Corporate Communications Relevance

Corporate communication was formerly known was “public relations”. This function, which was tactical in most of the companies basically with the aim of preventing the companies from its external constituencies, like press from getting too close to the management. Thus, the term “flack” came to be used to describe what PR people were actually doing: shielding top managers from “missiles” fired at them from the outside. Hence, they came to be known as the “spin doctors”.

For many years, PR agencies dominated the communications field, billing companies’ hefty fees for services they could not handle in-house. Few large companies opted to work without them for fears that they might be missing an opportunity to solve their communications problems painlessly by using these “spin doctors”.

By the 1970s, the business environment required more than just simple internal PR function supplemented by the outside consultant. As individual corporations and entire industries were increasingly scrutinized and had to answer to a much more sophisticated set of journalists, the old style public relations function was no longer capable of handling the flack. The focus now shifted to structuring new departments effectively to fir the function into the existing corporate infrastructure. In more recent years, the corporate communication function has continued to evolve to meet the demands of the ever-changing business and regulatory environments. The need to maintain a level of transparency has elevated the corporate communication function within companies to a new strategic level. Messages, activities, and products – from investor conferences and annual reports to philanthropic activities and corporate advertising – are mow analyzed by regulators, investors, and the public at large with unprecedented scrutiny. And the proliferation of online communication vehicles, including Web portals, instant messaging, and Weblogs, or “blogs”, has accelerated the flow of information and the public’s access.

Now, one of the problems that organizations confronted in structuring their communication efforts was whether to centralize or decentralize their operations. For example, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) http://www.jnj.com/home.htm, with more than 110,00 employees in more than 200 operating companies in 57 different countries, complete centralization of communications would be difficult, if not possible. J&J avoids centralizing its external communication counsel with a single public relations firm. Instead, the company uses both small firms on a project basis and large, global agencies with resources around the world, amounting to a total of over 20 different agencies worldwide to support various elements of its business.

The umbrella of corporate communication function had nine subsections. These are:

- Reputation Management
- Corporate Advertising and Advocacy
- Media Relations
- Marketing Communications
- Internal Communications
- Investor Relations
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Government Relations
- Crisis Management


Corporations are realizing the relevance of the corporate communication function. The success of a company’s communication strategy is largely contingent on how closely the communication strategy is linked to the strategy of the business as a whole. In addition to thoughtful design and careful planning of the firm strategy, a company must have a strong corporate communication function to support its mission and vision.

The following articles help us get an insight as to how corporate communication and its sub functions have helped organizations overcome hurdles and a continuous growth:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_6_22/ai_n15930866

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_1_19/ai_82353627