Image is Everything, Comunication is Key

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

Life in the corporate PR industry may sound simple and look glamorous but underneath the cool, manicured exterior of each firm’s PR team there are targets to meet and battles to win. Ensuring a company has a strong reputation is of utmost importance in this current climate. A solid reputation will endure even the worst storms. So when you narrow things down to a competitive industry, say Telecoms, the battle gets fierce. Making it in Public Relations is more than press releases at dawn. The Head of Corporate Affairs in O2, Vodafone, Meteor and 3 told WMB recently the ins and outs of making their firm the brand of choice.

Meteor

“It’s all about being the defender of the brand,” says Amanda Carroll, Head of Communications. “Every PR person worth their salt should be and would know how to handle crisis communications and be prepared for it. There is no time for error, you have to know what you’re doing.” Having already doubled their customer size within two years to nearly one million, it’s obvious Meteor have jumped fearlessly into the Telecoms power battle. Being an internal PR team, Amanda says “there’s so much more to do, you have to have your finger on all the different things that are going on in the company and be mindful of what’s happening externally as well.”

O2

“Obviously everybody has an opinion about O2, it can be good, it can be bad, it can be indifferent” says Majella Fitzpatrick, Head of Corporate Affairs for O2. As a major business and employer in Ireland with up to 1,600 staff and 1.7 million customers nationwide O2 has a reputation of steel.

“It’s very important to us as a business to be clued into what’s happening in the outside world. That impacts our business in lots of different ways. Right now the economy is not as flamboyant as it was, consumers are watching their spend, they’re nervous and uncertain. So when consumers’ sentiment is low then that has an impact on their spend and on their spending behaviour. That’s clearly something that’s going to effect most commodities.”

Vodafone
“The key is to be the voice of the outside world in the company on key decisions that may have a public impact.” Coming from a public affairs and commercial background, Vodafone’s Head of Corporate Affairs, Rosemary Steen is familiar with PR’s core issues; The protection of the reputation of the company and a whole selection of activities go with that from crises management to public affairs, media relations and publicity. This lady says that although the Industry may appear glamorous, behind the façade is a whole range of hairpulling scenarios. “It is a very sociable job and you are out and about a lot so it certainly does have its glamorous elements but it is also a hard slog. You must present a professional front at all times. You can’t have a day when you’re not on top of your game.”

3

“Young, fun and different” is how 3 is set apart from the “old networks” says Rachel Channing, Head of PR and Communications. As one of the newest network’s on the market, 3 says their PR strategy is smart, brave, consumer-focused and a little bit cheeky at times! There is definitely no feeling of 3 being the underdog in the market.

“Underdog? Absolutely not — we’re the challenger brand! That’s a licence to be creative, do things differently and really challenge the status quo for the benefit of the consumer. 3 is built around a totally different business model to the old networks, they are trying to protect their declining revenues on voice and text, 3’s strategy is different.”

Read more about Women In the Corporate PR in the October | November 2008 issue of WMB, on newsstands now.