Corporate Eye

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Archives for September 2008

Retailers Want to Sell – Not Tell

Allow me to start with a gross over-generalization: retailers would rather investors get lost in their product offerings than find useful information about them.  I say this after poking around on a number of retailers’ web sites.  By and large, it is very difficult to find your way to the investor relations page from most retailers’ home page as the home pages are cluttered with wiz-bang deals for goods on offer you just can’t refuse. My poster child for this problem is Sainsbury’s, the British supermarket chain.  I started out at their home page and went to the logical spot, “About Sainsbury’s”, conveniently displayed at the top of their home page.  Nope, IR is not in “About Sainsbury’s”.  Nothing remotely resembling investor relations is listed under that tab.

Sainsbury's
Sainsbury’s Retail Site

Then I looked at the “Online Community” tab. Nope, not there either.  A perusal of their FAQs was of no use, and given all that went before, it was no surprise that their Help function was of no help either.  I was a bit put off by this point, but hey, these are only the owners of the company trying to get information, so why should management care if it is readily available? Finally, after much searching and a high level of frustration, I found a tiny tab at the bottom of the home page entitled, “Corporate Site”.  In desperation, I clicked on it and, what do you know, I finally got somewhere where I could learn about the company as an investment. 

Sainsburys
Sainsbury’s Retail Site

This is the worst design I’ve seen so far in terms of getting to the investor relations information area.  It took me at least 6 clicks to get there, – three times as many as your normal site and there was a very high treasure hunt factor involved.  Given that many investors today have an attention span roughly equivalent to the life span of a Mayfly, many will give up before they find out where to go.  On my completely arbitrary ratings scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), I give this a 5, a failing grade.  The only reason the ranking isn’t lower is that the investor relations section, when you finally get to it, is fairly serviceable.

Creating a CSR Buzz in Your Pocket

One facet of the sustainability movement is that of corporate social responsibility, or CSR. This is the principle that businesses should recognise the wider social impact they have upon their and their suppliers’ workers and communities.

Many still misunderstand what is meant by this, believing it to be philanthropy rebranded. They limit their CSR activities to supporting grass roots causes, or donating a percentage of their annual income to a Charity of The Year.

Now a new report from makeITfair demonstrates how a simple business CSR policy, applied to the relevant employees, can profoundly affect the world, giving everyone a CSR buzz in their pocket – literally. [Read more…] about Creating a CSR Buzz in Your Pocket

Captive Brands – The Rebranding of Store Brands

Even though store brands have lost much of the stigma they held 10 or 20 years ago as cheap knock-offs, there is still a certain level of negativity surrounding them.  Apparently, the negative brand impression was strong enough that companies like Wal-Mart, CVS and Walgreens are now calling them “captive brands” in an attempt to make them more palatable to a broader audience.

Retailers make more money selling their own brands then they do selling products from other companies, so it makes sense that a push to rebrand store brands is a popular new trend that’s catching on quickly.  Manufacturers are noticing that the rebranding effort is working as captive brands slowly steal market share from brands that once controlled the vast majority of categories on retail shelves.  [Read more…] about Captive Brands – The Rebranding of Store Brands

Video Blogging: The New Corporate Social Media – Part I

WILL VIDEO BLOGGING REPLACE REGULAR BLOGGING?

As popular as blogging has become for most companies and especially for corporate America, there are still new advances in social marketing that have yet to reach the phenomenal reputation that blogging has. Some companies are still playing catch-up to the idea of blogging, wondering what to blog about and when is a good time to blog. This is in no way indicative of the quality or potential that these companies or entrepreneurs have to offer, but while they’re strategizing their next blog content article, other corporations are in their home office studios or warehouse flats making their next vlog.

YouTube might very well be one of the most popular ideas of vlogging since it’s users can upload a myriad of videos ranging from music, business pitches, corporate developments, politics and news. Youtube’s variety of genres makes it one of the most highly-trafficked sites on the internet.

Vlogging is an interesting animal because of the technical requirements that it takes to orchestrate such a thing and the ability to include the business nature of blogging. In video blogging, the author has to not only create fresh, compelling content, but also has to have and exude a film-face and voice in order to attract and keep the listener’s attention. No, they don’t have to be os supermodel or GQ quality, but they do have to be able to engage the camera, speak to the listener in a friendly tone and present themselves well on camera. Fortunately, in this type of content sharing, you can speak off the cuff, even occasionally throwing a few uhm’s and ahh’s for good measure. Unfortunately, you cannot go back and edit, erase or remove any subject or content ideas because once your idea is spoken, it’s gone. You can edit and splice parts of the presentation, but the topic remains the same. In standard blogging, you can go back several times and edit, re-word sentences, change thought patterns, etc. Case in point: while writing this blog entry, I’ve already done just that several times before you read the final piece. That’s part of the beauty of basic blogging.

Video blogging can be done by almost anyone in the corporation, provided that they have an understanding or even experience with filming, being filmed, editing and presentation. It can be as simple or as sophisticated as the author wants it to be. However, because it is a different kind of social media outreach, it has to align with regular blogging by offering listeners something of value that will enhance their business or personal lives. But, will it work for your company? Check back with me on my next post as we discuss the benefits (or detriments) that vlogging can be to your corporation.

Here is a list derived from the Wikipedia source that shows what companies are vlogging, events that involved vlogging and important dates in this social media venue.

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  • 2000, January 2 – Adam Kontras launches the first (known) video blog,[8] The Journey, detailing his move to Los Angeles and his attempt at showbusiness. He would later host a segment on The Early Show.[9]
  • 2003, June 15 – Nacho Durán launches the first (known) South American (Sao Paulo, Brazil) videoblog based on soundless loops made out of sequences of pictures daily taken from a portable webcam.[10]
  • 2004, January 1 – Steve Garfield launches his videoblog and declares that 2004 would be the year of the video blog.[11][12]
  • 2004, June 1 – Peter Van Dijck and Jay Dedman start the Yahoo! Videoblogging Group, which becomes the center of a community of vloggers[13][14]
  • 2005, January – Vloggercon, the first videoblogger conference, is held in New York City.[15]
  • 2005, July 20 – The Yahoo! Videoblogging Group grows to over 1,000 members.[16][5]
  • 2006, July – YouTube has become the 5th most popular web destination, with 100 million videos viewed daily, and 65,000 new uploads per day.[17]
  • 2006, July 5 – Host Amanda Congdon leaves Rocketboom over differences with her business partner Andrew Baron.[18][19]
  • 2006, November – The Vloggies, the first annual videoblogging awards, is held in San Francisco.[20]
  • 2007, May and August – The Wall Street Journal places a grandmother on the front page of its Personal Journal section.[21] In August she is featured on an ABC World News Tonight segment[22] showing the elderly now becoming involved in the online video world.

Source

Companies Responsible for Ads Displayed on Their Websites

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the U.K. has decided that website publishers are responsible for all third-party ads that appear on their websites regardless of whether those ads are served based on content (such as Google AdSense). 

Both large and small companies serve a variety of third-party ads on their websites, with Google AdSense being the most popular.  Have you ever visited a website and found inappropriate Google AdSense ads on that site?  For example, imagine you visit a blog about infertility and an ad for baby clothes displays.  That would be very inappropriate.  Not convinced?  Check out the picture in this post that shows actual Google AdSense ads displayed on a website courtesy of Flickr.  Imagine how inappropriate those ads could be. [Read more…] about Companies Responsible for Ads Displayed on Their Websites

Special interest groups in the media

Special interest groups have long been known to persuade companies and organizations to support their causes in various, creative ways. Whether the causes are only of special interest to the special interest group themselves, or perhaps they feel that other organizations would benefit from their passionate causes, finding an audience to spout their cause to is highly important for them.

Often, the best way for special interest groups to market their passions is to be as extreme as possible. The idea is to get as much as exposure as possible with a poignant, direct and compelling message. Consider this:

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has a campaign to convince people of the healthy style and benefits of living vegan. They have celebrities representing them and outlining the many benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle. Since some people are highly-tuned to the opinions of celebrity figures, PETA is likely to be successful in convincing people to give the healthy lifestyle a try. Photos of famous singers like the one shown here is bound to get someone’s attention and make them a believer of the vegan lifestyle. This type of media relations is often more than marketing and can veer off into an attempt at branding, marketing, information sharing and even politics.

Recently, PETA also made a public relation open request to the folks at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream to start substituting their milk-based ice cream product with women’s breast milk instead of cow’s milk. Of course this outlandish idea was met with public comments across the board ranging from complete support to utter disgust. Perhaps it was not so much that PETA wanted to actually get people to take seriously that it would be a good idea to extract milk from women for ice cream (or were they?), but perhaps it was their marketing attempt to further establish their purpose and cause. For this story, PETA got a lot of attention from blogs and news articles, whether they were taken seriously or not.

News articles and developments in various organizations can bring the company lots of attention, often more than is expected or bargained for. Impassioned views, special interest subjects and unusual business ideas help companies develop strong media relations and uncompetitive exposure. Coupled with a strong presentation and the right timing, their story is almost guaranteed to never be boring or dated. For a company of any size to establish themselves strong in their niche, their focus must be on creating impacting, compelling ideas and stories that will draw their audience in, creating images, thoughts and ideas that turn window-shoppers into life-long customers.