Disrupting the Lobbying Industry

Last year when I left eBay after 8 years as its Government Relations Head for Asia Pacific, I decided to write a series of blog-posts on how to do government relations. A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some online research and came across a video of Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick giving an interview at Code Conference last May where he said,

“We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an asshole named Taxi,” Kalanick said. “Nobody likes him, he’s not a nice character, but he’s so woven into the political machinery and fabric that a lot of people owe him favors.” http://goo.gl/n1sgBd

Uber is by now quite well-known for disrupting the taxi industries in many cities. I dare say that with this one short sentence, Travis is also disrupting how we go about doing government relations.

The first disruptive change Travis has introduced is, IMHO, in our mindset when doing government relations. We must now think longer-term. It’s a campaign. Not a one-off event.

It’s crazy to think there are quick-wins, low-hanging fruits, short-term fixes when embarking on a process to drive changes in laws, regulations or policies. This kind of opportunistic, transactional and short-term thinking will just lead to failures and disappointments.

Hilary Clinton, Jeb Bush and a whole bunch of US Presidential hopefuls are already starting their campaign now and the next election is not until November 2016! Here in Singapore, the next General Election doesn’t even have to be held till January 2017, but all the parties have already started jostling for voters’ attention.

So, the point is, if we think about government relations programs just like political campaigns, we will put in place well thought-out and well-resourced plans to do battles with our opponents and win over the stakeholders. We will also be prepared to engage in communications warfare that will last for quite a bit of time. And there must be appetite for delays, setbacks and long waits before we can see the end of the campaign.

Sounds simple right? But you will be amazed how many times I have been asked to set up a meeting with the “big guy”, the “ultimate decision-maker” or the “guy who really calls the shot” in the hope that with that one meeting, all the regulatory problems would be solved overnight. If I get a penny for every one of these idiotic requests I get over the last 2 decades I have been lobbying governments, I will be a millionaire at least 3 times over.

To make sure our candidate emerges as the winner of this fight, we must come up with a powerful, compelling and clear storyline. And the story must be backed up by solid data. Just like a candidate running for public office must come up with a clear manifesto for himself or herself.

Fluff-pieces will not fly any more. Just as meaningless spins will no longer work. We now have clear battle lines being drawn. There is our candidate. And there is our opponent (hopefully, you won’t call your opponent “a##hole” in a public setting as Travis has done.)

In order to come up with a compelling narrative, it is important to know our company or our client’s company really well. For example, who founded the company? When, why and how was it founded? What is the business model? What are the business priorities? What are the strengths and where are the weaknesses? What the threats and what are the opportunities? What are the top 3 existing markets? What are the top 3 emerging markets? What are the current products? What are the upcoming new products? What are the legal or policy impediments which stand in the way of our company’s expansion? What are some of the recommendations we have for those those outdated and unsuitable laws and policies?

And since we are in a political campaign, we also need to know our opponent inside-out. For Uber, their opponent is the taxi industry. It could be a company instead of an entire industry. But in either case, we have to know our enemy really, really well if we want to totally crush them with our campaign. Basically, the same set of questions we have just asked about ourselves would have to be asked in relation to the opponent.

From this deep understanding of both our company and the opponent, we can then develop a storyline which is most compelling for the community and ultimately, the government. And since the government is a critical stakeholder in our success or failure, we will also need to examine the government’s priorities and concerns. We will therefore ask some of the same questions we have asked about our company and the opponent. In other words, what are the top 3 government priorities? Is it jobs? Is it economic growth? Is it sustainability? Is it social equality? Is it safety and security? Or is it a combination of all of the above priorities. We must find some alignments between our priorities and those of the government in order to develop a storyline which will resonate with the government. Our demands must align with their policy goals. Only if we can find these win-wins do we have a chance of convincing the government to see things our way.

When we start thinking of a government relations program as a campaign, it follows that there must be clarity and alignment on the end-result. What does success really look like? On May 1, 2003, President George W Bush went on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to announce “Mission Accomplished”. But what was actually accomplished? The war in Iraq? Overthrow of Saddam Hussein? Liberation of Iraq? What? Did you know that close to 4,500 American soldiers lost their lives in the Iraq War and 97% of them died after this speech by George W Bush? And that the war actually carried on for another 9 years before ending on December 18, 2011?

So, my point is we need to have a clear alignment with our clients as to what exactly does success look like? And while you are at it, make sure you also agree on timeline and the quantifiable ways to measure success.

You can break down the end-goal into smaller bite-size milestones to track your progress. But please have a clear end-goal written down and preferably framed up so that if the end-goal is changed, we can all have an honest conversation about it.

The last thing needed to ensure a successful campagin is that we must have an agreed budget. You cannot do anything without money. To run a political campaign, you need a lot of money. Same goes for a sustained government relations program. Money talks and b.s walks.

The second takeaway I want to draw from the comparison with political campaign is that just like political candidates covering all the bases on their campaign trails, we need to roll out a communication campaign which is multi-channel to reach all our relevant stakeholders.

It’s no longer sufficient for us to draft a press release, email it to our buddies in the traditional media outlets and think that’s it. You need to do more. A lot more.

Whether your client is a company, an NGO or a government, there are people and organizations in its circle of influencer that will need convincing. Those who are friendly or sitting on the fence must be engaged, informed and convinced to become your allies, champions, advocates and supporters. Just like a politician needs grassroots members to support them, we will need to figure out who are the people who can potentially be our supporters.

Typically, we will consider these people our clients’ stakeholders:

• customers;
• partners;
• suppliers;
• vendors or collaborators;
• employees (present and past);
• investors and shareholders;
• academics interested in this industry;
• bloggers and online influencers who are likewise interested;
• government regulators;
• lawmakers and politicians;
• competitors (which is different from their opponent). These are companies which are doing the same thing as your client. All these companies have a common opponent – the incumbent that is being disrupted – so potentially, they can work with your client to kill off the common opponent.

Now that we have identified your relevant stakeholders, we will have to decide on the ways we communicate with them. To do so, we must create an environment of surround sound of our story. We want to create the surround sound to completely envelope our stakeholders so that they will not be able to avoid hearing our story.

So, for example, as you are preparing to talk to the regulators directly, you should at the same time also be using a whole other range of channels to get your message across and put pressure on the government.

You can host or participate in public forums to talk about your value propositions and why governments should change their laws and policies to allow your company to operate freely.

In addition, you can publish your own research, share some of your company’s operation and business data and get well-known academics to write articles supporting their company.

And it is important to have as many people trained as possible to deliver the same compelling message to all our audience. Just like a political candidate will hit the campaign trail and give a lot of campaign speeches, you and your clients will need to send their people on different lecture circuits to win over as many supporters as possible. But we cannot just rely on 1 spokesperson. If you have more than 1 persons going out there to consistently and forcefully push your case, chances are the surround sound effect will be much stronger.

Nothing tells a better story than a bit of “show and tell”. So, we always work with clients to organize a tour of their corporate headquarters, manufacturing facilities, customer support centers or logistics centers to give important stakeholders the all- important “behind the scene look”. It is very powerful. So, to the extent we can host any high-level visits by relevant stakeholders, that will be great.

Don’t forget to also slide in your public policy messages in your marketing campaigns too. Marketing events are great for a bit of covert messaging of our policy goals because they are highlighting a business’ value proposition. So, when you are saying “my product is great because it gives you X benefits”, it does not take much of a leap to add a call to action to customers to push their government to make the products widely available.

There is also the power of corporate social responsibility programs. They are very useful way for you to get close to the governments, NGOs, civil society and the community at large. If it is something which will find resonance with your government audience or the community at large, it is worth doing as a CSR initiative. But make sure we have a solid communication plan behind the CSR initiative.

The last thing you need to know about a multi-channel approach to communication is the importance of social media.

It’s rather obvious now but it bears repeating that if you want to have an effective communication program these days, you must build an online presence. So, have a blog, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and so on and so on.

But it’s not enough to build all these social media presence. We must work to keep it fresh. You must be responsive. And you must have someone monitoring everything that gets commented, shared, liked, reposted, retweeted.

And that brings me to my last takeaway from Travis’ comments about being in a political campaign. Just like in a political campaign, when it comes to a communication campaign, you have to play to win. The end-game for any government relations program must be to get your way. Your candidate, or rather your client, must win the popular vote to force a change in the status quo. This is really the ultimate test of everything you have done earlier to win the hearts and minds for your client. If you have done a good job in your campaigning, you will now get the votes.

After months of building up that surround sound through speeches, social media posts, press interviews, marketing events, charity drives, meetings with regulators and politicians, you should be ready to launch an online petition campaign to get your customers (existing and potential) to rally behind your cause. There are many online tools to launch such campaigns. It could even be as simple as a Facebook posting asking supporters to “Like”, “Comment” and “Share”. Then, all those sharing, retweets, posts, pins and positive comments can be collated and shared with all the politicians and regulators that were involved in deciding the fate of your client.

I must hasten to add that this is not easy. You and your client must have invested a lot of time and efforts to educate, engage and excite your customers and the broader community before you can launch something like this petition. This is a call to action. You must be authentic and you must have a winning message before you can pull this off.

Which is why when your client makes a mistake, please apologise right away. Without any qualification. And promise to do better from now on. This is important in any crisis situation. The lawyers will tell you not to apologize. Some of the business leaders may not want to apologise.

Do the right thing and maybe, just maybe your candidate will win the campaign.