Kanika Datta: Messages in messaging

SWOT

What's in a corporate message? How should companies position themselves in the cluttered world of conflicting media and unchecked information flows? In India, most companies have yet to hit the sweet spot as far as meaningful messaging goes. Much of this is part of the evolution of corporate relationships with the external world.

When corporate journalism started emerging as a profession in its own right in the eighties, corporate communications and the public relations industry were all but non-existent. There wasn't much of a market for them because companies didn't really have to talk or convey messages to too many people bar, perhaps, the mandarins on Raisina Hill.

This made corporate reporting something of an enjoyable free-for-all where reporters could pick up their tips from pretty much anybody in a company, from clerk upwards. The advice of supervising editors in those days was to "just barge in" to anybody's room in an office if we couldn't get information. To our surprise, it often worked. The few corporate communications people who did exist were""often hapless""brokers between journalists and company executives. But this did not mean that a company's image could be moulded or shaped according to will. In any case, in that cosy world of limited competition and nudge-and-wink business, reporters could as well pick up story breaks from the markets or through leaks from friendly bureaucrats. It was routine, for instance, to predict when steel prices""then administered by government""would be increased from the appearance of a certain prominent broker on the stock exchange floor. The notable exception to the collective indifference to external messaging in those years was Dhirubhai Ambani. Then still an emerging corporate czar, he shrewdly spotted the emerging equity cult, however small, and organise AGMs in football fields where he put up rock star performances and started to build a powerful hegemony over the information business.

Of course, by the nineties, this world of "perfect" information flows (from a journalists' point of view, that is) began to change. Lower barriers to domestic and international competition, the rising cost of capital and, most importantly, the emergence of uncontainable information flows via the world wide web, meant that, suddenly, companies had to worry about the external world. This was the era of the emergence of the Stakeholder""an amorphous group consisting of anybody from a shareholder to a vendor, customer, policy-maker or ever-vigilant NGO""on whom companies now depended for goodwill, reputation and business growth. Information released into the public domain now needed to be crafted.

It all began with restrictions within companies about who could speak to whom. The corporate communications (corp comm in journalist and PR parlance) executive was now armed with greater powers to determine which journalist would meet which executive and whether the information sought should be delivered or not. Friendly execs now told you, with some embarrassment, that they were no longer authorised to speak to you. Still later, public relations firms began to emerge with roughly the same functions.

For journalists, this new breed of corp comm. managers was a mild irritant. Increasingly, success was determined by how adroitly you could dodge the corp comm department or the PR firm concerned. This became increasingly important as the policy environment evolved and requirements for greater disclosure and transparency turned yesterday's news breaks into today's standard information.

The new era of the information age has companies focusing not just on controlling image-defining information but on how they want the world to perceive them. This has become even more critical now that these very same stakeholders are far better informed than ever before, relying less and less on journalists for their sources of information.

Some companies were effortlessly good at it. Infosys, for instance, built an image of trust almost solely based on a chief executive""now chief mentor""whose dorky glasses, Andhra-American twang and patent sincerity and humility turned him into an unlikely popular hero. In fact, more than any other company, Infosys has become both the symbol of India's IT prowess and middle class India's rising aspirations.

But most others struggle to come up with a credible "Authorised Version" of their message. The result is, the harder they try the more they sound the same. A random trawl through corporate websites will reveal a striking similarity of tone and terminology. All the usual suspects are there. Companies will gravely inform you that they are "world class", or follow best-in-class practices. They are always committed to excellence or to the community or to their people and maximise value to their various stakeholders. The upshot of this is that it is difficult to take even the best of them seriously.

The truth is there is no more powerful message for companies than their performance, their practices and the quality of their governance. Companies that are confident enough to let these speak for themselves emerge far more credible than those that take refuge behind the cliches. Facts and information have far more intrinsic value than publicity.

The views here are personal.