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Hear from experienced public affairs professionals, as our host Jack Talbot discusses the past, present and future of the profession with those who are shaping it.
From the days of posting letters to the future of technology-driven practices and AI insights, discover how the industry has changed, what its main focuses are now, and where it will be going.
00:01
Welcome to Now and Next in Public Affairs, brought to you by Helio Intelligence, the home of DeHavilland and Forefront. I'm Jack Talbot, and we're here to discuss the future of public affairs. And today I'm joined by Susana Braz, Head of Government Affairs at DS Smith. Susana, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. Not at all. Before we get into talking about what the future of the profession looks like, I'm really interested to hear a bit about you and a bit about your experience. For...
00:30
All of the listeners out there, you've worked at some pretty big names across the UK and Brussels. We're talking about the Flints, the Shearwaters of the world. Now, obviously, you're at DS Smith. Can you talk to us a bit about how the profession's evolved in your time and, I guess, where we are now? Sure. So my time started over...
00:51
20 years ago now, I must say, and I started working in Brussels. So I'm originally from Portugal, I studied international relations and I just wanted to have an international career to do with politics, but I didn't really know at the time what I wanted to do. I started by doing some internships in international organisations. I started with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
01:13
and then did a master's in European Studies. So that led me to sort of think that, okay, I want to work in Brussels for a while. And that's what I ended up doing for about eight, nine years. I stayed in Brussels beginning of my career. So for me, it has evolved quite a lot also in terms of my own career has taken me different places.
01:31
I never actually worked in Portugal, but I worked in Brussels, then I moved to China for two years, then I came to the UK, worked in Scotland for a couple of years, then came back to London. And at the same time worked on pretty much all the issues I was working were very international, so worked a lot with American companies, with all sorts of foreign-owned companies.
01:52
So I think my own career has been quite varied in a way. So it's difficult to say that it's really evolved from A to B because I've also moved around. And also because I've worked in different markets and they are different. Working in Brussels is different from working in the UK. So it's changed quite a lot for me. I think the main things that have changed...
02:15
I still remember having to call people a lot looking for information. I'm old enough to remember things like that. I would spend a lot of time on the phone. And now in my office, we don't even have phones, landlines, you know. And I noticed that the younger generations have a completely different approach to talking on the phone, for example. So that's just one example how I think things have changed. We would spend more time, I think, out and about.
02:40
And Teams has killed that a little bit. And there's very good things coming from working remotely and being able to join meetings remotely. It's a fantastic thing. But it also, I think, has killed a little bit of the direct contact that public affairs professionals always had to have.
02:58
Because it's a profession where you have to talk to a lot of people, you have to go to events, you have to attend meetings. And now you can do all that from your little office at home sometimes and there's no direct contact. So yeah, it has changed massively, but I think part of it is just the way working has evolved as well. But we could go into some more aspects of how it's changed. Yeah, absolutely. Why don't we talk about hybrid working? I think it's fair to say it's definitely accelerated.
03:27
since COVID or COVID has acted as a big catalyst to bring hybrid working into the piece. What do you see as the positives and the negatives? Because the way I look at it is on paper, if you know people, in theory, you can have more
03:46
online meetings through Teams, through Zoom, etc. On paper, you can get more meetings, which you'd like to think you can get more done. However, I'm very aware, particularly with Brussels and around the culture of meeting people face to face, I always get the impression a little bit to what you were saying that we lose a little bit with the lack of human interaction now. Very interested to hear what you think.
04:10
Yeah, I think we do, but I mean, let's not forget we also gain quite a lot from the possibilities that we now have. So I'm, for example, I'm doing a job that is a mix of London, Brussels and other European capitals. And in the old days, I would be pretty much traveling all the time.
04:28
I have to attend trade association meetings in several countries and sometimes meet with governments in different countries or even meet my own colleagues in different offices. And there would be a lot of constant traveling. Sometimes I've experienced that in the beginning of my career, traveling for one or two hour meeting and then going back. So I think the productivity wins of working remotely.
04:52
remotely or being able to join a Teams call to solve something without going to another country. It's tremendous. So we have to be thankful for that. But I try to keep an element of direct contact. So, you know, I don't attend every single meeting in Brussels.
05:06
in person, but I do attend one of the various meetings I need to attend that are recurring. I try to go every two, three months. I do attend some events where I know that my peers will be there because I want to catch up with them. I think it's just bearing in mind that you have to complement that.
05:24
not fight it because otherwise, well, it's just the world doesn't move on. Yeah, it really has. It really, really has. I'm really interested to understand a bit about your experience with
05:36
particularly when it comes to different sets of stakeholders. So what I mean by that is external stakeholders and the dynamic there we've covered has changed slightly when it comes to technology and hybrid working. You've obviously worked in the consultancy space and the in-house space as well. What does the dynamic look like when it comes to your internal stakeholders?
05:57
What I'm really interested in understanding is how much of your time is spent with internal stakeholders, either trying to inform, I guess, about the role of public affairs or strategy operationally. What does that look like from your experience?
06:13
I spent quite a lot of time with internal stakeholders. That's a very good point. I think the image of the public affairs professional in the lobby is just sort of being someone who's never in the office and is always sort of floating around.
06:27
talking to various external stakeholders. I think it still exists partly, but mostly we are part of the business and of course we have to focus quite a lot on our internal stakeholders. Well, first of all, we have the permanent challenge, I suppose, of public affairs and
06:43
government and policy work, which is having the buy-in from our leadership to actually do the work that we do. And that exists or doesn't exist at different levels in different companies, but I'm very lucky that I do have that understanding of the work that I do and the importance to the company. We also work
07:04
At the moment, I'm working in an area to do with sustainability regulation that there's quite a lot coming our way. So it's very evident to the business that we have to be on top of it and we have to understand how it affects us. We have to influence it and we also have to
07:18
be aware of the changes for us and for our customers. So I do spend a lot of time with internal stakeholders, understanding the impact on the business, but also trying to use legislation to our benefit if you want, because we work
07:35
So we're a business-to-business company in a heavily regulated market, so we produce paper and paper packaging. We produce quite a lot of the paper-based packaging that you'll see in the supermarkets every day.
07:48
or the parcels that come to your house via Amazon or others. And we work with some of the biggest brands in the industry. And they also have an expectation of us in terms of policy awareness, policy preparedness, because things have been changing so much, especially in sustainability policies in Europe in the last few years.
08:08
So there again, I suppose, my business sees the benefit in being on top of what's happening, but also having a proactive stance to the changes that policies will have. So I have quite a lot of expectations for my internal stakeholders. I don't have to focus, I shouldn't, and I'm not definitely focusing permanently on what the outside is saying. But we're constantly pulled in both directions because we also need to be aware of what's happening out there, of course, because otherwise we wouldn't be doing our jobs.
08:37
Absolutely. I'm really interested in the dynamic for the profession when it comes to the internal and external stakeholders. I think you articulate quite well in the sense there's a lot of push and pull based on the complexities of the role of public affairs.
08:54
And I think that it's probably fair to say there'll be some people listening to this episode that don't necessarily have the same buy-in internally that you have, whether that's from other departments, whether it's from leadership teams, etc. There are definitely people out there that constantly struggle to demonstrate the value of what public affairs is doing.
09:15
Do you have any thoughts or soundbites or bits of advice for people in those kind of situations? I certainly don't have any soundbites. And look, I mean, I think it's very different. It's case by case. It's sector by sector. Some sectors are intrinsically aware of the value of the need to be on top of policies and also have good relations, close relations with governments. Some are more than others.
09:41
I think the challenge for us is how to demonstrate it in terms that business people, who are mostly our leaders that we report to, understand. And I think I'm certainly guilty of it and quite a lot of my peers, I think, tend to think in ways that are not in the same way that our colleagues who are what I describe as business people in general, how they work. So using metrics, using business language,
10:09
using examples that really talk about the impact on the business, what parts of the business, what products would be affected, what do those products represent for us in terms of numbers. So that is very much the case nowadays. And I think that's the only way you can really survive in the modern world in public affairs is demonstrating the value by really by being pragmatic and numbers-based, let's say. And sometimes it's very difficult. It's difficult to
10:38
to quantify what was the result of those contacts that you made or those trips that you did around the parliament to talk to all those MPs. It's very difficult to quantify that. But I guess that's the expectation and knowing that that's what's expected of us helps us be understood by the leadership in the business.
10:57
Yeah, absolutely. I've just got visions of poor public affairs leaders sat in boardrooms with CFOs and talking about accounts and accountancy language. And then the challenge for public affairs, as you quite rightly point out, is articulating the value in a language that business leaders are going to understand.
11:15
It's a really, really interesting topic and really interesting to see how that might evolve. The other thing is making sure that you're talking about the relevance to your business in particular. Again, there will be different companies approaching this in different ways, but there is a lot of a tendency to sort of present to boards and to leadership in terms of,
11:37
geopolitical developments and how the economy will be affected by certain issues. I think being specific in terms of impact on the company, not even on the sector, it's quite important.
11:53
That's really interesting. And the geopolitical landscape is not getting any calmer, would be my observation. So I think that that dynamic is becoming more and more real for the heads of public affairs, government affairs directors, etc. It's been able to articulate what potential impact the world could have on the business. Yeah, it's not slowing down on that one.
12:17
It's not slowing down, but at the same time, the level of confusion, perhaps not confusion, but just uncertainty, is such that you almost stop making predictions if you want. I think that's the stage where we're at at the moment in things like transatlantic disputes of tariffs and trade agreements and things like that. It's just become so difficult to predict anything for various reasons. But yes, it's certainly...
12:44
gives us enough to do in terms of geopolitical developments. On that note, when it comes to not necessarily going down the prediction route, are public affairs now doing more scenario planning for leadership teams?
12:56
That's a really interesting question. I think definitely going more into disciplines that have to do with integrating economic methods into analysis and prediction. So scenario planning, certainly, risk management, risk analysis. I think those are areas that have become more important in public affairs, certainly.
13:17
Again, because they help us communicate in an effective way with the leadership in the business because they understand those concepts and those are concepts they're familiar with, but also help us do that difficult thing of quantifying things, quantifying risk, quantifying the effect of our actions. So I think, yeah, I agree. That's become more important. Really interesting. Really interesting. Thank you.
13:42
Let's move on and talk a bit about technology and specifically AI. You very, very clearly articulated in your experience how technology has come in in regards to having less face-to-face and more kind of virtual meetings. AI is kind of prominent for everyone in all aspects of life. I don't think public affairs are exempt from AI. I think it's definitely coming.
14:10
I'm really interested to understand what you think about AI in general, but also what your thoughts are on how AI is going to impact the profession.
14:21
Very difficult for me to give you a really insight opinion on AI. I am, just from the personal point of view, not the most technology-aware person in the world, and I'm sort of the typical sort of late adopter of technology. But interestingly, in the world of work, sometimes we just have to be forced to try different things, and we have been, my current company, very much...
14:46
introduced to this world by the company itself, that it tends to be top of these latest developments and wants to be progressive in terms of use of technologies and things. So I've already seen a little bit of the effect of using new tools, sometimes AI-related, sometimes not.
15:05
What I think it can bring to public affairs and that I can see for the moment is pretty positive in the terms of content development. We've had experiences with it in my company, both in public affairs, but particularly in communication. So just content development for different channels for communications within the company. And it's pretty impressive what you can
15:26
what we can do with it. Translations as well. I'd be interested to see in the future how we can go into data analysis, into compliance, for example. Some really complicated things for us to keep on top of when you have operations in, so we have operations in
15:44
over 30 countries in Europe, just to talk about the EMEA region. We have certain rules that exist in all these different companies that affect our supply chain, our production. Keeping on top of all of this, it's pretty difficult. So having something that supports that compliance that is IA-based will be interesting to see in the future how things evolve in that aspect. Also because regulation is becoming very burdensome in terms of
16:09
integration of data in terms of the data you have to report on. So it'll be interesting to see how that can help with compliance in the future. So I think there are elements like that, that we already see the benefit, whether it will put our jobs at risk as tends to be the discussion about the future of AI. I very much doubt that we'll come to a time when you can have
16:33
about doing your work as a head of government affairs. I do think that judgment is important and judgment, I think, will need to come from individuals who have their own experience and also relationships will continue to be important. So in a way, things have evolved a lot, but the fundamentals of public affairs are still important and you still need people to do them. We certainly hope so, because without people...
16:59
We'll probably be doing this podcast, so certainly hope that there's a place for us. When it comes to AI, do you have a perspective or an opinion on time? And what I mean by that is quite a lot of the people that we speak to, broadly speaking, align with your comments. They say it can be pretty good for us in this area or this area, and we think it'll actually give us back time, ideally.
17:26
I guess I've got two questions. Do you agree with that general sentiment? And if the answer is yes, what do you think you'd spend that time back doing? Oh, I think the answer has to be yes. Uh, there's never enough time to do what we need to do when the follow the issues that we need to follow. From my experience, at least I've never worked in a place where I felt like I don't have enough issues to follow or, um,
17:50
There's just so much out there. And also, I think there's so much information coming our way as public affairs professionals nowadays. So we'll have the usual sort of channels to receive information, but also now we have social media. I noticed that, you know, that's a difference. I didn't used to go on my social media to get policy news. I actually now go, if you consider it obviously LinkedIn as social media, which it is now,
18:15
I do get a lot of policy news through LinkedIn, even Instagram, believe it or not. So you get so much information now coming towards you in terms of what things you should be aware of and things you should read and you should be informed about that saving some time is certainly beneficial. And you can definitely use your time elsewhere to a better purpose.
18:39
You mentioned Instagram. Are you a TikToker? I've never been on TikTok. No, I don't understand it. And I find it profoundly irritating. But should I? You're asking the wrong person. Even at 35, I think I'm too old for TikTok. But I remain to be persuaded on that one. The reason I ask is there is a serious point to this. When it comes to
19:02
particularly external stakeholders. I think as time goes on, we're seeing new types of stakeholders. We're looking at new demographics of stakeholders. Some MPs, for example, that were elected last year are really, really young. And I think what comes with that, what I imagine comes with that is you've got a different type of stakeholder that probably wants to be engaged with or communicated to in a different way than, say, even five years ago or 10 years ago.
19:30
Do you have a view at all, or I guess what is your view on how the profession is going to have to adapt the way it communicates with essentially new types of external stakeholders?
19:40
Oh, of course. And I think, to be honest, in answer to your question about TikTok, I don't work in an area that is particularly geared towards, I suppose, young people in terms of the issues that I deal with. If I was, I would definitely have to consider TikTok. If you're working on issues that have to do with issues that mobilise young people in terms of environmental issues, for example, you definitely have to consider TikTok.
20:07
I think it's just absolutely, as some politicians have understood, that they have to communicate to young voters in a different way. We also have to understand that if we want to reach some audiences, we also need to reach them in different ways. I think publicisation
20:22
Public affairs from the point of view of campaigning has pretty much started considering these, you know, the digital channels that are now just part of any campaign. We've had some interesting experience with it ourselves in my current company. We have started...
20:39
targeting policymakers in a very targeted way through digital channels that you are not able to do in the old-fashioned way of doing things. But yes, absolutely, in terms of younger audiences, we all have to go over our initial sort of resistance in using those channels because those are... And podcasts are important for that as well, as we all know. Young people tend to listen to a lot of podcasts, so that's clearly one that is sort of now in the mix as an important way of reaching your audience.
21:08
Thank you. It feels quite timely for the listeners out there. We're recording this, I want to say, about a week after the news around lowering the voting age here in the UK. So it feels quite a timely discussion. And I think that the way that political parties are going to communicate with voters or the electorate in the future, the way that public affairs will have to communicate with external stakeholders is,
21:33
I think it's a really interesting part of the discussion and part of the landscape that we're all going to have to adapt to. So it's a really interesting point. In terms of what the next five years looks like for the profession, do you have any other thoughts or comments at all on how you think it might change?
21:50
I can't really even begin to try to predict the future on that one. I think we'll definitely, in the next five years, see a lot of, there will be a lot of clarification about what this AI thing is and how can we use it. Things are moving extremely fast. Even two years ago, I wouldn't be able to have this discussion with you on AI because it was something that probably I wouldn't have thought
22:15
seen in action. So I imagine in five years we'll be in a very different space. I can't really predict what that is. I think from public affairs point of view, just the world continuing to be a pretty...
22:28
unpredictable place that will certainly continue. And just sort of the expectation that you can have a stable regulatory regime that is accepted by your peers internationally and not challenged, that has gone out the door. So I guess that's good for people like us, right? Because we sort of, we can interpret that uncertainty, but at the same time, our work will be
22:53
difficult from that point of view. But then as I said before, I think the fundamentals will still be getting your leadership to understand the value of public affairs and be supportive of it and focusing on those personal relationships. So having support from the leadership and also using your networks and using your judgments to do the work and not think that AI will be able to do all the analysis that is needed.
23:23
Very interesting. Very, very interesting. I think you're right. I think that the ever-changing geopolitical landscape is not slowing down. And I think that's going to be a big challenge for everyone.
23:35
And I think public affairs is still going to have to not fight the old fight, but I think the profession is still going to have that internal challenge, if you like, about demonstrating value to internal stakeholders. Thank you very much. That's been really interesting. A couple of questions to finish. The first one, what would be your single non-negotiable piece of advice for someone today that is starting out their career in public affairs?
24:00
The non-negotiable is to think that you can do your job from home, from your office, in front of your computer, and just think that human interaction is no longer needed in public affairs. And I'd certainly try to tell that to young people who work with me. You also need to be the type of person that likes to interact, that likes to hear what other people have to say, likes to engage in conversation. I think those are the fundamentals and they will continue to be.
24:30
Very, very good. In the UK or in Brussels, what would you say has been your best, whether it be a conference story, conference experience, trip to Strasbourg? What's been your best, I guess, non-office experience when it comes to politics, public affairs? Oh, I don't think I would say conference experience would be it. They tend to be pretty crazy. LAUGHTER
24:56
Oh, that's a really tricky question. So as someone with experience in Brussels and the UK, I must say I really miss the experience of being in a way in the Brussels bubble and having worked in European Parliament briefly in my career, of just having that feeling of how international it is and all the languages around you. Other than that, you know, Brussels is also a place that likes a good event. It's quite a good one. It certainly does.
25:24
So, no, nothing comes to mind. But I do miss that aspect of just having the whole world represented usually around the meeting. It's such a small place as well. That's one of the things I love about going to Brussels is it's such a small place and you've got this massive range of different people from different places, but you're all there basically because you're really interested in politics. It's quite nerdy in some respects, but brilliant at the same time. Yeah.
25:51
A couple of questions which has a bit of a UK lens, so you'll have to forgive us for this. Do you have, or who is your favourite Prime Minister? I can't say that! Or we could go for, who's your favourite politician? I can't say who's my favourite Prime Minister. No, no, no. Who's my favourite politician? Jesus, Jack. LAUGHTER
26:21
You really got me there. I won't be able to answer that because I don't know how to answer it without, you know, just I never have opinions about politics because it's my job. I don't have a favorite politician. I think my favorite politicians nowadays tend to be the ones that actually answer questions and they tend to be fewer and fewer.
26:41
But I do have an increasing admiration for politicians that in this day and age can actually answer questions credibly and showing what they really think. I think that's so important in the future because we're just coming to a time when we all know what they're going to say. It's no point asking them questions anyway. So having that skill, I think that's what I really admire in politicians nowadays.
27:07
That's a very good answer and definitely something I think for us all to think on. So Susana, thank you very much for joining us today. It's been really, really insightful. And my thanks as always to Oli Foster, our in-house producer. Perhaps you have a view on the future of public affairs and would like to share or would like to add to the discussion yourself. Please follow the link in the show's bio, which will direct you to our feedback page for Helio Intelligence, which is of course the home of DeHavilland and Forefront.