Chatroom: Weber Shandwick Chairman Jack Leslie

Q: What about the growing focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR)?

A: Because it's become so widely adopted, we're reaching a point where consumers' antennae are really up for ... inauthentic corporate social responsibility activities. And some companies are doing it because they think they're supposed to do it, not because it's really embedded in their values. The companies I think who really get their whole organization to believe in it and act in the right ways will succeed, but there will be many who will be a little more cynical in their adoption and I think they'll get busted (laughter) by consumers who can see through that kind of stuff.

Q: On a different topic, how is the downtown in the U.S. affecting how companies are communicating with Americans?

A: Number one, this is not the time, which is the natural inclination, to duck and cover. It's not the time to put your head in the sand and wait for things to blow over. In fact, it's a time for sophisticated marketers to engage even more, because there's market share up for grabs. And if you are really careful and listen to people and their anxieties and you relate to them in ways that show sensitivity, you can win customer loyalty in bad times arguably even more than you could in good times. Now I probably have less credibility as the chairman of Weber Shandwick (laughter), but there have been studies on this. And it makes sense that companies that continue to run aggressive campaigns are the ones who come out of these tougher times in better shape.

Q: Can you tell me about the concept of "Brand America" and how that might be changing?

A: What is troubling ...is that since the end of the Cold War, we have cut back tremendously on spending for public diplomacy. And the reasoning was, you know, we won the war. So why would we need to spend anymore? But I think we're paying dearly for not having kept those programs up. This is partly a communications problem, but mostly a policy problem and we shouldn't mix the two. This happened in the early days after September 11 where there were a number of appointments made in the State Department, for example, of various marketers and the kind of belief was that if we get the right kind of marketer in there we could solve "Brand America." Well, I think this is naive. The fact is that there's a reason why we have difficulties around the world and we need to address those from a policy standpoint.

Q: If the American brand is declining, how does that affect U.S. companies that are marketing abroad? Is there a shift toward a more global identity?

A: Yes, I think there's more, if you will, global branding. But more than that there are efforts to embed the brand in local markets and cultures so that it has real local identity. (Weber Shandwick was hired by some American companies after the 2001 military operation in Afghanistan, when they faced boycotts in the Middle East.) We were hired by companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald's, two of the most iconic American brands around--and the most effective message was to remind people that they're really local companies. You know, the bottlers are locally owned, the franchisees are local. You're only hurting yourselves when you boycott them. So I think a lot of companies are responding to this by correctly pointing out their roots in local communities.

Q: How is media consolidation affecting the way you do business?

A: What's happening is that we're getting fractionalization on one end--that is, so many more channels that you can communicate through--and on the flip side of the coin we're getting this consolidation that's happening with big media companies. If we're smart about it, they can both be opportunities. The fractionalization just gives us more ability to target a clearer channel to get our message out. Consolidation helps us package together content that can then get leveraged through lots of different channels much more efficiently.