By David Jenkin

Bigger and broader

As long ago as 2012, a report by the Korn Ferry Institute, comprising a survey of 148 Fortune 500 CCOs, found that “communications executives increasingly are taking part in defining the company’s strategic direction and articulating an updated corporate narrative”.

A follow-up survey in 2015 revealed the continuation of this trend. More than 91% of respondents identified “providing leadership on reputation, values and culture across the enterprise as receiving more attention …” requiring them to “build relationships with a greater number of constituents, internally and externally, to ensure engagement and dialogue – not just one-way communications –from the enterprise.”

Writing for PR Week on the ways in which the CCO’s role is changing, Chris Daniels refers to the comments made by Arthur W. Page Society president, Roger Bolton, who says that the trend towards a convergence of marketing and communications “is due in large part to the growing importance of corporate responsibility relative to product attributes and pricing. Digital and social have also blurred the lines among paid, earned, and owned media”.

Another marked shift, Daniels continues, is the increase in importance of the CCO’s collaboration with human resources – this according to Arthur W. Page Society chairman, Gary Sheffer. Today’s CCOs have a greater role to play in shaping, influencing and partnering on culture with HR. Sheffer elaborates: “It is not just about talking about culture, but also understanding what motivates people in their jobs, how they view the company, and how the avocations in their own life match that of the organisation”.

Synergised messaging

Charl Nel, Capitec Bank’s head of communications, agrees that collaborating with HR is more important, and also that marketing and communications have an increasingly collaborative relationship in delivering messages to the market. He says, “Previously in the communications sphere, you had a public relations officer and that public relations officer had certain tasks but, from today’s perspective, it was all frivolous.”

He explains that, traditionally, the marketing department pays for messages to reach consumers through ad space, while the communications department uses influence rather than money, via journalists or social media. “Digital tools have made it much easier for any person who wants to communicate to be able to get the message across and to measure the message,” he says. “We are able to see who is reading the articles we put out internally, we can see where the interest lies, what we need to write more about, or things that people do not really care about. The digital age has made it much easier for us to pinpoint, to measure, and to deliver the right content to audiences.”

He adds that, today, communications is a much bigger role, more on a par with marketing, which was never the case before. “I think that organisations and the broader public are starting to understand the value of word of mouth, in terms of what people talk about, and what they share on their own social media,” he says, “And if you read an article in a newspaper it adds a lot more weight than an advertisement in that same newspaper. So the value of communication has been discovered in the past, I would say, ten years.”

Digitised skillset

In terms of an updated skillset, Nel says that previously people with a public relations background were preferred for the position of CCO. “Now, in terms of the strategic communication that is needed, I would say someone with a law background. Language is still paramount. And then the digital side has really just changed it completely. You have to understand those tools and the digital landscape very well, and you need to be your own master in that field.”

Compared to the international market, Nel says that South Africa is lagging a bit behind the curve, having not fully realised the trend of the CCO being on par with (and sometimes even more powerful than) marketing, but he’s sure that South Africa will catch up.

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