You can put the information in the meeting invitation as well, but I’d bet that most people look in their calendar to find out when and where they have an interview, but not what it’s about. Learn where your executives look for information and put it there. If you don’t know, ask. They’ll appreciate it.

Keep the essentials. A good briefing book lists the date and time of the interview (remember the time zone*), the reporter’s name and outlet and where the interview will take place. List your contact information too. You know this already. That part isn’t broken.

Provide relevant background. Your executive don’t care that the reporter graduated from the University of Illinois in 1993 or that the outlet was founded in 1971. Stop copying and pasting that crap from Vocus or Cision. Nobody cares. Focus on answering questions provide useful background information. What is the focus of the outlet? Who is the audience? Is it a key publication in our target market? Does the reporter know anything about us or our industry? Does the outlet or the reporter have a history with our company?

Include sample questions. Sometimes reporters will tell you some of the questions they plan to ask. If they do, include them. If they don’t, you should still have a general idea of what the reporter wants to know, so provide a summary of the story’s direction and purpose.

Remember your key message. Your executive should never do an interview without having a clear idea of what they want to see in print. That means having a key message and a few points in support of the message. Don’t provide a dozen messages and expect a perfect quote in the story. It won’t happen. Focus on a few main points. Anticipate tough questions, then outline the best answers for each of them and how to bridge to your message points.

Offer supporting data. Make a quick list of facts and figures relevant to the topic. If there are relevant financial, product, market or customer numbers, include them.

Skip the sample articles. They’re not helpful. Well, not always. If there are recent articles by the reporter or in the outlet that pertain to the company or the topic, include them. But if they haven’t written anything relevant, don’t fake it. You’re wasting everyone’s time and demonstrating that you don’t respect your executive’s time. Can’t give up the sample articles? Provide them as an attachment. That signals that they’re not essential reading.

That’s it. Provide the most important information as concisely as possible in the format your executive or client is most likely to read. Whenever possible, schedule time before the interview to go over it with them and plan the interview. You’ll both go into the interview with greater peace of mind.

1. * Bonus tip: Plan meetings across time zones using TimeandDate.com.

Um… wait. That’s not exactly right. (But it would be deliciously ironic.)

The call, in several intertwined variants

There is a very specific category of public interactions that rakes my soul with its fiery talons: dealing with customers who have had bad experiences with customer service.

Maybe you’ve had the pleasure of dealing with this situation. If not, feel free to imagine.

Your cell phone rings — it’s Sunday morning, it’s the middle of the night, it’s the middle of a family event, it’s some form of personal time, you’re in the middle of the road in heavy 75 mph traffic or in a snow storm — but you have to answer the phone. It could be a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. It could be the babysitter. It could be urgent.

Unknown number. As soon as you answer, a stream of invective pours through the phone and fills your ear, gushing bilious accusations and threats. Someone seems to have had a bad experience with your  company and is threatening to call the media, his attorney, the Better Business Bureau, all his friends and his mom. Or your mom. That part’s not clear. There’s always one part of the story that’s not clear.

The only consistent part of the story is that the customer service agents were rude and hung up on him. (And yes, it’s almost always him, and they always hang up on him. Twice. Three times!)

So you take down his name, contact information and details of the problem, which takes about two and a half minutes, including phonetic spelling (Sierra. Mike. India. Tango… um… Hockey? Hotel? Just one H. Underscore. One. Niner. At…) then spend the next twenty minutes apologizing over and over again and trying to get him off the phone so you can actually try to find someone who can do something about the situation. He claims he wants speedy resolution, but more than anything, he wants to vent his spleen.

Venting complete, he demands that you resolve his issue on some ridiculously tight deadline that you can’t commit to because the call center (hundreds of miles away in another state) is closed until sometime after the deadline and the escalations supervisor probably won’t respond to calls and e-mails until the office opens. Then he keeps calling back to harangue you for not solving his problem in a timely manner. More time spent apologizing….

I’ll stop there. If you’ve been through it, you know how it goes.

Why do I get these calls? I have nothing to do with customer service, but my name is on the corporate web site. Sometimes, I’m the only human being listed on the web site, and that is perhaps one of the root causes of the problem. These people just want to be acknowledged and treated with respect.

The dread, in its several incarnations

I dread getting these calls because I empathize. I know what it’s like to be treated poorly by some faceless corporation. We’ve all been there. I’ll do what I can to address the situation.

I also dread consumer complaints because I’m powerless to make any real change. I can make a few calls, send a few e-mails and nag the customer service team to resolve the issue in a timely manner, but ultimately I have no ability to fix the problem. I’m just the PR guy. But I’ll do everything I can to get someone to help you.

Finally, I dread consumer complaint calls when I’m aware of the problem but we haven’t fixed it yet. I know that we’ll do the right thing and I’m sorry we haven’t done it yet.

So, sir, whoever you are… I’m sorry. Now let me get off the phone so I can help you. Please.

But I do think that the influence of the PR team in the executive suite is frequently overstated.

Think about how often PR professionals are excoriated for letting their CEOs do something that results in negative publicity. Letting them? Do you really think most CEOs consult their PR staff for anything other than communications advice? Seriously?

Yeah. Thought so.

As public relations professionals, we’re in a bind. We can choose not to “swim with the snakes,” but as their spokespersons and advocates, we must stand up and speak for them — at least if we want to remain employed.

Bill goes on to point out that Governor Blagojevich’s spokeswoman, Kelley Quinn, knew that she’d find herself in that position sooner or later when she took the job.

Maybe so. But I’d bet that most PR professionals never expect to have to deal with a major reputation crisis. I’d also bet that most PR people don’t have a clue what’s actually going on in the executive suite, and when hell breaks loose, they’re often as surprised as anyone else.

Chances are, if you’re speaking on behalf of a company, you’ll eventually find yourself taking a beating for someone else’s mess. I’ve been in that kind of bind, though thankfully with a much lower profile. It’s never fun.

There have been times when I’ve asked myself whether or not I can be the spokesperson for an unpopular issue while maintaining my personal and professional integrity. I’ve asked myself if it’s worth a paycheck, worth putting food on the family table and keeping a roof over our heads. The answer hasn’t always been yes.

I don’t envy anyone in that position. As the job market dries up, however, it’s not always a question you have the luxury to ask. Not until you hit rock bottom.

If you find yourself that question, you have my sincere sympathy and respect.