Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for January 2009

Google’s Worst Brand Extension Bites the Dust – Goodbye Print Ads

google_print_ads_mistakeGoogle’s worst brand extension has finally met its demise.  Last week, Google announced that Print Ads is getting the ax.

In 2006, the brand that dominates the web launched its new Print Ads product.  Print Ads was Google’s attempt at making money in traditional media, Print Ads was marketed as the perfect way to bring a new revenue stream to newspaper publishers and to provide more relevant advertising for consumers.  Turns out, it didn’t work.  No surprise there.

What went wrong?  First and foremost, Google expanded into a business it had little experience with and lost focus of its core brand strength – dominating the online world.  The extension didn’t make sense from the beginning.  On the flip side, newspapers are in a fast decline.  Google Ads won’t revive them, no matter how great Google thinks they are.  [Read more…] about Google’s Worst Brand Extension Bites the Dust – Goodbye Print Ads

Communicating the Employer Brand

Employer Branding Fortune Top 100 Companies

The new Fortune list of 100 Best Companies to Work For is out—and as always, it offers great information and ideas. So this will be the first of three posts that explore the list, to find out more about what we might call the ’employer brand.’ Basic idea:

Your company has a customer-facing brand, but it also has an applicant-facing brand, which images the company as an employer.

Job-seekers will judge your company at least as much by its ’employer brand’ as by its ‘customer brand.’ The Careers site harmonizes with the customer brand—but it communicates the employer brand.

Today’s post will look for useful lessons from the top three companies on the Fortune list. Part 2 of the series will take up the cautionary tale of two-time winner Google, considering whether (and how) to leverage perks on the Careers website. Finally, Part 3 will do some speed-dating with 50 or so of these employee-friendly companies, in search of common threads and good ideas.

Now, to end the suspense . . . at win, place and show: NetApp, Edward Jones, and Boston Consulting. When I visited their Career sites, I found that NetApp and Edward Jones are already leveraging their Fortune ranking, with badges and links that grab your attention on the Careers home page and also on the corporate home page. (The Fortune print issue is not out yet, but the list is up on their website.) That signals attention to the site, as well as an appreciation for the importance of employer branding.

I also found that all three of these sites are attractive, interesting, and easy to navigate. But most important — all three have a pronounced focus on individual employees. And instead of talking about the company, or talking about people in general, all three sites employ a consistent, apparent ‘you’ focus.

I’ll pound this home by bolding some relevant bits from their sites, as follows:

Employer Branding NetApp
  • NetApp starts big with the first sentence: ‘Leadership, passion and ownership are qualities in every person at NetApp.’ Prominent on their Careers page is a list of key points (“Get rewarded for your great work,” “Push yourself and your imagination,” etc.) that immediately puts the visitor inside the message.

  • Edward Jones also starts off with a personalized headline (‘Welcome to Your Career at Edward Jones’) and follows up in the first sentence with ‘we’re known for our personal approach to business.’

  • BCG has a similar all-about-you focus, with messaging topics like ‘Chart Your Own Course’, ‘Challenge Your Mind,’ and ‘Is BCG for Me?’

Obviously these three companies are very different. They range in size from relatively tiny BCG (1,680 employees) to mid-sized NetApp (5,014) to the fairly large Edward Jones (34,496), and they have different business model and employee populations. But their common emphasis on individual employees seems to endear them to workers—and that emphasis is evident in their Careers messaging.

For a reality check on this point, I went way down the Fortune list to number 72, Nordstrom, and compared their Careers messaging to Macy’s, which is not on the list. (Picked these two because they are apples-to-apples.) Sure enough . . . the Nordstrom page starts off with the headline “Your Bright Future.”

The Macy’s headline? “Opportunities for Success.”

Not exactly a scientific survey, I know—but pretty interesting. Nordstrom’s message goes on with a paragraph containing 44 words, 10% of which are some version of ‘you.’ Over at Macy’s the very first word on the page is ‘We.’ In fairness, there are some ‘you’ sections on the Macy’s site, but they are buried at lower levels, so the impression you get from a quick visit is not especially personal. (And it’s worth noting that the word ‘we’ does not ever appear on the Nordstrom top page—it’s all about ‘you.’)

Now, it may very well be that Macy’s is just as person-friendly as Nordstrom, or more so! But you wouldn’t know it from the messaging. So our takeaway for Part 1 is . . . figure out whether the Careers message is effectively communicating your company’s commitment to individual employees.

And PS: The online Fortune list provides plenty of details about all 100 companies, with enough slicing-and-dicing to make the information worth exploring!

Corporate’s First Impression – Is it Working?

We all know that the sum of what a person thinks about your company is developed within the first thirty seconds of viewing your website or blog. You therefore have a few seconds to a couple of minutes to impress your audience. How will you do it?

In taking a look at your blog or website design, is it user friendly? Easily navigable? Or, do you have a template on your site that you plan to “get to when you can?” When corporate sites take that extra minute to ensure that they have a comprehensible and engagable site, they do well. Very well.

Have you ever visited a blog site and found it to be quite impressive, perhaps laden with digital graphics, easy to navigate menus and interesting, compelling content? Do you find that our site here at Corporate-Eye fits that audit?  There are so many blogs and websites on the internet today that there is often an issue with finding quality presentations.

There are quite a few corporate blogs in the blog-o-sphere, and trying to review each of them is a task more deserving than just a few lines. But what I wanted to do also was to look at one of the blogs that I follow to see if they fit the first impression criteria and what readers are actually looking for. Delta and General Motors are two corporate blogs that I follow. Their site design is quite interesting, and made me curious to know if either of the two, or both, of the blogs appeal to a niche audience. Or, perhaps because they’re household names, they automatically gather a following. Tell me what you think about GM.

General Motors

 gm

 

What appeals to you about the site? Do you find it easy to read and understand? What would you suggest to the site owners to do to make their blog more appealing? Would you visit this site again and often? What stands out to you and makes a compelling impact?

In corporate blogging, it’s really quite simple. First impressions are lasting impressions. All we have to do is to ensure that we have fresh, compelling content and that we are appealing to our niche audience. What can your corporate blog do differently to ensure just that?

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the Delta site.

Recruitment agencies and the corporate website

I recently invited Aaron Blower, from Chelsea Search Group, to explain how recruitment agencies use corporate recruitment sites, and what services the corporate site could provide for the external recruiter.

Targeting the One

An astute Corporate Eye editor recently noted that “Most corporate sites, it seems to me, are designed for the new graduate or the experienced hire – individual potential applicants, not agency recruiters …” 

Oh how right she is! 

This raises some interesting questions, both about the structure and usability of corporate recruiting sites, but also about their purpose. 

Let’s start by laying out some of the general goals of the different groups here:

Recruitment Agencies

The primary goal of headhunters is always to make the most money with the smallest amount of effort.  They work for two types of clients:

  • Type 1 clients, who actively source active job seekers and use recruitment agencies only for the most difficult positions after they have exhausted all of their options
  • Type 2 clients, who use agencies for most or all of their positions and do not do much to attract direct applicants. 

Recruitment agencies are always on the lookout for type 2 companies, but their bread and butter is the passive job seeker for type 1 companies (a passive job seeker being one who would consider a job if made aware of it, but isn’t actively looking, unlike the active job seeker).

Corporate Recruiting Website

Corporate websites are designed to attract potential applicants for current and future positions as well as inform all applicants of the benefits of working for the corporation.  This is one of the primary things that turns a type 2 company into a type 1 company; the better the corporate website, the more attractive it will be for active job seekers.  A company with no online careers presence is unlikely to attract the same quantity of applicants. 

Since agencies are hoping your corporation is a type 2 company, they will be talking to active candidates as well as passive candidates.  What this means of course, is that the corporate website is in competition with recruitment agencies for the same active candidates!  If a corporation can get a candidate to apply through the company’s website before an agency submits their resume, the corporation saves significant quantities of money. 

How to Make Them Work Together

With regards to agencies, the corporate website should serve a couple of primary goals.

First, it should be easy for everybody to see all of the open positions without registration or too many clicks.  Most recruiters are going to corporate websites to find out what jobs are open, to see if they might have any candidates that they can skill-market to that company. 

Second, it is nice when they have their corporate policy regarding use of recruiters in plain sight.  These are all examples of sites that clearly spell out their policy towards recruiters.  Some take the extra step of providing information on how to inquire about providing recruitment services.  This one seems to go the extra step of even listing which positions might be open to recruiters if they have a contract.

The point is to have a website that works towards your recruitment goals.  A note specifically tailored to recruiters may decrease the number of cold calls you get and most certainly will decrease the number of unsolicited resumes received – both of which saves HR a lot of time. 

I would probably take an additional step and note which positions the company would be open to filling via recruiter, with specific instructions on how to inquire with specific candidates.  Corporate HR departments cannot spend a lot of time fielding speculative calls from recruiters, but most would be willing to receive targeted contact from recruiters with candidates they would actually be interested in. 

Thanks, Aaron!

Social Media Affect Business and Politics

Today was one of THE most important days in my life, with the inauguration and installation of a new president of the United States of America. President Barack Obama.

Without a doubt, the installation of President Barack Obama was highly significant and a very, VERY popular event. There were estimated to be over 1 million people in attendance to witness this history-making affair. What was so striking about the event was something that everyone could see and feel but may have deemed it to be not-so-important. The electric feel of the internet activity during the course of this historic day is something that can be easily transferred to any corporate setting. Do you create an internet buzz?

Obama began his technological and media campaign for presidency long before the usual crunch time when candidate’s typically try to find creative ways that will help them win. Although not always, these candidates panic and try to find something that will work. They almost always wait until the end of the campaign to try something new, something with lots of shock-and-awe or something that is not public knowledge to reveal and put their campaigns over the top…and win. Corporations are not much different in terms of their dealing with finding workable solutions to issues that the company faces. Think about this in terms of your corporation or business and determine if a workable solution is available to you.

In business, there is also sometimes a tendency to wait until there may not be a viable solution to a problem. Or, the solution may not be feasible and practical for your audience. How can this be solved?

Social marketing and social media is a wonderful concept and tool that your corporation can use to facilitate you towards a solution. When a company networks and markets socially, they begin to build a trust with their audience that over time, will prove to be quite worthwhile for their company.

Corporations can effectively establish themselves in media relations and firmly brand themselves to create an image in the customer’s minds. When they do this, they stand to become a household name with its own industry and for potential customers to turn to when they are in need.

How does your corporation involve social media? What strategies or plans do you have in place to address issues or questions that may arise ?

Primark’s Sweatshops: The Future of Sustainability Assurance

Primark Store, ManchesterThink of great classic combinations: Fred and Ginger; Sonny and Cher; Laurel and Hardy. “The BBC and Primark” could soon be added to this list.

Last summer the BBC exposed how some of Primark’s fashion clothing range came from Far East sweatshops.

Now the BBC has done it again, this time showing that Primark’s continues to engage suppliers who use unsustainable employment practices.

Reaction to the news will been varied. Fashionistas may shake their heads sadly and say that the cheap, ethical fashion Primark which claims to sell simply cannot exist.

On the other hand, political deep-reds may get all agitated, saying corporations simply cannot be trusted. Both are, to some extent, correct. [Read more…] about Primark’s Sweatshops: The Future of Sustainability Assurance