Interview with Roberto Zangrandi for CIPR Student’
s blog
by Galena Ivanova
As a President of CERP and practitioner with extensive professional experience can you comment on the effects of the financial crisis on the European PR industry?
The only problem that arises from the financial crisis is not a matter of the ability of the Public Relations (PR) industry to offer services. It’s a matter of reducing the costs for the companies that are delivering budget in PR. In the Western Europe we have already seen similar situation in the early 90s and back again in the mid 80s. The point appears to be always the same and if a PR agency or professional can go back to the basics for a few months and deliver a good standard of services at a much more controlled cost, it will preserve its space. So it’s not a matter of renouncing innovations but it’s a matter of offering the basic services and reintroducing the innovations as soon as the economic situation improves. So if we go back to the basics which are - good assistance to the client, good advice to the client, no sophisticated communication but effective communication - you can stay alive and then recover all your innovation ability as soon as the situation improves.
What advice would you give to Bulgarian PR practitioners dealing with the disadvantages of the financial situation?
Times of crisis are the best time to consider merging initiatives. There is evidence that in times of crisis large number of PR agencies have come together in more structured agencies. I don’t know the Bulgarian situation as good as I would like as a president of CERP but periods of crisis may encourage concentration of small agencies into something bigger and something more budget effective.
Do you believe that in crisis situations companies should change not only their external communications but also their internal communications with employees?
Oh yes, certainly. The awareness of the employees must be put in the first place, even before the awareness of the general public, irrespective of the product or the services you are delivering. In times of crisis companies should not cut their communication costs but on the contrary they should remix the communication tools they use. Must not be forgotten that in such periods the first public you must address is your internal public as it has relations with other stakeholders and might convey your message in a better way.
Practice has shown that increasing PR activities, including the stakeholders relationship management, is very helpful for organisations. Your employees should not read on the local newspaper a piece of news they don’t know or a piece of news they are not in condition to comment. Those companies that have demonstrated respect towards the internal publics have shown to be the most successful in the past.
I know that you have a solid background in CSR planning and theory. What role the CSR has to play in the modern business world and how the philosophy of social responsibility is going to change in the future?
CSR has started as a new philosophical approach for managing companies’ activities focused on environmental and social issues along with the economical and industrial activities of the organisation. As moved from the philosophy sphere to the management theory, CSR is nowadays very much planning.
Furthermore, CSR has important role in the improvement of the relationship and management of stakeholders. It is based on the attention to at least 8 key stakeholders which range from employees and go through the communities, institutions, clients, suppliers, financers, stockholders, etc. Integrating the CSR vision within an effective communication policy could be winning strategy. In my company - ENEL, we established a strong relation between stakeholders management and communication and CSR, which has been developed under the direction of the communications department. So, it is a solid CSR practice combined with a solid communication strategy. Both things cannot go alone anymore.
Recently, the Vatican has announced its decision to create its own YouTube channel. What social implications might this have?
It will do a good work for the image of the Church. The Vatican on YouTube will raise the possibility for people to access that religious culture. However, YouTube is innovative in a way but it is also old in another way as it is a television distributed to any computer. The Vatican is not going to use the social media to its full extent. So, the way the Church is using this medium is not as innovative as it could be. I would expect the Church to establish one day two-way communication with its public. It will be nice to have the Vatican’s press office on Facebook and to have Vatican’s weblog - honest two-way parallel communication in the real and tangible style of the two-way communications. But I think it will not happen in the next several years.
One of the objectives of the CERP organization is to build the image of the PR profession. Can you tell us a bit more on your plans to achieve this goal?
I must say that CERP hasn’t done as much as it was supposed to do in the past 50 years. The period has been essential for the development of the communications and CERP has had important role during this time. In the years when the electronic media weren’t there and the websites weren’t there CERP was a platform for the PR industry to confront ideas and to discuss professional issues. With the advent of more sophisticated technological ways of communication CERP has lost quite a bit of its influence. The point is that an association representing associations is very difficult to keep alive. The previous presidents of CERP have achieved good results but I feel that this is not enough. Since one year I have been trying to revise the approach of CERP. Nowadays, we have very strong competition arising from other associations offering more services. We are not offering services but representation. Based in Brussels, CERP is working very hard on monitoring and establishing policy, cooperation and contacts with those who influence the policy of communication. This includes the Commissioner for communication in Brussels and all those guys working on the transparency directive of the EU that will affect the whole industry in terms of ethical approach and transparency of the communication process. So, over the next few years I will concentrate the work of CERP on these particular issues.
According to you, what challenges PR professionals are going to face in the coming years?
Most probably, there will be much more regulation, much more common rules to be observed by PR practitioners. There will be common standards for the European PR industry. Communication is very important to mainstream the decisions of the European, national and local politics. The EU is affecting the activities and the strategies of all industrial sectors. This impact is producing extensive communication flow that has to comply with some precise guidelines in terms of transparency in the process and transparency in the content of the communication. This is what I mean when speaking about regulation by the EU institutions in the next few years. I expect the EU to define the profile of a communication practitioner or expert. I also expect the communication to be influenced by guidelines regulating sensible areas like pharmaceutical communication or those kind of communication that directly affect the general public or the consumers.
As a Public Affairs manager would you comment on the way it is practiced on European level?
Public Affairs is also a matter of transparency. Usually, Public Affairs on the EU level is done in a different way compared to the PA practice in the member states. Relations are much more standardized and the behaviour of the counterparts is more predictable than in the member states or at the local level. To cut a long story short, a PA practitioner is actually a PR practitioner. You must bring in the PA process all the communication skills that are needed for an effective communication. So you should use an approach that is not aesthetic but is factual.
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*Roberto Zangrandi is the President of CERP. He is the Head of EU Affairs of the Italian Enel SpA. Before working for Enel, Roberto Zangrandi worked 13 years as an active journalist with the leading Italian magazines, and acted as Head of International Media Relations for Fiat, a position he held for 6 years before serving as the Fiat Corporate Public Affairs Director for Germany. He is visiting professor for Public Relations Theory and Techniques and is Founding Chairman of the CSR Manager Network of Italy.
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