On working with the marketing team

“As well as working with the marketing team on any crisis or reputational issues, I will work with them as a general manager if they’re looking for advice around social media, or I’ll be involved with looking at the marketing plans for the following year. I won’t be heavily influencing them, but I will be part of that process.”

On working with agencies

“As corporate communications team, we have PR agencies that help us manage corporate communications in our area. All of the PR teams are mainly focused on the Henkel brand, not our product brands. We have one in the UK, one in Ireland and we’re just going through the process of selecting a PR agency for Scandinavia.”

On what is asked of PR agencies

“The main thing that we ask PR agencies to do is to look at external communications, so where we can raise the awareness of Henkel as a corporate brand, and if there are crisis or reputational issues, especially in the media, they’ll help manage that process with us and come up with solutions.”

On selecting agencies

“We’ve had our agency in Ireland for a number of years, they’re very good and we have a good relationship with them so that will stay as it is. In the UK we’ve had a new agency for the last year, and so far they’ve been brilliant so we’ll be looking to keep them for a while I imagine, and in Scandinavia we’re going through the process of selecting someone. When we do these processes we’re looking for a partnership and someone who will stay with us for a number of years, who can really understand the business and help us through some of the issues we might face in the future, and also get to know us as a company. That way they can really help to promote the Henkel brand when they’re talking to journalists and other people.”

On Henkel’s biggest comms challenges

“For northern Europe our challenges are twofold. One is external; we’ve got a big focus on external comms over this year and next year, and that’s for the whole region; for Scandinavia, Ireland and the UK. We’re looking to promote Henkel as a corporate brand so that people are aware of who we are. There are a number of products that people know well; things like Pritt Stick, Sellotape, No More Nails, Right Guard – they’re all owned by Henkel, yet our corporate brand, or our family brand, is not particularly well known. We’re looking at how we can push that a bit more in the northern Europe region. That’s been our real focus this year and will continue to be next year. There are internal challenges as well. We’ve got a really wide and diverse workforce spread across multiple locations, so we need to make sure that we reach those audiences internally and that they’re updated on what’s going on corporately. Those are the two real challenges that we’re facing.”

On recent success

“We’ve had a few good successes. In Sweden we’ve got some really good articles around Henkel. In Ireland we’ve just launched a new education partnership with schools and adult universities - that’s been heavily covered in the media - and in the UK we’ve looked at some of the innovations that Henkel do. We have some big adhesive innovations that are coming through and we’ve focused on that quite a bit this year. We’ve had some really good coverage in some of the trade and sector press around that. We’ve done a lot more than we have in previous years. It’s going to be a long process but we’ve had a good start with it.”

On improving awareness of the corporate brand

“We work hard to leverage the awareness of our well- known brands to bolster the profile of the corporate brand behind them. Our goal is therefore to use these individual brands to develop stories that help boost Henkel’s corporate profile and allow us to build long- term relationships with key national and trade press. One challenge that we have come to face is a tendency by some media to focus on the individual, well-known brands, rather than the corporate brand.”