The Power of Corporate Communication: Crafting the Voice and Image of Your Business.

by Paul A. Argenti and Janis Forman. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 294 pp.

The authors of The Power of Corporate Communication: Crafting the Voice and Image of Your Business are familiar, at least by reputation, to most readers of the Journal of Business Communication: Paul Argenti, who serves on the editorial review board, is the author of Corporate Communication, a respected paperback textbook for upper-level and graduate students that is now in its third edition. He has also been quoted in Time magazine concerning the June 2003 indictment of Martha Stewart on charges of securities fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice (Thottam, 2003). Janis Forman, a frequent contributor to the Journal of Business Communication, received the Association for Business Communication's Outstanding Researcher Award in 1995.

Their expertise shows in this book. In each chapter, Argenti and Forman grab our attention with corporate communication issues ripped straight from the headlines of the business press, clearly define each facet of corporate communication in a separate chapter of its own, give a brief historical overview in each chapter, elucidate basic principles, and offer concise case studies, backing up general claims with statistics drawn from the research and anecdotal evidence developed through their own extensive consulting work. The authors draw on very current examples of communication successes and snafus, citing a range of popular and business periodicals and newspapers as their sources in their meticulously documented endnotes. The authors also draw on their own research and cite personal interviews among their sources, particularly for the third chapter, so as to produce a synthesis of the principles of corporate communication with varied examples to illustrate each.

As the title of their book would suggest, the implied audience for The Power of Corporate Communication consists of CEOs and other professionals working in upper-level management, probably for a multinational corporation with publicly traded stock (because most of the text's examples are drawn from such organizations). Not surprisingly, its authors take a firmly pro-business stance; they take capitalism as a given in our society and do not venture into cultural critique. Oddly, however, the authors seem to assume an almost complete ignorance of communication on the part of their audience; surely anyone who has reached an upper-level position would have at least a basic understanding of such concepts as advertising and investor relations. Such an approach might prove more effective for an audience of students, however, who might enjoy envisioning themselves working in upper management but who might nevertheless need an introduction to all aspects of corporate communication.

The book's prose is highly accessible, straightforward, and admirably lucid; it is unusual to see such distinguished scholars produce not just well written but also surprisingly entertaining material appropriate for a general audience. Unlike many books on this topic, The Power of Corporate Communication is genuinely fun to read. With the exception of a rather nondescript cover, the book is also well designed, with a highly readable typeface, sometimes as many as three levels of headings to break up the text within chapters, and endnotes rather than footnotes.

The introductory chapter offers an eloquent response to the question, "Why bother with corporate communication?" The authors are careful to define their terms: "By corporate communication we mean the corporation's voice and the images it projects of itself on a world stage populated by its various audiences, or what we refer to as its constituencies" (p. 4). In the course of that chapter, the authors refer to the Justice Department's lawsuit against Microsoft, the Firestone tire crisis, Hooker Chemical and Love Canal, Nike's troubles in Asia, and the continuing popularity of the theme of "public distrust of business" in such artifacts of popular culture as the 2000 Oscar-nominated film Erin Brockovich, Michael Moore's 1996 best-selling book Downsize This/, and the widely syndicated Dilbert comic strip.

The book's particularly fascinating second chapter analyzes the historical roots of public relations, describing the career successes and failures of PR pioneers Ivy Ledbetter Lee and Edward L. Bernays. Argenti and Forman demonstrate that ethical issues have been central to the practice of PR since its earliest beginnings, citing Ledbetter's controversial clandestine support of John D. Rockefeller following the "Ludlow Massacre," in which strikebreakers working for Rockefeller killed and injured men, women, and children; Ledbetter's work for German manufacturer I. G. Farben to reduce anti-German sentiments during the Nazi era; and Bernays's promotion of cigarette smoking as an emblem of women's equality.

Chapter 3 lays out the overall scope of the communication function and discusses its appropriate place in the corporate hierarchy. Unfortunately, as their prime example of a CEO responsible for sterling corporate communication, the authors cite Jack Welch, the General Electric CEO who retired in 2001. Seven months after he stepped down, Business Week was already posing the question, "Was Jack Welch's run all it was cracked up to be?" (Byrnes, Jespersen, & Brady, 2002). As followers of the business press may remember, tabloid stories about Welch's affair with Harvard Business Review journalist Suzy Wetlaufer around the time of his retirement have tarnished his reputation and led to a messy divorce, which in turn resulted in public revelations about the extraordinarily generous remuneration and perks he received from GE, revelations that further damaged his reputation. A precipitous decline in GE's stock price following Welch's retirement also prompted a January 2003 Business Week cover story that, critical of what it called "Welch's legacy," has called into question his business acumen ("The Welch Legacy," 2003). Although part of the bad press he has received may be merely a predictable but largely groundless backlash against a formerly powerful man no longer in power, "Neutron Jack," as the corporate leader was half-affectionately known, no longer seems the most appropriate role model for CEOs wishing to manage corporate communication well.

The fourth chapter, titled "Identity, Image, and Reputation: From Vision to Reality," details the ways in which companies try to create, maintain, and protect a positive reputation for their brands, spotlighting such successes as Burberry and The Body Shop. As a counterexample, the authors describe the long partnership between Ford and Firestone, their eventual and rather messy corporate divorce, and the damage Firestone's reputation sustained as a result. Arguably the book's most memorable chapter, it introduces the concepts of branding and reputation management in relatively jargon-free language.

Subsequent chapters cover various facets of corporate communication, including advertising, employee communications, investor relations, community relations, media relations, and crisis communication. The chapter on advertising includes copious black-and-white illustrations of actual ads, from early AT&T ads to images of glossy magazine pages promoting companies such as Accenture, Pfizer, Siemens, and Absolut. Television advertising is also discussed, and Internet advertising is touched on, albeit only occasionally. In their discussion of advocacy or issue advertising, the authors briefly explain logos, pathos, and ethos, not mentioning those terms by name but citing Aristotle's The Art of Rhetoric as the source of these concepts.

The chapter on employee communication is particularly valuable for its emphasis on the need for communication with employees to be a dialogue rather than a monologue; similarly, one of the strengths of the chapter on media relations is that it emphasizes the importance of maintaining an ongoing relationship with the media and of meeting the needs of journalists rather than simply expecting journalists to meet the needs of the corporation. Although admittedly not novel, such principles are nevertheless not widely followed. The authors pragmatically (and intelligently) appeal to enlightened self-interest as a motive for improving internal communication.

In chapter 7, "Investor Relations: Enhancing Your Company's Health and Wealth," Argenti and Forman first carefully define the term under discussion (as they typically do in each chapter): "Investor relations is a strategic function of corporate management, combining the disciplines of marketing, finance, and communication to provide current and potential investors with an accurate portrayal of the company's performance and prospects" (p. 159). They offer a brief historical perspective on the development of what they themselves call the "whole new ballgame" of communicating with shareholders, emphasizing the relatively recent development of this aspect of corporate communication. The authors particularly(and appropriately) emphasize technology in this chapter, mentioning Web casts of investors' meetings, the growth in traffic at such sites as CNNfn.com and CNBC.com, and the importance of corporations monitoring the Internet and responding promptly to rumors and misinformation. They also cite the growing importance of social responsibility as an important consideration in investment decisions.