Interview with Scott Sacco
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Scott Sacco of Maquan Communications on the firm’s market perspective and business orientation.
You talk about Maquan specializing in integrated marketing and corporate communications. What does that mean?
Marketing communications is typically thought of as promotion. It usually entails producing advertising, brochures, collateral, presentations and web content to support the sale of specific products, services, programs or capabilities.
Corporate communications is more all encompassing. It entails branding and overall image and identity management and includes internal communications and even strategic planning.
Why is it important that they be linked?
Effective management of overall corporate communications can play a major role in an organization’s success by ensuring that it has a sturdy platform from which to project itself into the marketplace.
An organization’s logo is its public face, but no matter how attractive or interesting it may be, a logo is meaningless unless one’s clients or constituents associate it with values and attributes that are important to them. Corporate communications is all about creating those all-encompassing, favorable impressions and ensuring that the credibility and goodwill they engender become associated with the organization’s specific offerings.
What’s the difference between building a brand and promoting a product or service?
You build a strong brand by identifying the values, qualities and capabilities that define you and by consistently communicating with your most important audiences in ways that ensure they associate those attributes with you.
Promotion is a function of establishing the compelling benefits and features of your products, programs and services and using your brand to communicate them to those same audiences in ways that cause them to buy what you are providing or support what you are doing.
How can Maquan help?
If a client has great products, but an ineffective platform from which to offer them, we can help them re-position and re-energize their brand. That might be as simple as re-working their logo and graphic standards or raising their visibility in the market. However, it also may be a function of engaging them in a rigorous strategic planning process to chart a course of action. Either way, we’re looking to create emotional linkage that will help drive the sale of the client’s products or services; increase support for what they are doing; and, create a reservoir of goodwill that will inoculate them from negative perceptions if they stumble at any point.
How do you do that?
Good marketing starts with self-awareness and one of our goals is to help clients with established businesses see themselves as others do. That’s important because you can’t shape impressions of your organization if you don’t first understand how you are already perceived.
What we try to do is make it comfortable and productive for clients to ask the hard questions about how they are perceived and to be self-critical so they can hone their messages and clearly define their objectives and strategies. This is the best way to insure that pre-existing perceptions of their organizations don’t interfere with their ability to be successful in the future.
Do companies communicate even when they don’t mean to?
Yes. Some organizations make a conscious decision to keep a low profile and the mere act of not communicating actually communicates a great deal about their values and priorities. Unfortunately, the impression that is created often isn’t very favorable.
Today, marketing is seen as a necessity, but there are still some who believe that it is an unnecessary and even unseemly practice. They wrongly associate marketing with slick, high pressure sales tactics and believe their reputations are forged almost exclusively by their relationships and body of work. When you are selling knowledge and expertise, having a prestigious client list, eye-popping investment returns, and the capacity to capitalize on referrals from satisfied clients are all very important. However, a firm or organization cannot always choose its constituencies. By that I mean, the actions and general perceptions of your organization inevitably impact more than those you consider clients — and those constituencies can have a significant impact on your activities and capacity to conduct business.
How does an unwillingness to communicate translate into negative perceptions?
Organizations that refuse to invest in quality marketing materials — that fail to be conscious of their web presence — that shun opportunities to speak at conferences or participate in industry events — that fail to reach out to clients and provide useful information on a consistent basis — that neglect opportunities to publicize their accomplishments or charitable activities — and that avoid interaction with the news media at all costs, often inadvertently create the impression that they are lazy or have something to hide. I can’t think of a situation where that kind of perception is helpful.
Unfortunately, the realization that one is actually perceived in this way often doesn't occur until something bad happens. You do a bad deal... You get sued... You have a product or service liability issue... You have an employee behave inappropriately or dishonestly... You have a violent crisis at your place of business... When things like this happen and you’ve previously done little to generate trust and goodwill among your various constituencies by being open, responsive and communicative, you’re in a world of trouble — particularly if the news media is involved.
To me, that’s the downside of employing a strategy that is based on being aloof and mysterious. It is better to communicate regularly with those who have an interest in your activities and to simply talk about how you operate with stealth in those parts of your business where it benefits those you serve.
You mention the news media? Isn’t it wise to be cautious when dealing with the press?
It is important to recognize that if you make news through your business or activities, it is going to get reported at some point. The media is just so prolific that it is unrealistic to think you are not going to capture its attention at some point — even if you don’t want it. We normally advocate developing relationships with those who cover your business and market so the lines of communication are open and the rules of engagement have been pre-established. This is beneficial in two ways.
First, the currency of journalism is information and if you can establish yourself as a source of reliable, accurate and interesting facts and perspective about trends and issues that affect your activities and those of organizations with which you compete, you will be valued and respected by those who cover what you do. You also are likely to be consulted frequently by them on topics in which you have specialized expertise, which is likely to increase your market exposure in support of your own business objectives.
Second, if you have these kinds of relationships with publications, broadcast media outlets and particular journalists, they can be very helpful when things don’t go well for you or your organization. That’s because you’re more apt to be treated fairly and to have your side of the story included accurately in the reporting. That’s often all you can ask or expect from your interactions with the media.
Clearly, things don’t always work out this way. There is no guarantee you will be quoted accurately or treated fairly. However, in my experience, you usually are in these situations... and even if you aren’t, you’re in a much better position to state your grievances after the fact than you would be if you didn’t have that relationship in the first place.
Successful news media relations is not about misleading journalists or “spinning” stories. It is about developing mutually respectful and beneficial relationships with them and, being an honest, direct and accessible source of useful information and perspective for them.
You refer to your firm as a networked consultancy. What does that mean?
It means that unlike most advertising and public relations firms, we’re not vertically-integrated. We use a hub and spoke business model. The hub is Maquan, which provides strategy development, planning, writing and project management. The spokes are our strategic partners, who are experts in a broad array of creative disciplines — from graphic design and web development to photography and printing.
Maquan’s value proposition is based on the premise that we meet your periodic need for corporate and marketing communications support in a highly efficient and cost effective manner. You get access to a seasoned and experienced communications project manager as well as a network of highly skilled creative talent.
We think this is an appealing option for two types of firms: Those that don’t have a full-time communications director or department — and those that need to augment the capacity and capabilities of such a person or team if they do.
What are the actual benefits?
Most advertising agencies and full service public relations firms want to have all of their account management and creative talent under one roof because they believe it gives them more control and a stronger basis to justify their fees. The problem with that approach is that it can become prohibitively expensive to use them. If you’re not doing elaborate direct mail campaigns on a regular basis; buying full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal; or meeting with the editors of BusinessWeek every other month; it can be very hard to justify engaging those kinds of firms because the overhead nested in their fees can just kill you.
Our overhead is low and we bring in other service providers only when clients need them. Our clients also benefit from the fact that we work with smaller design and creative service providers, which also have low overhead and which are run by people who are entrepreneurial. I’ve known and successfully collaborated with the principals of these firms for years and I respect and appreciate them — not only for their unique talents, but also for their values and their ability to work as members of a team. We think this approach is a vastly superior alternative to the traditional “agency” model for the market segments we serve.
Finally, you offer something called conservation project facilitation services. What does that mean?
That’s a niche capability that we offer to clients who are active in the conservation, real estate and infrastructure investment sectors. It basically entails working with the parties involved in conservation projects to define their parameters and to open and maintain clear lines of communication so the initiatives can be successfully completed. For example, we have particular expertise in structuring and negotiating conservation restrictions and easements on working landscapes.
From a philosophical standpoint, I’ve come to believe that regardless of a conservation or land-use project’s characteristics, the key to success is accurately scoping and describing the goals and parameters of the undertaking — developing a patient and methodical strategy that focuses on the end-game — working hard to establish trust and goodwill among allies and other involved parties — mitigating adverse impacts when they clearly exist — neutralizing those with obstructionist agendas — and, continuously focusing on creating mutually-beneficial and supportive outcomes. This kind of work encompasses a range of disciplines — from strategy, planning and communications to relationship development that are also key to our conventional activities in the marketing and corporate communications space.