Tag Archives: communications

Rein in or let loose? How should an in-house communicator behave with media-friendly colleagues?

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As an in-house communicator, would you reel an experienced colleague in or trust them to communicate well? (image source: http://www.questionpro.com/)

As an in-house communicator, would you reel an experienced colleague in or trust them to communicate well? (image source: http://www.questionpro.com/)

I had an interesting conversation today with a journalist (I still do that every now and then, as they’re a very fun bunch to be around). He was telling me about a recent event, of how a communications head for an organization came to him and asked about an award won by this person’s organization. It seems that the award nomination hadn’t been vetted by the communicator, and they wanted to know more about the nomination, including who specifically had submitted the nomination.

The journalist wasn’t particularly happy with what he saw interfering after the event. His viewpoint was clear, telling me that:

Yes, some journalists actually have relationships with people in organisations that don’t involve PR or comms, and while you can help that relationship, don’t mess around with it when it works so well!

As communicators, it is a natural instinct for us to control the message, especially when there’s an external party such as a journalist involved. However, does this always work? Does it make sense to rein in fellow staff members, especially when there’s potential to damage a relationship with your colleague or with the journalist whom your colleague has a relationship with.

For the journalist in question, much of his frustration comes from a feeling that when the marcomms team gets involved, the editorial process comes to a halt. In contrast, his source get to the point, he knows what to say and gives content that the journalist wants.

Would you rein in a colleague, especially one who is able to communicate well and who has a good relationship with a journalist? Or would you let them loose, albeit with some conditions and observations. You tell me, I’d love to hear your views.

And by the way, the award nomination won a top prize on the night.

Lessons from West Africa: The Need to Move Beyond Media Relations and Other Observations

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https://www.instagram.com/p/BB7XX8UDO46/?tagged=prsaccra

Every now and then I’m allowed out of the country, and some of those trips make for some remarkable learnings. One of my recent trips was to Ghana. I met with a fair number of communications professionals from across West Africa, including from Nigeria. There was much talk around what I call the usual suspects – digital, social media, measurement et al – but what struck me most was the challenge that our colleagues in West Africa face when it comes to educating clients on the need to move beyond media relations.

There was one panel which opened my eyes to how similar West Africa is to the Gulf. Four gentlemen (and no ladies) from the national Nigerian and Ghanaian PR and African associations took to the stage to talk about the challenges and opportunities faced by communicators in the continent.

A fixation on media relations

What seemed to be repeated over and over again was the need to move communications away from pure media relations and towards a more holistic model; like in the Gulf, it seems that many clients are keen to get their pictures in the papers, their voice on the radio and their silhouettes on television. There wasn’t much in the way of a response from the panel, aside from pointing a finger at the numerous journalists who had joined the public relations profession and who were keen, or so the argument would go, to keep the industry focused on media relations as the only deliverable for clients.

Nigerian regulation and the slow pace of change

What was a surprise to me was that Nigerian comms professionals have to be registered with the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations to hold mid to senior-level comms roles in the country. Living in a part of the world which is unregulated when it comes to PR (nearly all of the comms people I know don’t even have a formal education in the discipline), I do like the idea of having an independent standard to meet and maintain. However, as one member of the audience pointed out, it had taken her just over a decade of chasing to secure her membership of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations and hence be eligible to hold a senior comms role. While some aspects of the sector may be different in Nigeria, bureaucracy remains.

Discussing the the evolution of PR in Africa #PRSAccra

A photo posted by Gideon Kodo (@gideon_kodo) on Feb 19, 2016 at 6:33am PST

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The rise of the female comms professional

You don’t need me to tell you that women are better communicators. They simply are, full stop. It was wonderful to see that three-quarters of the room were women, and many of them young ladies at the beginning of their careers. The local panel was full of men, an observation not lost on one brave lady who pointed out the imbalance between those on the stage and those in the room. However, looking long-term women will hopefully dominate at the top as they do at the mid and entry levels in the comms sector in West Africa.

A photo posted by @chiyneze on Feb 19, 2016 at 6:27am PST

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A focus on national talent

Another observation was the strength of the national talent. There were very few expats, which was a revelation for yours truly after being based in the Gulf for so long. While I was imagining Nigeria’s Lagos becoming a hub for comms across Western Africa and hence attracting expat talent, what I saw was a room full of (mainly) young, talented Nigerians and Ghanaians who care deeply about what they do and why they do it.

A photo posted by Mya (@mariann.balogun) on Feb 18, 2016 at 9:29am PST

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If you have experience of comms in West Africa I’d love to hear your inputs. Do you agree with the above, is there more you’d like to add or am I off on my observations. Don’t be shy, leave a comment or two!

How did Facebook fail with its Safety Check in emerging markets?

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There are some times you really shouldn’t be making a distinction. Last week two tragedies took place, the first in Beirut and the second in Paris.

Others have written, much more eloquently than myself, on the raw emotion they felt after the two acts of terrorism – Beiruti blogger Elie Fares was one of the first to write about his anguish at Lebanons’s suffering being ignored by the West.

What is telling with the decision to activate the Facebook Safety Check was a comment by Alex Schultz, Facebook’s VP for Growth, who said:

In the middle of a complex, uncertain situation affecting many people, Facebook became a place where people were sharing information and looking to understand the condition of their loved ones. We talked with our employees on the ground, who felt that there was a need to fill. So we made the decision to try something that we’ve never done before: activating Safety Check for something other than a natural disaster. There has to be a first time for trying something new, even in complex and sensitive times, and for us that was Paris.

While Facebook’s intentions were to help those in need, the appearance to many in emerging markets such as Africa and the Middle East was that of bias. In effect, it was as if a life in Paris was worth more than a life in Beirut, or in Kenya or in Nigeria. This was compounded by Facebook’s decision to provide users with the option to upload the French flag over their profile picture.

Schultz’s comments that it was a human decision to activate Safety Check for Paris lead me to lose this question. Who at Facebook should have put forward the idea to use this service anywhere or everywhere where there is a crisis? My answer would be the communications and policy teams.

Communications in particular is the function that should act as the bridge between the outside world and the corporation, the part of the business that brings the outside in. That’s why, for example, Comms leads on issues and crisis management. Comms should have a robust understanding of the different stakeholder groups and how they impact the organization.

However, my take on Comms goes further. Comms should act as the conscience of the organization, and the Comms team should be able to advise when something is not right ethically. Unfortunately, Facebook’s team missed this opportunity here and instead turned what should have been an opportunity to play a vital role in helping inform families and friends re the safety oftheir loved ones into an example of unintended double standards (this was compounded by the Safety Check being used for residents of a Western capital rather than an Arab or African one, which in the context of colonialism also doesn’t look good).

Mark has said that Facebook’s policies will change and rightly so. Facebook is considered by many in emerging markets to be a tool for good, which is helping to promote positive change. It’d be a shame to see that opinion shift due to a lack of cultural awareness.

What communications lessons can we learn from Arabtec’s leadership and stock crises?

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No investor wants to go through a crisis, but by letting others fill the information vacuum with their facts and thoughts you’ll be prolonging the stock market collapse (image source: http://www.people.opposingviews.com)

For those based in the Gulf and with an interest in communications, the last couple of weeks has been a remarkable story. We’ve watched as the region’s largest construction firm by market value has staggered from one crisis to the next. In less than two months, Arabtec lost over two-thirds of its value – the company’s stock price hit a peak of 7.4 Dirhams on May the 14th and fell to a nadir of 2.61 Dirhams on June the 30th – as well as its CEO and a number of high-profile executives. Where did it go wrong for a company that stated it wanted to be one of the top ten builders in the world?

Undoubtedly, the company’s strategy of transforming from a contractor to a developer and of geographic and sector-based expansion hasn’t paid off during the reign of its previous CEO, the 37 year-old Jordanian Hasan Abdullah Ismaik, who looked to expand the company into the oil and gas and transportation sectors. Ismaik oversaw a US$40 billion dollar agreement with the Egyptian government to build homes in Egypt, and, in a strange move for a Gulf-based contractor, a regional sponsorship agreement with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City.

Things began to go drastically awry when rumours spread that Arabtec’s largest shareholder, Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Investments, had reduced its stake in the company. At the same time, the CEO Ismaik had built his stake in the company from 8 per cent all the way up to 28.8 per cent. The story is best told by two reporters at The National, Frank Kane and Hadeel Al Sayegh.

There are some obvious communications lessons to be learned from the Arabtec story, which I hope other companies in the Gulf region will study long and hard.

1) Communicate proactively, stop the rumours: Information on share ownerships seemed to have been leaked out to the market before any announcement by Arabtec itself. While Arabtec didn’t break any rules in terms of non-disclosure, the company could and should have taken a much more proactive stance to explain the share movements made by Aabar Investments, an Abu Dhabi government-owned investment vehicle, and the CEO himself. What was inexcusable was a lack of clarity following a “temporary system glitch” at the Dubai Financial Market, which erroneously reported a drop in Aabar’s stake in Arabtec from 18.85 percent to 14.32 percent. The rumours took over, and filled the void left by a lack of information and analysis.

2) Use the right channels to communicate: As Arabtec’s share price dropped, the CEO announced he was quitting his role. With the stock still heading south, Ismaik announced his resignation. However, this wasn’t announced by the company through a statement to the media or to the stock exchange, but rather by an interview with a newspaper. Again, while Ismaik or Arabtec didn’t break any of the Dubai Financial Market’s rules (which must be reviewed after this sorry debacle), the fact that he announced it himself struck the wrong tone and sent out signals to investors that something was wrong. No information has been forthcoming on his own 28 percent stake in Arabtec, apart from he is willing to sell.

3) No matter the mess, get your story out there: As soon as Ismaik was out, so too were many of his executive management. The company’s head of mergers and acquisitions, Shohidul Ahad-Choudhury, was fired, as were hundreds of employees, including numerous managers. The only comments in the stories that followed were from analysts who were asking, quite rightly, what is going on. It would take eight days before Arabtec would respond to the media at a press conference.

4) Don’t lose your communications team: Whether you like their advice or not, your communications team are essential in a crisis. According to what I’ve been told, Arabtec lost both its head of communications as well as its agency during the past two months. Arabtec’s management should have moved to stem the rumours and controlled the narrative before taking any action re the communications setup, which I hope would have included a more active social media approach (Arabtec’s last tweet from its @ArabtecHolding account was in March).

Reputations that take years to build can be destroyed in a matter of moments in today’s era of information. There’s little excuse for any listed company for not sharing information with shareholders, especially during a crisis. Arabtec has since recovered some of its share value, but the company still has a long way to go if it is to win back investors. Communications is vital to this process. Let’s hope that Arabtec’s new leadership are able to learn some lessons from the past two months, and proactively engage through a systematic communications approach, with strong narratives that lead nothing to the imagination of their investors.

The Sheikh Mohammed School of Communication

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I’m no posterboy for Dubai I’ll admit. But I do admire how the Emirate’s ruler communicates with the media. The BBC aired an interview with Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum this week and the piece made headlines the world over. Sheikh Mo as he’s known here shared his thoughts on everything from Iran, Syria and Egypt to horse doping and human rights in the UAE. Sheikh Mohammed talks plainly, he gets to the point, and he admits when things go wrong; asked about the jailing of a number of young men for a spoof video Sheikh Mohammed says:

“We try to change it. We are not perfect and we try to change it. Any mistakes, we go in and try to change it. We’re not perfect, but we are doing our best.”

What’s fascinated me the most has been how the media industry has taken its pick of quotes to build headlines around. For the UAE’s media the key talking points were Sheikh Mohammed’s call to lift sanctions on Iran and his views on Syria and the need for Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad to step down. His views on Egypt’s General El-Sisi dominated the Egyptian papers.

If you want to watch and learn from Sheikh Mohammed School of Communication and see a leader who is unique in terms of how he interacts with the media then watch the interview on the BBC on the 17 January at 04:30 GMT & 09:30 GMT and read the article by the BBC’s Jon Sopel here. You can watch a teaser below from the original airing of the interview yesterday.

I wish there were more leaders in the Gulf who’d talk to and with the media.

Déjà Vu and Dubai’s Real Estate Sector – Is Communications Doing Enough to Win Back Consumer Trust

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We’d just finished off another round of Cityscape here in Dubai, an exhibition that was the highlight of the decade that was the 2000s. When 2008 struck, Cityscape was almost forgotten about. No one wanted to be reminded of how much Dubai’s real estate sector had fallen. Anyone who visited the event this month may have been forgiven for thinking that the downturn never happened. We were bombarded with news about how good everything is looking; one executive from Dubai-based executive Damac claimed there had never been a property bubble to begin with.

All the good news hasn’t been without incident. An announcement at the beginning of this month revived plans to build a canal, this time linking Dubai’s Business Bay waterway system out to the Gulf at what is now Jumeirah Beach Park (Alex McNabb wrote an excellent blog piece about the news which you can read here). Other reports have focused on stalled projects which have neither been revived or cancelled, basically locking in investor money (the law here in the UAE requires projects to be cancelled before any collected monies can be returned to investors), and the proposed establishment of a body that would help return funds to those who invested in projects which never got off the ground.

While there’s no doubt that the boom is back and that Dubai is again one of the leading lights when it comes to global real estate, is enough being done to ensure not just investors but ordinary people out there, the likes of you and me, that mistakes which were made in the past will not be repeated?

If you’re an Arabic speaker listen to this interview at Cityscape with the CEO of Damac Ziad El Chaar.

Getting the communications balance right – Ras al-Khaimah, beaches and modesty

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I do feel for anyone who has to communicate on behalf of a government body in the Gulf. That’s especially so in places where there’s conflicting, divergent views resulting from a strong cultural diversity and significant business interests with the outside world. I remember the late Yasser Arafat often getting away with making one point in Arabic and then saying the exact opposite in English (there’s many other examples out there too). With the advent of the internet, social media, and a horde of citizen journalists out there in cyberspace it’s no longer possible to say explicitly different things to different constituents.

In this week’s The National newspaper in the UAE there was a great example of the above. On the 22nd of April police from the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah announced a bikini ban for the area’s beaches. Ras al-Khaimah is a beautiful part of the United Arab Emirates. With a population of just over a quarter of a million people Ras al-Khaimah is known for its pristine beaches, and also for its rapidly growing tourism sector and free trade zone. However, the Emirate is also conservative. Trying to balance the two interests, tourism and tradition, isn’t easy as the below quotes from The National’s article on the 22nd April illustrates.

Bikinis have been banned from public beaches in the emirate as police urge residents to “use common sense” and dress modestly.

The municipality and police have put up signs on public beaches that state: “All coastgoers should commit to public morality and modest clothing”.

Offenders will be given a warning and after a second warning, they could face an unspecified fine.

The two most popular beaches in Ras Al Khaimah are located next to hotels where swimmers sunbathe in thong bikinis or trunks alongside women in burkinis, a modest full-body swimsuit designed for Muslim women.

On weekends and at sunsets, RAK’s public beaches fill with women in full hijab, who come with their families. Women in swimwear are a rare sight at these beaches and there are no women-only beaches in RAK.

In a plea to the public, police urged beachgoers to comply with “public morality and dressing modestly” to respect the country’s traditions and culture.

The move followed complaints by families about tourists who attended public beaches wearing indecent clothing.

The public have greeted the ban in Ras Al Khaimah, a conservative emirate with a large Emirati population. In RAK, it is common for women to dress for the beach by putting on more clothing so that they do not attract attention from men.

“I totally agree with that [ban] for us because it’s not a respectful thing to have on our beaches,” said Hessa Ahmed, a 31-year-old Emirati mother-of-two.

Many people, like Ms Ahmed, would like tourists to cover up but are too shy or polite to approach them. Her last visit to the beach ended abruptly when a man and woman in revealing swimwear sat near her family.

“I wasn’t sure about what she was going to do,” said Ms Ahmed. “I was afraid she would take off her top. So I preferred just to drive away just in case anything was going to happen, so I would just be away and my kids wouldn’t see them.

“There was no sign or board to inform these people you shouldn’t wear this, you shouldn’t wear that.”

Ras Al Khaimah has adopted a lenient approach to public dress in hotels but customs remains overwhelmingly conservative in public spaces, such as shopping malls.

The above was a great piece and insight into the challenges facing a country that is looking to adapt culture with business. And then came the follow-up article the next day in The National.

Police have backtracked over their statement that bikinis and tight trunks are banned from public beaches.

Revealing swimwear is not officially outlawed but strongly discouraged because of cultural sensitivities, police clarified.

“We respect the rights for people. We follow UAE law,” said Maj Marwan Al Mansoori, the head of public relations and moral guidance for RAK Police.

“Our campaign is not about catching people. We just want to tell people about our culture and our community.”

“You should respect our culture and our community rights but you have your rights,” said Maj Al Mansoori. “If it is under our law, you can do it.

“We wanted to tell people what we are thinking. It is communication between cultures. We want to explain this to people.”

It’s worth reading both articles in full, and to put this in its full context few Westerners will use a public beach in Ras al-Khaimah; all the hotels have private beaches which are fully equipped and only for the use of guests. However, such communications outreach isn’t going to help draw foreigners to a part of the country and world that has everything to offer. Perception is everything, especially online when social media is involved. The more people who talk about an issue, the more that issue or perspective is believed no matter its veracity.

This is a reminder about the challenges of trying to get the communications balance right in today’s connected world, where a tourism can view such news pieces while booking their vacation just as easily as a local sitting for a tea and reading the morning newspaper. Media relations is a tough job and I do hope that lessons are learned from this and that the right balance is found, both in terms of educating foreigners coming in (can you really tell someone what to wear after they’ve seen the glossy brochure/website, booked, traveled and arrived) and in preserving local cultural norms. And remember, if nothing else works there’s always the burkini!

The burkini! Foot flicking and hands on hips are optional (credit alrasub.com)

Seizing the moment – the GCC’s energy subsidies and communicating a solution

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Is energy a problem for the Gulf? At first thought one wouldn’t think so. However, the Gulf region is facing a ticking bomb. To put it as simply as possible, the cost of producing electricity is becoming unsustainable. Demand for electricity has reached a point where countries are burning up to a fifth of their daily oil production. Unfortunately electricity prices have barely risen over the past couple of decades.

I didn’t realize the scale of the problem of electricity subsidies and the growing demand for electricity in the Gulf region until I worked in the energy sector. The issue is slowly gaining the attention that it deserves. One of the most impressive public sector leaders I know, Dr Saleh Al Awaji, has been constantly working to highlight ways to reduce energy consumption in Saudi Arabia. Only last week the BBC’s Middle East analyst Bill Law wrote a compelling article on the subject, which should be read by everyone who is concerned about energy consumption in the Gulf.

Bill Law's article on electricity subsidies makes for a a compelling read.

Bill Law’s article on electricity subsidies makes for a a compelling read.

And this brings me to my argument. In marketing and communications we all hope to plan and work to a long-term plan. For me, what distinguishes the good from the great are those professionals who know when and how to seize the moment, take the initiative and weave these waves of interest in related subjects into the communications plan.

So, what would make sense within the context of the above issue of energy subsidies? Possibly a company’s vision and thoughts on how its technology can reduce residential energy consumption, or improve the efficiency of electricity distribution, or ways in which alternative energy can complement traditional fossil fuel energy production.

The idea is simple. But it’s all about timing and approach in order to gain the maximum coverage for a company and its thought leadership. I’d love to see how energy leaders such as GE and Siemens are aiming to help the Gulf’s utilities and governments in averting the electricity subsidy cliff.

Of course there are times when it may appear in bad taste to seize the moment and partake in tactical, opportunistic communications activities. For example, promoting armored backpacks days after the devastating school shooting in Newtown.

If you were a company producing armored backpacks for school children would you promote your product after a deadly shooting?

If you were a company producing armored backpacks for school children would you promote your product after a deadly shooting?

Is the Middle East’s Communications Business now 24/7 due to #SocialMedia?

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There have been a slew of articles coming out from the US and Europe on social media and when to communicate to ensure that a message gets heard by a maximum number of people. Blogs from Bitly and other social media tools have highlighted the issue of timing and its importance in terms of how content goes viral.

The When Should I Post this Infographic by digital agency Raka was based on Bitly’s data for social media content distribution

I hadn’t heard of anything along those lines in the Middle East until recently, when one agency told me they’d won a contract to promote a national sports league via social media. The agency in question claimed that they had an ace up their sleeve during the pitch; they’d guaranteed the client that they would communicate in the evenings during the matches themselves, rather than promoting the games during office hours.

The thinking was simple. The target audience would be most focused on the sport an hour or two before, during and an hour or two after the games.

By that logic, wouldn’t the same also ring true for a variety of other audiences across the region? For example, for non-alcoholic drinks such as Barbican one of the prime times for selling is during football games. Similarly, wouldn’t restaurants and other venues which do most of their business in the evening do well to communicate afternoons and evenings rather than in the morning?

It’s an interesting one to think about for marketing and communications professionals. I’d love to see someone coming up with similar studies to the bitly blog and Infographic above, particularly for the GCC region. But I’m guessing most business and brand-related social media communications in the Middle East are being posted during office hours.

Everyone I know in the marcomms industry has a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, and a 3G mobile connection. Connectivity doesn’t seem to be the issue to communicating outside of office hours, so then what is? Is it all down to the permissions and approvals processes that companies here have in place?

There are a myriad of tools which can help measure responses and even suggest the optimal time to post messages on social media based on previous data. One to look at is Crowdbooster. This online tool is free to use and you can use it to schedule messages to Twitter and Facebook. If you’re looking for a basic but useful tool to work out when to post to social media, try out Crowdbooster.

Crowdbooster is a great tool to use when you need to know the best timings for posting messages

But do remember, don’t sleep and tweet or Facebook! Or else you might end up writing something that you will regret.