Back in May, Bob Pickard posted a piece on whether management consultants make good PR people.  His conclusion was that, while management consultants may see PR as an “easy” discipline that they can easily add on to their portfolio, in fact the skills that make a good corporate communicator are many and varied and require years of experience to acquire.

Well, if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.  I was surprised to read a piece by an influential management consultancy this morning that claimed that branding is “too important” to be left to the marketing and communications departments and instead should be elevated to a strategic level in the organization – essentially the level at which these ‘big brains’ operate.

“[M]any enlightened organizations are moving branding entirely away from communications and toward connecting strategy, culture, and a wider stakeholder involvement. They recognize that branding is a process that is too important to be left just to the marketing or communications department. These organizations have understood that brand building (even if the terminology of branding is not used) is a participative process involving the whole organization and is the responsibility of all employees.”

In this assertion they are absolutely right.  Branding is a strategic imperative for companies and brand building is a collaborative process.  However, they are also spectacularly wrong when they assert that this is not a communications discipline.  It is the very essence of communications to manage the “continuous dialogue between customers and employees — both online and offline” that shape and define the common brand.

They argue that consumers are losing trust in brands.  This is generally true, but more a function of the fact the the online conversation facilitates and encourages the examination and discussion of brand promises.  Within this environment companies are finding new ways to build and retain trust – look at Zappos for a compelling example – by incorproating communication into the business strategy, not by excluding the communicators.

To the challenge of restoring trust in brands the management consultants offer the following five axioms:

1. Content not communication. It is what you produce and how you deliver it that matters if you want to build a relationship with customers. Advertising is sexy, PR is influential, and design is uplifting; but it is the substance of what you do that matters most. As media fragments and services become more dominant, the way companies interact with people and the products and services they deliver will increasingly influence consumers’ perceptions of brands.

Well, yes.  Communication without content is irrelevant, but so too is content without communication.  Yes, media is fragmenting and yes, company interactions with consumers will influence perceptions of the brand.  That is what we communicators were saying ten years ago.  Unfortunately the world moves on.  Company actions are today viewed through the distorting lens of civil society, not through the narrow field of view presented by direct interactions.  It is the role of communicators to understand these currents and advise the senior executives on how to shape business decisions accordingly.  In this field, the communicators are the strategists.

2. Mind your language. Be aware that the language of branding is a turnoff inside many organizations, and that the hyperbole of marketing communications is increasingly ineffectual. Now that we are all creators through Facebook and YouTube and blogs, we better understand the language of persuasion. Increasingly, we can also see through organizational facades to the reality, so more transparency is required.

“The language of persuasion” is the language of professional communicators.  Yes, the bold, brash promises of advertising are losing credibility, but did anyone ever truly believe that Kenny Rogers actually produces, objectively and verifiably, the world’s best chicken? Laws around the world exempt advertising ‘puffery’ from regulations regarding accuracy of disclosure because the lawmakers understand that the average consumer accepts that the promises are inflated.  Public relations professionals are generally held to a higher standard – we have to practice in an environment of honesty and transparency if we are going to be credible.  Invariably we are prevented from doing so by the restrictions of other forces within the business.   In this field the communicators are the strategists.

3. Let go. The brand is not something that can be controlled by managers. It is employees and increasingly customers who self-manage brands. Managers and writers have long been seduced by the idea that marketing plans can be developed and implemented in a vacuum, but the reality of our socially mediated world is that brands are created by a diverse group of people.

Absolutely correct – brands are no longer managed, they are curated through a diverse array of content delivered in an increasingly targeted manner via multiple direct and mass channels.  They may be owned by companies, but they are managed and evolve through the actions of a myriad stakeholders – consumers, employees, evangelists and detractors.  The challenge for brands – and a challenge that many brands are embracing – is how to channel and focus the wisdom of the masses into the development of viable products, services and delivery channels.  This needs to be done through engagement and managed conversations.  In this field, the communicators are the strategists.

4. Open up. There is a greater requirement to make the brand open to the influence of others. In the future, the required expertise of a brand manager will be to listen, to absorb, and to share. Traditionally this receptivity to the outside world has been derived from market research, but the movement toward co-creation has led to the direct involvement of consumers in defining products and services and the way brands are delivered. The most important mental shift here is to stop seeing users as an object and to start seeing them as a source of creativity and value creation.

Among the many areas of expertise required by a professional communicator are the abilities to listen, to absorb and to share.  I’m not to going repeat the point I made above about harnessing the wisdom of the masses through dialogue-driven engagement, but the idea that this somehow replaces market research is a fallacy.  Tapping into the stream informs and refines market research, but ultimately businesses need to base decisions on a high degree of certainty of outcome.  When we talk about Evidence-Based communications at Burson-Marsteller, that is what we mean.  Of course, the explosion of social media gives us many more sources through which to direct the research but, as communicators, it is part of our task to evaluate which channels are credible and which are not to ensure that we obtain research that can guide business decisions.  In this field, the communicators are the strategists.

5. Just do it. As Nike’s famous slogan implies, accept that there will be successes and failures. Learn from open source practices, and experiment. The emergence of new approaches to branding doesn’t require organizations to change their whole modus operandi. The point is to try things; to experiment with openness and to find out how the culture and strategy of your organization can best engage with customers.

The world is changing at a pace that few businesses can possibly match.  Organizations were just getting used to the idea of corporate websites when blogs came along.  Companies were just getting used to blogs when social media sites arrived.  Companies have not really started to fully understand social media sites and now Twitter is upping the stakes even further.  Yes, companies should “just do it” but they also need to accept that things will go wrong when they do so.  The online community is comparatively forgiving if mistakes are accepted in an attitude of openness and transparency, in real time and through dialog.  In embracing the chaos, companies need to be guided by an understanding of the communications risks and rewards and prepared to manage the impact of a mistake, large or small.  In this field, the communicators are the strategists.

What the article tries to do is move corporate and brand communications away from the communicators and place it in the sphere of the strategists.  This is a mistake.  The real imperative is to move communications – PR, marketing and advertising – up to a strategic level within the organization, usually under the aegis of the CMO.  That is how companies will better equip themselves to understand the shifting social and media landscape and adapt themselves and their organizations accordingly.

The other imperative lies with us as communicators.  We must place a greater premium on our ability to set, measure and achieve tangible business outcomes.  Ten years experience as a journalist and a folder full of name cards is not sufficient qualification for a public relations professional.  The onus is on us to step up to the plate and demonstrate that, when it comes to managing the reputation of an organization and its brands, the communicators – not the management consultants – are the strategists.