Parallel to the changing business processes and management styles, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of Communication Management in today’s business world. This has been mainly due to the need to communicate with number of important audiences: customers, stockholders, the media, employees, banks, government agencies, and creditors and so on.
The traditional roles of a communicator included Journalism, Public Relations, Copy writing, Writing books etc but let me now take you through the specialized fields of today’s Strategic Communication Management.
With a degree in Communication Management, the professional opportunities are boundless. Unlike traditional communication degrees, which lead to specific jobs in particular industries, Communication Management students acquire a broad knowledge base and a comprehensive set of skills that are applicable across different types of organizations: large corporations, governments, educational, service, non-profit and charitable, entrepreneurial and small businesses.
Communication Management students have opportunities in following industries:
• Entertainment
• Medicine
• Public relations
• Higher education
• Travel and tourism
• Pharmaceutical
• Advertising
• Marketing
• Museums
• Publishing
• Professional sports
• Health and fitness
• Media consulting
• Real estate
Communication Management Roles:
A communication management student can perform one or more of the following role in an industaries.
Corporate Image and Identity Management: Corporate image is a personality of an organization. It involves a planned programme through which their achievements are recognized, its policies understood, its products appreciated and its shareholders, employees and customers satisfied.
Advertising: It promotes products, goods ad services of an organization. It aims to persuade in order to sell. It includes advertisements, advertorials, audio visuals, multimedia presentations, hoardings.
Media Relations: It is one of the primary techniques through which public relation activities can be achieved. It basically involves initiation of media coverage and supplying information to the media.
Crisis Management/Communications: It involves Prevention as well as preparation exercises to identify both likely and unlikely crises. (Eg: fire in the factory, Bhopal gas tragedy). It includes both crisis planning and response including well planned response team, with spokes person(s), manuals which outline guidelines during a crisis etc.
Financial PR/ Investor Relations: It involves communication with shareholders, financial institutions, investment analysts and the financial media in order to assist an organization in achieving its commercial aims. It includes advising in the area of ongoing investor relations which includes communication of results and financial news, annual reports and shareholder communication as well as media relations for public issues and GDR.
Employee/ Internal communications: It’s a process through which organization share information, build commitment and manage change. It involves assisting human resource function of an organization to ensure that communication with employees is planned and correctly manage to achieve enhanced motivation and performance.
Marketing Communications: It includes providing invaluable inputs and support to marketing department of a company at all stages of product life cycle. The various aspects are market research, branding and positioning, packaging, marketing education, dealer relations, sales promotions, sponsorships and test marketing.
Personality Marketing: This includes a planned process of packaging and promotion exercise for marketing an individual- election campaigns, film stars, cricketers all avail such services. This is a very recent field and has developed tremendously in India and abroad in the last decade.
Event Management: This includes planning and managing events such as customers’ meet, dealers meet, cricket matches, music shows, fashion show etc. for an organization.
Electronic Communications: A relatively new area inspired by the technological boom includes expertise (as content strategist, web marketing etc.) in the use of electronic media such as internet, intranet and extranets.
Analysis and Research: This is a backbone of all above activities and includes design communication audits, identity structures, corporate brand valuation, tracking and understanding the changes/trends etc.
The days of isolationism are over, as the stereotypes are falling, the organizations are realizing that communication function is an essential element in solving business problems and if integrated with business processes can significantly impact the bottom line.
Author: Mona Gupta (New Delhi).