Are you in a Global PR Role? Do you have your colleagues on mute?

• Tweet

• Tweet

Presentations by presidential candidates are too infrequently a source of inspiration for me. However, an address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco today by Senator Joe Biden included some perspectives on global communications that got me thinking about the evolution of global PR models and a presentation I’m giving on international PR at the PRSA’s North Pacific District annual event later this month.

Biden’s bid for the White House (the reason he was speaking) seems fuelled by his mission to restore credibility to America amongst the international community. If elected, Biden says he will replace America’s adversarial brand of foreign policy with a more understanding and influence-driven approach. It was striking to me to think that many US corporations could take a leaf out of the same book!

I offer this because in my experience the majority of US companies persist with variations of the out-dated ‘hub and spoke’ approach to international public relations. That is they continue to operate not as equals with their international colleagues, but as superiors with PR models that centralize strategy and content creation at HQ.

That tide seems to be turning (undoubtedly driven by the growing significance of new markets), but it’s notable to me that European-headquartered companies – some of Text 100′s clients among them – have been much quicker to shift from command-and-control models to truly global communications models. That seems to be particularly true in the semiconductor sector (not coincidentally one of the sectors that has seen the most rapid shift of revenues and influence to Asia).

Our clients NXP Semiconductors (Netherlands) and ARM (UK), for example, have both been communicating with a truly global mentality for some years. Their marketing staff may still be concentrated at HQ, but strategy (from corporate to product PR), creativity (for plans or tactics) and content origination (from press releases to bylines) has become highly decentralized, occurring around-the-clock, in every region, in a highly-collaborative model empowered by web-based collaboration tools.

As an adopted American, I can see why the hub-and-spoke model made sense for a long time. While the US was king, it could afford to dictate. However, as China, India and other fast-growth markets become more significant – and as new, relatively-inexpensive collaboration tools become available – the time seems right for a shift to new international PR models. 

As Joe Biden says: "America needs to un-mute the mute button and start listening again". Here, here! say I. And let’s see America’s communications professionals leading the way.

David McCulloch