Trust: The Secret Weapon in Modern Communications

The synergy between communications and marketing is more crucial than ever as AI reshapes the way we engage with audiences. Understanding how these functions coexist can unlock new opportunities for growth. My guest today, Tabitha Anderson, delves into this dynamic relationship and shares insights from her new book, the Chief Communications Officer at Work. Hi, Tabitha. Welcome to the show. Really good to see you again. Thank you very much for having me, Chris. I look forward to our conversation. Good stuff. I know we've got a book to talk about, but we're going to come to that. I've been reading it and it's. It's excellent. I don't know how you managed to find the patience to write a book, but I'm really curious about it. There's a couple of questions. I just want to talk to you first of all, because, as you know, when I look across the marketing function at the moment, certainly the people that I'm talking to right now, it's a bit. It's complex, it's challenging and it's changing. And I wondered how. What your thoughts are, what are you feeling at the moment, the big challenges that you're facing or what you see across the landscape? One of the big challenges I see at the moment is everyone trying to understand AI search. We have a big paradigm shift. I think we've known and grown to understand and know how to work with the search engines, how to do our SEO, how to use keywords, but we still haven't made the shift to AI search. So a lot of the senior marketing leaders and comms leaders that I'm meeting are talking about, well, how do we do that? What does our content look like, how can we make sure we appear in the right places? And some AI search don't actually have links, others do. So how can we work that process out? That is something that I see as a big challenge right now. It's shifting really, really quickly. AI visibility. I mean, we are obviously seeing ourselves as an agency, but I'm noticing a lot of our leads coming in at the moment are coming in from the LLMs, which is really. But almost overnight. Yeah, absolutely. I've heard exactly the same. All of a sudden, companies having these leads coming in and actually to understand where did they come from, how did they find us, That's a whole different, almost science to work out and then fig out what works, what doesn't work, what can we do more of, what should we stop doing, etc. Have you seen, have you any thoughts on the. How the media landscape is therefore changing? I think earned Coverage taken from the old peso model is growing in importance because that is what we're seeing as showing up more in AI search. It's got more reliability, more importance, and it's just becoming crucial to have and increase your earned coverage. So that obviously brings comms to the table in terms of the marketing function and making sure that actually what we do is integrated with the marketing campaigns, is holistic and it's visible. So I think we have a great job as PR and comms professionals in producing the right type of content that makes it to being earned coverage that can really lead the way in geo and AI search. Good. Okay, so AI visibility, top of the agenda. But also there's a lot of headwinds out there that the marketing role is facing. And one of those was. I was reading, there's a recent piece of research out. I don't want to scare you or anything, but the average tenure is reducing from three to two years. And I know you're not quite on the C suite, you're a VP of marketing and in the world of tech, but are you worried? Do you see that it's a struggle to validate the marketing role at the moment? I'm not worried because I think we have a massive role to play and I think the way that business is going, they're going to need our skills more. And Wall Street Journal, for example, had an article just a week ago about storytellers being the number one skills that everyone's looking at. And to me that's amusing to my ears because that's what we do so well in comms and pr. And that's where marketing can really step up and do a great job. So I'm not worried. I also think and thinking about my book and the conversations I had with chief comms officers, I actually saw the opposite on the comms side. A lot of the chief comms officers were much longer tenured in their role. And I think that's partly because we as comms pros, we become very embedded in the organization. We have to understand the nuts and bolts. We have to understand the entire organization. So having that knowledge, I think is very valuable to the business and we can then prov the value of. Of the function. So I think comms have got a real good lead in terms of. Of tenure. So I think there's a lot we can bring to the. To the. So that's really interesting and we're going to come to your book at the moment because I'm very dead curious. Here's a picture of it and we keep coming back to it. Nice segue, but let me just ask you a couple of more questions. Just. I don't know if this is true. I need to fact check this in a minute, but somebody just said to me literally half an hour ago, did you know that in Chinese the words opportunity and threat are the same thing? And I'm wondering about AI because the world is changing. Do you see AI as an opportunity or a threat? Massive opportunity. I think both for the marketing and for the comms function, I think marketing has done probably a much better job of figuring out all the use cases. I think from what I'm seeing, the marketers and the marketing function are much more further ahead in trying to figure out exactly what AI can do to help, to help streamline, to help us more efficient, to help customer and build the customer journeys better, to help workflows. There's so much work on the marketing side in AI that I've seen and I think comms is probably lagging behind a little bit, still trying to find feet. I think comms has also got a slightly different take on leading how organizations use AI on a more broader scale. It's much more about being ethical, it's much more about protecting the organization, it's much more about commuting to and other shareholders, for example, about how AI is used inside the organization and outside. So I think comms has got a much broader role in terms of implementing AI across an organization. And in terms of the conversations I've had with with comms people and comms chief comms officers, some are further ahead, others are still just trying to work out what to do with it. One of the use cases, actually, I think that I thought was very pertinent was the knowledge bank, the internal knowledge bank. So for example, you're writing an internal comms message to all your employees. Being able to go into a knowledge bank and actually understand and see what did we say a year ago or what did we say three years ago on this particular topic? So that you can create that consistency and narrative and message that is super helpful. So I think that's a really good use case. Excellent. But also there is a massive content overload out there as a consequence of AI, don't you think? And yes, some are more advanced than others, but the ones that aren't seem to be filling the airwaves with, well, dare I say, a sea of mediocrity is really challenging to cut through the noise. But you talked about storytelling. Is that one strategy? Absolutely. I think as comms professionals. We have a good opportunity of creating good quality content that cuts through the noise that people want to read and listen to and hear. I think we also have an opportunity of making sure that we don't contribute. Contribute to the hallucinations. We actually have an opportunity of going out and validating with sources, with references and making sure that the content out there is the truth. So I think we have a real role to play on, on that side. And then I think marketing has a real role to play on making sure that the content that's coming out is of good quality rather than just masses and masses. Because it's so easy and so tempting, perhaps as well, when it's easy to make content, to make lots of it. So I think we have a responsibility of taking a step back, thinking about what we're trying to achieve and thinking about what the best message is. Almost like going back to basics. Content is king, always has been. So it's going back to that basic step of actually, does it meet my objectives? Has it got the right message? Will it land with my target audience? And how can I make it as relevant and personalized as possible so that you don't contribute to this deluge of AI generated. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is, as a good way of describing it, deluge. And perhaps more than ever, storytelling is highly applicable at the moment because it's, you know, the humans write the goosebumps, we add the value to it. But it's a fantastic tool to work with rather than just adopt fully. But I totally hear what you're saying. So let's, let's come to the book because I am interested in this point that you're making. The book is called the Chief Communications Officers at Work. Just tell us a little bit, first of all, how you come to write the book. And maybe at the same time, just tell us in a snapshot your background, because I'm assuming you didn't want to become a VP of marketing when you were a little girl, so there must have been a pathway that you had in mind. And how did you end up. Just tell us briefly your journey culminating in the publication of your. On your book. Sure. So when I was very young, I was choosing between two job, two jobs. One was air traffic controller, because I was super excited about the thought of sitting in the tower at an airport, directing all these flights and planes everywhere. And then the other job was a journalist because I also loved to write. And then as the years went by and I did more writing and I discovered that actually you can actually do A lot of writing by being in comms and you don't have to have to necessarily go down the journalist. So that's where I kind of ended up then studying. I did a bachelor degree in comms and I kind of started out on that route. And then I've worked in various comms and marketing roles for B2B organizations throughout my career. And it's about a year and a half ago now when I was looking for something to read about chief Communications officers and I went out looking at all sorts of different. Different publisher sites, went on Amazon, all these different types and I just couldn't find anything. So. But what I did find was I found this publisher website and an email submission form that said, if you have an idea, please email us on this template and push this button. So I thought nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I put my idea in and thankfully publishers were very positive. And two weeks later I actually ended up with a contract of having to do it. And writing a book had also been part of my, my dream of always doing so. Yeah, and then we had a very aggressive timeline as well, which is actually a good thing. I think a good deadline really helps keeping you focused. I was going to say to you, how do you find the patience? You don't really need the patience if someone turns around and says, you've got to write this in six months and it's not exactly a small book, is it? It's like, you know, how many pages are we talking here? We are up to 80 odd pages. So this, what was the journey like in creating the book? How do you set about it? And we'll talk about some of the surprises therein. I'm interested to know what you observed. Yeah, so we had. The whole process of writing the book came down to me, myself and I. I had sort of full project management and scheduling and organizing of everything from booking the interviews, making sure they were recorded, transcribed, edited. I went through the whole reiter. Every chapter obviously had to be legally reviewed, approved and signed off as well before we got to the final manuscript and then doing the proofreading. So I was very heavily involved in pretty much every step of. Of the way. In the beginning, when I was looking at finding the people to interview, I found it really fascinating to do the research of finding the chief comms officers. Where were they? Because I wanted a really good spread of not just. So that was down to you as well. So you had to go, you had to go and find the. The people to interview. And of course there's quite a variety of levels in here, aren't there? They're all chief comms officers, but they are large and small businesses. Exactly. And that was on purpose. So I wanted to have a really good spread on purpose so that the voices from the different types of organizations would be heard. And we could have male and female, we could have B2B and B to B2C and the majority reporting to the CEO. But I wanted a couple that didn't for just seeing the differences as well. So I designed that on purpose. So you get a real widespread of voices. Yeah. So tell me. So in a nutshell, I mean, you know, there's 280 pages there, but let's talk about some of the surprises that you observed whilst doing your research and then ultimately writing it. So I think the one surprise that I found was a theme that went through every single conversation that I had. And that theme was trust. Every single CCO talked about trust. And it's trust at different levels. It's building trust with your CEO and you'll see level execs and your, your peers at that leadership team because that really proves the value of what we do in comms. And then it's building trust on the outside of an organization. So you've got your internal stakeholders, you've got your external stakeholders, and it's building trust on all those different levels. That was a real golden thread that ran through pretty much every conversation I had. And do you think, why is that? Is that because trust is eroding now? I mean, with, you know, we keep coming back to AI, but we can also look at geopolitical issues. We can look at misinformation and disinformation being spread far and wide. And I guess the question is, trust is probably more paramount now than ever. I agree. I think it is. I also think it's a good way for CCOs and senior comms professionals to show the value of what they do. Because when you gain the trust of the CEO and when you gain the trust of your executives in the organization you're in, you can advise much better, you can work much more efficiently, and you just connect as a team much better. Which means that when there is a crisis situation, for example, you don't have to work at the trust bits. You can go straight to, okay, what we're going to do, how we're going to solve it, what we're going to say, what are the opportunities, where are the consequences, etc. So you can go straight into it rather than sort of having to build those relationships first. Where's the intersection between the CCO as you call it, and the cmo? Is there one and are they reporting separately into the CEO? Because I've always considered the comms reporting into the CMO function. But that's not necessarily the case you're arguing. No, correct. I don't think that's the case. I think it depends on the organization and what you're trying to achieve and what type of customers you have, what type of brand you are. I think for brands that need to build a good, for premium brands that need to build a trusted reputation with their customers in order to sell services perhaps that are higher price or higher premium to them, to those kind of organizations, I think it's, it is so important for, for communications to be at the top table. And I would argue that for most organizations because in today's complex world where we have a macroeconomic climate that varies and changes on a very fast basis, where we have crisis situations that pretty much every organization come up against, where there's risks in all sorts of various ways, all of these situations is something that a chief comms officer or senior comms leader can work with and help mitigate and help escalate if needed or de escalate if needed. So I would argue that actually comms should sit as part of a corporate function in the middle of an organization so that we can best help with everything, not necessarily just the companies in marketing, which is all about driving demand and pipeline. So to me there's almost two different levels of the comms leader's job. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to sit in a certain function. To me it's more about who the leader is and the leader's awareness of whatcoms can do as an organization. You will. And I've noticed more and more, for example, you see Chief Marketing and Communications Office. That's a title that's coming a bit more now than what it used to. And if you have a great CMO who really understands what comms can do, then I think the CMO has a responsibility and ownership of bringing comms to the table, bringing comms in early when there are those organizational wide transformation projects, for example, or changes that comms really can help at that level. So the CMO can really become a partner with the comms leader of making sure that we're working at the best level. So when you set about creating this and identifying the people that you wanted to interview, because sometimes I feel that comms isn't taken seriously enough and I'm Just curious to know whether in your research you had searched far and wide for companies who are taking it seriously enough. And did you rule out a lot of businesses who weren't? I did. Looked at, obviously the titles of Chief comms Officer was important for the book and for the title of the book. And then it was also a case of look, looking at what type of organization it was and then the different sizes of the teams, because I've got CCOs that have no team and I've got CCOs in the book, they've got hundreds of people in their teams. So I wanted to show the difference. But in each and every case of the people I interviewed, comms was highly valued and respected within the organization. So it didn't matter what the size of the team was or perhaps even what the size of the organization was, because the organization valued comms, and that's what I wanted to show. Okay, that's good. So when we look at these roles that are perhaps working in parallel but interrelated, so this is what you're talking about at the top table, as it were. But when you talk about the role then of the cco, let's just talk about the metrics that matter. How do you measure success? That was one of the questions that I put to all the CCOs, interestingly as well. And I think everyone has got their own slightly different slant on it because at the end of the day, it depends on what your business objectives are. So my argument is that we now have a plethora of data points at our fingertips, something we didn't have perhaps 10, 15 years ago. So we can measure what we do in terms of data numbers very well and very efficiently. But you still have to have a starting point of what it is you're trying to achieve before you can then identify the right data points to look at how you measure that. I believe that where we as comms leaders perhaps aren't so good is at using data and numbers to our advantage. And I think perhaps sometimes we're very good with words because that's where we come from. We're very good at writing, we're very good at talking, we're very good at painting pictures, storytelling. So I think we have a great opportunity actually now of learning how to use data to tell the story, because the data points are out there. And I also think with AI, we have a massive opportunity of using the genai models and build models ourselves for looking at how we are perceived, how messages are landing and how we're actually moving the needle. So I believe we have data now that we just have access to that we've never had before. So the opportunity is immense, I think. Fabulous. Fabulous. And I guess is there anything that you know. I know what we have covered, but is there anything we've not covered in this conversation? You think we should? So I think one thing for CMOS that would be really good to understand is that their comms leaders have got skills that perhaps marketing leaders don't appreciate. The three top skills that came out of all the conversations that I had for comms leaders were critical thinking, curiosity, and courage. And I don't believe CMOs always use those to the best of their advantage. My message to cmos is make sure that you make the most out of your senior comms leaders. They have a lot more to bring to the table than what perhaps you realize. Excellent, Tabitha. That's really, really good and an excellent interview and I'm really pleased with your points of view and I'm glad that you didn't go down the route of an air traffic controller because I think we need you in this world and you've been very inspirational and I've enjoyed the book. I'm going to read the rest of it. How can people get hold of the book so it's available from Amazon or apress directly? Just go on there and download them. Fantastic. When I see you next, I need you to sign this and say some nice things. Fantastic. To Peter. Bless you. Really lovely to see you. Thank you so much for joining. So that wraps up another episode of CMO Unplugged. Thank you to Peter for sharing such valuable insights and thank you to everyone for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll be doing me and the algorithm a big favor by hitting subscribe. And if there's a bold or brilliant marketing leader you'd like to hear from, drop me a message. You can also grab a copy of Tapita's book, the Chief Communications Officer at work on Amazon or directly from the publisher. I'm Chris Hewitt and this is CMO Unplugged. Thank you for listening.