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“Communication is the most powerful lever to gain competitive advantage” says Charlie Mayfield, Chai
“Communication is the most powerful lever to gain competitive advantage” says Charlie Mayfield, Chai
Experts in corporate communications jobs, VMA Group attended the Business Leaders in Communication Study discussion.
Berkshire,
Wokingham,
United Kingdom
(prbd.net)
24/02/2012
VMA Group last night hosted Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of The John Lewis Partnership at the launch of its inaugural Business Leaders in Communications Study.
The retail luminary urged the audience of senior communicators to think about their purpose and effectiveness, saying that he believes communication is the most powerful lever to gain competitive advantage.
Alongside Charlie Mayfield, John Smythe, Founding Partner of Engage for Change; author of "The CEO - Chief Engagement Officer", David Bickerton, Director of Communications at BP, Leslie McGibbon, Vice President Global Communications at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare and Professor Tom Watson, Professor of Public Relations at Bournemouth University took part in a lively and wide-reaching debate about the current and future role of corporate communications jobs.
One of the most hotly debated topics of the evening was around the use of social media. The study revealed that the areas where communicators expected to see the greatest rise in demand were websites, digital and social media. Three quarters are expecting an increase here, yet only 15% see recruiting in this area as ‘critical’ while almost one in ten communicators do not see social media as a challenge. This led one audience member to ask whether this is the case because social media is just a bubble or is it through ignorance or complacency.
While some said it was ‘A flash in the pan’ and ‘Not used by the shop floor,’ others urged caution and said the starting point should be to question the objective of social media before acting on it. Yet, as agency bosses from Grayling, Hotwire PR and Speed Communications and senior communicators from the BBC, BP and GlaxoSmithKline responded, social media is here to stay and those who don’t embrace it fully will be left behind.
The Business Leaders in Communications Study 2012 (BLCS 2012) commissioned by VMA Group, the international resourcing specialist for corporate communications jobs, surveyed 95 Directors of Communications in leading FTSE organisations about their corporate communications function. The results provide the most comprehensive overview of the function, structure and role of corporate communications jobs today and in the future.
Participants included: BP, GlaxoSmithKline, IHG, Hammerson, Rolls-Royce, AMEC plc, AstraZeneca, Aviva, BT, Deutsche Bank, Diageo plc, GlaxoSmithKline, The John Lewis Partnership, Lloyds Banking Group, McKinsey and Company, Novartis and PwC. The research was designed, hosted and managed by Mediatrack Research.
The results reveal that senior communicators expect their influence to increase over the next two years, yet they currently report only moderate influence at board level. It also reveals an expected increase in demand but decrease in budgets over the next two years.
Other headlines findings include:
1. Nearly two in three communications professionals see reputation management as their main function, while media relations and advising the board on business strategy were both equal second. However, only three per cent of respondents saw protecting or enhancing the reputation of the CEO as their main role.
2. Forty-one per cent had a seat on the board or management executive and two thirds of respondents reported into the CEO; one in ten to the HR Director and just seven per cent to the Marketing Director.
3. Eighty-one per cent of respondents said that their CEO and the board thought communication to be critically important. But that figure fell to 59% when applied across the business. A significant minority (18%) said communications was not critically important in the organisation.
4. More than one in three (37%) CEOs spend at least one day a week on communications activity, and one in twenty spend more than two days. The proportion of CEO time devoted to communications is particularly high in the financial services sector (22%), possibly an indication of the continued fallout from the banking crisis.
5. The statistics around the ownership of the digital space raise the possibility that we may be seeing the beginning of a decline in influence for marketing departments as we currently know them.
Julia Meighan, Executive Chairman of VMA Group who commissioned the research says: “The debate arising from the launch of the BLCS last night demonstrates what a truly significant and timely piece of research this is. The study will play a critical role in helping communicators and CEOs underpin their investment in corporate communications jobs, and better demonstrate the link between reputation and profitability that Charlie Mayfield speaks of.
“Some of the world’s leading organisations have responded to this research and so its influence and relevance is far-reaching. I urge communications professionals to study the report and use it in their businesses,” she says.
Funding the Research
The Business Leaders in Communications Study 2012 is available to buy from the BLCS web page, please visit www.blcs2012.com/shop/blcs2012
BLCS 2012 Breakfast Events
We will be hosting a series of breakfast events in February / March for those people who have purchased the study and wish to discuss and debate the findings in greater detail. For more information and to register your interest please email marketing@ vmagroup.com
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