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What changes are taking place in stakeholder communications? To gain more insights, see see eye sought answers from top professionals at Brown & Brown Insurance, Cousins Properties, Delta Air Lines and Goodrich, as well as from an independent communications consultant. What did we find out? That stakeholder communications are growing in importance, quantity and purpose. Read on.

Doug Monroe, moderator and Atlanta freelance writer: What changes have you made in communications because of the economic downturn and the rash of corporate scandals?

Lisa Borders, Senior Vice President, Cousins Properties, Incorporated:
We communicate more frequently and are even more precise about what we say and how we say it.

Lisa Bottle, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Goodrich Corporation: The scandals have given communications more visibility at the highest level. We’re focusing on different things with different groups. With investors, we’re focusing on long-term stability. With customers, we’re focusing on the economic benefits of our products and services. With employees, we’re trying to focus on long-term positives.

Doug Hudson, Director, Corporate Communications & Investor Relations, Brown & Brown, Inc.: We have never until this year webcast our shareholder meeting. This year it was automatic. We now have a policy that we will not go to any analyst conference that is not webcast. One impact of the scandals is that the cost of our standard quarterly press release has doubled – because of the amount of information we’re giving out.

Gail Grimmett, Managing Director, Investor Relations, Delta Air Lines, Inc.: Full disclosure is essential in difficult times. Employees wonder why they hear about a headcount reduction on the radio and are not told ahead of time. We’ve developed and implemented a business literacy program for employees, bringing them through voluntary financial classes to help them gain understanding of the business and financial news about Delta they read and hear.

Scott Mall, President, Mall Communications: One thing everybody here has in common is that their management teams realize communications makes sense. But that isn’t the case everywhere. There are a lot of companies where the communications people still don’t have a seat at the table.

Have you changed your communication vehicles in this time of change?

Lisa Borders: The only thing we have ever used consistently to get Cousins’ message out is our annual report. Real estate in Atlanta has traditionally been a relationship-based business. Guys played golf, shook hands, deal done. Post-Enron, the market is demanding evidence of an ability to not only perform, but also to garner the business through a rigorous and competitive process. So we are starting to use more communications pieces.

Gail, Delta has been aggressive in the way it uses the Internet. What else are you doing now?

Gail Grimmett: We were one of the first companies that actually established a Web site for our corporate governance program, and we use the Internet for both external and internal communications. And about a year and a half ago, we established a program where twice a quarter we bring a member of our senior management team to New York to talk to analysts. It helps the Street see the depth and breadth of our management team.

Lisa Bottle: We’re recognizing that the pieces we do have will need to work harder. We started this year’s annual report knowing that it wasn’t aimed just at the investor audience. It was going to be used throughout the year by most of our stakeholder audience for various purposes.

Doug Hudson: Our annual report has been a broad-based corporate brochure. Our sales people carry it out as a marketing piece, and we deliberately have designed it that way. The annual report and our Web site are our major vehicles for communicating.

Scott Mall: More than anything else, you are seeing communications departments having to justify their existence. You’ve got declining budgets and a lot of pressure on the bottom line. The attitude now is not, “What have you done for me lately?” It’s, “What have you done for me today?”

Lisa Bottle: We’re trying to educate our own senior management as to the potential benefits of what we do, and it’s not just about getting the column inches. We’re saying, “Hey, look what we can do for you. Look at the returns we can bring.”

Lisa Borders: Many corporate titans are not good communicators. I think the debacle at Enron put corporate communications in a heightened position. Now it’s incumbent upon us to carpe diem – seize the day. There’s this huge positive energy that can be leveraged if we use it correctly.

Scott Mall: You have to constantly fight the idea that this is a soft function. It’s a very hard function, a very businesslike function. The real bottom line with employee communications is keeping them informed to generate greater productivity. The same thing with investor relations: You are trying to get people to buy the stock. Things like that can be measured.

Do communications help build confidence in your organization?

Lisa Borders: I think so. We are fortunate in Atlanta because Tom Cousins’ name means a lot. But when you get beyond the Southeast, business people do not know him, or our company, nearly as well. So I think consistent communications will build confidence, over time, beyond our home base.

How do you do that at Goodrich, when your employees are all over the world?

Lisa Bottle: We are about to start webcasting. We also do a short weekly newsletter that is issued electronically. We have 23,000 employees and over 100 sites all around the world. They don’t all have computers. Some of the facilities have kiosks. People who don’t have kiosks will be encouraged to download the webcasts. Our CEO, Marshall Larsen, wants to talk more directly to the leadership team, so we’re developing tools for that, such as teleconferences.

Doug Hudson: The answer is, communications does build confidence. Our CEO, J. Hyatt Brown, is a very charismatic individual who communicates extremely well to employees and our various publics. We have 140 different profit centers around the country, and he manages to visit every single one of them in person at least once every six months.

Gail Grimmett: With our industry in crisis, it’s hard in terms of instilling confidence. Our CEO, Leo Mullin, has taken on the role of the industry spokesperson. Internally, we try to communicate to employees so they understand we are different from the rest of the industry. We have 69,000 employees, and many of them are transient. They don’t have an office to go to. We’ve found communication through our intranet site to be very effective.

Lisa, has Cousins changed its style of communicating to the investor based on the increased interest in real estate investment trusts?

Lisa Borders: We’ve just communicated more. In our sector, a lot of analysts have been laid off. So we’re finding that we have to knock on the door and say, “We’re still here, and look, we’re doing as great a job as we’ve always done.” We have to be proactive about it, to participate in more conferences, to call analysts and tell our story as opposed to just waiting for them to call us.

Gail, what communication steps is Delta taking to assure investors that the company will return to profitability?

Gail Grimmett: What investors want to hear from us is that we understand the business and the challenges, and that we have our finger on the pulse of the business in order to get to that profitability level. I think that ’03 is not going to be much better than ’02 or ’01. So there needs to be a comfort level that we understand at least how to get on the right path. As I work with Corporate Communications, we are very careful with the adjectives we use. Any words like “strong” or “increased bookings” could drive a reaction that we’re not quite ready to drive.

Doug, Brown & Brown Insurance has had one record year after another for quite some time. What does your investor communications program consist of, and has it gone through recent changes because of Sarbanes-Oxley?

Doug Hudson: The biggest change we’ve made since Sarbanes-Oxley would be webcasting our shareholder meetings. Our stock prices have been increasing 15 percent to 20 percent a year for 10 years. Our biggest challenge is convincing our employees to not keep 100% of their 401(k) in our company stock.

Scott, as you look at investor communications, what messages are getting through in the marketplace today?

Scott Mall: It’s the same thing with an annual meeting, annual report or quarterly earnings. Don’t tell me what you’ve done because I can find that out. The information is there. Tell me what your game plan is. What are the issues facing you, your industry and your competitors? How are you going to deal with them?

Gail, how is Delta communicating with customers about so many volatile issues today?

Gail Grimmett: We use as many different channels of communication as we can. We found that right after September 11, Delta.com became a great avenue for customers to get information. We’re finding that people want ease and convenience; they want control of how they’re flying. You’ll see the whole airport experience changing to deliver that to the customer. You’ll see more kiosks in the airport to help them do self-service.

Doug, when you acquire the assets of a company, how do you communicate with the new people?

Doug Hudson: We encourage current ownership of the company to tell their people before it hits the newspaper. We make it clear to the local business community that we have no intentions of changing management. When we do the releases we’ll do the national releases, and a totally separate local release.

Lisa, at a time when the aerospace industry is facing cutbacks, what are some of the things Goodrich is doing in the area of employee communications?

Lisa Bottle: We’re trying to get beyond the cutbacks and focus on the long-term positives. Most of the predictions are that things won’t really start to improve until ’04. That’s a hard message to get out. The upside of it is that it gives our new CEO a chance to move into position. He’s got a good story to tell.

Thank you for a fascinating discussion.

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