Mr. Cowan, you started as a journalist, how has that foundation in the media helped your career in communications?

“I started as an IT and financial journalist and from that went into writing for various banks. I think most journalists at some point would like to jump to the other side and see what it is like to be involved with running a company. Journalists develop very strong analytical skills, looking at all angles of a story and write what they hope is a very objective piece.

Once you get into the corporate world, then such a depth of analysis is not always welcome.

There are decisions to be made, and you are one of many voices and all sorts of other factors come into play. If you learn to manage your input and find a way to articulate that to your company, then I think you can provide a great service. You have to learn new skills of persuasion and diplomacy.

You finally made that jump. At Clearstream, following the Cedel-Deutsche Börse merger, you were involved in creating a new brand identity.

What sort of challenges did that present?

“A post merger or merger situation is one of the most interesting times to join a company. You are talking about a paradigm change for the organisations involved and you have the opportunity to really shape something.

André Lussi, the CEO of Cedel at the time, called me into his office and told me he wanted me to change the name of the company – which is about all he told me. Well, he did also tell me I had until January 2000, which gave me four months to hire a branding agency, find the name itself, get the design done, develop a launch campaign, present it to the board and get it approved. Rebranding only works when there is a very strong commitment from the head of the company – the chairman, the CEO have to go along with it and it has to be a strong vision of what the company aspires to be.

You have to get the launch right. That’s when people are most emotional and you can really reach them. The Clearstream brand is still around, despite many changes at the company, so I take a lot of pride in having driven that very exciting process. The same happened for the branding people at ArcelorMittal before I joined. The new brand has been such a success.

Indeed, now you have moved from finance to industry. What are the most significant differences you have noticed in working for the two sectors?

“In the financial sector you are very much dealing with white collar workers and you go to the financial centres, major cities like New York, London, Frankfurt or Hong Kong. In industry there are two things you have to get used to, especially in this company, which is quite amazing in its scope.

Firstly, you are dealing much more with blue collar workers. And you are helping support communications in a company that’s got 320,000 people spread over 60 countries. So you are dealing with different cultures, ages, class... all sorts of things.

It means learning about places that you’ve not had to deal with before – very out of the way and challenging places like Liberia and Bosnia. In finance the worst thing that might happen is you miss your train. In this company you might find yourself stuck in a jungle somewhere. But you get to see the way a company interacts with the community, which is not evident from working in the finance industry.

Lakshmi Mittal has said that ArcelorMittal is now a company “with one culture, one direction and one strategy.” How do you implement that maxim when communicating with a multicultural workforce, with hugely varied skills levels, spread across the globe?

“It’s a never ending task of developing and deepening the company experience, creating a sense of one company.

When I joined ArcelorMittal, the first thing I did was to bring the global communicators together here in Luxembourg and establish a series of quarterly meetings to work on how we coordinate and ensure we are communicating in a consistent way.

We have adopted the notion of localisation, which is to take the global aspects of the company – its central messages, its approach, its standards – and see how those can work locally so that they are meaningful to people. So people resonate much better with the messages you are trying to get across.

One major project that is just being rolled out now is to adopt a common approach to internal magazines. Every site’s publication is moving on to the platform of a magazine called “1”. They will all have the same cover and a couple of pages of corporate news, but the rest will be local content in the language of the site. Part of that local content will draw on similar themes that we may want to promote using local examples.

You can adapt ideas to come up with a global solution, but that can only be achieved if you work with people across the globe and don’t just have people at the centre delivering down.

Your previous jobs focused on external communications and public affairs. What significant changes in your approach to communications have you had to adopt in your new role?

“One of the approaches I take is that all external communications are internal and all internal communications are external. I think this is an important issue for communications professionals to engage with more. I was as guilty as anyone, when I worked in corporate communications, of not putting enough of a premium on internal communications. Companies have to see how important internal communications are as a management tool.

The distinction I make is that external communications is a lot about politics – you are campaigning for the company’s reputation – and internal is more about diplomacy, because you are trying to persuade people to a point of view and you are dealing with them in a professional and personal capacity. You are communicating to employees as individuals. You have to use a different kind of language and bear in mind that these are your own people, and you try to explain things to them in a helpful way.

What new technologies does your department use to gather and disseminate information?

“We use the internet and intranet quite extensively, but the management level is very thin in terms of who uses technology. Most of the guys are on the shop floor and if they are using a computer it is to control the industrial process or a blast furnace. We are looking at tools that make things easier for management to use more direct communication, as well as communicating through behaviour. We need to take a holistic approach to the way we deal with internal communication.”