Corporate Communication Practices

The future of any organization critically depends on how it is viewed by key stakeholders, such as shareholders and investors, customers and consumers, employees, and members of the community in which the company operates.

Protecting the organization’s reputation is considered to be ‘critical’ and one of the most important strategic objectives.

Until the 1970s, practitioners had used the term ‘public relations’ to describe communication with stakeholders. However, it largely consisted of communication with the press.

As the more demand of communication has arises from different stakeholders, the roots of the new corporate communication function started to take hold. It focuses on the organization as a whole and how an organization presents itself to all its key stakeholders, both internal and external.

Marketing Public Relation

Organizations have realized that the most effective way of organizing communication consists of ‘integrating’ most, if not all, of an organization’s communication disciplines and related activities, such as media relations, issues management, advertising and direct marketing.

Until the 1980s, marketing and public relations were considered as two distinct disciplines, in their objectives and tactics. Marketing deals with markets, while public relations deals with all the publics (excluding customers and consumers) of an organization.

In the 1980s, concern over the rising costs and decreasing impact of mass media advertising encouraged many companies to examine different means of promoting customer loyalty and brand awareness to increase sales. Companies started to make greater use of ‘marketing public relations’. It involves the use of public relations techniques for marketing purposes which was found to be a cost-effective tool for generating awareness and brand favorability.

Corporate communication is a management function that offers a framework for the effective coordination of all internal and external communication with the overall purpose of establishing and maintaining favorable reputations with stakeholders.

A multinational corporations with a wide geographical range, communication is often a balancing act between corporate headquarters and the various divisions and business units.

The sustainability and success of a company depends on how it is viewed by key stakeholders, and communication is a critical part of building, maintaining and protecting such reputations.

Corporate communication demands an integrated approach to managing communication. Organizations used to place corporate communication practitioners to higher positions in the organization’s hierarchical structure.