How To Nail Your Rebrand

Shahar: Welcome to the first series of “Always On”. That’s the podcast that dives deep into the art and science of brand and reputation and how you can protect them in this complex, today’s complex and crisis-ridden world. 

And we have a special guest with us today. Very excited to have Médard Schoenmaeckers, he is the chief communication officer of Boehringer Ingelheim. Boehringer Ingelheim is a global leader in human pharma and animal health based in Germany. So, welcome, Médard.  

Médard: Thank you, Shahar. Very good to be here. Good to see you again. 

Shahar: Yeah, you too, and I hope I didn’t mispronounce either your name or the company’s name, because both of them are a bit of a mouthful.  

Médard: Both of them are a bit of a mouthful and both listen to all exotic variations. I mean, we live in a global world with so many languages, so we take everything. 

Shahar: So it’s great to have you here, and I really want to start by, for the sake of the listeners also, just hearing a little bit about yourself. Tell us about who you are, how you describe yourself when you’re at a bar meeting somebody. How do you introduce yourself?  

Médard: Well, that would depend on who I meet at the bar, but let’s keep it strictly professional. So, I’m Dutch by birth. I’m, I think, a European at heart, and I’m a global citizen when it comes to our profession. But also when I travel, which I like to do as as a hobby, so to say. But I spent about 40 percent of my life and most of my career in other countries than my original country, the Netherlands. 

We’ve lived in four countries, actually in Switzerland, we lived twice. And currently live in Germany, and we is the family, so my wife and my son. My daughter not, she’s already a third-year university student in the Netherlands, so she’s abroad. But we currently live in Germany, and I’m leading corporate affairs for Boehringer Ingelheim, indeed a pharmaceuticals company. 

I haven’t always been a pharma. I spent about half my life in the financial sector and the other half of my life in life sciences. So two very different sectors. We may get to that, but also sectors with very, very distinct parallels, you could say.  

Shahar: So tell us a bit… so you’ve spent many years in the field of communications and I’m assuming that you like being a communicator because you have done it for so many years. But tell us a bit about that. Why did you choose it to begin with?  

Médard: That’s a funny question, because I don’t think I chose communications. I think communications chose me. Yes, yes, yes. And that’s really true. It’s not a joke because I was in banking, actually, not as a communicator, but as a banker. I worked in investment banking at the time, in London, for a Dutch bank. 

I spent my time in the City, and at some point I got a call out of the blue from a headhunter who asked me whether I was interested in a career in PR. And I kid you not, I didn’t even know what PR stood for, but I was curious, right? I mean, this sounded like, whoa, this is something I have no idea what we’re talking about. So I was curious and I decided to give them some time. 

And, well, that was, at hindsight, a very good, a very good thing to do because that little bit of time became a weekend of discussions. And I decided to join an American PR firm at the time and quit banking, and I’ve never gone back since, as a banker, that is. 

Shahar: Yeah. Yeah. But that’s an unusual career change from investment banking to communications. That’s interesting.  

Médard: It is and it isn’t. I mean, I think the PR firm at the time, that was Hill & Knowlton. They wanted to start a new team for Continental Europe in Amsterdam for financial communications and investor relations advisory. And they realized that they had lots of good communicators. 

But often when you advise on transactions, it’s the banks who are in the lead when it comes to an IPO, to an M&A transaction, et cetera. And so they wanted someone who spoke the language of the banks, who could read a balance sheet, who could talk to the banks at their level and in their language. And that’s how they got to me. 

So I’m very grateful for that smart foresight because they have brought me to the world of communications and it’s a world I’ve come to truly love. 

Shahar: So tell me more about that. What do you love most about this field?  

Médard: I mentioned already, I was curious. And I think where you have a natural curiosity, when you like getting into, exploring new things, getting into different things that you haven’t seen before, I think communications is a fantastic field to be in, because every day is different. 

We are… If I look at my organization, we are virtually in every corner of that organization. We have something to do. And many corners I don’t even know of. I certainly don’t know what they’re doing in those corners. So you learn an incredible lot. 

That’s internally, but externally as well, right? There are so many topics that are happening, what’s happening outside in the world that is relevant for us, that we need to form an opinion on, where we need to think, “Do we have, do we need to have an opinion on that or what do we do with that?” And so it brings me in many different places, and I like that. I think it’s also the contact with people, helping people also, because we don’t communicate, I always say. We help others communicate effectively.

So it’s contact with people and making people better communicators and from that, seeing that they actually they they get more impactful in their appearances and get more inspirational, motivational to employees or other stakeholders. That I very much like. And it’s probably also the fact that we are… you know, we’re a bit of a spider in the web. 

We are, we’re kind of connected to all the different places in the organization, and we are a connector, a bridge often, for these different parts. And, you know, if you like these, these characteristics in your job, this is the sweet spot. 

Shahar: Hmm. Yeah, and that’s the two sides of it, right? So you have fingers in many pies, but sometimes that can also be a bit of a challenge.  

Médard: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, being a spider in the web can be a really cool thing. At times it’s also very difficult because often things can be played through you from one corner to another. And that’s always something to watch. 

That comes with experience, though. You’ll become an ever more efficient and effective spider and therefore enjoy it all the more. 

Shahar: Yeah, that’s an allegory that I might use again. But tell me a bit about how you see… because we’re, of course, seeing the field changing significantly these days, and I’m curious to hear from your side, how do you see the field of communications changing?  

Médard: It’s changed ever since, I think, ever since it started, let’s say at the start of the 20th century. I haven’t seen it… I haven’t seen it stop or pause in its development. And partly this is about maturing the field of communications, or more broadly, perhaps, corporate affairs, these days. 

On the other hand, it’s also a response to how rapidly the world is changing, how rapidly we’re doing things differently, as citizens of this world, and how also the roles of companies, organizations, are changing, is changing in the world and in society. 

And that constant, that constant movement makes us having to be agile and change as well. I mean, it’s not just about digitization and different tools and applications and how we move from faxes to mobile phones, et cetera. It’s much more also about how digitization has given stakeholders, citizens, a different voice. 

Everyone has an opinion these days. Speed keeps going up and our response time’s therefore ever shorter. So there is this constant change and that requires us to be agile as a profession and change with it. And I think that’s also very exciting. I think, if you’re not agile, you could not survive, you could not thrive, I think, as a communicator. 

Agility is an important characteristic to have as a communicator and I think when you have that, you know, you’ll also enjoy this ever changing “umfeld” (environment), as the Germans say, in which you operate. 

Shahar: Yeah, but that’s… so it’s a good point that you’re talking about agility because we are calling this podcast “Always On” and we are seeing that communicators around us, our clients and people that we know, increasingly are required to be “always on”, the companies are required to be “always on”, and that’s something that we’re seeing and it’s the mix of the two changes that you mentioned: the change on the company side, companies are changing, they have a bigger voice and they have a bigger role to play, and stakeholders are changing, they’re expecting a lot more. 

Do you find in that sense that your job is an “always on” job? And how are you dealing with that? Because that must be very challenging as well.  

Médard: Yeah, I think in practice it’s an “always on“ job. This is not a nine-to-five job. I hope, I think, all who are watching and our fellow communicators will agree with me. It’s an “always on” job. But it’s also important that, you know, you learn how to deal with the “always on” and how you define for yourself what “always on” means. Because if “always on” means that you can’t let go of your mobile, that you’re anxiously looking at your mobile all the time because you can’t miss that SMS, all that, yeah? 

Or you’re constantly scanning news platforms, because God knows what happens that might be of importance to you, and you wanna be the first to make sure that they see that you’re on top of things. If that’s your “always on”, you cannot, you cannot uphold that and your work-life balance will severely suffer. So you need to define what “always on” for you means. That also means that you need to get support. 

Technologies can be a great help when it comes to that. But, yes, we are “always on” because you are always looking at things that are happening in the world, happening in the organization, happening around us. Is that of influence for us? Do we need to have an opinion about that? Do we need to react? How do we react to that? 

And with this world becoming ever faster, I already said it, our response time‘s become ever shorter, which means that you feel that we need to be “always on”. We can’t miss, we can’t miss that moment, that we should have, that we should have seen as an opportunity. So, to that extent, it’s “always on”. 

But I think the more complex and the faster the world gets and our role gets, the more important it is that you really define for yourself what does that mean, “always on”. It can’t be, as I said, that you’re always anxiously looking and waiting for that one call to come in. We need to think about our own work-life balance as well. 

Shahar: But do you find also the internal pressures, arising within the company, there’s an expectation from you internally, by the executive leadership team, by the board, by the CEO, to be very, very fast in reacting or advising them on how to react? Do you feel that pressure?  

Médard: No, I don’t see it as pressure. I don’t see it as pressure. I see it as my role. But what I find really positive in the company that I’m in now is that we feel it is a shared role. 

So it’s not always “all eyes on the chief corporate affairs officer, so don’t miss anything.” It’s all of us, as a leadership team, being mindful of things that we can’t miss, that we shouldn’t miss and then flagging that. 

So it feels very much to me as a shared job and not so much as, “Well, all fingers point at you and you’re the one who needs to needs to always be on alone.” So I think maybe that’s a cultural thing. 

What may also be slightly different is that unlike all the other companies I’ve worked in before, which were all public companies, listed companies, Boehringer Ingelheim is still a privately owned company. It’s a family-owned company. Though it’s one of the 15 largest pharma companies in the world, it’s still entirely family-held. And that doesn’t mean to say that we, therefore, are not interested in what’s happening around the world. 

But there’s a different sense of urgency because our investors are a very different audience than a typical public company would have. And that also brings a certain, different dynamic, a less urgent stress, I would say, because that market dynamic, as such, isn’t there. 

Shahar: That’s a very good point because that means that there’s a bit more long-termism than short-termism, from a strategic perspective, but at the same time, they’re still “always on” needs to keep supporting that long-term view. 

Médard: Yes, it’s often also internally, often it’s… people feel that, “Oh, we’re a privately held company, so, you know, we can be more relaxed about things.” Well, I don’t think any of that’s true, because we are still a competitor among the other listed pharma companies. 

We still want to employ the same talent as our listed competitors, peers, will want to do, et cetera. So, to that extent, I think we’re very much the same company and we can’t have that thinking. But, of course, as I said, that fast-paced financial markets dynamic, that’s not there. And that helps relieve some of the pressures of that “always on” that we see these days. 

Shahar: Yeah. And of course, your stakeholders are still expecting things from you. They don’t care whether you’re a public or private company. Their expectations are still there, right? 

Médard: Absolutely, to that extent we are no different than any listed company. It’s our shareholder base, I always say, that’s different. Other than that, we are like any other pharmaceuticals company.  

Shahar: Of course. So you mentioned that sometimes there’s tools, the technology, that can help you be “always on”. What is the role that data and technology play in your ability to stay “always on”?  

Médard: I think monitoring may be an obvious one. I think, you know, trying to scan news sites yourself, be on top of all the newspapers. I like it on a Sunday morning, but that’s different from making sure that you monitor everything that appears in the media and that you’re the first to know. 

So when it comes to these technologies, which we’ve had for quite a while now, these are important. What we see now is that monitoring, as it gets ever more complex, technology can help us to not only monitor, but start to analyze for us. 

And this has really helped, this I find really helpful. And I think also I see a role, an increasing role for AI, at some point, in getting ever smarter, ever better in making the analysis through the monitoring and bringing to us what really is relevant. 

So help us prioritize, help us focus, help us see what our reactions to a certain topic out there and how can these reactions, how do they conform with how we think, or maybe not, and therefore react more effectively at particular comments made in the media, for example. So I think technology has helped us for several years already. 

But I think we’re now at a point where actually we’ll get to a new level where monitoring extends to smart analysis and because of that, we get, as I said, ever more targeted snippets of things we need to have on our watch. And that will help us, you know, still be on, be “always on”, but not having to scan all these ourselves and knowing that what we get really is something we should look at.  

Shahar: That’s an interesting point because it also brings us to this discussion. There’s a bit of a spectrum that seems to be in the communication world. It was maybe viewed originally as a more creative field. And over time there is a push towards the data-driven communication space, which is perhaps seen as, you know, less creative. Where are you on that spectrum or how do you see that  spectrum? 

Médard: One thing I always find very important, and I keep hammering on this topic in our organization, is when we set objectives — and this is where I think the communications profession in general can still grow — when we set objectives, we’re not talking tactics. I think often we’re still thinking too much in output terms and not in outcome terms. 

And we need to be better, we need to be really good at setting objectives that create impact. And in doing so, we need to understand what that impact is. And we need to understand how we can measure, actually, that impact because how else do we know that we make that impact? 

This is where I believe data measurement comes in and where that becomes even more important in creating the impact within our objectives than we’ve done before. So for me, that’s the crux, where for me, where data come in, where good data measurement comes in, to be able to measure the impact that we need to force ourselves to set when we set our objectives. 

Shahar: And of course there are a lot of perspectives in the market about that. I mean, there’s no doubt that the market is going towards more and more use of data, and use of data to back up decision-making within corporate communications, corporate affairs. 

Some people are more inclined to do so, some are less inclined. But I think that also collides with another discussion that’s happening in the industry, which is the “seat at the table” discussion. And some people see data as also an enabler in getting a stronger voice in the executive leadership team, for example. Do you see that also as the case?  

Médard: I’m a little bit beyond the point of having a discussion around the seat at the table. We’ve done that now. Let’s stop calling out that we need a seat at the table. Let’s just earn and, through earning it, claim that seat at the table and not discuss it anymore as something that we need as such, in my view. 

But you’re right. I mean, the more meaningful the data are that we have, and therefore can help us steer, help steer an organization or strategic objectives, the more we’ll be heard, because the more meaningful what we bring to the table will be perceived as valuable. And that of course will help us ultimately in being accepted and trusted in the roles that we have and having earned that seat at the table. 

But I don’t think it’s just data. I mean, it’s important, don’t get me wrong. It’s also the way we join that table. We need to move away from this, and I still see it in organizations, this client-supplier thinking. 

I tend to think much more in peer-to-peer terms. We are peers among each other, and the days that communications are seen as a supplier to a client internally, those days are long gone, as far as I’m concerned. We can be strategic. I think we’ve proven to be strategic, able to be strategic business partners. Data is helping us be even more impactful in what we deliver and what we bring to the table. 

Now let’s also have the maturity, the seniority, to be that trusted peer at the table. So those things are important. And so I would say, let’s stop saying that we need to sit at the table and just act as if it’s absolutely a necessity to have us at the table. 

Shahar: Yes, I fully agree. Unfortunately, I still see a lot of companies there that are struggling to get that seat at the table. But I think your point is very good that the seat at the table needs to be earned, and it’s earned by being strategic and data is one of the means that helps you become strategic and show the value to the organization. 

Médard: That’s for sure. I think the other thing that really helped me get that seat at the table, if you like, is to understand truly to make sure that communications or corporate affairs are not a satellite function, but that our people truly feel that they’re part of the business. 

I often say to our people in corporate affairs, “we are the business”, and we truly are the business. We should be in the business. We should understand: How does our business operate? How does our organization make money? We need to understand that as communicators. We need to understand, we need to sit down with the business and understand the business agenda. Because if we don’t understand the business agenda, if we don’t know what the priorities are in the businesses, then how can we set our agenda? Because our agenda needs to be their agenda. So we need to work together. We need to work from one joint agenda, from one common agenda. 

And if you get those priorities right, and if you set those priorities with the business, then they also see the value that you’re bringing to them, making their objectives reality and creating the impact that they want to and need to create. And then you automatically become part of their world, part of their community. And hence you are sitting at that table. I think that’s been enormously helpful for me as well, to have that absolute focus. All of us have an absolute focus on the business, understanding their agenda, and making sure that our agenda is their agenda. 

Shahar: Yeah, and that has an impact probably on the type of skills that you’re looking for when you’re hiring people into the communication team, right? Because I mean, of course, everybody’s talking about data skills, data analytics and technology, but actually also commercial savvy that needs to be there as well, some kind of a business acumen that needs to be there maybe, that wasn’t there before to the same extent.  

Médard: Absolutely. I agree. And in our people development programs, we also deliberately, consciously bring talents in the business. So out of corporate affairs, for short, an extended business trip, but it could also be in a role for two or three years and back into corporate affairs, to make them, to give them that business savviness, if you like, the commercial acumen. I think it’s super important, yeah. 

Shahar: Yeah, interesting. So I want to ask you a little bit about the rebrand. There was recently a pretty big rebranding process at Boehringer Ingelheim. Can you tell me a little bit about that, the background, why you did it, and how that was?  

Médard: Well, Boehringer Ingelheim, privately owned, we already said it. Not very well known. I think our visibility wasn’t high at a corporate brand level. Consciously. The family shareholders always decided that the investments should go into our products. Our products should be known to patients, to doctors. 

The corporate brand was not necessarily so important for that. But as you grow and globalize and become a truly large global player, at some point you realize actually that there is a role for the corporate brand. To help your products, to help you in your engagement with stakeholders and to create a certain reputation as a company as well.We need a corporate brand for that, right? I think we will agree to that one. And we didn’t. We didn’t. We didn’t have that investment. 

In fact, the old corporate brand was dated from 1996. And so when we started looking into this in 2021, that had been 25 years in existence without any change. And the company had changed in those 25 years. As I said, truly globalized. It’s 54,000 people now around the world, growing towards 30 billion in sales in the near future. So we needed to establish, or reinforce, redevelop, our corporate brand. 

It was also a great opportunity for us, at this point in time, to take a digital-first approach. Now, with this whole digitization having happened, we could take a real fresh digital-first approach, which we’ve done. And all that is really to become more visible, to show the world, we are ready now to tell our story, to show you what the best-kept secret of Germany is, I would almost say, and for talents to see us as well, for partners, for potential partners, to be interested in what we have to say and to consider us in future partnerships. 

So there were many reasons why this was the right time. We also have a very promising pipeline that we’ll bring to the market in the next years. I’m quite sure that that actually will be helped by a stronger corporate brand. 

Shahar: For sure. Tell us a bit about the reception, what kind of feedback you got, and how did you measure the success of that from a stakeholder perspective? 

Médard: There’s internal and external, right? Let me quickly start with internal and then we’ll go to external. Internally, I was a little concerned. Twenty-five years, people knew us as the blue brand, and all of a sudden we were accent green and very different, with a much broader set of brand assets. 

It was phenomenal. From day one, people embraced it. It went, you know, I had no doubt that we could deliver on this, but I’ve been super-positively surprised by the huge, fast adoption rate of our people. You know, after a month we had seen more than a million asset downloads in the organization from our brand hub. So you could see, I mean, the last time I saw a blue presentation was the day before we launched our new corporate brand. People immediately went onto the brand hub, grabbed the assets and went for it. And that’s been super exciting. 

So internally, that was fantastic. Externally, so how do we do it? I mean, you measure extensively already in focus groups and through other ways, as you start to develop the brand. You have to have different designs. We went to different markets. We went to very different stakeholder groups and you start to already test several designs. What works, what works well, what works better than the others, when you look at your brand values and your brand persona, as you’ve developed it. That gives you ultimately a design. So you know already that a design has a good and positive reception through focus groups. 

But then, of course, the proof of the pudding is always in the eating, with your broader stakeholder group. We engaged on reputation measurement with Caliber, and we deliberately started a year and a half before we launched the brand, to make sure that we  had a meaningful–enough database of stakeholder feedback on our corporate brand and on the different reputation drivers at the time of launch, so that we had a meaningful, let’s say, baseline, a zero measurement, at the date of launch, and that helps us now, as we continue our reputation measurement, to see if what direction are those drivers going is indeed what we’re doing at a corporate brand level, helping our reputation with the stakeholder groups compared to the baseline that we set for ourselves at the time of launch. 

Shahar: And would you say that also the expectations from the owners of the company have changed? Because you mentioned before that there was intentionally a little bit of flying below the radar, low familiarity beyond the sector. Do you feel that there’s also an understanding and expectation from their side to increase familiarity generally?  

Médard: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. They see why this is needed and why this will help the company. We need to be very respectful of the fact that you have a family of shareholders and you have a company, both have the same surname, but both are very different groups, and so when we talk about more visibility, we need to be very diligent in realizing that this is about the company and not about the shareholders behind it. 

But having made that very, very explicit, people were very enthusiastic. The reception was very good. We’ve always, by the way, we’ve always throughout the process of creating this new brand identity and concept, we’ve always taken them with us on the journey. It’s been a real collaboration. I think that’s really important as well. 

The same goes for the board. If you haven’t touched your brand for 25 years, and many board members will never have done a brand relaunch or redevelopment of a corporate brand, so it’s really important that you take them by the hand, if you like, and that you take them with you on your journey. And if you realize they’re not getting that, allow yourself a step back and then bring it forward again, so that by the time that you launch, everyone’s in. Everyone gets it. Everyone’s excited about it. And I think that’s also why internally it was such a success. They could see how senior management, how executives, how the family were behind this and excited by it. And that’s an accelerator, then, into the organization. 

 Shahar: And when I think about the rebrand, from my perspective, there were two things that, for me, looked new. I mean, obviously the new colors, which was a big sign, as you said. And even you did it before “Brat”, so I think you kind of went with the green accent before that album. And now it’s very politically hot to be kind of accent light green, right? Lime green. 

So you were ahead of the curve there, but there was the color change, and then there was the tagline that seemed for me to suggest something new. So what was the role of that? And how do you see, so when you think about the rebrand, were they really the two biggest components that you saw as the change, or did you see it differently?  

Médard:Well, before we launched the corporate brand, we first launched a company purpose. The “why” in our cultural framework, in our credo, had not been defined explicitly. And we said, if we want to think about the positioning of the company, how do we position ourselves? How do we want to be known with our stakeholders? Then we need to understand what the purpose is for us internally. What gets us out of bed? Why do we, why are we getting so excited about working here? 

So we defined the purpose first, and that helped us in the brand journey to define our positioning more meaningfully. Once you have your positioning, your positioning as such, the way you phrase it, it’s not something that you use in your branding, but then that led to an external expression of that positioning in the claim Life Forward. Life Forward. 

And Life Forward, on the one hand, brings elements of our purpose, transforming lives for generations, in the claim. The “forward” also exemplifies the long-term strategy that we take, the long-term view that we take on things, on pharmaceuticals, the multigenerational aspect of a family company. The forward-looking, how can we help life move forward as well, in its various dimensions. 

So the interesting thing about Life Forward is that when you hear for the first time, you think there is something wrong grammatically. There’s something wrong grammatically. Life Forward? So it gets you to think about that. It gets you to think about what does Life Forward mean for me? How do I interpret this? And that’s exactly what we want. We want Life Forward to be what it is for you, and it can be different for different stakeholders. But having you pause and think, “What do they mean by that?”, is exactly, I believe, what a brand claim should be doing for you, for any corporate brand. And, hence, that’s how we got to that. 

Shahar: Was there any resistance or reluctance by some people internally throughout this? Because it was a long process, as you said. First the purpose, then the rebrand. Were there any obstacles along the way?  

Médard: Of course, of course. There were moments where we had, we had discussion and we couldn’t agree. And that’s okay. You need those discussions, and then that brings you back to the drawing table. And you’re right. We took quite some time. We gave ourselves the span of almost two years to develop it from scratch to where we were. But by the time that we had it, we had really looked at all the different dimensions, the different elements. We could immediately launch with a very rich and broad asset library. The brand hub went live, the story was there, people understood it, people got it, people could run with it. And the acceptance was there. 

And, as I said earlier, having the family on board, having your executive management on board, and then ultimately having your 400 senior leaders in the organization on board, because that’s how we did it, we brought ever-larger groups in our thinking with us on the journey, so this was not a moment where nobody knew about it and when we launched, “Tada!”, there it was, and nobody knew. This was something that we actually evolved with a small group, with an ever-larger and ever-growing group, so by the time you go out, you have your top 400 leaders loving it, understanding it, being able to articulate it, and that helps you get that fast adoption internally and externally. 

Shahar: Yeah, and it’s a good point where a lot of people sometimes in the outside world, they see a new logo, a new brand, they think, okay, they just changed the logo. And a lot of people are not aware, I think, of the amount of legwork that needs to happen in the background to get to that moment.  

Médard: Absolutely, because the biggest mistake that you could make is when you think about your corporate brand and you think about your corporate identity and design is to start with the design. The design is not the first step. The design, the assets, ultimately are the last step, right? So you really want to think about, you want to start about, internally,who are we? Externally, who do we want to be? How do we want to be seen? That brings you to your positioning. And at some point that brings you to your brand persona. You articulate your brand values. And as you go through those steps, ultimately you get to, “So when we have all this, how do we bring that to life in colors, in icons, in illustrations, in video style, in typography, etc.,etc.?“ But that really is the last step, not the first step.  

Shahar: And when it comes to data, also using data, to determine success of such a complex process, I mean, certainly from the Caliber data, we can see your familiarity is up, your reputation is up, we can see the impact of that. Are there other data points that you’re using among specific stakeholder groups to determine, for example, I don’t know, is it easier to attract talent after the rebrand or other areas where you can see other data points that show the success of it?  

Médard: Yes, we will have a number of data points. I mean, the reputation tracker, I already mentioned, is an important one, and it’s also an important one because it’s available for managers across the company, not just exclusively the corporate affairs, which I think is a really important point in creating that buy-in and that understanding and the use of it. That’s one. 

But we also track the brand. We track the brand along certain brand drivers, where we look specifically at the corporate brand, less so at the stakeholders, and how it’s being perceived. So that’s something that we started doing as we launched it. And we’ve set also specific objectives. Where do we want to be? How many percentage points do we want a certain score to increase? And how do we do that? So it informs your planning. 

We’re also using global campaigns. For example, you mentioned HR and talent. We’re using global campaigns to, for example, address directly talents and link it to our HR systems in the background. So, we have data, ultimately, that can show, with a certain campaign, how many people clicked on our career site directly through, how many people in the end left a CV, how many people got an interview through a campaign, how many people ultimately did we hire. And so that gives you, if you then divide that by the cost of your campaign, that gives you an idea of what your  recruitment costs are.  And I can tell you, it’s very interesting to explore this route. So that’s another example of how we’re using data to really bring our corporate brand work closer to the business objectives. 

Shahar: That’s great. So, going back to the field of communications, we talked a little bit about how the field is changing. We talked about the use of data. I’m interested also in hearing your personal perspective on how the role of the CCO is changing. So obviously the field is changing, the function is changing, the expectations are changing. What does that require from you as a CCO and how do you see that role evolving?  

Médard: It’s become a truly matured executive role, I would say. I definitely think that the CCO has grown from the second echelon to the, let’s say, first echelon, if I could call it that. But it also comes with responsibility, right? It comes with the responsibility of behaving at the right seniority level, with the right maturity, with the right business acumen. We spoke about that, and building and being able to build trust as a peer, and not as a supplier, if you like. It’s that peer-to-peer relationship that we really need to build as CCOs. 

On the other hand, I also think that in our roles, we’ve moved beyond only looking at some of the tactics, of the reactions to things that we need to react to, things like capability building. With that ever ongoing change, the capabilities, the skills in the organization, are so critical, both in the corporate affairs organization, but also the communication skills of leaders in your wider organization. 

Playing a role there, being a leader there is, I think, critical for us going forward. People will increasingly look at us for advice. I think our advisor role has grown at executive levels. I definitely see it. If I compare the number of calls, questions that I get from board members, from the chairman, on a daily basis. “What’s your view on this? How do you see that? Should we do something about that?“ All these questions, they get ever more. If I compare that to being in this role, let’s say, some 10 years ago, you can really see that the frequency has gone up dramatically. 

All of that is testament, I think, to the value that people see we play in organizations, but also the responsibility that we have in providing the right direction, the right guidance, the right answers, and the right insights to the questions that they have. 

Shahar: And how do you see it continuing? So what is your, in a sense, vision for the CCO going forward? How would you want to see that role evolving more?  

Médard: I see a broader role than communications alone. I believe we need to move away from the more siloed operations of communications, public and government affairs, brand, we talked about that. 

But I see rather a much more integrated approach going forward. And that’s also why we changed our… we call it a division at Boehringer Ingelheim… the communication division to a proper corporate affairs division, where the communications function, corporate brand function, and the public and government affairs functions have been brought together, not just to, you know, to provide an organizational roof over three heads, but really with the idea to have one integrated agenda. And I see that integration and a further integration because they need each other and they leverage each other. I see that as an important step going forward. That’s one. 

You mentioned already the use of data and the use of technology in being smarter in (a) taking good decisions, right decisions, (b) being faster, even faster than we already are today, and help us deal with the volume and the complexity of that volume that we see today. That will be another evolution that will continue, no doubt, in the years to come. People often ask you a question, does that mean that the comms role at some point will disappear with technology? I don’t believe so. Not in the near future, for sure. AI can do a lot, but in the end, they still generate content from things that are already there. 

So I don’t think they’re creative, really creative, enough yet. And I also see far too many mistakes yet in outcomes to fully rely on them. So, I think we should use it smartly, but I think there’s a future for communicators.  So that role will broaden, I believe, certainly the CCO role. It will broaden, it will integrate more, it will grow closer to the business, and become far less of a siloed, standalone function and much more part and parcel of an organization’s core strategic core.  

Shahar: Yeah, and it’s a good point you made, by the way, about AI, because as the role becomes a lot more strategic rather than content creation, it also shields itself from any threat from AI because the strategic element is where the value add is, rather than content creation.  

Médard: Use it smartly, but use it, not be run by it. 

Shahar: One last question is, what advice would you give a young aspiring communicator? What should they focus on? What should they do, if they have aspirations within this field? 

Médard: Two words. Dream big, I would say. Dream big. And I mean that. I remember one day when I was far more junior than I am today in my organization at the time, I went from City Airport in London to the old City and I passed the new City and I saw a huge building in the City of a bank, at the time one of the world’s largest global banks, and I thought, wow, you know, if ever I could be in the top of that tower, wouldn’t that be the summit of my career, right? And then you abandon the thought and you think, okay, now back to business here, because that’s a huge step, yeah? Twelve years later, I got the job and I sat on that floor, right? So I’ve learned, and I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. And it taught, it taught me: dream big. If you’re ambitious, if you have an energy to get somewhere, go for it. Really go for it. 

And I’ve learned in my career that, more often than not, actually, you’ll be surprised about the things you can achieve and the places you can get if you want to, without even forcing it, without feeling stressed or forceful about it. It just happens. So believe in yourself, be confident, and set your goalposts, far out, and dream big. 

Shahar: Thank you so much, Médard. This was excellent. I appreciate very much your time and sharing all these words of wisdom with us.  

Médard: I really enjoyed this interview, yeah. And I hope the audience will do too.