Daniel Tisch “Grandes decisões nas empresas tem a participação do comunicador”

Por Edward Pimenta

In this exclusive interview, the former Global Alliance president and CEO of Argyle, one of the largest communication agencies in North America, talks about the evolution of CCO’s role in recent years, IA, and the main challenges communicators face today.

In two decades leading Argyle, Canadian Daniel Tisch has spearheaded the transformation of a small boutique firm into one of North America’s largest and most acclaimed communication agencies. Argyle is known for its ability to connect communication to business value. Indeed, this perspective structured the curatorship of the annual Arthur Page Society conference in October in Toronto.

Member of the Canadian Public Relations Society and former president of the Global Alliance for Public Relations & Communication Management, Tisch has received over 200 professional awards, advising CEOs, boards, government leaders, and marketing professionals from some of the world’s largest brands. He spoke to Aberje on a video conference about the main challenges of the communication professional.

How has the role of CCO evolved in recent years?

I have worked in communication for over 30 years, and it is interesting to remember how corporate communication leaders were not in a C-level position until recently. The role of Communications Director was performed by a senior professional of the organization who basically communicated the decision made by someone else – it could be the decision of the board or often the CEO. They said: This is the decision, now see the best way to communicate it. Today’s scenario is dramatically different. It is almost inconceivable that a successful organization makes a crucial decision without the participation of the Comms Director. Companies now understand that they must consider operational, financial, legal, and reputational impacts. Nowadays, CCOs participate in the decisions; their mandate is broader, and they analyze what the organization must do to build relationships with stakeholders to improve reputation over time. The role of CCOs is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary because organizations understand that communication impacts everything they do.

Could you give us some examples?

Comms Directors often need to be involved in conversations about brand, human resources and employee engagement, diversity, inclusion, investor relations and sustainability, public affairs, and the CEO’s vision. There is a dimension of communication in all these issues. CCOs play a broader role but are also under more pressure than ever.

What were the key insights of the annual Page Society conference?

It was exciting to bring together communicators from around the world in Toronto. We discussed how CCOs should break borders and create sustainable value, which seems to be one of the most critical challenges for these professionals today. When we talk about leadership across borders, it’s not about physical boundaries but, above all, the borders that have been blurred by recent years of the pandemic, whether among shareholders and stakeholders, employees and customers, business and politics, home and work, and online and offline experiences. All these borders are collapsing. We are also seeing barriers being broken regarding the inclusion of women and LGBTQ+ people in organizations in various countries – at the heart of this revolution are communicators, who have always struggled to have a place on the board. A recent research by the Arthur Page Society shows that CCOs are increasingly ensuring their place at the table of the company’s leaders. The question now is how to have the resources, skill sets, and mindset to ensure they are successful in their challenges.

What other topics were discussed in the conference?

AI was a theme explored by experts from Google DeepMind, UCLA in Berkeley, and FGS Global. We also discussed political polarization and how companies can better navigate this environment. CEOs talked about reconciliation with indigenous communities, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism, leadership, and creativity.

What will the impact of AI be on day-to-day communicators?

Artificial intelligence is transforming every business. Over the past six years, I’ve been involved in research on how AI can impact our business. But only in 2023, this began to become evident. I see great potential in the tools. I know many young professionals who have become more efficient, productive, and creative with them. At the same time, there are warning signs. We must establish rules to ensure it is employed with integrity, curbing wrongful uses. We must understand ethical limits seeking transparency: It is necessary to be clear when an artificial intelligence tool is used.

AI should replace technical work with lower strategic value. When I started my career, we did physical media monitoring. We had paid people to cut newspapers and magazines, photocopy them, and produce a report for the customer. This task has been automated for a long time. Today, AI can perform many technical functions in content creation. We can become more productive using tools smartly, taking the extra time to focus more on our strategic role.

How do you build the ideal budget to do what it takes?

We often compare corporate communication to marketing, which clearly connects with sales and company revenues. Marketing is customer-focused, while in corporate communication, we are focused on all audiences and stakeholders. It is a continuous dialogue that is difficult to measure. For example, how do you measure the financial impact of a crisis that has never happened? That is why CCOs must develop their budgets considering key success factors and tangible goals that they can quantify. What can you say about the company’s reputation in all its dimensions? Perhaps the company has an excellent reputation for products and services but a weak reputation for leadership or corporate citizenship. Understanding this, what change do we want to achieve and measure the impact over time?

Can you comment on the importance of the CCO’s collaboration with other company areas?

Marketing, HR, and Corporate Communication are often peers on the boards of companies. Engagement and interaction between areas are greater when key initiatives for business evolution exist. It is not just a matter of structure but of organizational culture. The tone should be set from the top down, avoiding working in silos and encouraging the construction of a culture of collaboration in the company’s big decisions. It is desirable to set up multidisciplinary teams, communication management committees, task forces, and groups formed by employees with different skill sets to reflect the organization’s total capacity. But I think that, ultimately, culture construction is probably the most critical aspect.

 

Daniel Tisch was interviewed by journalist Edward Pimenta, director of InvestNews (Nubank) and professor of the MBA of Content Marketing at Mackenzie University.