Big business takes a lesson from Labour

Anji Hunter, Tony Blair's former right-hand woman, is about to start her new job as director of communications at BP.

The Government's critics greeted her appointment as more evidence of big business buying political influence, a topical issue this week as the Enron scandal becomes yet another "cash for access" story. But what the cynics misunderstand is precisely why communicators who cut their teeth in the Mandelson/Blair revolution are in such demand from the private sector.

I started off working with Anji for a young Tony Blair, she as his research assistant and long-time friend, me as a press officer from Peter Mandelson's Labour communications team. Sure, Anji has inside knowledge of New Labour in power. But, given the open nature of politics today, and the willingness of politicians at the highest level to bare all to any political journalist or biographer, that knowledge is neither at a premium nor, in her case, for sale.

What interests business leaders is the way that, over the past 15 years, Mandelson, Campbell and those who worked with them have revolutionised corporate communications in this country. It is that battle-hardened experience of transformed reputation, media rebuttal and constant, proactive media management that they seek to share. In the 1980s we saw the corporate men in smart suits from advertising and PR - Tim Bell, my old boss Peter Gummer - take the strategies they brought to successful consumer brands and apply them to politics. The Tories blossomed, while old Labour recoiled from being sold "like soap powder". Then Labour brought in Mandelson. Like the Tories, Labour learned the lessons of successful brand and corporate communications and applied them to its own "brand relaunch".

The story of New Labour is not the triumph of spin, as its critics would suggest, but is a textbook case study of focused and disciplined communications reconnecting a brand with its "consumers". That strategy has seen the roles reversed: now big business wants to learn from New Labour's approach. In the US, where the corporate and political world are more intertwined, business leaders have long understood the need for a political campaign approach to corporate communications. Every day is a mini campaign you have to win - whether it's for votes, market share or confidence in your stock.

UK business leaders are now beginning to follow. Today in business, as in politics, executives face a relentless 24/7 media and no choice but to demonstrate their leadership to investors, customers, and employees. They use communications, as well as innovation, to move their company's agenda forward, just like a candidate. If they are not out there telling their own story and defining their firm's reputation, the media will find someone else to do it for them.

Executives constantly need to review strategies and ditch those that don't work. They need every piece of corporate communication to add to the central campaign message and stick in the mind and ear of their target audience. And they have to repeat that message again and again and again. Just as in politics.

One searing experience that Mandelson, Blair, Hunter, myself and others carry from Labour's hard years out of power is that of "product truth". In the late Eighties, having been amateur at communications, Labour got its act together. Out went the red flag and in came the red rose. We learned that we had to get the policies and the leadership right before our professional communications were actually believable.

That's a lesson Blair is currently mulling over as he seeks to convince voters that he can and will improve public services - while their daily experience is of hellish journeys to work, overstretched hospitals and schools they feel are failing their kids. Communications is not just about winning in a competitive environment, it is about staying in the lead.

I wish Anji well in her new job. No doubt The Guardian and The Observer will be looking for any hint of Downing Street access or preferential treatment for her firm. The hunt for "sleaze", even where it doesn't exist, is now a fact of public life. But she will be a success not because of her contacts but her experience.

The same reason why, ironically, the greatest political strategist of his generation, Peter Mandelson, is now in more demand as a corporate communications tutor and speaker than as a minister by his own communicationschallenged Government.

Colin Byrne is joint CEO of communications consultancy Weber Shandwick.