30 November 2006
M&S boss beats off competition from Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s to scoop top comms award
The winner of this year’s Business Communicator of the Year Award was announced last night following the release of a shortlist of 10 earlier this month.
Stuart Rose, CEO of high street retailer Marks and Spencer, is the Business Communicator of the Year 2006. He was chosen from a shortlist of 10 other top UK business bosses, including other high street retailers J Sainsbury boss Justin King and Tesco’s Sir Tim Leahy.
Choosing the communicator of the year
Rose picked up the Public Relations
Consultants Association (PRCA) Romeike
Business Communicator of the Year Award last night at a ceremony in London.
It’s awarded each year to a
FTSE 100 CEO who has employed best practice public relations to the overall
benefit of their organization over that year. Previous winners have included
EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Rose Marie Bravo of Burberry.
PRCA is the representative body for public relations consultancies in the UK and has over 130 members and represents consultancies who account for more than 70 percent of the consultancy fee income generated in the UK. Romeike is a comms company that carried out extensive research to find a shortlist of 10 UK bosses who excelled at communicating with employees.
A shortlist of 10 top communicatorsOther bosses short-listed for the prize were Richard Baker of Alliance Boots, Chris Bell of Ladbrokes, Philip Bowman of Scottish Power, Dr. Jean-Pierre Garnier of GlaxoSmithKline, Mark Tucker of Prudential, Mike Turner of BAE Systems and Ben Verwaayen from BT Group.
A panel of judges made the final decision from the shortlist of 10 communicators. The panel included the following industry experts: Sarah Clark, commercial director at Romeike; Richard Houghton, PRCA chair and chief executive of Carrot Communications; Sue Jackson, director of corporate communications at Discovery Networks Europe and Simon Lees, associate-publisher of PR Week.
Keeping communication simple
In a statement to the press, the PRCA said Rose stood out for “the
breadth of topics that he communicated on, from financial results
through responsible retailing with the ‘Behind the Label’ campaign,
to industry topics such as British Fashion Week.” It added that
he was also consistent and clear in his communications, scoring well
each month from January to September and using simple language with real
impact.
The challenge he faced when he joined M&S was making people believe in themselves once again and getting everyone lined up together as a team.
Rose said the challenge he faced when he joined M&S was making people believe in themselves once again and getting everyone lined up together as a team. “In recent years, M&S has had a new strategy every 10 minutes. That’s a very easy way to confuse your own people and make them lose confidence. Instead, we've stuck to a simple plan, which hasn't changed and I've communicated it again and again so that it's clear to everyone what we need to do.”
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