The next installment in our series of conversations with prominent brands features 3, ‘the most advanced mobile network in the UK’.

We spoke with the company’s Director of Corporate Affairs, Hugh Davies and Sarah Pope, Head of Consumer PR, about managing reputation. Do they – like o2 – have several key brand values, just one message, or different campaigns for each audience?

Davies explained what sits at the heart of 3’s communications strategy. “We have one pretty clear message underlying everything both externally and internally. In today’s world, if you’re going to take advantage of the opportunity that lies within digital Britain, it’s your network that gives you access to your online life, wherever you are. Fixed lines can only do so much, whereas mobile incorporates an added element of freedom – whether that’s via a mobile, dongle or laptop.”

He went on to say that this was about looking at human needs as a whole, and not having a separatist approach. Is this reflected in the company’s PR efforts? Sarah Pope explained that; ‘At the moment, the two sides of the business- corporate and consumer- fall into two teams. But, as they are both small, we work very closely together. More and more recently, the consumer team has been taking on issues that have traditionally been regulatory, and integrating them into consumer announcements and vice versa. Because of this, there tends to be a lot of crossover and we end up working with specialist agencies.”

Reputation Online first saw Davies speak at a new media conference in 2007, during which he championed the use of word of mouth marketing, at a time when it was relatively unheard of. We questioned him on being a leader in this field, and whether it was difficult to be ahead of curve with no one to benchmark success or failure against.

“It’s really about looking at need. From our perspective, buying a mobile phone is one of the most complex relationships there is. It’s not like gas or electricity, which is relatively static. People have come to expect constant connectivity, and if they’re without communications for a small period of time, they don’t like it. Many therefore turn to the world of social networking to express opinions. We realised that we needed to understand better the conversations that people are having about our brands and our competitor’s brands, using what we found to engage with consumers.”

He went on to say that over the past two years, 3’s involvement with social media has evolved and now falls into either ‘complaints and conversations’, which are now mainly dealt with by customer services, or working with influencers across the wider blogosphere.

Pope also added that; “A lot of our work is a bit ‘suck it and see’. We’re feeling our way around as much as anyone else. I like to think we’ll continue to lead, but really it’s just an opportunity for us to understand what people are thinking and saying, then using that constructively or proactively. We know that mainly, whatever’s being said in forums or chat rooms is being repeated in pubs or on street corners, online is a huge wealth of information.”

The offline and online comparison is not an easy thing to monitor though, as Pope continued; “We use information we find online and match it up with letters we’re receiving, coverage that we’re getting or even input from events. Quite often things are being said online are mirrored offline, it’s just another validation to put it all in context.”

Part two of the interview, including insight into the deal with Spotify and 3’s attitude to dealing with coverage of poor customer service, will be published later in the week.