Why won’t a better graph earn communications a seat at the table?

Nik
In my experience, Measurement should be and is about improving the result.

If someone doesn’t feel that you’re credible as part of the business, then numbers are unlikely to change that.

He recruited me by walking up to me one day and saying, you’d be good at PR. Why don’t you come and join my team? I said, I’ve never worked in PR. And he said, that doesn’t matter. That’s fine. I can teach you that.

A lot of organisations talk about it, but actually in Honda, I have seen it happen.

Tony
Welcome to PR in the real world with me Tony Garner. Someone said to my guest recently that communications will get its seat at the table the day it takes the share of the downside risk. That’s the thought that’s kind of struck with him. Nick Pearson runs corporate communications and external affairs across Europe for Honda.

You started out in pricing and dealerships and we’ll get to all that stuff later. But this is about earning a place in the room and measurement and belief in that seat at the table. So welcome, Nick.

Nik
Thanks for having me, Tony.

Tony
So in the industry, we’ve all spent years talking about we deserve a seat at the table and so on. What’s your view on that?

Nik
I think it really is important first of all to say well what exactly do we mean by the top table? I think for me, my experience is that truly big decisions are made by a relatively small group of people. It might be the CEO, and a few members of the exec suite, so it could be two or three or four people. I think my view is where communications can have its best impact is making sure that we’re consulted before the decision is taken and solidified. That means we can maybe modify or give a view on some details of that decision, but we’re not necessarily crucial to the main thrust or the genesis of the decision itself. And I think ultimately for me, our best role as communications people is to be an enabler, which is maximising the organisational benefit or invariably minimising the risk. Talking about risk, I mean, that quote at the top of the programme about downside risk, where did that come from and what did it make you think?

Yeah, so this was a conversation I was having with someone on LinkedIn recently, and it hit home for me because I think…

In certain situations, and I wouldn’t say that this is the case across all communications, but there’s not always a strong sense in communications of what is really at stake. So businesses need to make decisions and sometimes they’re really difficult ones, and sometimes they look on the surface downright crazy. But I think, in order to share in that downside, we really need to understand why those decisions are being made.

In a lot of the literature around communications and PR generally, we talk about this idea of us as the boundary spanner. So we sit in the organisation, but we’re always giving a view from the outside. And sometimes that role can mean that we tend to quickly revert to, well, this is what the outside will think about this decision. And stressing the impact and maybe getting really passionate about what the outside will have to say. But we have to always remind ourselves that we’re there to have that balance and ultimately to enable the business to continue and maximise the benefit from it or like I say, minimise the risk.

Tony
It’s interesting as well. mean, do you think we’re equipped as an industry to justify a seat at the table as well? Do we know enough about what it takes to run a huge corporate organisation like the one you’re involved in?

Nik
Yeah, I think that’s…

I mean, you could use some perhaps shorthand there to say, well, how many communications specialists and experts get to the very, very top echelons of big corporations? And whilst it’s not unheard of, there are some examples I can think of in the auto industry of, wouldn’t necessarily say they’re PR people, but certainly communications and marketing people who have reached the very top echelons of their business. One that comes to mind is Luca de Mayo, who was recently the outgoing CEO of Renault, is someone who’s worked in marketing across a number of different players within the industry, and now he’s gone off to run Gucci, which is definitely a left turn from working for a French car manufacturer. But it is quite rare, let’s be honest, that comms people get to the very top echelon. So the reality is that it would bear out that perhaps we don’t know enough.

And it is true to say that if you’re coming from a sales or in operations or even a finance part of the business, you tend to have a real understanding of the nuts and bolts of exactly how this business makes money. And I think that’s a gap in our experience as an industry that we need to try and fill. In my experience, I’ve had some experience in the commercial side of the business before I worked in communications, and I’ve always found that really, really valuable for me.

Tony
Just let’s drill into that a little bit more, the value of that. Because a lot of people in our industry, I mean, my background, I worked in journalism for 15 years, then worked in PR for the last 25. But you’ve had a kind of a more different approach to the industry. And what value do you think that might bring?

Nik
Yeah, so I started in, well, before I started in automotive, I worked in FMCG for a small time working for Unilever. But when I landed at Toyota in the early part of my career, I had some really good experiences working with dealerships, having a sales number to deliver with those dealerships. I worked on product planning, which is where you spec the car, you price the car, you work across the business to launch the car. And I think what that really helped me to understand, particularly in an industry like automobile where we’re actually a wholesale business but the most important person is still the end user, but we have to go through the dealerships, is to understand the state of mind and what’s important to those people who are ultimately running their own, these days actually, very big businesses, but when I was doing it it tended to be relatively small to medium-sized enterprises. So I think what it’s really given me is it’s given me a different perspective, and it’s also given me a different language set to use in the organisation. I can talk from a communications perspective but I can also talk from a commercial perspective and I think that balance is a really, I found that really useful in my career.

That’s not to say that that’s the key or that’s the answer, but that’s my experience, it’s just one pathway that’s perhaps a bit more uncommon.

Tony
It is, guess. We always say to the people who work with us, every opportunity you can get, get into a business, walk around the production line, find out what they do in all those different offices, speak to as many different people as you can to build up that kind of understanding beyond the contact that you might have.

Comms or marketing to really kind of get to grips with it. And even then you’re only kind of scratching at the surface, aren’t you? Let’s

Nik
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Tony
Let’s change gear and talk measurement because it was through our kind of mutual connections, Steph Bridgman, that we hooked up. So let’s talk about measurement. You said something on our kind of call to set this up that you can show somebody as many numbers as you like.

But you can’t use data to change what fundamentally they believe about communications. So what is measurement for in your opinion?

Nik
I think personally, in my experience, Measurement should be and is about improving the result. So it’s maximising the impact of what we do. And that’s my overall view. So as an industry, we talk, but we do talk a lot about using measurement to demonstrate our credibility. And it goes back to that seat at the top table type discussion where we have the numbers, have the, Steph and I talk about, we have the fanciest graphs. know, we have,

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
You know, we have the graphs that make us look really good, but if someone doesn’t feel that you’re credible as a part of the business, then numbers are unlikely to change that. And I think that credibility really comes from not necessarily measurement itself, but it’s how you use the measurement to develop good judgment and an understanding of the environment. So I think that is my view. When I said that, it doesn’t really change if you haven’t got that rapport and credibility in terms of this person in the business thinks you’re a good judge or you have a good viewpoint or you’re a good practitioner, then the numbers are not necessarily going to change that point of view. So it’s how you use them for me.

Tony
So you’ve built evaluation programs that pull things together. What are you looking for and what are you kind of looking to produce and what’s worked well for you in that? The other listeners might be able to take from your experience.

Nik
Yes, first of all maybe a bit of background. I’ve worked on media measurement and evaluation throughout my career in PR and comms, first of all at Toyota and then laterally at Honda and I think I’ve got a good understanding of that sector.

of suppliers and it’s moved forward in a number of ways over last few years. First of all, the Amex evaluation framework was a really important step forward in terms of taking it from pure output metrics like coverage levels through to really stressing the focus on outcomes and an impact, an organisational impact. think that for me, when I first started to understand what Amex would do,

doing that made a lot of sense and was really logical to me. And in 2020, I started to develop a pan-European measurement program in my role in Honda, which looks across 16 countries for two parts of the business. And ultimately, think whilst that’s important that we have the metrics in place, I think the two other key things for me are: how comfortable are your teams with working with these types of metrics?

Because for a lot of particularly frontline PR comms people, they’ve managed to maybe not have that in there. They’ve not necessarily needed to justify themselves in that way in the past. They’ve just sort of waved the coverage in front of somebody’s face and gone, this is great, isn’t it? That’s fine. But I think educating and developing the teams, and that’s the work we’ve done over the past four or so years at Honda. When you’re then looking further up the organisation towards our exec teams and the like, yes we need visualisation, need graphs, need bar charts, we need part charts, that kind of thing, but I think the industry gets a bit too focused on that and ultimately the key that what an exec needs can usually be captured on one page which is what’s happening, so what, so what do we do now, why do we need to do it now and what going to get and you can usually get that into one page.

This focus, I think, from the measurement industry in terms of, well, here’s the dashboard, here’s the portal, you can slice and dice the data. You can slice and dice the data yourself, which is always a, I always find myself smiling at that point, because I’m like, well, when would I have time to do that? But really, it’s, want, I very much sit on the side of the debate that stresses the importance of judgement. And I think the conversations…

Tony
Right.

Nik
I’ve had with Steph in the past have talked about very much the importance of judgement and acumen in terms of what you’re recommending.

Tony
Let’s look at that a little bit more then. What do you mean by judgment?

Nik
I think it comes back to that understanding of the commercial environment that you’re sitting within. So we’ve all delivered reports that say there was this much coverage, it gave you this much reach, you know, the tonality was X, Y, Z, the message transmission was Z. I think we’ve done some work recently, we’ve had some, let’s say, some challenging global announcements recently that we’ve gone through that have perhaps not been front page news here in Europe, but certainly in America and Japan have been significant announcements. And we wanted to understand here in Europe what was the kind of echo impact that we were seeing. And yes, we ran the numbers and we looked at the data in depth, but ultimately it was, okay, so what are we going to do about it here in Europe to ensure that we are pushing back against this kind of prevailing narrative that is developing about our organisation? And therefore, what is our judgment in terms of what we should do, how should we use our spokespeople, what activities should we do, and what are we going to get as a result of those activities. So I think that’s the step on from what we perhaps could have done in the past, which is to say, yes, there’s been a lot of coverage, most of it’s terrible. There you go.

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
We need to move on to, and particularly in a multinational or a global story like that, where actually we’ve not got necessarily an awful lot of levers to change the tone of the message, but it is affecting us, what can we do?

Tony
And so that’s a much more kind of interesting use of looking at the data, but looking at your impact on storytelling. How do you then translate that into something that’s useful for the people sat around the top table? What, know, presumably they haven’t got time to kind of slice and dice the data, right? They want something quick and intelligent.

Nik
Yeah, I think actually that’s where the practitioner’s acumen comes in. So you understand, okay, what level and what appetite does your exec have? What time can they support you with? And then it’s about taking them through a structured process to ensure that you get down to the message. So I’m a big fan and user of things like very basic formats like message house to brief my exec to ensure that they are adequately prepared for any work that we do. But then, importantly, it’s that next step. know, once you get to that point where you, you we did a recently, we did an exec media round at Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
Very hot day, trying to do interviews in the middle of a garden party is a challenge. But we spent the day engaging with media. And I think at the end of it, you know, his very experience of having that- when I’m talking about him, I’m talking about my CEO,

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
His experience of that, he’d not done much of that spokesperson work before, so he felt really energised and positive by, you know, obviously the joust that he was having with the media, and that he felt like he contributed to pushing back against the countervailing narrative. So that’s one thing, so you’ve then bought a bit of ally shit from them, but then the important next step would be, and this is what we’re going through now, is, all let’s look at the coverage, which messages landed, how good did the message house work, did we brief him well enough and then what do we do next so it becomes then an iterative process so you know it’s not just about the day itself you know wipe the brow and go thank God that that didn’t go badly what do we…

Tony
Yeah. Yeah, nothing.

Nik
Do what do we do next because it’s it’s a never-ending it’s a never-ending process

Tony
Yeah, it’s interesting. You’re not saying measurement isn’t a useful tool, but you’re actually saying it’s a really valuable thing, but you’ve got to know how to plug it into your organisation.

Nik
Yeah, and I don’t necessarily want to see this as a criticism of the suppliers that we use or anybody else uses. I think there are some fantastic suppliers out there, but there is this sort of two routes in the industry between, okay, what are they selling?

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
One is it’s a service, it’s a system, it’s all focused on, you know, particularly recently, how do we automate it? How do we make it as easy to use? Kind of a license-based approach. How much can you do yourself? You know, agentic AI front ends, things like that, which is great and has its place. And particularly in larger organisations where these practitioners at the frontline do go through training and development.

But equally, I find it much more useful to look at the other route, which is as a person who’s gone through all the data, it’s really, really interesting, but has teased out these three or four key things, and this is what we’re going to do about it. And then you sit between the measurement specialist and the practitioner to really arrive at this is the recommendation. And then it comes down to your credibility and the report that you’ve built with the people that you’re engaging with to ensure they deliver as well.

Tony
So I guess it’s almost at that first engagement level that you’ve got to kind of like help the measurement specialist understand what you’re trying to get out of this. What good looks like for you might not necessarily be what they’re always selling day in, day out.

Nik
And I think maybe just to add to that, I think that is something- suppliers, not just in measurement but generally; I work in the automobile industry.

There are many suppliers who will come in and say, well, we do this for Ford, or we do this for Toyota, or we do this for Hyundai. You’re like, yeah, but actually my business is very, very different from theirs, or our business is very different. Not least of all, the culture is very different. So don’t assume just because it’s a car brand or it’s FMCG, or it’s defence or whatever that they’re exactly the same because they, you know, they are wildly different in the way that they go to market. Their operating style as a business.

Tony
I’m interested in that. What makes your culture different? What’s your business different? So you’ve moved from Toyota to Honda with the differences there or is it different just because of it’s Japanese or what?

Nik
That’s the favourite question of my Japanese colleagues. You used to work at Toyota, how is it different? And they are,

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
Even though they are Japanese industries, sorry, competitors,

Tony
Yes.

Nik
They are actually very different. And I think from my now 11 years working with Honda, Honda is a very passionate business.

And really focuses on the quality of its engineering and that’s very central to its core as an engineering business. The big contrast between Honda and Toyota is course, that Toyota is a car manufacturer. Honda has a much wider portfolio of businesses, auto, motorcycle, marine, power products, etc. which gives it a much wider viewpoint on society to be honest and the challenges that society is going through.

So I enjoyed my time with both brands, but the culture is quite different. It’s hard to capture in one word; I’m possibly without offending one or the other, but I think I’ll probably say Honda’s a more entrepreneurial environment, a more passionate, perhaps more human environment, whereas Toyota is very structured and clear.

Sometimes that clarity you don’t get at Honda. It can be a bit different, but both have been super rich experiences in my career.

Tony
And do you cover that broad portfolio or just concentrate on the motor side of things?

Nik
Yeah, so in my role, I work at corporate level, so group level, so above the verticals. In the past, I have looked after product PR and comms for automobile and motorcycle. And so I’ve got a bit of experience of being in the verticals, but then now in the last six, nine months, sitting slightly apart from it and focusing more on the overall corporate message that we have.

Tony
Nice. That overview must be fascinating then because you know, I can’t imagine that, you know, Marine and Auto and, you know, even Formula One, it’s just the different worlds, aren’t they?

Nik
Yeah, think Honda is astounding in its breadth as an organisation.

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
But even within that, I think, I don’t have a comparison point here, but other multi-product businesses.

Perhaps don’t necessarily have the strength of culture within each division as much as Honda does. think the auto business in Honda feels quite different to the motorcycle business and not just because of the positioning in the market and the products that they sell but the cultures are slightly different.

And the same with power products and marine and what have you. But there is a kind of fundamental layer that is common amongst them all, which is this kind of passion and commitment to the quality of our engineering.

Tony
Let’s change things up and talk about leadership and culture and what your years in both have taught you and how you try and run your teams. you know, how do you go about building a team?

Nik
I had a mentor when I was working at Toyota, he was my boss. He recruited me by walking up to me one day and saying, you’d be good at PR. Why don’t you come and join my team? I said, I’ve never worked in PR. And he said, that doesn’t matter. That’s fine. I can teach you that. So I think I have always taken from that, talking to him since, it’s about character first, I think, and skill second.

And actually, I think, there’s a lot I’ve taken from my work with dealerships. So when you’re facing off to a dealership, there’s quite a lot of similarities to dealing with journalists, to be honest, in the way that you have to do it. And actually, when I started to talk to my peers in other parts of the business, HR is another good example. Actually, there is a common theme in terms of it’s actually just about people and how you interact and build rapport with people, whether it’s HR or comms.

Tony
That’s interesting. So what was it about you and the way you work that he thought he could mould this person into?

Nik
The honour that we have in working in such an interesting industry. You know, everybody has a point of view on cars because everybody invariably drives one or at least has someone that they know in their lives and they are more than machines, is, you know, they do have or at least I believe they do have a soul. And it says a lot about you, you know, particularly in the UK, the car you drive is part of your make-up as a person.

And I think we bonded over that kind of position alongside a fascination with historic motorsport. And I think we got on well and we built a good rapport. And I think that’s what stood me in good stead is I built a good rapport. And fundamentally what’s PR about? It’s about building relationships.

Tony
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s true. That’s another lesson I try and hammer home here that, you know, that’s the single most important thing you’re doing here is creating relationships and creating relationships for our clients as well. Tell me about the team building then. How does that translate into like the culture that you try and build with the teams that you create?

Nik
Hopefully it comes across during this interview. Informality works quite well for me. I’m not a very formal person. Informality works for me and I find that in my team that whilst they, hopefully, trust me as a leader, I feel that I can know them as individual people. So I’m not one apart from them. I’m part of the wider group.

What’s been really important for me, particularly since I took on this role a couple of years ago, I’ve been working on a multinational basis. So what’s been important for me is about building a multinational community of practitioners. So I think historically, in the past, they sat in their little silo within their country, and actually they were relatively sealed off from other people who did what they did. So I think it’s important to break down those silos.

And get them working with other practitioners in other markets. And some of the best things we did over the last couple of years is that community building aspect. And a key part of that is skill development. So we did a lot on measurement. We did a lot on the importance of personal branding. So developing yourself as an ambassador for the brand, alongside deepening their knowledge of the corporate position that Honda was taking. Globally around things such as sustainability and, very importantly, safety.

Tony
Yeah, that’s really fascinating. We work with a multinational

Nik
Okay.

Tony
That brings everybody together under one roof, that, know, Italians, Spanish, Germans, UK, and that brings challenge as well, though.

It’s a great melting pot of cultures, but there’s challenge too. Have you found that yourself?

Nik
Very much so. So I work in a European organisation so we have people from all countries across the region.

And of course we also have the Japanese factor so we have a number of expats from Japan. But that was one of the things that drew me to the role in the first place. So I’d worked in a UK-heavy organisation when I was at Toyota and the next step for me was to get that European experience. I think one of the watch-outs I’ve always had…that I’ve experienced is, particularly in what we do, it’s quite defined by kind of national culture.

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
working with media in the UK is very different to Germany, to Italy, to Spain, to France, to Switzerland, to the Benelux or Nordics. They all have a different style. And what you can get away with or what you can do in one country is very different from the other. And I think when you look at that internally as well those kind of national I won’t call them stereotypes, but those kind of national styles you do see coming out and

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
It’s easy I think, because we have the comfort of English as a kind of the language of business we can kind of very easily snap to, well, what works here works everywhere, and it really doesn’t and I think that’s it’s about being humble to understand actually you’re going to need to completely change this for Italy or another market. Turkey, I mean, I had some recent experiences working in Turkey and a very very different way of working in terms of media and communication to here.

Tony
You talk about empowerment and allowing your teams to grow and thrive. That sets bit of bravery on your part as well, because ultimately you’re the one who has to face the CEO at end of the day if things don’t go well. How do you strike that balance?

Nik
Yeah.

I’m not necessarily sure it will work in every single business, but Honda has a really good learning culture.

It’s not necessarily about what goes wrong and whose fault it is. It’s what do we learn from what happened because in everything there’s good and bad. So there was these good bits, but there were these not-so-good bits. What do we do about those for next time? And then we move on to the next thing. We don’t necessarily have a kind of finger pointing culture. Now that’s not necessarily the case in every business or indeed every business is slightly different. But within that environment, I think I’ve been able to foster a culture within my team of them knowing that they are empowered to do something and I will stand behind them and if it goes wrong or it doesn’t work that’s okay we’ll look at it and see what we need to change and also ultimately we have to have a bit of humility in what we do. Luckily, we’re not brain surgeons, we’re not rocket scientists. The pound will not fall because we’ve changed

a semicolon and a press release, right? Ultimately, we’ve got to find what our level is, and is it life or death? It’s important, but is it life or death? If we make a mistake, no. And then giving that freedom to breathe to your people, invariably they grow and they’re able to take on that responsibility much more easily.

Tony
That’s interesting, how you share with the team. I’m also interested in how you speak truth to power then and give honest feedback where it’s needed sometimes. How does that work within that organisation and is it made easier or worse by the culture?

Nik
That is a good question. I think it’s not always easy. So I think if everybody had a kind of common playbook…

In terms of, okay, this is how we all operate, the way that I’ve just spoken about operates at certain levels or to certain levels of bravery, courageousness, depending upon the area of the business. So that’s my leadership style, but it’s not necessarily somebody else’s. And I think that can sometimes cause some conflict. But if we’re honest and realistic, is my experience at Honda different from anybody else’s in a big corporation? Not necessarily known. Different people have different standards, different expectations, and you’ve got to learn and understand that as you move around. It’s always a bit bumpy, but I think one of the really good pieces of our culture

which is this idea of we have something called WIGIA, which is very open, informal communication, regardless of your level. So one person who’s on the shop floor in a factory can say what they want to the CEO. And I think A lot of organisations talk about it, but actually in Honda, I have seen it happen.

Tony
Right.

Nik
And I think that working style keeps the seniors grounded.

Tony
Yeah.

Nik
but it also empowers those lower in the organisation to be able to say, yes, my voice is heard. Does it work perfectly? No, it doesn’t. Do you see it really having an impact in every single thing that we do? Not necessarily. And sometimes, going back to the point at the beginning, the business has to make decisions that people lower in the organisation will say, well, why are you doing that? That’s inexplicable. But…

Then it’s comms role to say, okay, this is how we can explain it. This is what we can tell you at this point in time. We want to hear your feedback. We want to hear your questions. And part of my role is internal communications. And that’s been a really interesting experience for me in an organisation such as Honda.

Tony
What do you love most about working there?

Nik
I think the team, the people are really important to me. I love the team that I’ve built up around myself within the role that I’ve been doing over the last few years. That’s really important to me. But also I think…

I’ve never really worked in an organisation where the product hasn’t excited me. And I can walk into a room and see some friends or meet somebody new and say, what do you do? say, work for Honda and they go, right. Not from a point of view of saying they’re impressed, but just in a, well, you’re to have a point of view on that because it’s interesting in its cars or it has an impact on your life, which perhaps, you know, delivering.

Not trying to not be disparaging about it. Delivering solutions for something in IT, people don’t actually understand what that is. Whereas a car or a bike or an outboard, everybody tends to say something like, my dad had a Jazz or my uncle’s had a lawnmower for 25 years and it’s a Honda or whatever.

Tony
I have very happy memories of my Honda Civic. When I first handed the keys to that. was like my one happy day.

Nik
I’ll have to get you sorted for a new one.

Tony
And just to kind of wrap things up, mean, obviously you got tapped on the shoulder and told PR’s the way my son, but what’s the best piece of advice that you had been given over the years or one mantra that you go back to time and again, that stood the test of time?

Nik
think the point about character first, especially when you’re recruiting, I think, know, does this person, can you see yourselves working with them? Do they build rapport in the right way? I think that’s a big piece of advice that I’ve always held close to my heart. And I think the other…

kind of key piece from a leadership point of view is, I think, trust your people. So I had a previous colleague who talked about it’s his name above the door and that would sometimes lead to kind of too much oversight of a piece of work or whatever, in my opinion. But I was always kind of the yang to that, which is, OK, let people

experience the success and the failure of what they’re doing and invariably they’ll sort themselves out over time and because let’s be honest what we do you know we’re not saving lives we are we are providing outstanding engineering products to people to make them happy in their lives and that’s a really positive thing but

Hopefully it’s not so serious that people get choked up with being so nervous about working in Honda. So I want to let them be free, express themselves and learn from their mistakes over time.

Tony
Excellent, well you’ve certainly expressed yourself with us today and thank you for living through those technical gremlins that our

Nik
No problem.

Tony
producer Max will make sure that the listener doesn’t have to worry about. Thanks again Nick and hopefully we’ll see each other up at the Reebok when you’re next up in town. Excellent,

Nik
Yes, I still call it the rebound. That’s true. See you then.

Tony
cheers now, bye.

Nik
Cheers. Bye bye.