By Bob Finlayson and Paul Brunato

• The media landscape has changed drastically over the past two decades. The internet has permanently altered the way most people get and consume information.

• But communications teams at many large corporations are still structured around a model that lost its relevance over a decade ago.

• A more strategic structure is needed to ensure successful communications campaigns.

Mainstream Media is No Longer Mainstream

Among communications professionals, it’s no secret that the media landscape has changed drastically over the past two decades. The internet has permanently altered the way most people get and consume information.

Newspaper circulation continues to decline, traffic to news websites has leveled off, and time spent on these sites has declined. Meanwhile, a growing majority of Americans (55%) are getting their news from social media.

Social Media Influencers are Gaining Influence

Even more interesting is the shift in influence. The rise of social media influencers over the past five years has been breathtaking. 

In a survey of 3,600 consumers, 41% said they discover new products weekly because of influencers they follow, and 24% said they do so daily. 

Additionally, 63% of the consumers surveyed for the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer said they trust what influencers say about brands more than what brands say about themselves.

Communications Teams are Hobbled by Legacy Structure

These changes aren't news to most savvy communications pros, but structurally, many companies still have their teams built around the old model:

The company launches a new product or initiative. The corporate thought leader or subject matter experts explains why customers should care. And the communications teams dutifully issue press releases and blog posts reflecting the corporate party line.

This old model is based on a ‘command-and-control’ approach, which worked when traditional media was king, and communication was one-way: Companies controlled information flow, traditional news outlets reported it, and consumers ‘consumed’ it. 

That world hasn't existed for more than two decades. For the most part, press releases and blog posts now stagnate in unread corners of the web, while distribution services provide misleading-but-comforting metrics of “eyeballs” reached.

But let’s be clear: In all likelihood, your communications team fully appreciates the new reality of the media and influencer landscape.

The problem is that the starting point for planning and resource allocation is frequently still aligned with older ways of thinking and acting. 

For example – Although communications teams typically have social media managers that pay attention to social influencers, this function is too often an afterthought, with social channels operating semi-autonomously, and serving as a ‘bolt-on’ to the primary communications strategy.

A More Strategic Structure

An effective communications function requires a structure that is aligned with today's media landscape – the way people get and use information, how they evaluate and think about brands, and how they make buying decisions and share recommendations.

Before we get to the new structure, it's useful to dissect the old communications department model that's still prevalent. 

Ask yourself if this looks familiar: You have a large product communications team and a smaller corporate team. The larger team supports product launches, while the corporate team supports executive and crisis communications, and sometimes employee communications. When it comes to social media, fewer companies nest it within the communications department and opt, rather, to engage it as a marketing function. Structured this way, social media's focus is often more aligned with advertising sensibilities than the thought-leadership bent of communications teams.

Now let's examine a more strategic way to organize the communications function. Moving away from the typical structure of corporate and product teams, this new approach is based on a channel strategy, with managers for each of the key media channels: owned, paid, shared and earned.

The overall goal of this approach is to leverage channel experts – early in the message development process – to determine how to best reach external stakeholders and provide them with the content needed to influence their behavior.

Individual channel managers optimize activities for each channel and work as a team to ensure integration across all channels, working closely with executive stakeholder comms managers (e.g., directors of communications), the C-suite, other business unit leaders, HR and investor relations. 

The role of the stakeholder managers is to understand the business strategy and needs of their executive stakeholders and convey this to the channel managers. Both groups can work with research and content teams to identify and create the types of content needed to drive the story through the channels and achieve the desired business outcomes.

Visualizing Structural Change

If you think of this structure in terms of a series of concentric rings, the brand is at the center. Next are the executive stakeholders, then executive stakeholder managers, the research and content team, channel managers and, finally, external stakeholders.

The reporting structure for a large corporation based on this model might have four leaders reporting to the chief communications officer: the channel leader, the executive stakeholder leader, the research leader and the content leader. Teams reporting to those leaders would be sized according to the needs of the organization.

This approach prioritizes the needs of all stakeholders, identifies the optimal channels to reach each target audience, and facilitates the strategic creation of content customized for every audience.

The need to truly integrate marketing with communications is another important driver for this structural change. There has been a lot of talk about integrated marketing over the past decade, but the result is often a push toward better integration of marketing and sales, with communications retaining its legacy structure. This new structure — with its channel focus — would make it easier to integrate activities across marketing, sales and communications.

Bold Action Needed

As with any significant change, every organization needs to customize its approach to its individual needs. But bold action is needed. 

Given that corporate fiefdoms are often built around departmental structure, any major change is likely to receive pushback at the departmental level. This is why C-level involvement is essential to achieving such a consequential change in the organization. 

The benefit will be a competitive advantage in the form of more effective marketing and communications and, ultimately, increased sales and a more valuable brand.