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"DARE TO FAIL" SONBERG TELLS OSLO IPREX CONFERENCE
February 23, 2010
"PR people will find it increasingly difficult to work at the heart of senior management unless they innovate" according to Claus Sonberg, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations, SAS Group. He said that the industry should abandon its "can't do" culture and dare to fail.
He was speaking in Oslo last week during the annual Global Leadership Conference - The Future of PR - run by IPREX, the worldwide corporation of independent PR and communication firms.
Apart from reacting to such communications developments as the mobile internet and the rise of social media, the PR industry has initiated little change during the last 10 years, claimed Sonberg. He advised his audience of young professionals to reinvent their approach with four key strategies:
• Do the numbers - develop serious numeracy skills in order to understand clients' businesses in financial terms
• Invest in research and measurement to track, prove and predict the business impact of communication work
• Earn the right to be consultants, not agents - understand "what's on the client's plate", and bring this knowledge to the boardroom
• Dare to fail - conservatism and fear of failure is killing innovation, and preventing the PR industry from reinventing itself for the 21st century.
Sonberg's theme was taken up by Kathy Tunheim, IPREX Worldwide President (Tunheim Partners, Minneapolis), who outlined a structure and culture for future global competitiveness in the PR industry, and Peggy Brønn, Associate Professor at the Norwegian School of Management, who presented a masterclass on reputation management.
Delegates also worked in groups on three key strands of development currently under investigation at IPREX - business modeling, innovation and value proposition analysis.
IPREX Worldwide President Kathy Tunheim said: "IPREX is investing heavily to build our competencies to deliver both global scale client services and strong local-market insights in each of our 88 locations. The Global Leadership Conference is one great example of how that investment pays off - our emerging leaders have now had the opportunity to work side by side, building a shared vision for the future of our services model. As the world gets smaller and flatter, we are ensuring that our people are organized and prepared to deliver consistent, valuable communications services wherever our clients need them."
