My short subway journey from Greenwich Village to Wall Street each morning lasts just long enough to allow a quick scan of the papers for stories about clients and the larger issues that affect them. As head of Latin America Consulting at Thomson Financial Investor Relations, I lead a group whose clients are some of the largest companies in Mexico and South America. These firms feel the impact of significant market trends that occur anywhere in the world.
Information gathering continues in the office with a scan of voice- and e-mail for issues that my consulting team is currently facing on behalf of its clients. Messages from our consultants and business development people in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina also deserve swift response, and I try to oblige. One of the wonderful things about this environment is the utter absence of routine.
For some time, my professional thinking has been concentrated on expanding the notion of what is possible for companies in shaping the public dialogue that surrounds them. I think management teams have enormous opportunities – generally unrecognized – to legitimately influence the terms in which their companies are discussed in the world.
The challenges in this are great, as any public company of size has a startling array of constituencies whose actions and attitudes influence its fortunes. They are not only its investors, analysts and bondholders but also the media, regulators, rating agencies and legislators, as well as employees and the local community. Each requires a message focused on its particular interests; each is listening acutely to what the company says to the other. Given that a company’s image depends largely on what it says, it is worth management’s time to generate a communications strategy that presents the firm for the long term as it would fairly like to be seen. The alternative is to let a situation exist in which the company simply reacts to seemingly isolated events as they occur.
Promising solution
One very promising solution to this is the generation of a core message adaptable to multiple applications for a specific company. A core message differs from a mission statement in that it is a characterization of the company intended for the confidential, strategic use of communicators – whether the chief executive, investor relations officer, or others. It should be structured to give breadth and context to public communications, setting a framework in which the details and arguments surrounding a specific issue can be set.
I believe the most valuable component in a core message should touch on the balance of the company’s commitments – market growth balanced with environmental rigor, shareholder value balanced with service (for example). Each core message must be highly specific, usable by no other company on earth. Its development has strong collateral benefits, focusing management attention on the company’s basic concepts at a time when no crisis is forcing the issue, but when there is time to think about it.
Our investor relations practice has clients whose public lives have revolved around some of the most compelling issues of the day. Our association with Telebras for the three years it was on the New York Stock Exchange, and through its privatization and split-up into twelve companies, brought us into the nexus of major emerging market themes. These involved the great debate over liberalizing markets and a renewed era of open competition. We were advisors to both the company and Brazil’s Ministry of Communications throughout this intriguing process.
On many days in the office, I try to fulfill my duties as a member of the board of advisors of the Latin America Advisor, a financial and economic daily newsletter widely-distributed in the region. The group’s editorial board manages to generate a challenging question every day on a specific Latin American financial or economic theme. Board members are challenged to answer them in print, and I try to compensate for any failure of vision with some wit.
When I head back to the Village around 7:30 pm, I generally pick up my news reading where I left it in the morning – not having had a moment in the interim.
