Actionable Ideas Blog

Does this picture of Grand Central Station in New York City remind you of your PR programs? Could you imagine these people representing the constituency groups you seek to reach? Some are coming and others are going. Some will stop and listen to the message, while others won't. There are schedules to follow showing arrival and departure times at the station.

Some PR programs are on a fast track and others require extra stops. Sometimes, you can't even get to your destination when you want to.

So here are some questions that come to mind:

• Who is running the ship here? 
• Who is overseeing all these activities? 
• Who knows the schedule? 
• Does Investor Relations report into the Chief Financial Officer?
• Does PR report into the Chief Marketing Officer? 
• Is there anyone at your company who oversees both? 
• Who knows how and when audiences converge? 
• Are there universal messages? 
• What are the individual messages and do they reflect a core message?
• How is the company's image influenced by all the voices speaking on behalf of the company?
• Are social media activities managed by a social media director and/or woven into the rest of your company's communications fabric?
• Can any of the messages be integrated? Can the programs be integrated?  
• Are there ways to leverage one program off of another? What areas are duplicated and can savings be generated?

If you have multiple communications programs going on at the same time, then it might make sense to explore the feasibility of a Chief Communications Officer position. Daily headlines teach us that the root of many PR disasters come from lack of coordination or the miscommunication of ideas, especially when one hand does not know what the other hand is doing.  

Many companies are taking this seriously and have hired or are in the middle of hiring a Chief Communications Officer.  We first wrote about the growing need for this position in last week's blog post about,Star Trek, which includes the list of these companies. What do you think? Are your communications programs running as smoothly as Grand Central Station? 

Source of all Grand Central images: istockphoto.com