7. “I had to communicate
that the more barrels of
oil we pumped out of the
Mother Earth the better it
was.
That was becoming more
and more difficult for
me.”
“I wanted to be able to
look at myself in the
mirror, knowing that I
had done my best to
make this planet a better
place for all.”
8. The news of my transfer
came as a bombshell.
Front page news in
Norway:
‘Statoil-director
goes to the
arch-enemy.’
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16. Global Communications Strategy
• Research
• Storytelling
• Digital mobilisation
• Traditional media relations
• Organisational set-up
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28. “We have won many victories,
but we are losing the planet”…
~ Gus Speth Practice of Environmental Policy. Yale University
29.
30.
31.
32.
33. What’s in a name?
Why companies should worry less about their reputations
“The best
strategy may be
to think less
about managing
your reputation
and concentrate
more on
producing the
best products
and
services….”
34. “Asking about Return on Investment is the
wrong question today.
You should be asking about Return on
Involvement.
Everyone wants a conversation. They want
inspiration.“
~Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi
41. "We have to bring this world back to sanity and put the
greater good ahead of self-interest.
We need to fight very hard to create an environment out
there that is more long term focused and move away from
short termism.“
Audacity
42. Age of transition
"We have to bring this world back to sanity and put the
greater good ahead of self-interest.
We need to fight very hard to create an environment out
there that is more long term focused and move away from
short termism.“
~ Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever Audacity
43. Into the workplace; wherever
you go!
• Audiences
• Authenticity
• Audacity
COMMUNICATION 2.0
Editor's Notes
Changing the name of the communications game – up to Communications 2.0 I am very pleased to be here today, with you, international communications students and to share my vision of Communications 2.0 with you. I feel very strongly that we need to take our profession to another level, based on what we have learned and done, but I believe one step further. If we look at the challenges that we face in the world, there cannot be such thing as communications as usual. I believe we communications people need to take up three points, my three A’s. They are inter-related:
AudiencesAuthenticityAudacity However, before I get into that vision more specifically, I will share some of my journey of life with you – both personal and professional – related to these three points. The reason I do this is to show you how that journey, the experiences I went through led to a great personal transition for me and which enabled me to believe that we should take the communications profession to another level. I think you will appreciate why I feel so strongly about the three A’s. After sharing my personal experiences, I will come back to the vision and also look at other companies. I am absolutely fine to take any questions and/or comments as I go through my presentation. We should have sufficient time for Q/As and discussion at the end. But do really interrupt me if you like to ask something or want me to expand.It must be so exciting for you to be where you are, with a whole world of opportunities ahead of you. You are all led by different drivers and different values, which will take you on your journey. I remember being a student myself. I am by nature curious / inquisitive. I am also ambitious, though not in the traditional meaning of the word or in the way it is most interpreted. I see life as a journey of learning. It is in that aspect that I am ambitious. I want to keep on learning, always. I am also pretty happy taking risks. The combination of these different characteristics, these values, that enabled me to see and experience a lot.From a very young age onwards I had this conviction that communications is part of the essence of life. All strategies, all connections with people, etc., all we do that contributes to a set of goals are based on the value of communications. I wanted to study communications to become the spokesperson of an organisation and share its story with those who had a bond with that organisation. I believed in telling stories and that stories could connect people. I studied Communication Sciences at the University of Amsterdam and I loved it. And although the world of communications has changed greatly of course, I still regularly reflect and apply what learned then. As said, I had the desire to tell stories, to build narratives. I went into PR, fulfilling my passion to build relations through communications. So let me take your through the three A’s and how they played a role in the various jobs I had and in the job I currently fulfil at Greenpeace:
I joined Anglo-Dutch container shipping company P&O Nedlloyd in 2005. I had only been there 8 weeks when Danish Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, informed us they wanted to take us over, but they wanted to do this like a merger. Are you all aware of mergers and acquisitions? …P&O Nedlloyd and Maersk had been fierce competitors over the years and both from an employee perspective as well as from a customer perspective one could tell the differences between the two companies. P&O Nedlloyd had a totally different culture. Yet, these companies were about to become one. How could I synchronise a story to the financial markets, our people, and our customers? It felt like a huge dilemma. The financial markets would cheer the deal, a lot of money was made per share and key individuals would also benefit from this deal. The employees and customers would not like the deal, yet, the financial market, the shareholders and some individuals would absolutely like it.
From a communications perspective I would have to put this all into a coherent story. I drew a picture for the CEO with one smiley face and one crying face and told him that was my communications challenge. How could I put the two together?Well, the emphasis in the communications should be put to the employees and customers: what was in it for them? We should not emphasise the financial aspect of the deal at all, that would sell itself. It worked; the CEO took my advice. The CFO, by the way, thought this was ridiculous. Why make the fuss to employees and customers, why prioritise them? These kind of take-over and merger deals happen all the time, what is the big deal? And in this context I think you see a lot of ‘look at how fantastic this is’, purely from a financial perspective, with people (mostly men) showing of ‘how big is mine versus yours’…. And yet, that will ultimately go against you. We brought a coherent story out and got neutral press. Across the audiences, we have made it work: we differentiated our communications, yet based on coherent messaging.
In the light of authenticity;the process of becoming part of Maersk, an internal staff meeting was organised during which Maersk managers were telling P&O Nedlloyd employees how similar the internal values of Maersk and those of P&O Nedlloyd were. This was not true. In fact, they were very different. And obviously one could tell, we P&O Nedlloyd employees could see right through it. There was nothing authentic about the Maersk spiel. I realised that having been only around eight months on the job, it was time for me to leave.
When the opportunity came to join Greenpeace International I knew more than ever before why I would want to work for Greenpeace. We know what we need to do as human beings, really, in terms of what is right and what is not wrong. We know for a sustainable planet what we need to do. I joined Greenpeace from Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil. In Statoil I had worked with people who do not view Mother Earth as a living ‘being’, but as something intangible that one can just exploit. And though Statoil is also in the business of green energy, such as wind, mostly it is into the dirty part of energy.
" I had different reactions from my colleagues at Statoil, as you can imagine. But also within Greenpeace were voices of discontent, a woman from oil and who worked at a PR agency that is famous for helping the chemical industry? But soon I was at home at Greenpeace.On many levels, Greenpeace is totally different to the corporate world I came from, but the parallels are there too. The parallels help and helped me to contribute. The differences, however, make all the difference. I work to contribute to a green and peaceful world. I don’t contribute to bringing in more money for our shareholders and the happy few at the top. That does not mean that I now believe that business for me is necessarily the wrong category. In fact, those companies that are taking a different approach to their business model through embracing different values and taking on sustainability in its total meaning – it is those companies that have the key to the future, the key to success. So business and ethics can go together. When companies take sustainability seriously and become lobbyists for a cause among their peers and legislators, they can be far more powerful than NGOs. This reality also plays a role in our Greenpeace campaigning as the Detox example showed. It is also those companies that will allow us communications professionals to do our jobs differently.
At Greenpeace, a wonderful organisation, where I work now, at their International Centre, we also look at audiences in a diversified way. I guess you all know Greenpeace? Do you know how long we have been around? Do you know what we do?
Greenpeace started as a group of inspired hippies who embarked upon an ocean trip forty years ago to show the world the nuclear tests at Amchitka.
This small group with no communications plans and audience segmentation at the time, yet making communications history, slowly, but surely grew into a global organisation, with many faces, and our own CEO, who we call our IED – International Executive Director.
Many of you know Greenpeace because of images like this, compelling to many audiences. Our ways of campaigning and activism, through which we achieve successes are in line with the expectation of our loyal supporter base (play clip ‘Inspiring Action’).
The story of Greenpeace is summed up in the image of a tiny ship sailing into a nuclear weapons test zone, or a small boat moving in front of a harpoon to save a whale. Those are David and Goliath stories, and at its heart the David and Goliath story is about an unlikely hero taking a courageous decision to do something that is not required of him, to intervene in an injustice, to step up and take action. Like any story, it’s inspiring because we want to see ourselves reflected in that positive example. And when people became Greenpeace supporters, they actually mirrored that story – whether they donated a small amount of money that paid for a part that powered that boat that saved that whale or they signed a petition or promoted our content on social media or volunteered at an event, they became a David against the Goliath of business as usual: they took action. And we knew that the same drive motivation that drove them to align with us suggested they had a desire to do more – they wanted to be a part of the story, characters, not just passive listeners. What we weren’t doing was offering ways to do that beyond writing a check or sending an email, and that’s the journey we’re now starting to construct.
These different campaign examples show that we focus on putting audiences back at the centre of our attention. Though our story telling throughout the Greenpeace history has always been about connecting with people, at some point we became very science and policy focused. We had to do this though and still what we do and demand today is all based on sound facts, based on research. But this started to influence our communications. We became very focused on feeding the media those facts and figures. The media demanded checks and balances from us, rather than only receiving our inspiring ‘mind bombs’. And we also started hiring more issue experts, policy advisors and scientists. This was important. It allowed us to speak to elite audiences in elite language, adding a newer audience to our audiences mix.
So, in this constantly changing world, we are trying to further innovate for more campaign wins and connect with new audiences. In the last four years that I have worked at Greenpeace, I prioritised a number of different areas. I have put internal communications on the map, built the global communications community in Greenpeace, crafted a Global Communications Strategy with many communications colleagues around the world and pushed our Mobilisation Strategy into a next phase. The Global Communications Strategy addresses five areas: research, story telling, digital mobilisation, traditional media relations and organisational set-up. Those are interrelated to create success. Story telling is at the heart, aiming to improve our connection with people, both internally (internal communications) and externally. I will share a couple of Greenpeace examples with you. After all that is where I work and I believe they are inspiring and diverse.
Let me turn to another of our campaigns, one where audience segmentation was key: our detox campaign. Water is central to our existence, hugely influential on our culture and its protection and availability are two of the biggest environmental concerns in the world today
One of the biggest threats to clean water is industrial pollution, and one of the biggest contributors to that is the textile industry. A truly global business, the textile industry has been able to get away with poisoning our waterways with hazardous chemicals for many years because it has been able to do this out of sight, in the shadows. In classic Greenpeace style, we wanted to bear witness to this environmental crime, and support the brave people around the world fighting for access to clean water. But in order to do this, we had to convince the world’s major fashion brands to take responsibility for their supply chains and eliminate the use of these chemicals from their production and products.Trouble is, these brands are not necessarily influenced by a bunch of hippies and their calls for clean water. These brands are influenced by their own audiences – their customers and shareholders – and by the people who decide “what is hot and what is not” in the worlds of advertising, trends and fashion.
So in order to talk to these audiences, we took a different approach. We didn’t call the campaign the “Clean Water” campaign, the “save our rivers” campaign or the “Toxic Clothes” campaign – We called it the “Detox” campaign – offering people a clue as to what it was about (De-Tox-ing) in order to entice them in, provide a hook, and spark a conversation with these new audiences; not frighten them off before we had even begun engaging. Also, in addition to the campaign goals, we had organisational ones, to grow our organisational reputation – our brand – in countries where we were either not very well known – like in China - or where we were known for a very specific campaign issue, like deforestation in Indonesia.
The tools and assets we created were also made bearing these diverse audiences in mind. It played on the natural competition between two of the world’s largest brands, Nike and Adidas, who we had found to be linked to the toxic pollution. Instead of having them compete over who made the best sport shoes, we activated their customers and other influencers to join us in challenging these brands to lead the chase on clean production….
– and prove that impossible really is nothing (NOTE: this is a play on Adidas’ previous ad slogan “impossible is nothing”)
A truly global effort, our team in China were central to the success of the campaign, and the Detox logo even incorporates the Chinese symbol for water. Thousands of temporary tattoos bearing this symbol were handed out from music festivals in Shanghai to Lowlands here in the Netherlands, providing another way in which we could engage with new audiences around the world and apply pressure on the brands to change.
The results speak for themselves. Nike, Adidas, Nike and Li-Ning (biggest Chinese sportswear brand in the world) all committed to work with their suppliers and Detox their supply chains and products in 2011 – sparking a revolution in the sector, and I will touch again on this campaign later in my presentation.
All of these different campaign examples show that we focus on putting audiences back at the centre of our attention. Though our story telling throughout the Greenpeace history has always been about connecting with people, at some point we became very science and policy focused. We had to do this though and still what we do and demand today is all based on sound facts, based on research. But this started to influence our communications.
We became very focused on feeding the media those facts and figures. The media demanded checks and balances from us, rather than only receiving our inspiring ‘mind bombs’. And we also started hiring more issue experts, policy advisors and scientists. This was important. It allowed us to speak to elite audiences in elite language, adding a newer audience to our audiences mix. However, our core legitimacy was to be in touch with people and based on populist sentiment and support.
This campaign was very successful and that is great, and I’m sure that we will continue having incremental and some transformational wins. We are winning victories, but are loosing our planet. Therefore we will need to make more difference in moving forward, as humanity. Cause,
We actually all know that if everyone in the world would live like us in the West, we need about seven additional planets. And as Al Gore pointed out quite a while ago, we know this ‘inconvenient truth’. We know we should be worried, very worried. But this message of urgency is getting ever so dull. We have heard it so many times and it does not shock us as much anymore as it perhaps should. What do we do to address that? And what could we as communications professionals do?
The good thing is that the same professor from Yale Gus Speth who stated we are loosing our planet, is also observing that we are ‘ in the age of poets, philosophers and psychologists’. This means huge opportunity for us, communications professionals. To me this has meant that I have started to look at our profession in a critical way wanting to contribute to a sustainable world, believing that we communications professionals can make a difference. Can we? Can we start working on communications 2.0? I believe there are many of who could join this quest.
I am quite hopeful. I start to see many examples where communication is looked at critically and contributing to our ability to take it to another level. An example that I would like to share with you is the launch of a report in the UK called ‘Think of me as evil – opening the ethical debates on advertising’. I look at the debate in a broader sense as a communications professional and look at what we should address and/or learn from this? What is particularly interesting in the report is the impact advertising – of communications – has on our values.
And it goes broader: look at this article in the Economist, not so long ago. This guy will stop spinning if he starts to work communications 2.0.
And this quote from Saatchi & Saatchi – a much admired advertising agency – redefines RoI, from ‘return on investment’ to ‘return on involvement’. I think this is very inspiring and it gives me the courage to be on a communications quest.
Let finish by address the three areas again and address the taking to another level:
Audiences: I have shared audience diversification with you, but I think it is time to readdress how we identify audiences. I think it is time we start identifying our audiences in a more holistic way. With this I mean that we not just look at the direct audiences we have as a company, an organisation or as the government, but we go beyond. We should add Mother Earth and future audiences as two key audiences. These audiences are key wherever you work, whatever you do. If in any communications strategy we write, we add these audiences, we are influencing the conversation…
We are co-creating the strategies of the companies and organisations we work for. If you look at the company Patagonia, I think they are getting this right. It’s company that I admire for its appreciation of audiences. They truly understand what they can provide for their audiences and how that changes over time. Not only that, they also appreciate how the circumstances of Mother Earth changes.There is another point to audiences, however, and that is regarding people. Now I realise that it is not right to say that we have an audience that is the ‘general public’, but overall we can agree that people are addressed as consumers, not as citizens. I think we should redefine that and change consumers to citizens wherever we are and work.
This brings us to the third A: Audacity:We need to stick to the principles of what we have always learned as communications professionals, which is that identity and image should be the same; a one-on-one relationship. We have moved away from that key principle over the years, I believe. In the drive for more – more of everything, money, products, etc – our profession has delivered a lot of spin and a lot of fairy tales. And wow, what creativity we have seen, amazing and wonderful. However, we have gone over the top, I believe.
When putting petrol in your car at a Shell station, your car will start emitting flowers. I mean really?! Or when you buy your next Levi’s jeans, you enter (or maybe even contribute) to a whole different, sustainable world. Conclusion is though, only if true authenticity is at play, should we as communications professionals work this kind of creative work. This brings us to the third A:
Audacity:
Would you like to join me on my quest for Communications 2.0? I would love you to!
