Communicating with conviction
Zurich Insurance Group's Chief Communications Officer, Alessio Vinci, shares his advice for executives navigating an unpredictable news cycle as part of The Corporate Newsroom series.
Speaker: Alessio Vinci - Group Chief Communications Officer, Zurich Insurance Group
These two words that I banned at Zurich corporate communications.
One is a stakeholder and then one is holistic.
It's an audience. Whether it's a chairman, whether it's a board, whether it's a customer, whether it's your colleagues, this is your audience. They're not your stakeholders.
The second thing is holistic. You cannot necessarily always talk about everything.
I always believed that it was important for companies to take a stance. Now all this is backfiring, so you ask yourself the question, do I need to express my opinion?
Because you have to have an opinion. Everybody has an opinion, right? But do I need, do I sense the urgency of actually being out there and comment?
All the recent data suggests that if you stay silent, customers may punish you. I'm not sure that this is still relevant, that this is still true in this day and age where everything is so fractured, fragmented, quick, high speed, confusing.
The advice that I give to executives is don't feel that you must always share your opinion on anything out there.
Don't chase the headlines, don't chase the trend, and don't chase the political cycle.
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