Speeches as Public Relations: Practical Convergences

Most texts on public relations neglect to discuss speeches, and vice versa.

To me, the two are strongly related – more obviously than theorists may consider. There are many theoretical similarities between speeches and various forms of public relations communication, and I will discuss these in another article, but I associate the two practically: speeches are given by significant people in a company, and therefore, are received by numerous publics, intended and unintended, in-house and outside the organisation. Speeches are planned and delivered for real and specific purposes, and they typically reflect high-level management’s thoughts on matters of company performance, strategy, and trajectory. Speeches address issues of relevance at the time they are made. Their content is dependably non-trivial. They are important, which makes them interesting, both to insiders and outsiders. Speeches can be recalled minutes, hours, days, or years after their delivery. Researchers, lay people, and journalists can easily correlate the content of speeches with the performance of the company. In other words, speeches reveal much about how the company is performing and how managers intend to steer or have steered the company and, by inference, with what results.

Furthermore, in the age of ubiquitous digital information and established public expectations around transparency, can anybody in any serious business genuinely believe that key internal communications are going to remain internal?

So, for these reasons, speeches must be considered a form of public relations, even if (or especially if) an external public is not the intended audience. Speeches will usually be published in, for example, annual reports, CEO statements, and similar. Typically, such documents are made accessible through the company website. They may be posted on social media or posted on a website, where they may be made difficult or easy to fiund (if finding a speech requires users to patiently click through a series of unintuitive links, the speech at the end of the trail is likely not the company’s best piece of communication). Online availability means that speechwriters must compose with the understanding that their work will be received by variously-motivated publics, scrutinised, and if found problematic, criticised and further publicised in an uncontrolled way.

Speechwriters have to be mindful that any company media could (so probably will) escape the walls of the organisation. Even if a speech is delivered in-house, behind closed doors, and not published in any company documents, there may still be somebody present recording that speech for their own purposes, whatever they might be. The spreading of information has never been easier.

I advocate that speechwriters compose carefully, but not defensively. They should be truthful, sensitive but forthright with their wordings, and use the speech to demonstrate the ethics and proper governance of the company they are working for. If a speech contains messages or sentiments that are likely to be problematic, then management should rethink what it is they want the speech to convey and indeed reflect on what they are doing that could trouble the wider world. Sometimes, speeches force companies to reconsider their actions. In this sense, the speech is a tool of self-scrutiny and, if necessary, course correction. If a leaked speech is likely to create problems, then the organisation is probably functioning unethically and that will need to change.

Excessive or inappropriate information must never find its way into any company publicity. Speeches should never reveal information that would undermine competitiveness if leaked. That is entirely the wrong type of transparency. No speech should contain any details that could be used by an outside party to reconstruct any aspect of the company’s success formula exactly. This is unlikely content in normal speeches, but complacency could lead to the accidental communication of legitimate corporate secrets. Even hints should be omitted.

And now the punchline.

Speeches can – and should – be used as a form of strategic, indirect PR. This is how the script is flipped. If the company assumes that its speeches will be circulated as video online, for example, it can use the format as another means of spreading the messages it wants the world to hear. Instead of sneaking out speeches that are overcautious, lukewarm, non-commital, concealed in a forest of links, or vapid to the point of redundancy,the company should produce bold speeches that address both a primary (internal) and secondary (external) audience and are designed to “go viral”. If the eagle-eyed media are waiting to swoop, then the prey they carry off should be loaded. The company must benefit from the eagerness of its watchers.

In the spirit of good speech writing, I will repeat the main message of this article: speeches should be used as public relations. Speechwriters must design their work for reception by people other than the primary audience. Care must be taken to express the company’s positives while not divulging proprietary information.