“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” This piece of wisdom comes from Warren Buffett, the entrepreneur, investor and, according to Forbes, the world’s second richest man with $37 billion and an ingenious talent for communications. His every word, every move, is carefully calculated for and watched by the market.

A precious attribute like reputation is not a hard asset; however, it is measurable. While reputation can help build more tangible resources and enhance shareholder value, reputation is staked on what companies do and say. Similarly, reputation is damaged by a combination of actions and words. Leaders at any level should not delegate their responsibility for communications. Communication is just as much their job as brand stewardship. Whether you are a managing director of an office, president of a division, or chairman and CEO of a corporate behemoth, communication is within your purview and you need to own it, internally and externally, while working in concert with your public relations directors, marketing officers and senior executive team.

Why? Because the boss is the embodiment of a company, a division, a team. Anything and everything a boss does, right down to the way he or she lives, can significantly impact the company’s image. Anything and everything will be watched carefully. It simply is impossible for a boss, any boss, NOT to communicate.

Steve Jobs is an example, and an extreme one. He is not only the founder of Apple, but also its face, head and heart. There is not a single innovation coming from Apple that isn’t initiated, controlled or announced by him. Jobs embodies the brand, the lifestyle, the brainpower, the forward-thinking sense of Apple products. And that is not always good. For Jobs is so strongly connected with the brand that even rumors about his state of health can affect the stock price. This is a perfect illustration of why it is so important for leaders to communicate a sense of team.

Communication is not just words but also gestures

Communication can occur through any action, not just speaking or writing. Gestures can communicate, especially if they are captured in pictures. Think of it as the total performance. The CEO of Deutsche Bank could tell you a story about that.

Josef Ackermann made a joke when he raised his hand and gave a V for victory in 2004 at the Duesseldorf County Court while waiting for the Mannesmann trial to start. The dpa photographer Oliver Berg “caught” f Ackermann’s gesture. The picture attracted worldwide attention when it made the front cover of the magazine Stern with the headline “The Mighties’ Arrogance.” No matter what explanation was offered, nothing could stop that picture from circulating around the world.

Ackermann’s predecessor Hilmar Kopper also has to live with an old embarrassment. Even today his thoughtless comment from 1994 when he referred to damages of 50 million Euros as “peanuts” is referred to in the press.

Or Klaus Kleinfeld, the former Chairman of Siemens: A media darling when he assumed his position, he never lived down the outcry caused by his first official portrait. His ostentatious Rolex Submariner was airbrushed out over internal concerns about negative public reaction, but the airbrushing was discovered and drew an even more negative and loud public outcry. The story spread and the press did not cease referencing it until Kleinfeld departed.

A missing watch, peanuts, and the victory sign all show how words are not needed to provoke. Nuance matters too. Bill Bernbach, one of the three founders of the worldwide advertising network DDB, got it right back in the early fifties: “It’s not just what you say that stirs people. It’s the way you say it.”

Eleven years ago, we had a very big crisis in the automobile industry: the failure of the newly produced Mercedes-Benz A-Class during the “elk test.” During the double-lane change manoeuvre, a test car failed and rolled over. A strong and prescriptive response by the company turned the setback around.

With media fragmentation and ever more rapid forms of communication, more than ever it’s about the “how” – and the many little things that people notice.

Barack Obama, the new President of the United States, knew this on his way to the White House.

It is not new that politicians like to be photographed with a baby in their arms, in front of a flag, or visiting the troops. But Barack Obama’s team developed a unique visual language for him. Obama was seen exactly as he wanted to be seen: running up the stairs of the Capitol – alone; talking on the phone and reviewing a speech–alone; sitting feet up at a table with worn-down shoes–alone; pulling his wheel-on luggage down a hotel corridor–alone; standing in front of empty seats rehearsing a speech–alone; Obama, playing basketball with street kids, dressed in a coat; and Obama and family with his two daughters in his arms–all meticulously choreographed.

When performing, Obama leaves nothing to chance

Obama’s campaign managers hired 50 photographers who were quicker in posting their pictures via Flickr on the Internet than the news agencies, and there was an added bonus: they were free of charge. In this way, he dominated news coverage with more than 50,000 pictures. And his camera crews shot more than18,000 videos that played on websites like YouTube.

But Obama’s campaign was more than just pictures and videos showing “a man of the people,” down to earth and authentic. Obama’s campaign workers collected 13 million email addresses, identified the target groups and forwarded one billion e-mails. They sent 2.9 million text messages -- a record. The Obama campaign was the biggest mobile campaign in the US ever. They added 5.5 million friends on 16 different social networks on the Internet. The website “My Barack Obama” collected two million profiles. Their users established 235,000 communities, ready to help at any time. They had 400,000 blog entries and they organized two million events via the Web.

Of course, they also worked with traditional advertising media like TV spots and advertisements, plus a financed broadcast on three different TV networks in prime time. And the campaign workers introduced the new tool “in-game-advertising” where designers and software engineers of 16 online computer games were convinced to allow Obama posters to appear during the games, thus enabling the campaign workers to get hold of the target groups that rarely use traditional media.

With this far-reaching campaign, Obama was able to amass more than $750 million through small donations. This was more than twice the amount his competitor John McCain raised.

New ground broken on the Internet

Like Obama what the boss has to keep in mind is that his or her image is also the image of the company, the product, the brand; communication has to be open and honest at all times, including during a crisis when it is imperative to present the facts, accept responsibility and refrain from third party attacks; the new and old economies must be mastered; the new role of the consumer must be considered; good communication makes a lasting impression and is not derivative; and good communication reaches the target group better with creativity and a high degree of relevance.

Barack Obama used the Internet with enthusiasm and success. He broke new ground and used new target groups for his communication and holistic organization. However, this strategy is not without risk. The data highways and their self-confident usage by broad population groups hold some surprises. Digital communication via the Internet comes from all sides and can hardly be controlled, and therefore can be misdirected very easily--even by a single user.

An example of this is the Kryptonite lock. On September 12, 2004, a user complained on a US Internet forum for cyclists that one only needs a simple ballpoint pen to pick a Kryptonite lock. Straight after this post, videos appeared proving that allegation. On September 15 nearly one million people discussed the problem in their blogs, the net’s private billboards. Four days later, after the media had reported the full story, the number was 1.8 million. Ten days later, the company recalled the products and the material damage was assessed at $10 million. Estimated damage to the brand image was never published.

This was five years ago. At that time the German Federal Statistical Office reported that nearly every other German between 16 and 74 years of age was surfing the Internet at least once a week. In 2008 “Infratest Initiative D21” reported that 42.2 million Germans over 14 years of age were online. This is more than two thirds of the German population – and the number is growing daily. Different surveys testify that more than one billion people are online today. Keep this in mind if you want to communicate with others, and remember what stirs people’s emotions, because nearly every Internet user is able to raise a blog storm as large as the Kryptonite one.

In the age of cell phones there are no unobserved moments

The internet gives new import to nuance. The International Telecommunication Union estimates that at the end of 2008 more than four billion cell phones were in use, most of them equipped with cameras, all ready to point and shoot at any time. Think you can sneak in a quick yawn? Think again.

The editorial office of the daily Bild receives around 5 000 cell phone pictures and a growing number of videos every day.

Everyone who wants to communicate should expect an exponential increase in available media (passive as well as active).

• 114 TV channels in Germany in 2005 – 12 times as many as in 1977
• At the end of May 2009 the satellite system Astra was sending the signals of 303 digital and 40 analog channels into German households
• Every year 50,000 new books are published in Germany
• 71 different women’s magazines are published in Germany
• 50,000 brands are advertised in Germany
• The number of daily sent text messages is higher than the total worldwide population
• Blogtotal.de promises to register your text messages in 540 search engines and 470,000 lists of links
• Technorati.com counted more than 133 million blogs worldwide from 2002 through 2008

If the social network MySpace was a country, it would be the eleventh largest country in the world (more than 110 million users)

Every day the consumer is in contact with up to 3,000 advertising messages

But the average vocabulary of a German is 8,000 to 10,000 words and
a person’s attention span is only a few seconds

And these seconds are loaded with more and more media. Digitization enables permanent and quicker access to more and more information and entertainment. Nearly everybody and also nearly every bit of information is available – at any time and everywhere. Multitasking in media is increasing enormously. And it will continue to increase when the generation of digital natives becomes stronger. The generation of digital natives are the children of today who don’t need to learn how to handle the new media because they imbibe it from their infancy.

The consumer is available anytime, anywhere

The tremendous variety of ways to approach the consumer is also a tremendous opportunity. If you want to communicate on products, brands or companies you don’t need to wait till the consumer is reading a newspaper or magazine, is switching the TV on, or is passing a billboard.

Today you can reach the consumer anytime, anywhere. But this also means that the message has to find the consumer within the endless ocean of information.

Many users organize social networks and share countless private details with friends. This is also a perfect and rich way to segment target groups.

But what happens when my message reaches the target person? Then the message must be convincing. Everything that the consumer doesn’t like or finds useless will be clicked off in a fraction of a second or might be forwarded in a changed or even altered version. In social networks this process can easily and unexpectedly strengthen the effect for the better but also for the worse.

A leader has to know that communication is a practice that demands personal involvement.

But what is good communication? A lot of communication is not always helpful. As Bernbach said, “Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten” or “Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.” This is true, not only for ads fifty years ago, but also for every kind of communication today.

Good communication is neither imitative nor irritating; good communication is unique in its creativity and has to be planned, arranged, coordinated and executed very carefully, more than ever. Good communication has to be quick and immediate, break rules, has to be entertaining, informing, and catch the ear or the eye.

But if the product is bad, great communication won’t make a difference and will even hurt. Because if the advertising is effective, a bad product will disappoint many consumers and the situation will very quickly escalate to crisis. That is why the magic has to start with and be part of the product.

Tonio Kröger, CEO, DDB Group Germany

Posted on October 7, 2009 5:17 PM | Permalink

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