Audience: your own employees
Message: Let’s change the image the public has of us.
Tone: informal
Timing: 10-12 minutes

What you will be doing in the next year is critically important to us—important to our stockholders, important to our customers, and important to the press. I don’t want to leave the room until I get that point across.

You are critical to our success, and we appreciate how well you have been doing your job. You have built and are running what we believe to be the best (type) business in our industry. We know that.

But the public doesn’t. And that’s the issue today. That’s why you’re critically important to us. We need you to talk to the right people with the right message.

We as management speakers talk about you often—just like family. Obviously, we want to share your achievements because they make us look good. We talk to securities analysts, investment managers, and the press. Our objective is to let them know what a great group of capable employees you are.

But we also need you to start acting like grandparents. That is, we need you to pull out the wallet photos and start bragging. We need you to talk about every member of the family. To tell them we’re well managed. To tell them the financial facts of life. To tell them you’re eager to provide good customer service.

Grandparenting in the vein I’ve just described is usually easy. Grandparents can tell total strangers that grandson Johnny who lives in Kalamazoo is a darling, and nobody will argue. First, because nobody knows Johnny personally. Second, because others don’t care all that much.

But grandparenting for our company can be a little more tricky. First, because the public thinks they know our industry pretty well. Second, because they do care. What we do affects their everyday life.

My point is this: Convincing the public of the facts is sometimes not an easy job. And we’re asking you to take on this “bragging” task in addition to your regular assignments. We’re asking that you preach our message from your desk every day when you talk to visitors and telephone callers.

And we’re even asking that you take it “on the road.” We’ll be asking for volunteers to undergo special training to become official spokespersons in the local community. We’ll ask you to speak to large audiences and small. To friendly audiences and maybe a few unfriendly ones. Nothing has an impact such as face-to-face, question-and-answer, in-person explanations about what we do and why we do it.

Misinformation and outright distortions are spread one to one. And that’s exactly the way we have to correct the misinformation—one to one, face to face. Yes, the media can compound the problem with their own misinterpretations. And they can correct misunderstandings with accurate, fair reporting. But they’ll never be as vital to our efforts as you are—individually, one on one. In the next year, several of you will be called upon to receive this special training and special briefings on our internal workings—finances and future plans for products and services. You will learn the complex problems that face us. And you’ll learn how to explain those problems in lay terms so that everybody understands. Those in your local professional organizations…. And those standing around the bus stop in your local neighborhood.

Most people accept a clear statement for a true statement. That’s what we’re counting on. We want to help you as our employees to learn the facts about the complex issues that face us and then be able to pass on those facts clearly to others.

You are a valuable resource, and your efforts become more vital to us daily.

Who else can tell our story better than you? You deal with our customers every day. You are (corporation) to them. You are the eyes, ears, hands, and feet that make this company work. You create the impression of competence or incompetence…. Of poor quality or excellent quality…. Of an efficiently run system or a lavish, inefficient system of perks and mismanagement.

You are the grandparent who knows us very well. So what do we want you as flesh-and-blood embodiments of (corporation) to tell people? We want you to explain how our products contribute to their everyday life. We want you to tell them that how we operate internally to cut costs and then pass those savings on to them. And finally, we want you to tell them the realities of our cost to operate—increasing suppliers’ costs and the cost of maintaining the quality of service we provide.

So why do we need you to take on the extra responsibility usually assumed by a PR department? Well, grandparents brag about their offspring out of sheer love. But we’ll present you with a more reasonable reason.

Here’s why we need you to talk to your customers:

Ignorance generates suspicion and fear. Knowledge brings trust and favor.

And how did we come to that conclusion? A random telephone survey of (number) customers to tell us what the public’s perceptions were. Of those polled, (number) percent said they felt they knew our company very well; (number) percent claimed they knew little about our company, although they did business with us from time to time. Of those who claimed to know our company’s products and services well, a large majority—(number) percent to be exact—held a favorable impression of us. But wait until you hear the last half of the story: Of those who claimed they knew little about our company, a whopping mass—(number) percent—rated our company with a negative tag.

To put it in a sentence: The better they know us the better they like us.

So to correct the image problem, we first have to get the facts out. We have to show them we’re interested in making a reasonable profit for our stockholders and we’re equally interested in providing quality products and services to the public.

But here comes the more difficult part in your telling our story to our customers. People aren’t rational. They don’t always just listen to the facts and come to logical conclusions.

Instead, like grandparents, they are emotional. Grandparents can brag on Johnny’s well-mannered behavior, his wit, and his intelligence without a single fact to back them up. Why? Are they being deceptive to the strangers who might listen to them? No, grandparents are simply emotional. They love Johnny; therefore, Johnny must be intelligent, witty, and well behaved.

That’s why I’m saying you can’t just give the facts and persuade the public of the truth. We could publish facts in the newspaper. No, instead you have to make them feel the truth. They have to sense emotion. They have to see service in your eyes. They have to feel quality when they walk in the door.

In short, we need your words and your emotions to convey the message to everybody you come in contact with as a representative of this company.

What’s in it for you when you take on this PR job? Well, many of you are stockowners through our employee-savings plan. You will benefit directly through your dividends. But you also can picture those other stockholders out there—men and women, families just like you and yours—who depend on a reasonable return for their investment.

And possibly even more directly, you will benefit from a healthy company image through your regular paychecks—salary, benefits, bonuses, raises.

As I said earlier, we know you’re doing a good job. You know you’re doing a good job. Our new job is to make sure the public knows we’re doing a good job. An excellent one. They have to understand that we are an efficiently run operation that makes a reasonable return for our stockholders and provides products and services they must have to maintain their quality of life.

Let’s tell that story like grandparents—clearly,… emotionally,… repeatedly.