If you are the CEO of a company large or small, you undoubtedly are busy thinking about myriad issues ranging from customer satisfaction, trends surrounding revenue growth, and alignment of resources, to recruiting, innovation, establishing direction and external changes, to name a few. In the midst of all of this, it is easy to forget about public relations and its strategic importance to helping your organization achieve its business objectives.
We recently were talking about the CEO’s role in public relations and wanted to share a few thoughts on this topic. In many organizations the CEO is critical to the success of a company’s PR activities. Namely he or she plays a role in the following areas:
- Serves as the company spokesperson. In many, but not all, organizations the highest-ranking corporate officer plays a significant role acting as the company spokesperson. Journalists look to this individual for comments and insight because she personifies the company. Clearly, the CEO is not obligated to be the spokesperson. He or she can appoint someone to take on this responsibility, but typically journalists working on a corporate story will expect to have access to the CEO for comment.
- Approves the Budget and Resources. Often a VP of Marketing or Corporate Communications, a Manager of PR, or Marcom Manager will have the responsibility for developing and proposing the scope of work and budget, but the CEO should be involved in reviewing and providing approval of the budget. The CEO should do this as he or she has a broad view of the organization’s situation from its projected revenue to the overall operating budget and can best see how PR fits into the bigger picture.
- Evaluates ROI. In addition to approving resources and the budget for PR, the CEO should play a role in considering the overall effectiveness of the organization’s PR activities. He or she should consider top-level success metrics (e.g. share of voice) and consider how PR is impacting sales. Clearly, in some organizations it is often impossible to prove that PR plays a direct role in motivating someone to purchase, but there should be some hard evidence showing the positive impact that PR is having on his or her organization and brand.
- Showcases Results. To build excitement about an organization’s activities, there is an opportunity for CEOs to showcase results from PR activities. For instance, the CEO might showcase a marquee editorial placement in a company meeting to build further staff enthusiasm for a particular initiative. When I joined Tegic Communications in January of 1998, we were a very small startup. Every month we had an all-employee meeting to discuss our progress toward company goals. PR was essential in helping us stay top-of-mind with our customers and our CEO Bob Hart, along with our VP of Sales and Marketing Don Davidge, did an excellent job of highlighting the editorial coverage the company was receiving. This was especially motivating to the engineers who otherwise might not have been aware of external reaction to their work. Other places that editorial coverage should be showcased include board meetings or even in some instances discussions with customers and partners.
For additional thoughts on the role of the CEO in PR, please check out this article by Kathy Keenan. It contains some excellent reminders for CEOs from the perspective of journalists with Fortune, Business Week and the New York Times.
Clearly, with many responsibilities it is easy for the CEO to abdicate PR to others in the organization. However, CEO involvement with PR is often paramount to achieving success.