Court jesters, not singers
Public relations consultants are the corporate clowns of our time. And yet they are more reliable service providers than, say, lawyers, who trigger PR disasters that are more or less amusing.
Column Communications consultants are the corporate clowns of our time. And yet they are more reliable service providers than lawyers, for example, who cause more or less hilarious PR disasters. "This is the only country where people who successfully create value are on trial for it": Josef Ackermann, CEO of Deutsche Bank, announced this on January 21, 2004 - and spread his fingers in a victory sign as he entered the courtroom. It took 15 days before the 55-year-old Swiss publicly apologized for this unfortunate appearance: he had only followed the advice of his lawyers. They had advised him to behave "as casually as possible". The result was a storm of protest that almost cost the top banker his job, but "Big Joe" can take comfort in the fact that he is not the only one who caused a PR disaster because he listened to his legal advisors. The temporary employment agency Adecco destroyed around five billion Swiss francs of share capital within a week on the stock exchange due to accounting problems with its lawyer-dictated communication. The company is now facing numerous lawsuits from investors and an investigation by the Swiss stock exchange.
What went wrong in these two - and in numerous analogous - cases? Just one thing: Most company bosses no longer have a clue what their investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders think and want. Anyone looking out of the 30th floor of their glass palace sees the world populated only by ants. And who cares what ants think?
It is obvious that someone who has to go to court over controversial compensation payments of 60 million euros is perhaps not the most popular man in Germany and should therefore appear somewhat modest. But only if the person concerned realizes that his own sense of innocence does not necessarily correspond to the feeling of all those who are not wearing golden parachutes. But it is precisely this examination of one's own perspective that many success-spoiled inhabitants of the carpeted floors lack.
Which is why one of the core tasks of internal and external communications consultants is to tell their clients clearly: "Hey, you up there, watch out: Not everything you think is good and right is actually perceived as such in the real world!" (A tip between brothers: It is not absolutely necessary to get the bosses to rethink. It is enough if they no longer make everything they think public).
Incidentally, this type of reality check was already practised a few hundred years ago: by court jesters in the Middle Ages. It was up to them to hold up a mirror to their masters and embody the vox populi: "Mirror, mirror in my hand, see what they think in the land."
This did not always make them popular with their employers. But the rules of the game at court were: As long as you give me the rate honestly and don't just butter me up, you can stay. This rule has lost none of its validity today: Communications consultants must not just announce good news to their clients. Otherwise they are not court jesters, but court singers.
However, opportunism is not uncommon in the communications industry. Today's consultants have a decisive advantage over their colorful predecessors: they can spread their entrepreneurial risk over several "kings". If a CEO or Chairman of the Board of Directors proves to be absolutely unadvisable, they can confidently take off their foolscap - or put aside their consultant hat and resign their mandate. Those with a literary bent do so in the appropriate manner with the words from Friedrich Schiller's classic "The Ring of Polycrates": "Here the guest turned with horror..."
> Sacha Wigdorovits was editor-in-chief of Blick and co-founder of 20 Minuten (Switzerland). Today he heads the Zurich-based communications agency Contract Media.
What went wrong in these two - and in numerous analogous - cases? Just one thing: Most company bosses no longer have a clue what their investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders think and want. Anyone looking out of the 30th floor of their glass palace sees the world populated only by ants. And who cares what ants think?
It is obvious that someone who has to go to court over controversial compensation payments of 60 million euros is perhaps not the most popular man in Germany and should therefore appear somewhat modest. But only if the person concerned realizes that his own sense of innocence does not necessarily correspond to the feeling of all those who are not wearing golden parachutes. But it is precisely this examination of one's own perspective that many success-spoiled inhabitants of the carpeted floors lack.
Which is why one of the core tasks of internal and external communications consultants is to tell their clients clearly: "Hey, you up there, watch out: Not everything you think is good and right is actually perceived as such in the real world!" (A tip between brothers: It is not absolutely necessary to get the bosses to rethink. It is enough if they no longer make everything they think public).
Incidentally, this type of reality check was already practised a few hundred years ago: by court jesters in the Middle Ages. It was up to them to hold up a mirror to their masters and embody the vox populi: "Mirror, mirror in my hand, see what they think in the land."
This did not always make them popular with their employers. But the rules of the game at court were: As long as you give me the rate honestly and don't just butter me up, you can stay. This rule has lost none of its validity today: Communications consultants must not just announce good news to their clients. Otherwise they are not court jesters, but court singers.
However, opportunism is not uncommon in the communications industry. Today's consultants have a decisive advantage over their colorful predecessors: they can spread their entrepreneurial risk over several "kings". If a CEO or Chairman of the Board of Directors proves to be absolutely unadvisable, they can confidently take off their foolscap - or put aside their consultant hat and resign their mandate. Those with a literary bent do so in the appropriate manner with the words from Friedrich Schiller's classic "The Ring of Polycrates": "Here the guest turned with horror..."
> Sacha Wigdorovits was editor-in-chief of Blick and co-founder of 20 Minuten (Switzerland). Today he heads the Zurich-based communications agency Contract Media.
