Corporate Eye

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Archives for April 2009

How Important is It for Brands to be Green?

recycle_earth-dayWith Earth Day upon us, I’ve been thinking about green brands and companies that focus heavily on spreading an environmentally-conscious message.  Unfortunately, not as many well-known, international brands come to mind as one would hope and expect. 

I’m not saying there aren’t industry leading brands that hype their green initiatives.  There are plenty of those, but how many of those messages do consumers truly believe?  And how many of those messages actually motivate consumers to purchase one brand over another?  Do you buy products from Walmart because Walmart participates in eco-friendly activities, or do you shop there because it’s cheap and convenient?

What’s my point?  It’s simple.  It’s easy enough for brands to jump on the green bandwagon.  The big players sponsor environmental events, match donations to environmental nonprofit organizations, and hype their in-office recycling programs, but how many of them actually “live” being green?  How many of them have, “Lead the industry in quantifiably helping the environment,” on their list of strategic imperatives  (notice the use of the word quantifiable, meaning measurable)? [Read more…] about How Important is It for Brands to be Green?

Recruiting Goes Green

Green Recruiting

In honor of Earth Day, I spent some time looking for ideas and information about how the increasingly popular “green” movement can/should/will impact corporate recruiting. And I found some interesting items:

  • John Sullivan, who often leads the way on HR topics, called attention to the impact of environmentalism back in 2007. In Green Recruiting: Building Your Employer Brand, Sullivan explains persuasively that many of the best candidates (young, well-educated, responsible) will place a high value on corporate responsibility in general, and a commitment to sustainability/green values in particular. And he follows up with a detailed list of ways for companies to promote their green credentials—including (for example) providing interviewers with a fact sheet highlighting environmental values and initiatives; using recyclable paper for recruiting materials; and (very important!) showcasing green on your Careers website.
  • Sullivan’s green recruiting article sparked what could be described as a “feisty debate” among commenters. (Other descriptions might be donnybrook, free-for-all, or brouhaha.) Worth reading—not only for the entertainment value, but a a reminder that passions can run high when it comes to the topic of environmental action, even in this relatively tame context.
  • Taleo touts its greenness, focusing on “electronic recruiting saves paper.” That’s a valid point, but since erecruiting is Taleo’s business anyway, they might need to look for ways to go a little further. The article does discuss energy savings through software-as-a-service, based on the advantages of server-pooling. Interesting—but there’s a long way to go before SaaS makes a big environmental impact.
  • The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University implemented a “no goodies” policy for its campus recruiting events. Noting that “Duke MBA students accrue a significant inventory of giveaways” from the 150+ companies that visit Fuqua annually–and citing the energy costs of shipping, plus the amount of waste created by packaging and discarded items–the school no longer allows companies to bring piles of stuff to recruiting events. Again, interesting. But will other schools follow suit?
  • The February 2009 Update newsletter from CareerXRoads contains a short but very thoughtful piece called “Staffing’s Carbon Footprint=1.25 tons of CO2 emissions per hire and why you should care.” They suggest that staffing professionals honestly assess their company’s commitment to sustainability, determine the level of commitment, and analyze the environmental impact of their own departmental activities. They also offer a definition of “green recruiting” that is definitely worth reading (or possibly memorizing).

One point that occurred to me often while exploring resources for this topic: How much of the greenness claimed by companies (whether for recruiting, for public relations, for advertising, or otherwise) reflects real commitment, and how much is mere expediency? Another post, perhaps . . .

Thanks to Luz A. Villa for the image “Living Earth.”

Investor Relations Website URLs

Recently, it seems that more and more users are making some assumptions regarding website name and URLs. A recent review of logs at several different sites show an increasing number of users attempting to bypass website navigation and directly access what they want via the URL they type into their browser.

Pseudo-Standard URLs

Certain things are established standards in URLs today, the defined extensions (.com, .edu, .uk, and so on) and the registrars who regulate the assignment of domain names attached to those prefixes, for example. Also, certain characters are allowed or not allowed, which results in certain characters being “escaped” or defined by an allowed set of characters. The dollar sign being replaced by &#36, for example.

After that, how and where various web addresses are handled within a site is completely in the control of the site owner.

However, there is an emerging sense among savvy Internet users that certain things can “usually” be found in a specific location by entering commonly used keys into manually typed addresses. Entering URLs in this manner can result in significant time savings, particularly on longer website names, or when entering a web address via a non-standard keyboard like on a mobile device or cellphone.

For example, many websites offer the mobile version of their site at m.sitename.com. Others offer the same mobile functionality at www.sitename.com/mobile or www.sitename.com/m. Likewise, most large Internet providers tend to respond well to entering “mail” and then the site name, even if just by redirecting the user to the official address. Consider, mail.google.com, mail.msn.com, mail.yahoo.com, and so on.

While these locations and shortcuts are by no means standard and are not even noticed or anticipated by many users yet, there is an emergence of user interface design that takes advantage of such assumptions. Doing so continues to allow for specific customized user interface and programming standards, while at the same time allowing users to find precisely what they are looking for in case they don’t quite understand the interface presented, or even if they prefer to skip the interface all together.

Investor.Company.com

Internet users looking for investor relations web content are no doubt significantly smaller in number than users looking for email or mobile content, but a significant portion of them are more savvy than the average web surfer. While certainly not as widespread as concepts like m for mobile, or mail for accessing webmail, there are signs of a pseudo-standards movement coming to the Investor Relations arena.

Consider, that in a recent test, half of the 10 largest US companies provided a valid response to investor.companyname.com regardless of where the “real” IR website could be found. For example, typing investor.wallmartstores.com brings the investor the Wal-Mart IR homepage, despite the fact that the IR page URL is actually walmartstores.com/Investors/

Such response is easily configured via a redirect. A redirect is simply an instruction to a visitor to redirect, or look to a different location, based on the information within the web address the visitor is trying to reach. For example, most commercial websites today can be reached whether or not the user types www. Users trying to reach the New York Times will get there via either www.nytimes.com or nytimes.com, with the webserver either adding or removing the www automatically depending upon the site configuration.

There are multiple types of redirects, but one preferred method is called the 301 Redirect which provides a behind the scenes error code electronically informing the visitor that the page in question has been permanently moved to another location, and then provides that location. This all happens without any interaction or display appearing to the user. Indeed, if the user were to bookmark the page upon arrival, they would actually bookmark the correct link because the redirect not only displays the proper page, but re-states the URL in the browser itself.

The great thing about this method is that it allows the user to continue to access important information in a manner that makes sense to them, while preventing any sort of implicit approval of the visitor’s entryway. Thus, search engines like Google will not provide investor.company.com as a search result no matter how many websites link to it in that manner, and will instead provide the official authorized link as the search result instead. While users who bookmark the IR site after reaching it via redirect will still bookmark the official location.

Best Practices For IR

How should an Investor Relations department handle the rise of pseudo-standard URLs?

Examine your website logs and see if your users are starting to try this technique. Are there multiple 404 File Not Found errors for addresses like investor.name.com or www.name.com/investor?

If so, there is little harm in configuring redirects for those addresses that point to your official address instead. Doing so causes no downtime, does not increase the load on the server, and does not cause any broken links or exceptions to the various standards that may be in place at your corporation. In other words, its a guaranteed win at no expense!

A forward thinking IR group might even consider taking it to the next level. What other ways might people try and access IR information that you are enthusiastic about returning? Is anyone trying to access mobile formatted investor relations content via m.company.com/investor or how about investor.company.com/mobile?

Would it be worthwhile to provide access to the current stock price via something like quote.company.com?

Obviously, such redirects could spin out of control, so trying to anticipate every possible request has little value. Focus instead on what the majority of your users are trying to do.

Such redirects not only provide an easy way for users to access your site, they also provide an easy way for company representatives and executives to reference the IR site as well. Is it easier for the V.P. of Research to stand before a large crowd and say that investor information is available at investor.bighype.com or to expect them to say it is available at www.bighype.com/corporate/investor-relations. (Don’t forget to mention the hyphen!)

Judicious use of such redirects are a great tool to provide an even better user experience to investors and potential investors.

Happy redirecting!

Will the Media Silence the Naysayers?

These days, it seems that it’s what you DON’T say rather than what you DO say that can get you in trouble. And it always seem that the celebs are always in the hot spot as they always seem to stay in trouble. What they say is often misconstrued or taken out of context. They have to be extra careful with what they say being caught on camera, or on the news and potentially harming their careers.

Although Hollywood celebrities struggle most with it , almost anyone is susceptible. Most any and everything they say lands them and their names and their unfortunate photos in a media-laden land of opportunists. Even if they say something good or something right, they’re criticized. Even if it’s jus their opinions, they’re still criticized. Is there winning anywhere, ever?

Carrie Prejean, the runner-up to the Miss USA winner, Kristen Dalton knows exactly what that feels like. She said something, or rather answered something, that got her into trouble. More specifically, what she said may have cost her the Miss USA crown.

It turns out that what she said was her opinion about gay marriages – that it’s only right that marriages exist between a man and a woman, – wasn’t as popular or exciting as some of the other contestant’s questions. She was booed from the stage. Perez Hilton, one of the judges and the one who asked the ill-fated question, felt that the comment cost her the crown. He was right.

“The way miss California answered her question lost her the crown, without a doubt!” Perez told Access Hollywood after the pageant. “Never before that I’m aware of has a contestant been booed at Miss USA.”

So how much responsibility should the pageant director’s have in the outcome? Should they be held accountable too? There is talk of lawsuits with pageant directors and big names like “Donald Trump” all tied in together.  

The media seemed to have a field day with this situation, replaying the question over and over on network stations and all across the Internet. It caused quite a media fire-storm when Carrie un-surprisingly did not win.

Because this has been broadcasted so many times in media outlets, it’s doubtful if Carrie will ever outlive this snafu or if she will be forever tied to the “one who said that.” Only time will tell.

What do you think the media should do? If Carrie ignores them, will they go away? Should the media keep pouncing on this story?

Starwood Sues Hilton Over Denizen Brand’s Fast Launch

hilton_hotelAn interesting story is out this week from the hotel industry. In June 2008, two executives from Starwood abandoned ship and headed to Hilton. Roll the calendar ahead to March 2009, and Hilton announces it is launching a new luxury lifestyle hotel brand, Denizen. Enter Starwood who thought Hilton was launching this new brand a bit too quickly. Roll the calendar ahead again to April 2009, and Starwood sues Hilton claiming that those two executives who changed teams back in June 2008 stole over 100,000 confidential files.

The lawsuit alleges that it was because of those 100,000+ files about Starwood’s luxury W hotel brand that Hilton was able to launch the Denizen brand much more quickly than they would have been able to without those files. Hilton’s response? They’re going to fight the case claiming it is without merit, and they have no plans to stop the rocket-paced launch of Denizen. [Read more…] about Starwood Sues Hilton Over Denizen Brand’s Fast Launch

Brand Names Come Back from the Dead – What Do You Think?

linens_n_things_bankruptcyThere’s a new trend in the branding world (well, not entirely new, but certainly growing in popularity lately) — reviving brand names from the depths of bankruptcy (via the New York Times). Recently, Linens ‘n Things, Sharper Image, Bombay, Halston, and CompUSA have all been given a second chance at life — albeit a shadowy version of their former lives — thanks to liquidators (they prefer to be called “asset recovery specialists”).

So what exactly is going on? [Read more…] about Brand Names Come Back from the Dead – What Do You Think?