Beware of corporate communications divide

Like most journalists who make that leap of faith across the great corporate communications divide, the first two shocks to the system for Chalmers will be a loss of status and also getting used to an environment quite unlike that of a newspaper, where egos and corporate pride take precedence over the search for truth, justice and fair play.

Good reputation

There is no question that Chalmers has built up a fine reputation as both a financial journalist and editor. She has enormous respect among her peers and within the corridors of corporate power. And working for Business Day will have augmented this respect and would have had many a captain of industry pandering to her.

Financial journalists are probably the most besieged by a sometimes overly patronising PR industry and this more often than not results in their clients becoming equally patronising when it comes to dealing with business journalists and especially editors.

And that top-of-the-pedestal status disappears completely when one crosses over to corporate communications. It is a time when one finds out, sometimes brutally, just who one’s media and business friends really are.

No ducking and diving

When I made a similar leap 17 years ago, I was lucky in terms of moving across from a business newspaper to BMW South Africa. Also having made that leap with more than two decades of experience in ad agencies and PR companies. That helped enormously as did working for BMW, which was not only a hugely respected global brand but also one that did not have a reputation for ducking and diving.

Unlike SAA, which Chalmers is joining at a time when its credibility is probably at an all-time low. Her predecessors were often quite clearly forced to follow directives from above when it came to dealing with the media and the public and there has been many a time when one could almost cringe in sympathy listening to SAA spokesmen trying desperately to wheedle their way out of tight corners.

It is a company that has turned the practice of smoke and mirrors into an art form.

Unpopular

It manages to win all manner of best airline awards yet, when it comes to trying to find someone who actually thinks it is a great airline, this quest is similar to finding an American who actually voted for George Bush or a white South African who admits to voting for the Nats.

Chalmers will join SAA at a time when it is in a corporate communications mess of note. The airline has a distinctly uneasy relationship with the media, many of whom are continually torn between treating SAA as a big advertising client and as a company that loses money and credibility at about the same frightening rate.

Honesty is best policy

Unless I have literally read her wrong all these years, Chalmers has considerable integrity and purpose and will either succeed in persuading her new bosses to accept that when it comes to corporate communications and customer service, the combination of honesty, integrity, transparency and accessibility is always the best policy.

If not, well, I can’t see her becoming a publicity puppet and it’s likely her sojourn into corporate communications might well be a very short one.