In this week when we celebrate our 40th anniversary, I look back to 1971 when I set up Action PR. At that time the world was a very different place; no internet, no mobile phones and certainly no iPad! Times were challenging but exciting and my vision was to build a business that was to become the first full service public relations consultancy in the emerging markets.  Now those same emerging markets are not only the focus of global attention but also drive the global economy. As the company grew we found that, while we offered our clients effective communications combined with strong local knowledge, we also had to help educate local media and other influencers to understand the value of what we were doing. At first and in some countries this was quite a struggle, especially with highly regulated, even censored, local media. Now digital communications and social media have cut through these obstacles taking us into a new world of openness and change. There are still challenges to be faced, some of a very different kind to those we faced 40 years ago. But the difference now is that the Action team of professionals in over 40 countries have never been more effective, more professional or more committed. We should be proud of what we have achieved over the last 40 years, proud of our long standing client relationships and proud that we work with some of the world’s leading brands and organisations.  I salute all the Action team whether you are working in the heat of the Middle East, the cosmopolitan cities of Eastern Europe or the heady political world of Brussels. Here’s to the next 40 years of Action!

Companies are built in the image of their leaders. It is as true of Virgin’s cheeky Richard Branson-inspired persona, as of a Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) that, under Sir Fred Goodwin, believed it could do no wrong.

Determining how to make the most of your leader’s qualities is an important task for internal communicators. In difficult times, leaders have to set the company’s agenda, raise and maintain morale and chart a path forward – all at once.

Here are the six most common leadership styles. So which one is your boss?

Barack Obama

Key personality traits: The classic rock-star CEO sets the big picture, moving people towards a shared vision. Superb public speaker with an abiding fondness of the limelight.

Internal comms advice: Visionaries work well when they have a day or weekend to explain their vision and allow the interchange of ideas. Webcasts also provide the perfect vehicle for visionaries to reach beyond national boundaries. Regular communication in the form of picture-led newspaper-style updates is also a great way for them to reach employees.

Angela Merkel

Key personality traits: The type of leader who also wants to be your friend. A collaborative figure who focuses on emotional needs and is most likely to say ‘how are you?’.

Internal comms advice: These are often very effective senior managers, but they need to find a way to show steel. Accordingly, getting back to the shop floor can work well with this leader’s collaborative qualities, while also demonstrating that they are not afraid of rolling up their sleeves. Regular ‘health check’ team meetings to discuss company progress are an opportunity to share constructive feedback in a group setting, which the affiliative leader will find more comfortable. Feedback from external sources, such as customer satisfaction surveys, will address any reluctance from the leader to communicate anything other than positive points.

Dr Who

Key personality traits: Holds long conversations that often reach beyond the work place. Good at helping staffers find strengths and weaknesses and tying these to career aspirations.

Internal comms advice: This style is useful in intimate sessions and small groups,

It is important, therefore, that day-to-day comms requirements do not become the focus. Specify a senior manager who can handle these, leaving the leader to focus on the bigger picture, and the one-to-one coaching at which they excel.

Lord Sebastian Coe

Key personality traits: Listening, often at the expense of immediate action. ‘What do you think?’ is the obvious catchphrase for this leader, who likes to show the way without pushing people through it.

Internal comms advice: A democratic leader likes to involve people and provide opportunity for feedback, in which case, workshops, online forums or a blog allow them to manage downwards to the team. It is vital that the democratic leader is able to communicate decisiveness. Create a forum on an intranet – this will enable a democratic culture to thrive.

Margaret Thatcher

Key personality traits: Most likely to say ‘copy me’, a back-breaking workhorse who leads by example and never shirks a challenge. Expects employees to automatically get the picture.

Internal comms advice: They need help in consideration, listening to people’s problems, caring for those less able and managing egos. Therefore, focus on building a more inclusive approach, and advise this leader to take some time to understand team needs. This can be addressed by implementing a recognition programme that celebrates team wins at all levels of the organisation.

Montgomery Burns

Key personality traits: Typical catchphrase is ‘do this’. An old-school taskmaster who brings playground dynamics to the boardroom. Refuses to consider an alternative message.

Internal comms advice: The key to successful comms as a commanding leader is in ensuring you always communicate the why as well as the what. Expecting employees to jump when you ask them to is more likely to result in people digging their heels in. Commanding leaders can breed distrust, and a sense that internal opinions do not matter. People therefore need a channel to communicate that gives them their voice safely and without fear of intimidation. Look at newsletters, blogs, surveys and feedback forms. Also, work on the non-verbal comms aspects, all that frowning, posturing and glaring can speak volumes and rapidly disenchant a workforce.

I’m sure most of you have heard of the recent instance of JC Penney’s new line-up of T-shirts, which landed the brand on the RidicuList (http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2011/09/01/ac-ridiculist-jcpenney.cnn). The story is worth attention as it tackles three important elements that a big brand, such as JC Penney should have given better consideration:

1.   Brand image

2.   Corporate social responsibility

3.   And at a later stage: issue/crisis management

We’ve seen that JC Penney seems to have ignored all three elements and while we are still watching to see how they will clear things up, we can learn lessons about how big brands should “care more”. They need to care more not only about the society in which they do business, but also about doing  business in a smarter way to ensure that they don’t make any more mistakes.

It’s not all about the attractive new designs. When launching a new line of T-shirts for the ‘back to school’ season, a designer should think how this would attract customers and improve their brand image. More carefully considered text on the T-shirts could have made them bestsellers in clever ways. T-shirt text along the lines of…,  “I might not be the best in Maths but Einstein wasn’t either” or “I never scream, I’m patient and good looking…everyone tells me that I should be a teacher”, might have helped.   

The ‘back to school’ season is one of the times of the year when it should be easy for a retailer to show their commitment to society, but JC Penney managed to achieve the exact opposite.

After the T-shirt story had broken and had everyone talking about it, a company spokesperson told ABC news, “We’re reaching out to our customers who are unhappy to apologize and to let them know that the T-shirt is no longer available”.  This was a very weak response as the story was all over the web and nothing significant was done to counter the negative coverage which had been created.

A big brand with more than one thousand stores should have been more careful and aimed to avoid such negative coverage.

As an example of a better way to maintain brand image, Jacky’s Electronics, an Action UAE client and  a UAE retailer with 9 stores in the country, worked hard during the summer to be involved in Dubai Care’s charity campaign – ‘Girls’ Education Campaign 2011’. The charity aims to increase awareness and funds to enable girls in poorer countries to be educated, thus improving their lives and empowering them to play effective roles in society.

When times get tough the tough get going…..but companies cannot afford to lose their best people even during difficult times. Keeping staff well informed and committed is even more important in these economically rocky days.

Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and author of the respected book of battlefield strategy – ‘The Art of War’ – had much to say about communicating with troops. If people matter, then company leaders should think long and hard about his words.

Sun Tzu called for clear communications for armies to function smoothly and avoid threats.

“If the army is confused and suspicious, neighbouring rulers will take advantage of this and cause trouble. This is simply bringing anarchy into the army and flinging victory away”

Like much of ‘The Art of War’ the message for business is clear. Misinformation and rumours spread like the diseases they sometimes become. In good times and especially challenging times, it’s easy for suspicion and speculation to impact the morale and lower the productivity of people. As Sun Tzu warns it will lead to loss.     

The business world can sometimes seem like a battlefield and looking after people is essential. Employees will not feel valued if they aren’t being communicated with effectively and meaningfully. Lack of communication leads to rumour, speculation and gossip.

Sun Tzu knew that an organisation that understood the strategy, was united and had a strong fighting spirit had the advantage.

“Pay attention to the soldier’s well being and do not fatigue them. Try to keep them in high spirits and conserve their energy”

How many business leaders truly appreciate this point? How many understand that effective communication with their people will give them a real advantage in both good and especially bad times?

In fact some more up to date evidence reinforces the wise words of Sun Tzu. Research by leading professional services company Towers Watson is revealing.  It shows that effective internal communication leads to higher people retention rates, greater staff commitment and a market valuation often 20% higher than companies with poor internal communication.

Japan’s tragedy, the next real global crisis after the BP Horizon oil spill, is on everyone’s mind at the moment. It’s all over the news and your friends and family are probably googling “Chernobyl” and “thyroid gland cancer in neighboring countries” obsessively.

From a PR perspective, BP’s ex-CEO Tony Hayward’s response to the oil spill was analyzed over and over again with mixed commentary but the consensus that emerged was that his performance was abysmal. The Japan tragedy will be the next big case study in terms of crisis communications but will most likely yield completely different conclusions particularly relating to the way the Japanese authorities, or to be more specific Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, used social media tools to calm public fears and remedy media speculation.

As expected, the category seven crisis at the Fukushima power plant was catapulted online almost instantly and within a few days generated 64% of blog links and 32% of Twitter news links, according to a research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Public criticism in the Japanese society both against the government and against Tepco, the operator of the plant, started to rise.  Anti-nuclear protests in Japan’s streets gathered a respectable number of people but made more noise on Flickr (insert picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandocap/5606363080/) and were followed live on Ustream (Yasumi Iwakami – http://iwakamiyasumi.com/) by those who could not join. Kazuyoshi Saito’ song entitled “It was a lie all along” directed against government and big Japanese power companies generated probably more than 1 million views all around (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b01yohRgfyc&feature=related) and much heated debate online.

So how did the government react to the rising anger and public fears?  One man seems to have gotten it right. Cabinet Secretary Edano’s live press conferences became an object of praise on Twitter where he was hashtagged #edano_nero (sleep edano) by twitterers concerned about his health.  He was also the subject of many blogposts including “Tireless Edano Earns Twitter Respect in the Wall Street Journal” (http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/03/14/tireless-edano-earns-twitter-respect/).  According to Japanese PR expert Takashi Kurosawa’s blogpost “10 things we can learn from Cabinet Secretary Edano from the perspective of crisis management PR”, the man was exemplary in that he was clear, honest, articulate, not afraid to tackle difficult questions or to be seen as a leading spokesman.

Invaluable lessons for the PR industry can be learned here. Edano’s and Haywarth’s approaches will make for a textbook comparative case study for generations of PR and communications experts to come.

Action Qatar has handled media relations for many events this year, but definitely the most prominent event in our calendar so far was the Qatar International Business Forum (QIBF) which took place on May 17 & 18 at the Ritz Carlton.  The QIBF is a prestigious event hosting high-profile women from all around the world who have excelled in the region in economic, political and social fields. The forum took place under the auspices of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development.  It paid tribute to a quartet of prominent regional personalities: H.E.  Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, the Chair of the Emiri Diwan ; H.E. Dr Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, Secretary General – General Secretariat for Development Planning in Qatar; and Members of Parliament,  H.E. Mrs Bahia El Hariri from Lebanon  and Ms Suhair Al-Ali from Jordan.

It is not the first time that Action has handled events celebrating women’s empowerment; we have previously worked on the 2008 Qatari Businesswomen Award and Corporate Ambassadors’ Forum that experienced a huge success in Qatari society.  We really enjoy working with people who are making such an impact on society.

Despite tight deadlines (of just a few days) and a number of last minute requests, 3 members in our Doha team were able to gain coverage in the local and regional media prior to the event, prepare media materials in both Arabic and English, draft newsletter for the forum, organise around 15 press interviews with key personalities and prepare for managing the media on the day of the big conference on May 17th.  At the same time, we ensured the correct messages were communicated, as well as achieving the right balance when translating into Arabic to address any sensitivities to the issue of women’s empowerment.

It was a challenging project due to the time constraints, but it was extremely satisfying for the whole team. It was very successful, with around 40 media attending, including Al Arabiya channel, Al ‘An TV, CNBC, Al Bayan and Arab Women & Business magazine.  In the end this is what PR is all about – getting the best results for the client in the required timeframe.

Action carried out PR for the Qatar International Business Forum (QIBF)

The irrefutable power of blogs to keep the Greek public informed was confirmed recently during the country’s nationwide four day media strike. With all outlets from newspapers and magazines to radio,  television and news websites participating in the strike, the country was left in a total media and news blackout.

Seeking to take advantage of the clear gap in information provision to the Greek people, the government sought to exploit the situation by attempting to pass a number of bills that would otherwise have gone through different political channels to be passed and which may have resulted in greater political cost to the government. Furthermore these bills would have certainly generated significant discussion in the media and among the general public had the country’s media been in operation.

In protest against the media blackout and the government’s attempts to take advantage of the situation, Greek MPs rejected the passing of these bills, with the dialogue between the MPs played out on the nation’s blogs. Members of Parliament claimed that the country would plunge into great social and political unrest if the media strike was not brought to an end.

However while the country’s media remained steadfast, the power of blogs was cast into light, being the only source of information and regular news updates.  For the Greek market – in its current state of turmoil and where strikes are rife – blogs have emerged as an important communication tool and a way out from the political and economic chaos that has threatened  to leave the Greek population uninformed about the very events and issues that affect their daily lives.

One of the projects on my desk this week is the strategy for this year’s dyslexia awareness program for our client OMV. We knew the pilot project was successful and appreciated by the public and we were glad that OMV decided to continue into 2011.

But nothing worked better to get me and my team inspired than to learn that our 2010 dyslexia campaign was nominated in the SABRE EMEA Awards, the ‘Balkans’ category! Yey! I was pleased to see that of five nominations, three have come from Romania.

Congratulations team and fingers crossed!

On Tuesday 8^th March, International Women’s Day (http://www.internationalwomensday.com) was celebrated around the world.  Flowers or other presents were given by family, friends co-workers and by companies, National Holidays were observed, big and small events took place and women were the focus of attention (which we all like!).  There is no standard way of celebrating it and its importance varies from country to country.  In Eastern Europe and parts of Asia particularly, it is considered as a major annual event and numerous initiatives are carried out, serving as a source of inspiration for many people.  In many of the countries that form part of the Action Global network it is a Public Holiday, such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.  But, did you know that the first International Women’s Day took place on 19^th March 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland?  Over a million men and women took to the streets to campaign for women’s rights.

In fact, its origins lie slightly earlier than that, in 1908 when 15,000 women marched in New York to demand fairer treatment at work.  The following year, the first National Woman’s Day took place in the United States.  Then, in 1910 at an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, the leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany suggested the idea of an annual International Women’s Day.  This was approved and, to this day, it is still celebrated.  This year, it has taken on increased significance as it is the hundredth anniversary and countries that normally don’t do much, such as the UK, are getting in on the action.

So, what do people do?  In Bulgaria, men give flowers, or chocolates, or other presents to women, both at home and in the workplace.  Children may give their mothers flowers and usually after work people celebrate with their family and friends.  In Ukraine, it is a big Bank Holiday and at Action’s offices in Kyiv, they came up with a creative way to wish their clients and suppliers a happy Women’s Day.  Tiramisu is a very popular desert there, but the original Italian ingredients are hard to find.  Most of Action Ukraine’s client contacts are female and we sent our female clients and suppliers a box, which had a note sending them best wishes for International Women’s Day and added, “… as beautiful women, you are being sent one of the finest desserts, but to enjoy its pleasure, you have to carry out some Action….”  Underneath was the recipe for Tiramisu and all the ingredients.   Action Ukraine received many calls telling them how it had made their day!

Action Ukraine celebrates International Women's Day with clients and suppliers

In Russia, according to Action’s office in Russia, “It was perfect, the men in the office gave us beautiful flowers the day before, there were flowers everywhere and it was a sunny day.  It was like spring was beginning!”  The office sent flowers to its female clients and the day itself was a Bank Holiday.  People generally like to spend time with their families and friends but there are also a lot of big events and concerts.  At the same time, it is seen as a celebration of the past and of women today.

Slovenia, also celebrated and one of Action’s clients gave out around 20,000 chocolate bars to female customers at filling stations, with the chance to win spa weekends and other giveaways.  In Kazakhstan, just a couple of days before International Women’s Day, the first Women’s Congress of Kazakhstan took place, with prominent women from across Kazakhstan.

So what did you do for International Women’s Day?