{"id":28609,"date":"2019-01-11T07:11:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T06:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ferrovial.com\/blog\/?p=28609"},"modified":"2025-12-12T11:48:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T10:48:37","slug":"politics-corporate-communications-strategic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ferrovial.com\/blog\/en\/2019\/01\/politics-corporate-communications-strategic\/","title":{"rendered":"From politics to corporate communications: why is Communications strategic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you aren’t a brand, you’re a commodity, or at least that’s what Philip Kotler says.<\/a><\/strong> It’s possible to sell information, tech services, pleasure, or designs for large transportation infrastructure. The key to doing it is going through an apparently simple process: communicating it. In a corporate ecosystem where areas like Strategy, Finance, and Innovation play a key role, it is of special interest to reconsider the following questions: what is the objective of Corporate Communications\u2019 role? How and why does it come about? In the following paragraphs, I\u2019ll summarize the origins and evolution of Communications, as well as why I consider Communications to be a strategic area for organizations.<\/p>\n

To talk about communications, let\u2019s talk about politics <\/strong><\/h2>\n

The origin of corporate communications was in the United States. Specifically, we have to go back to the end of the 19th<\/sup> century and the start of the 20th<\/sup> century following the new industrial society, as the report \u201cInvestigation about the Historical Evolution of Public Relations\u201d<\/a> (\u201cInvestigaci\u00f3n sobre la Evoluci\u00f3n Hist\u00f3rica de las Relaciones P\u00fablicas\u201d) recounts. The goal was basically the same as it is today: contributing to improving the image, positioning, and public profile of politicians and organizations, even though at that time public relations was discussed more than communications.<\/p>\n

We can find one of the first references to the profession in the early years of the 20th<\/sup> century from the desk of Ivy Ledbetter Lee<\/a><\/strong>, considered to be the \u201cfather of public relations\u201d who created the first office of Public Relations in New York in 1904.<\/p>\n

\"Ivy

Ivy Ledbetter Lee<\/p><\/div>\n

A Princeton graduate, he worked for the coal industry and advised the great oil magnate Rockefeller after a strike at one of his businesses, \u201cColorado Fuel & Iron Company.\u201d Another great pillar of this profession was Edward Bernays<\/a>,<\/strong> who applied the fundamentals of psychology to the development of public relations in the 1920s, and he came to advise public figures like Eisenhower and Reagan. Bernays \u2013 the author of what is considered to be the first book on public relations, \u201cCrystallizing Public Opinion,\u201d and a nephew of Sigmund Freud\u2019s \u2013 is considered to be one of the inventors of propaganda and publicity<\/a>. A third figure of relevance from the 1960s was Theodore Sorensen<\/a>,<\/strong> John F. Kennedy\u2019s speechwriter who coined, among other things, the well-known phrase, \u201cAsk not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n