As we see it, social communication is just ‘public relations’, revitalised.

PR was largely an attempt to control relationships with the public on a ‘one to many’ basis – which was fine when all we had were broadcast channels.

But social media now enables ‘many to one’ communication too – the crowd suddenly got empowered. Finally, we have the potential for dialogue…

Initially the role of social communications is to facilitate these emerging “many-to-one-to-many” conversations – listening to stakeholders, understanding their needs, and crafting new opportunities for collaboration and change.

Crucially, today’s social communicators understand that brands increasingly need to act as brokers of ideas, and facilitators of conversation between different stakeholders. They need to be much less intrusive than in the days of PR.

Over time, the best and most successful brand stewards will step out of their stakeholders’ way entirely, allowing many-to-many conversations to take place with minimal intrusion or intervention. The best brands will behave like the ultimate party hostess – setting the tone, checking everything is on hand; making great introductions, ejecting disuptive elements and becoming largely invisi……

At the UK national level, civil society agents like McMillan, MIND and Shelter are increasingly being leant on to act as the expert delivery arm of the state. At the international level Oxfam has effectively becoming the paramilitary arm of the UN, while simultaneously stretching itself to become a global retail empire. The traditional ‘advocacy and additionality’ of NGOs is under threat.

One consequence of this politicisation of civil society is a backflow of credibility and trust to Multi National Corporations (MNCs). As the supposed bad boys of corporate life (Oil, Chemicals, Cars, Cement…) get strategic about social responsibility, and as their critics’ voices become more muted or less credible, so corporates are increasingly empowered to shape the global agenda – and with increasingly positive outcomes. Just watch Gates and Monsanto in Africa.

The operational prowess of MNCs, working in conjunction with the developmental expertise and vestigial trustworthiness of NGOs, can arguably deliver more effective global social solutions than national governments. The consolidation of power is seemingly inevitable, but potentially troubling.

As business, civil society and government increasing abandon their representational role in favour of an instrumental one, pursuing very broad, but often unquantified and unaccountable policy goals, so they face a very real challenge to protect their own legitimacy.

At least in the North-West of the planet, the previous tri-partite governance model (Business v Civil Society v Government) is effectively collapsing into a singularity (Business = Civil Society = Government). In the face of this homogeneity, traditional media (both corporately-funded and corporately-owned) are arguably very poorly equipped to act as a bona fide ‘fourth estate’.

Into this global accountability void we need to inject new multi-party collaboratively-governance models to ‘lift and separate’ the internal dynamics of these partnerships. But we also new tools and processes which successfully empower and focus the voice of exetrnal stakeholders’ – towards ALL these power-brokers.

In short, we need wiser crowds as the basis for a new chaordic governance. Social Media lies at the heart of the New Social Capital.

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Organic Exchange asked us to present back to back ‘training’ sessions for European fashion brands on the impact of transparency and what to do about it. Yesterday was ‘T-day’.

Verdict: Tiring and only partially successful with such a disparate group (audience was spread from CSR and environment through ops and procurement, with a smattering of brand folk). Lesson learned: this stuff would be better tailored to a specific brand…but the frameworks do really seem to help people to conceptualise.

Need to do more of these, with more specific examples, but it will still be a challenge to answer really brand-specific consulting-type questions in an open forum.

Best news is actual brand custodians really ‘get this’ which is good news for the speech I am giving at the International Apparel Federation in October.

There were extenuating circumstances, but still, losing it forces me to reflect on our approach.

We advocated a distinctive corporate marketing approach. The winners were proposing a corporate selling approach. We wanted to develop a strategy to evolve reputation; they wanted to define a new brand proposition. They wanted to create a new dream. We wanted to create a new reality. Losing is, at many levels, depressing.

On reflection I am now worried that many corporations and civil society organisations have not moved on beyond branding. Back in the 70s and 80s, organisations used to really believe in basic marketing principles — designing products to fulfil customers’ needs, and then configuring themselves behind those needs. Then along came the brand bunnies and decided you didn’t need to meet needs any more, you just needed to manage your brand. The Chairman’s wife would decide what the organisation should stand for, and that would be it. Then all you just needed to persuade the entire universe to think the same way as the Chairman’s wife through some sort of brand engagement or employee mindwashing exercise. This is the brand narcissism that Alan Mitchell speaks of. We hate it.

We are not PR people. We do not do corporate selling. We do corporate marketing. We help design and evolve organisations which meet actual stakeholders needs. We advocate changes that should leverage existing relationship systems as a source of competitive advantage. We try very hard to suggest changes that may actually be deliverable and may actually have an impact. We want strategies that multiply; not divide.

Glasshouse Partnership asks first and foremost:

“What does the stakeholder want to achieve? And how can you best help them achieve it?”

That is the only way we know to build brand integrity. And brand integrity demands sustainable relationships, built not on ethereal trust, but on trustworthiness.

The only viable way we know to do this is through Stakeholder Collaboration. It’s the only way that works in an age of transparency.

As customer co-innovation and true customer participation supersede the iniquities of CRM, so Stakeholder Collaboration will gradually replace self-interested stakeholder engagement and empty corporate reporting…enlightened strategy directors and CEOs must ask themselves:

“How can we collaborate better with stakeholders to achieve common aims?”

This is not philanthropy; it’s survival. And answering this question will finally require them to understand relationship networks as their most elastic asset, and the heart of their sustainability. The real pioneers get this, at least at leadership level: Nike, IBM, Cisco, GE are getting this…and most of our clients get it – de facto. In fact many have already got this ‘right side up’ thinking hardwired into their organisation – they recognise their dependency upon their stakeholders and work with them to drive corporate innovation and renewal. But this thinking is still not embedded in the thinking of marketing and communications and CSR communities – where arguably, it matters most.

Maybe for a while corporate narcissism worked. But no longer. The world is not a mirror any more; it’s a whirlpool.

We lost. I am sad, but unrepentant.

His key conclusion: leading practitioners are focussed on materiality; which will force clients to be more proactive in their stakeholder relationships and better align their CR and PR functions. Data dumps and greenwash have had their day.

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