CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

1. Definition of corporate communication and its functions

Corporate communication is a skill that makes an individual to join the work force as well as succeed in the job they are engaged in. Corporate communication is the most common form of business organization and one which is chartered by a state and given many legal rights as an entity separate from its owners. Corporate communication covers all the marketing, understanding customers and markets, market research, advertising and sales. In addition, the process of corporation will gives the company separate legal standing from its owners. There are many types of corporate communication such as private, nonprofit, municipal. Private corporations are in business to make money. There are two type of public corporation which one of the type has a large number of investors, called shareholders. The other type of private corporation is same as closely held communication. This corporation usually has a large number of investors, called shareholders. Non-profit corporations generally are designed to benefit the general public. Municipal corporations are typically cities and towns that help the state to function at the local level. Indeed, corporate communication is the key of marketing. Corporate communication help junior and mid-level employees to improve their communication skills. As we all know, communication skills one of the most important area that have to cover by todays people in order to succeed in multicultural business environment. Corporate communications is an important area for most businesses, because its creates and maintains the companys image to the outside world. This function ensures various job responsibilities and typically is found within the marketing department of most of the companies. Corporate communication also help people to upgrade their self in such vital areas as organizing information, planning, developing and presenting written and oral work and also improving non-verbal communication skills. Indeed, corporate communication will ensure people control all the skills, that needed to respond to opportunities in todays business world. Example of mutual benefit of corporate communication is a golf club. Individuals pay to join the club, memberships may be bought and sold and at last property owned by the club is distributed to its members if the club dissolves. And the club can decide its laws, how many members to have, and who can be a member. 2. Each corporate communication sub-functions

There are some sub-functions in corporate communication which helps the organization of a company to succeed. Corporate communication department in a company initially play a key role in marketing, investors, employees and the general public perceive a company. The main responsibility of this department is to report directly to a companys chief officer in order to managing the companys reputation. This automatically will help the companys workers to prepare for media interviews, develop messages to deliver to investors and employees and suggest new initiatives to keep companies on the cutting edge of communication with their stakeholders. First of all, let us concentrate on first sub-function of corporate communication that is media relations. What is means by media relation and what are the responsibilities corporate communicators have in media relation. Media relation refers to the work includes writing and disturbing news releases and give responds to media inquiries. Media relations also involves arranging for spokespersons to appear on local television and radio programs. Employees in corporate communication department need to be aware of company regarding conferences, including selecting the venue for the event, arranging for banners and other graphics to be displayed at the place, preparing packets of information to distribute to the media and preparing executives to speak correctly at the news conferences. The person who incharge of communication must have the capability in order to have the dealing with media. Corporate communicators monitor newspapers, television news broadcasts and other outlets to see what the media is saying about the company and to devise strategies to address misinformation. Since, the media and business rely on one another to a certain extent, most companies try to make the best of these companies. Nowadays, media relations is very important to corporate communicators. This is because technology helped companies through media so much in their own way such as marketing, promoting and so on. The relationship between business and corporate communication must be strong in order to success in their business world.

The second sub function of corporate communication is public relations. We must admit the truth that a business organization cannot succeed in the business world without public support. Public relation refers to build relationship with customers and respond to inquiries from the public accurately and correctly. The area covered by the sub function of produced printed material which is relevant to the company or related business such as producing newsletters or brochures which is designed for the idea of general public. Other than that, the responsibility of corporate communicators is to manage the companys website and social media presence. This refers to monitoring what customers and clients opinion or what are they saying about the company on social networking websites and responding to inaccurate posts or requests for information. If there are questions from customers or clients about a companys plans or activities, corporate communicators will respond directly to them through calls and emails. Corporate communicators have to inform the development and achievement of the company from time to time to the society in order to develop the relationship between company and public. Other than this, corporate communicators also give importance to the donation matter which is donate funds to organizations that could benefits the firms employees, customers and shareholders. Examples are include donations to universities or colleges that might be conducting research in the industry and organizations representing minority interests. The main thing is customer relations is the part of corporate communication that influence on an organization. And makes sure customer is always happy with the product or service of the company. All of the above activities will help corporate communicators to build up strong relationship with public. Indeed, to be successful in todays business environment, companies need to integrate the relationship with their public. The third sub function for corporate communicators is crisis communication or crisis management. Actually, communication professionals should be involved in crisis planning and crisis management to get rid of all the problems in the company. Crisis communication defined as when an event occurs that threatens public safety or a companys reputation. In this situation, the companys corporate communicators act as advisers to CEOs and senior leaders in managing the crisis. Crisis communication helps corporate communicators to prepare for events such as chemical spills, violence in the workplace, an accidental death on the job, layoff announcements and allegations of company wrong doing. Corporate communicators often work with staff throughout their organizations to develop crisis communication plans before disaster strikes. This crisis may cause some communications staff to work with attorneys, government regulars, political officials, emergency response personnel and communications staff from other companies when developing crisis messages. Corporate communications professionals can make the difference between good and poor crisis management. Last but not least, corporate communication sub function is employee communication. Employee communication also known as internal communication. This internal communication play an important role in corporate communication because in order to make a contented workforce, a company should know how to communicate with employees through internal communication. Internal or communication between employees is a collaborative effort between the corporate communication and human resources department. Employee communication is important because the responsibilities include communications managers, which includes designing printed publications and writing emails to announce company news, benefits information and training opportunities. In this case, corporate communicators facilitate focus groups to learn what issues matter most to front-line employees. They advise senior leaders on how to improve relationships with their staff and gain support for their initiatives. The corporate communications staff also manage a companys webs and official blogs. So, more companies try hard of making sure their employees understand the new marketing initiatives. Indeed, a strong employee communication always will generate more productive, engaged and loyal workforce. Employee communication will create strong bound between the workers in the company. Other than that, strong communication between management and employees will help to get employees trust and loyalty. The loyalty of the employees will ensure the success of the company. The success of the companys business depends on strategy how corporate communicators arrange the responsibilities of sub functions within the function, and their role as corporate communicators not only limited into the company, but it will continue to broaden and diversity as globalization. The global firms gives pressure on the communication function to communicate successfully with even more diverse, foreign audiences. The conclusion is, a business based company must have a strong corporate communication function to support its mission and vision. Strong corporate

communication is the most important skills needed by the employees in the company to achieve goals of the company. These are the main four sub function that have to follow by each companys corporate communicators. Now, let us do survey about one of the company in Malaysia. Let us see what are strategies or sub functions used by the company to succeed in todays business world. After make a clear analysis, I select an organization from the retail industry that is involved in marketing activities. The organization that I have selected is COSWAY Corporation Limited which is formerly known as The Berjaya Corporation. The principal activity of the company is direct selling of consumer products including health and nutrition, slimming, personal care, skin care, cosmetics, perfumes, household and car care, food and beverage, water filtration systems, kitchenware, body shaping lingerie. The company sell the products through network marketing and property investment. As we all know, COSWAY Corporation Limited is a subsidiary of Berjaya Corporation Berhad. COSWAY currently markets over 1900 consumer products solely through our in house brands. Now, the question is how manage all the main sub-functions of corporate communication. First of all, let us see the analysis of corporate communication in media relations. As we all know, COSWAY company deliver a catalogue that contains all the detail of the products every month in a year. There was no company with not have relationship with media. The main reason COSWAY become successful is, the company is very good doing the marketing of the products. There are several ways that used by COSWAY company to promote their products such as catalogue. Cosway will give one main catalogue to the members to their own use or promote to others. There are also ecosway. Members can do their business via online without wasting their time, money and energy. Sometimes COSWAY will deliver special promotion catalogue to the members. These are all the ways how COSWAY company advertise its new and quality products. There are also advertising board about COSWAY products in the sides of highway rounds. There are also several program or advertisement about the quality of the products shown in local television, radio or internet. The second main sub-function is public relation for corporate communicators. COSWAY Shd Bhd also organizes great redemption programme. This is the main facility given by the company which makes customer love to use COSWAY products. Members and customers will get chance to get hundreds of valuable gifts can be redeemed for totally free or at below-cost prices by collecting Redemption Coupons when they purchase COSWAY products. In addition COSWAY members will have membership card. So, there will be redemption point to the customers who purchase more than a certain amount. Finally, there will be special price reductions on COSWAY products for members. There are also free training and product demonstrations to members. This also a type of promotion to COSWAY customers. These programme will be conducted regularly throughout the country in order to help members train their network of down line members. COSWAY company also good in publicity because it is a very popular retail industry among people. The main publicity that COSWAY allows is give chance to customers to do their own business via COSWAY. This was the main publicity done by COSWAY. If the customers purchase more products in COSWAY, then they will become members, after that they start publicity COSWAY products to their friends and relatives. This process will continue and continue and this gives automatic publicity to COSWAY products. There is no company without no promotion. So COSWAY believes that proactive, aggressive and exciting promotions to help members recruit more members, attract and retain customer loyalty. All year round excitement makes recruitment and selling easier. There are different type of promotion given by Cosway company such as montly promotion and year promotion. Montly promotion refers to members can look forward to exciting offers and bargain buys all-year-round. In addition to COSWAYs regular products, these promotions also include gift, food items and creative products at lower than retail prices. The third sub-function is crisis management. Crisis management refers to the responsibility of the corporate communicators in order to solve all the problem rise in the company. There are no company without problems. So, The group of COSWAY always contribute a well-planned management to their company. One of the main important features is Cosway always alert on their company employees background and the problems rise at the moment.

Last but not least, COSWAY company also need to be precise on employee communication. Now, let us see how COSWAY company, contribute in employee communication. COSWAY Shd Bhd gives high priority to staff welfare. The Board of COSWAY always wants to improve the quantity and quality of life in the workplace by focusing on their employees well-being and career development. COSWAY also allocate many training and development programmes that is relevant to their employees areas of work. This will help in employees productivity and develop their employees skills in various area of work. Other than that, apart from training about area of work, COSWAY also organizes regular talks on health, safety awareness and other relevant topics for personal development, while the Sports Toto Fitness Centre, boasting state of the art gymnasium equipment and facilities, was arranged by the Group in order to encourage staff to exercise regularly and maintain a very healthy lifestyle. The employee health is very important to a company in order to ensure the quality of the products. In conclusion, a Staff Welfare Fund was set up under the company to manage and supplement financial aid to staff their families in times of crises and need due to illness, natural disaster and death. At conclusion, I have given a brief history about Cosway Shd Bhd, and how the company used sub-functions in corporate communication. A detail analysis about 4 main subfunction regarding Cosway company also given. First of all, let us see the the analysis of Cosways product in media relations. Cosway always used media wisely in order to get good reputation. Next, I have identified and accurately analyze the second element, which is public relations. According to our analysis, Cosway maintain excellent relationship with public. This will automatically encourage the members to be active in doing business of cosway products. Customers who purchase more than certain amount, will get chance to own a membership card for cosway. Finally, Cosway company also gives certain payment period for their customers. In summary, Cosway has become a successful retail industry because it gives more important for the 4 main sub functions in corporate communication. Cosway will build our group and keep it forever. Everyone who get introduce into COSWAY becomes a branch of our network. Every new members and their downline members subsequently introduce, become branches of our network too. There is no 'breakaway' in the COSWAY system. This means that COSWAY does not limit the number of branches or levels, or set a certain sales volume after which a branch of our network is separated from us.