Our July 16 speaker, Shirlee Clark, is director of Corporate Communications for FedEx Corporation, a $22 billion global transportation and logistics company. She is responsible for corporate-wide communications, public relations and media relations for FedEx Corporation.

Shirlee's presentation focused on building and maintaining a positive reputation for your organization. She stressed the importance of communications in this process. She suggested that communications departments develop a mission statement to keep them focused on their goals and objectives.

Shirlee defined Brand versus Reputation. Brand is what a company delivers to the market place. Reputation is about the actions that bring a brand to life. She offered a model that showed the link between business goals and reputation. She stressed the fact that reputation management directly affects the bottom line and daily operations (no matter what your organization does). Her department is able to show the value of reputation management using hard data from an independent polling source.

Shirlee offered an overview of FedEx showing their progression from a small company with few assets into a multi-billion industry giant. She showed how key messages had changed over the years to meet the company's growing needs, but remained focused on the essence of their business. She talked about the challenges communications faced during the transition years – both internally and externally. Following several acquisitions, they had to "validate" the "new" FedEx to internal and external audiences. Then they had to build credibility and confidence.

She talked about the six key dimensions of reputation – emotional appeal, products and services, vision and leadership, workplace environment, financial performance and social responsibility. Shirlee stressed the need for ongoing measurement of business and communications outcomes. She briefly discussed the role of communications in overall business.

She talked about how communicators have spent years trying to get a seat at the decision table, but often then do not bring value to the table. Communicators need to do both. –Trudy C. Barthels

Shirlee Clark