Also attending the IPRA World Congress was Ketchum senior partner and CEO Ray Kotcher who gave the keynote address to the delegates. Here is an extract of what he had to say.

Globalization has been a long-discussed factor for international businesses and something that, as communicators, we’ve had to address in many forms. One of the challenges that globalization has wrought is an increased amount of integration and competition among markets. The recent turmoil in the financial markets around the world is just one indication of how connected and interdependent the world has become.

From a business standpoint, integration has opened national boundaries and accelerated the speed of growth in emerging markets that are now increasingly integrated with the global economy. Once-developing states like China, Russia, Mexico, Brazil and Turkey are now emerging as competitors for Western economies, and with one another. These markets are also home to brand names. In China, for example, Haier and Lenovo, will be part of the next wave of global challengers in sales of goods and services. As the footprints of these new competitors grow, the rules of competition and communication are changing rapidly – in a way that every company needs to pay attention to if they are going to stay around for long.

One important challenge is adjusting to the expectations of how companies need to communicate outside their home markets. This often means understanding the context of an environment with long-held stereotypes and misperceptions.

Biases – whether they are a result of political or historical issues or a lack of familiarity with other countries and cultures – affect how consumers, policy makers and business leaders see companies from countries such as Mexico, China, Turkey and Russia, and how they make decisions regarding them.

Russia, for example, is an easy target in the US marketplace. China has also been questioned in the recent past as we learned from CNOOC’s failed bid for Unocal. This example, and the controversy over Dubai Ports in the US, shows that mindsets stuck in the past can affect businesses.

Often the lack of knowledge toward a country or region leads audiences to make broad generalizations. For example, China’s manufacturing sector has been broadly painted internationally as lacking quality controls and standards after problems over pet food, toothpaste and toy products were widely covered in the international press in 2007. This created a belief among consumers that ALL Chinese products were potentially unsafe. No matter the number and range of high-quality and safe products that come out of China, any additional problems with the quality of Chinese goods will propel this perception.

Take the recent melamine scandal in China’s dairy product market. On its own, this was an issue that primarily affected Chinese consumers. Had something similar happened a few years ago, it would have been fairly insignificant to international audiences. However, on the back of last year’s stories, the issue now has resonance well beyond China and was reported around the world reinforcing the point that in today’s high speed media saturated world, nothing is local any more.

As much as audiences are connected, they also are becoming more active. Digital technology has made it possible for nearly anyone to take part in stories as they develop making managing communications, and the identification of potential risks, much more important. As journalists seek new sources of information – and as more people create their own widely available news and editorial content – the new communication model drives how the story is told as much as the underlying facts and figures.

For all the changes that globalization has brought about, and the new challenges that have appeared in communicating value and position, there are opportunities.

Certainly, the companies that learn to dance in step with new global markets will be the world’s leaders in sales of goods and services. And a key part of that will be having communicators who quickly learn to move to the beat of the new global communication landscape.