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Archives for October 2008

Who are the Most Influential People in Advertising, Marketing and Media?

AdWeek is conducting a poll to help its editors determine who the most influential person in advertising, marketing and media is.  Since branding is so closely integrated with advertising, marketing and media, I was immediately drawn to this survey.  However, I was disappointed in the list of people to vote for.

The list is made up of a number of popular bloggers, corporate execs, and celebrities, but it seems to be missing something.  I’m not suggesting that Oprah Winfrey isn’t influential.  She probably tops this list in many parts of the world, but I do think the list should be split between the celebrities and bloggers and the people in the trenches of advertising and marketing.  It doesn’t seem appropriate to top a list of the most influential people in advertising, marketing and media with J.J. Abrams.  I know Lost is a popular TV show and I loved Alias, but it doesn’t make complete sense.  I should also mention that as of right now, Steve Jobs of Apple is in the lead with almost twice as many votes as the next closest person on the list. [Read more…] about Who are the Most Influential People in Advertising, Marketing and Media?

Celebrating the FTSE 100: action on the breadline

Blog Action Day 2008Despite the recent financial madness, most FTSE 100 companies aren’t on the breadline … but many of them try to help those who are.

There are a few whose social involvement statements are a little like the beauty queen’s vapid ambitions to work for world peace – all motherhood and apple pie; and a few whose statements go no further than that they support health and education projects.

Don’t get me wrong: health and education projects are essential, and perhaps these companies subscribe to the view that charity should be conducted secretly, and don’t want to brag … but others provide a bit more detail, and if we dig a bit, we can see that there is some great work being done to try to alleviate poverty.

And surely these big companies are ideally placed to help, if anyone can.

How can big business help pull people out of poverty?

There are several different ways that businesses provide assistance to individuals or to smaller businesses.

By donating cash or goods

Some companies donate hard cash or goods in kind to charities aimed at particular problems, such as disaster relief and homelessness. This is a direct route to alleviate poverty, but doesn’t necessarily solve a long-term problem.

  • For example, Sainsbury’s donate food that is past the display date but before the eat-by date to various charities. This avoids waste and provides food for those in need – definitely a win-win.
  • Or ICAP, who donate money to VSO – in 2007, this was enough to send two teachers to Nepal, where “a single volunteer shares skills with people who go on to train hundreds more, and eventually change the lives of thousands”

By donating time

Some companies donate time by allowing their staff to volunteer in work time to support charities. This type of action is often local and small-scale: one-off barn-raising type events, or fun fund-raising events – but can be regular literacy sessions at a school, for example. And there is no doubt that education is one of the best ways out of poverty. Again, this is a win-win game: staff feel good, the company gets credit, and the people they help get the benefit – and that could be several children who improve their literacy skills, and therefore their life-chances.

By donating expertise

Some companies donate expertise to build entrepreneurial abilities – a great way to lift people out of poverty.

  • Several provide support for small entrepreneurs, such as:
    • BG, who supported women in Brazil in developing their business skills and marketing their craftwork
    • SABMiller, who work to develop a culture of entrepreneurship among young people in South Africa by providing training, grants, mentorship and assistance during the set-up phase of a new business
    • and Compass Group, who helped improve a Colombian fish breeding programme by teaching best safety practices and handling procedures.
  • Others provide financial support for entrepreneurs, such as Shell and AngloAmerican, both of whom support micro finance schemes.

What else could be done?

Here are some places where people are coming together to try to work out how business can help solve some of the issues around poverty:

  • Transforming Business is a research and development project based at University of Cambridge and is looking at how “the creative forces of free enterprise be effectively applied to the most pressing social, economic, and moral challenge of our time: the elimination of poverty”. It has an impressive array of advisers from big businesses, including many FTSE 100 or other multinationals
  • Business Fights Poverty is smaller scale, but is “a network for professionals passionate about fighting world poverty through good business”
  • University of Cambridge (again!) offers a training programme called Business and Poverty Leadership. It’s not cheap, but is intended for Directors and Senior Managers with responsibility for business development, CSR, or business units in emerging economies (some scholarships available)

Not FTSE 100? Not even close?

Here are some initiatives that you could consider as an individual or very small company (big ones welcome too):

  • Mentori – (online) offer time as a business mentor to an entrepreneur in a developing country
  • Skills Venture – (offline) offer time as a business mentor, combined with a holiday, as a working holiday or as a sabbatical – even as a team-building venture.
  • Kiva – offer micro loans to individual entrepreneurs. There are many of these organisations, but Kiva is perhaps the best known.

How can your organisation help? Something for us all to ponder, I think.

Last year’s Blog Action Day post, on the environment: Techniques for enticing the green investor

Making the most of outposts: Flickr

If you’re looking into the creation of social media outposts, you shouldn’t forget about Flickr.

People have been pointing out the use of Flickr by major companies since at least 2006. I haven’t found anything earlier than that, though if you know of something, please do let me know (Flickr was launched in 2004).

However, there still aren’t very many of the companies we look at on a regular basis that have a link from their corporate site to their Flickr stream. Even GM, who were using Flickr back in 2006, and which still maintains a Flickr stream, doesn’t seem to link the Flickr outpost to the corporate site, though the Fastlane blog does link to Flickr.

TNT Flickr stream

TNT are one of those that do – with a link from the Media Centre, which is perhaps the most appropriate place, though I can imagine that the Graduate Careers section might also be a possibility. Images of happy new recruits, anyone?

The Media Centre is the obvious place on the corporate site to look for corporate images, and Flickr is not a replacement for an image gallery. However, it is another place where people may come across your branding, and as such shouldn’t be ignored. Why not put good quality photos that support your brand out there?

I notice, though, that the TNT images have copyright restrictions. This means that – unlike the images explicitly made available for download in the image gallery on the corporate website – people would not be able to reuse these images without permission. Perhaps these images are actually copyrighted to the photographer, rather than TNT.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting strategy, and I’m particularly impressed that TNT link to their photostream from the corporate site. I like to see these paths between the outposts and the core …

Toyota Considers Making Prius an Independent Brand

Toyota already has several successful independent brands – the Prius at a lower price for younger buyers and the Lexus at a higher price for older, luxury car buyers.  Now, Toyota is considering making the hybrid Prius an independent brand complete with new models.  A smaller Prius and larger Prius are both being considered for the new brand lineup.

According to James E. Lentz III, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, the Prius independent brand strategy comes directly from consumer demand and market conditions.  In short, consumers want more fuel efficient car choices in the United States, and the Prius is the most popular hybrid car in the U.S.  It makes sense to extend the line and make Prius its own brand. [Read more…] about Toyota Considers Making Prius an Independent Brand

Mobile Services for Investor Relations

Recently, I came across something interesting on the Bayer Investor Relations site, “Mobile Services.” Most people probably imagine an investor or potential investor sitting at a computer while viewing an IR website. After all, many of the documents that form the cornerstone of Investor Relations don’t lend themselves to being viewed on the tiny screen of a mobile device. Can you imagine trying to read a prospectus on your phone or PDA?

SMS or Text Messages

And yet, some things are very useful for the mobile investor. Bayer’s site for example offers SMS (text messages) for IR News and share price. While many IR sites offer email alerts, the use of SMS or text messages seems to be less common as of yet.

For every day use, there probably aren’t a lot of investors looking for a text message every time something gets posted, but in certain cases, particularly when an investor is waiting on certain information, a prompt text message might be exactly what they need.

There is some care to be exercised here. Regulators likely won’t consider the distribution of important financial information via text message as meeting the qualifications of public disclosure, so you will want the text message to go out at the same time or after the relevant disclosure is made in the company’s traditional public forum. On the other hand, an SMS message that arrives days or even hours after the release of the information elsewhere is likely to be regarded as poor service or insulting. After all, someone doesn’t sign up for quick instant notification only to be delayed in receiving the information.

Mobile View Website

As more devices become capable of displaying web based content, more investors will be looking up information on the go. Perhaps based upon a conversation at lunch, an investor will try and look up the IR page of a company between meetings, or somewhere else on the go.

Although the mobile devices industry is working on solutions for displaying full-scale content, nothing compares to having a page specifically formatted for mobile users. In fact, with a simple bit of coding, a page can actually detect if the visitor is using a mobile device, and if so, display the mobile page instead of the full page.

Bayer IR Mobile PageAgain, the Bayer website provides a nice example of this function. This functionality is not on the IR site alone, but rather part of an integrated mobile site interface accessible via www.mobile.bayer.com. Once accessed, the IR page is an easy click away. The information is easy to read and formatted so that the mobile user doesn’t require any tedious scrolling or searching around to find what they are looking for.

Also, knowing that the information most likely to be sought on a need to know now basis by mobile users is the stock price, the mobile page has been laid out such that the quote is right on top allowing any mobile user to quickly access the page, get the price and then keep moving, which is what being mobile is all about.

Best Practices

Launching a mobile site is a fairly straightforward sounding process. However, it will work best if it is part of your overall template or content management system. Tediously reformatting every posting for mobile viewing is not only inefficient, but error prone as well. A well designed IR site infrastructure, however, can allow each posting to get the mobile treatment with little or no manual intervention, usually through some non-page specific formatting such as CSS or other technology. Look to these methods for implementing a solid mobile viewable option.

As far as SMS messages go, the best option is to integrate them with other electronic delivery options you may already use. For example, if, like many companies, you provide email alerts, designing your SMS system to provide a snippet of the email alert would avoid duplicating efforts. Assuming your email alert system is already compliant for issues like timing, piggy backing your text messaging on it should keep it in line as well.

As always, the key is to provide relevant, timely information to investors. With a mobile formatted page and SMS alerts, there are two new ways to do just that.

Trademark Violations – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from Apple

Corporations have every right to protect their trademarks, including their brand trademarks such as product names, slogans and logos.  However, it’s important not to assume a false power with those trademarks simply because your company is bigger than others.

A perfect example is in the news this week.  In a cease and desist letter, Apple threatened the Victoria School of Business and Technology with legal action if the school doesn’t stop using their own apple logo, which they have been using without any problems since 2005.  Below are the two logos side-by-side.  What do you think? [Read more…] about Trademark Violations – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from Apple