Page 113 - Corporate Communication

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102 Corporate Communications in Practice

communication; a wire-free future in which you call people, not places, and
where everyone will benefit from the advances of technology. ‘The Future is
Bright. The Future is Orange’.

The team also realized that given the doubts that surrounded Orange as a late
entrant at its launch, the most important task for the media strategy was to imbue
the brand with as much confidence as possible. A multimedia schedule was therefore
adopted: a dominating presence for the Orange brand with posters heralding each
new campaign theme, TV communicating core brand benefits and press providing
detailed messages in the information-led environment of newspapers. Since its
launch, the branding and communications strategy chosen has delivered on its
corporate targets. Although Orange has not become the market leader in the UK,
a position still firmly in the hands of Vodafone, it quickly gained market share and
a market capitalization that enabled it to expand into other international markets. In
1996, hardly two years after its launch, Orange Plc underwent its first public offering
with the shares being listed on the London and Nasdaq markets on 2 April 1996. With
a valuation of £2.4 billion, Orange Plc became the youngest company to enter the
FTSE-100.
In October 1999, Orange was acquired by Mannesmann AG, which itself was bought
in February 2000 by Vodafone, a deal approved by the European Commission sub-
ject to an undertaking from Vodafone to divest Orange Plc. In August 2000, France
Télécom acquired Orange Plc from Vodafone. Despite the changes in ownership,
Orange has continued to concentrate on its brand-led communications strategy,
rather than on hard-hitting competitive strategies including price cuts and distribu-
tion growths, as this strategy has propelled the company to the corporate success
and position that it now enjoys.

Questions for reflection

1. What does the launch of Orange tell you about the link between corporate
strategy and communications strategy?
2. Is communications strategy therefore vital to the achievement of corporate
objectives for every kind of organization (in other business sectors)?

4.3 Making strategy: the process and
practice of communications strategy

The preceding section has indicated that for most organizations the central purpose
of strategy revolves around attempts to match the organization to its environment.
And, as mentioned, although writers on strategic management discuss the environ-
ment, only a few of these writers have traditionally recognized or described the role
of corporate communications in identifying the most important components of its
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environment, and in using communications to build relationships with them. This
is unfortunate as for many organizations the question of how particular strategies
may affect key stakeholder relationships has now become an increasingly important
concern shaping the thinking of strategy makers.