Corporate Eye

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Archives for August 2008

Would Your Customers Wear Your Brand on a T-shirt?

According to an article in BrandWeek, ad agency David & Goliath surveyed pub-goers in California and asked them which liquor brand they would be willing to wear on a free T-shirt.  Jack Daniels and Corona took the top spots, but the interesting part of this unscientific study is how it can be applied to just about any industry.

Consider your own market.  If you surveyed people about your brand’s industry and asked them which brand they would wear on a T-shirt, what brand would they choose and why?  Would your brand be the one they’d be proud to display on their shirts or would they rather show off their loyalty or approval of a competitor’s brand? [Read more…] about Would Your Customers Wear Your Brand on a T-shirt?

SEC Interpretive Release Part 2 – Antifraud

One of the SEC positions taken in 2000 when they addressed company web sites was that companies are responsible for the accuracy of statements made on their websites that could reasonably be expected to reach investors or securities markets.  This in turn makes statements made on a company’s website subject to antifraud provisions of federal securities laws.  Noted specifically is Exchange Act Section 10(b) which prohibits making material misstatements and omissions of fact.

The Good News

In the 2000 Electronics Release, the SEC noted possible liability arising from accessing previously posted material on a company’s web site.  The SEC notes that “some companies” continue to be concerned about whether or not previously posted materials that are accessed later by web site users would be considered “republished”.  In 2005, the SEC addressed this issue, but only in the context of registered offerings under the Securities Act.  Now, it seems, the SEC is ready to put this issue to bed.

The Interpretive Release states that the SEC does not believe that “companies maintaining previously posted materials or statements on their web sites are reissuing or republishing such materials or information for purposes of the antifraud provisions of federal securities laws just because the materials or statements remain accessible to the public.”

Yippee!  A straight answer!  Maintaining historical materials on a company website is not considered republishing.  There is a catch, however.  In circumstances where it is not apparent to a reasonable person that materials are from an earlier date then things might be different.  So, previously posted materials should be identified as historical by dating them.  Most companies tend to do this already.  But, also, the SEC recommends that such materials be “Located in a separate section of the company’s web site containing previously posted materials or statements.”

Investor Relations Web Site Best Practices

Not all companies were taking the hard line approach discussed by the SEC in regards to posting historical materials on their web sites, but none the less, the elements contained within the Interpretive Release give some guidance as to how the IR portion of the web site should be constructed.

In addition to the items outlined from the first section of the release, we have two new items to add to the best practices list.

First, all items should be dated.  For the most part, all official materials are already dated.  However, by making a date a requirement for anything posted to the IR pages, a company can ensure continued compliance particularly with materials that are “current” today, but will be “historical” sometime in the future.  An existing date when the material is first published eliminates the possibility that materials will inadvertently be archived without a date later.

Second, all historical or archived materials should be kept in a separate area.  Though not explicitly stated, a separate page with a large “ARCHIVE” or “HISTORICAL” heading across the top will be a great way to prevent any “reasonable person” from being unable to distinguish between new and old materials.

Chances are most IR web sites are at least somewhat on board with these issues already, but for those that aren’t, your reason to make some changes has arrived.

Attracting Graduates: New Alternatives

Blurting out boring facts about your company is really not a good way to attract applicants especially if you are hoping to focus on graduate careers. The secret for attracting them? 

Being innovative as much as possible.

Instead of just enumerating information, how about presenting it with a twist? Creating videos or blogs about your company could work, especially if you are promoting the culture of the company and how the culture would be able to nourish the growth that these future employees want to achieve in their career life.

One good example of this comes from AstraZeneca. This firm does not just give a brief introduction about the company! It gives an over-all experience for applicants. The tour goes from the different career opportunities which you could join in and also the perks (company gym and bar) that you could also experience once you join the company. This virtual tour could really entice interested parties because they could visualize themselves working for your company. I personally consider this as the best “marketing value” for both the company and future candidates.

Aside from that, testimonials are also a great way to promote your companies. If you are targeting graduate careers, you could ask someone from the same educational institution to write an honest-to-goodness testimonial about their experience in the company. The testimonial could include any of the following topics: 

  • personal recruitment experience
  • present working situation
  • stability and perks of the company
  • future career and personal growth

Through this strategy, applicants could actually have that “connection” because these people that gave their own testimonial have the same background as theirs. This could give out a sense that they could actually relate to these people, and in the future they could also be like them.

Combining these two methods is a very good idea but companies should make sure that they maintain the standard and the real purpose of these strategies. Implementing a new twist in terms of attracting candidates could make a difference in a company’s sourcing goal but making sure that it still follows the mission and vision of the company should always be the main priority.

Do Tech Companies Give Good IR Web? (part 1)

Where better to search for good Investor Relations web sites than tech companies?  These are supposed to be the companies that are cutting edge when it comes to technology and my thinking is that such companies, if anyone, will know how to optimize the web experience for their investors.  So to begin my semi-random, completely unscientific review of how company web pages treat their investors, I decided to start by looking at how three well known technology companies – Microsoft, Apple and Sun – deal with getting investors to the appropriate spot on their web sites.  Each of the web experiences says something instructive about the companies and I will deal with each in separate posts.

I started with Microsoft; they’re the big dog and their advertising is always telling me how their software will make my life easier.  When I directed my browser to go to www.microsoft.com, instead of just the home page I encountered the home page with a pop-up window encouraging me to install a piece of software called silverlight in order to make my web experience better.  YUK!  As an investor, I want information quickly, and I don’t want software.  Once I declined the software, it was relatively easy to find a link for About Microsoft in the upper right of the screen.

Home Page
Microsoft Home Page

Clicking on the About Microsoft link brought up a new pop up screen showing mini views of a number of pages, including Investor Relations, For Journalists, Environmental Sustainability and 9 other pages.  A further click on the IR page got me where I wanted to go.  And I must admit, the mini pages were a cool touch.

Pop Up Mini Pages
Pop Up Mini Pages

Which leads me to introduce my entirely arbitrary ranking system for ease of getting to the investor relations web page on a company’s web site.  In addition to the criteria I laid out in my previous post -number of clicks, treasure hunt component and location and size of the reference (see You Can’t Get There From Here) I will also consider obstacles placed in my path and general aesthetics.  Based on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, I score Microsoft’s experience a 7, with markdowns coming from the blasted software pop-up, the listing for About Microsoft being in small print and the fact that it took three clicks to get where I wanted to go, one more than it should.  (Note:  A subsequent visit to the Microsoft site to double-check my findings revealed that Microsoft had removed the pop-up window for silverlight software and replaced it with a tab which people could access if they wanted the software.  Without the software, I improve their score to an 8.)

What does all of this tell me, as an investor, about Microsoft?  Well, to start, it shows they are willing to try to impose and tie you into new software.  It might also tell you that they think current web browsers, of which they have about an 80% market share, are not doing certain things as well as they should.  Judging from the home page and the size and placement of the About Microsoft link, product is what they overwhelmingly care about most.  Finally, when you get to the mini pages view, investors are only one of many stakeholders. 

It could be that I am reading too much into a series of web pages, but I assure that I will not be the only one doing this.  When investors visit you, whether in person or virtually, everything is scrutinized.

How To Get Your Corporate Blog On “The List”

Blogging is a sort of weird animal. You either get it or you don’t. New blogs on new subjects and topics are being added to a growing list of blogs every single day. With so much information to share in each individual blog, it can be hard for the average reader to decide which blog to visit, why and what is it that is valuable to him or her. A blog’s purpose is to share, entertain, inform or educate. A blogger has about 20 seconds to convince the reader to stay, read the entire article through and perhaps even visit again. If the blog writer loses them, he may have to work two to three times as hard next time to win them back. Add corporate blogging to the equation and the likelihood of visitor’s returning decreases dramatically. That’s because corporate blogs usually don’t give readers a good enough reason to come back.

Corporate blogging is often thought of to be “dry” or “boring” and its readers somewhat staunch with no sense of humor. Corporate blogs often share information of course, about its own self, what the corporation’s accomplishments are, what direction the corporation is going and how the corporation is going to achieve those goals. They may on occasion throw in a few humor lines or a story or two to lighten things up, but they stay on the side of caution and keep things narrowly focused on the business at hand, not giving in too often to personalities, politics or current events. In doing this, they can often be pegged as boring and dry. Is that really fair or accurate of all corporate blogs? Does your corporate blog fall into that trap?

There are some corporate blogs that get it and there are some, unfortunately, that do not. Those that get it are the ones who go beyond what their actual purpose is and provide more enlightenment, more information and more entertainment that what is called for. In other words, they are not boxed in to whatever the general thinking of them should be. Just because a corporate blog is spouting news about developments, technical issues and company information is no reason that the blog should lack luster, life and brightness. Every corporation that employs the use of blogs to act as a media relations source should consider using a myriad of bloggers to act as their voice. In other words, let the corporation’s personality shine through, illuminating their message through those that know the company best and can articulate it in their own words and personality. It’s like having company evangelists that can share your branding message in multiple ways.

Corporations should also not be afraid to let their company bloggers speak and blog on the company’s developments. Sure, corporations don’t want their employees loosely blogging and sharing private information, but corporations do want to get their message out in as many ways as possible and blogging is that way. When bloggers are allowed expression of speech and freedom of that expression, they can work wonders for your company. The only time to give pause to allowing bloggers freedom is when there are stifling management practices (that gives disgruntled bloggers fodder) and if there are any inexperienced employees who may not have the seasoned ability to write succinctly and accurately to your reader base. In this case, offsetting it with further training can prove to be the remedy.

Identify employees within your corporation that can blog professionally about what it is that your company does. Allow them the freedom to express themselves, your company and their developments openly, in a fun manner and on a routine basis. Don’t be afraid to let go of the reigns and relax a little. Your corporate blog will be better for as will your company’s blog for having a medium and an outlet to do so.

Later This Week: Part 2 On Getting On “The List” in Corporate Blogging

Evaluate Your Brand with the Corporate Branding Success Quiz

How well is your company doing in terms of developing your brand?  Take my Corporate Branding Success Quiz below to find out where your efforts stand.

Respond to the 10 statements below using a tiered scale as follows: 1=Never, 2=Sometimes, 3=Always

  1. Employees and customers know the one word that your brand occupies in consumers’ minds.
  2. Customers know what to expect from your brand.
  3. Employees can clearly articulate your brand statement.
  4. Your employees and customers know where your brand is positioned in the marketplace.
  5. Your brand is clearly differentiated from the competition and employees and customers can articulate what that difference is.
  6. Your employees are trained on an ongoing basis to know your brand’s image, message and promise and understand how to portray that message and promise as brand ambassadors.
  7. Your marketing initiatives consistently deliver the brand’s image, message and promise.
  8. Your company invests a portion of its budget on brand marketing initiatives.
  9. Business decisions are evaluated for brand-worthiness.  In other words, business decisions are evaluated to ensure they are consistent with the brand image, message and promise.
  10. Your company employs branding experts who are responsible for maintaining the consistency and integrity of your brand (e.g., a Chief Brand Officer and staff). [Read more…] about Evaluate Your Brand with the Corporate Branding Success Quiz