Corporate Eye

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Archives for September 2009

How Not to Use Social Media to Market Your Brand or Anything Else – Ever

Microsoft brings us a great example of how NOT to use social media to market your business, your brand, your products, or anything else you might ever consider promoting online in any way shape or form with its Global Windows 7 Launch Party campaign.

I don’t think I could make this story much funnier than The Register did, so check out their take for a good laugh.  In the meantime, here’s my view on this marketing ‘miss’.

First, the Global Windows 7 Launch Party is a worldwide online event hosted on the HouseParty.com Web site, where anyone can sign up to host a party to celebrate the launch of Microsoft Vista 2 Windows 7 with their friends and loved ones.  So if you want to lose your friends and annoy your family members, go here and sign up to host your own Windows 7 launch party right now.

Why so negative, you ask?  It’s not so much the idea of the Global Windows 7 Launch Party, which seems lame enough in and of itself, as it is the promotional videos Microsoft has unleashed on the unsuspecting online world to teach people how to host a Global Windows 7 Launch Party.

I cannot do these videos justice in text summary.  You must either watch them or read the article on The Register for full humorous impact.  However, I will include them below for your analysis:

First, the “How to Host a Global Windows 7 Launch Party” video complete with preparation instructions, agenda suggestions, and more uncomfortable banter than an interview between Glen Beck and Richard Gere might be.

Next, the terrible party idea suggestion.  Copy music and send your friends home with it.  Notice the missing disclaimer that copying music you don’t own or have permission to copy is illegal.  Oops.

And now the final piece of torture.  Notice how at 30-seconds into the video, the over-zealous partier proclaims, “Cool!”  I believe the real-world exclamation at this point would be something more along the lines of, “Dude!  We can’t be friends anymore.”

So yes, this post was a bit more sarcastic than you might usually see here on Corporate Eye, but if you read any of my other blogs, then you know I’m very sarcastic in real life.  And I couldn’t resist this one.  This story was just too lame to ignore.  I’m waiting for the Windows 7 Launch Party skit on Saturday Night Live.  If only that show was as good as it used to be, but I digress.  What’s the SNL equivalent outside of the U.S.?  There’s parody gold here!

Scare Tactics? Debating the “Perils” of Social Media Recruitment

Workforce

Workforce Management has come up with another surprising article.  (The first one was discussed here recently in Cut on the Bias.)  And this time, the fur is flying.

The article is Discriminatory Twist in Networking Sites Puts Recruiters in Peril.  If the title seems a bit melodramatic—it really doesn’t hold a candle to the contents.  Highlights:

  • “Sourcing from professional network sites such as LinkedIn carries a risk that the method could be challenged on discrimination grounds,” says Pamela Devata, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago. “It represents a hiring pool that is not open to the general population.”
  • “Networking sites, including Twitter, exclude whole populations,” says Jessica Roe, managing partner at Bernick, Lifson, Greenstein, Greene & Liszt in Minneapolis.  “The social networks represent limited social groups and very small labor pools. It’s an enormous issue.”
  • Paul Mollica, partner at Meites, Mulder, Mollica & Glink in Chicago, has another warning for heavy users of networking sites:  “When the OFCCP [Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs] or plaintiffs’ attorneys come along with a discovery request and want to see the trail for recruiting, these employers are going to come up short,” he contends, because “the records are in a digital mist.”

And it’s not over when the sourcing is done.  In the selection phase, “using social networks to screen candidates generates additional legal risks,” according to the article.  Explains Mollica,“the risk is that visiting Facebook or MySpace pages or even Googling candidates may reveal information that no employer should have in a properly constructed application or interview.”

There are even more perils to be feared, such as the dangers of changing job descriptions and laying off people who were “hired into bad positions.”  But if you want to be thoroughly warned, read the whole article.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at the blowback.  Commenters are mixed in their responses—but one of them (solubrious1) offers this heartfelt response:  “Stop freaking out about pretend legal issues when the real issue is workforce design, the concept of ‘permanent’ work, and the decisions made by political and business leaders (many who also do not use Twitter and Facebook) to de-value Human Resources in the core mission and vision of their organization.”

Meanwhile, one of Workforce Management’s featured blogs (Fistful of Talent) takes aim at the “Discriminatory Twist” article and lets loose with a full-scale rant:  Hey Employment Law “Experts”, You’re Killing My Profession . . .

Worth reading, including the comments.  Choice quote:  “Oh, I forgot.  You only care about promoting your little section of the world, which is risk management from a legal perspective.  In the meantime, you scare, intimidate and generally freeze the average HR person from adopting tools that can help them do their jobs better . . . “

What’s the relevance of all this for the corporate Careers site?  I suspect that similar concerns come up in the context of using social media and blogs as part of employer branding and online recruiting.  The problem is (for all concerned) that Genie has left the bottle, and won’t be going back in.

So the inevitable outcome is “a period of adjustment.”  Those are never fun.

Consumers Friending Brands on Facebook Via Engagement

facebook_logo_imageIf you believe Facebook chief revenue officer Mike Murphy, then it is possible to convince Facebook users to friend brands on the social networking site.  According to an article from AdWeek, Murphy claims that, “ads on Facebook have a significantly higher engagement rate than ads elsewhere on the Internet.”

That’s possible since ads served via Facebook are typically well targeted.  But how does that advertising engagement rate translate into friending brands and building relationships with them that lead to sales?  A new partnership with Nielsen should make it more apparent.

Facebook and Nielsen signed a deal that will allow marketers to measure performance through more than the ubiquitous click rate metric.  The new metrics Facebook and Nielsen plan to deliver to Facebook advertisers and brands is one that will allow them to identify branding goals and serve ads that match those strategies.  For example, one of the first tools offered is called Learned Targeting which serves ads to Facebook users that have been identified through their online behavior and demographics to be more likely to become fans of brands on Facebook. [Read more…] about Consumers Friending Brands on Facebook Via Engagement

A Look at Rolls-Royce’s Investor Site

This week I visited Rolls-Royce’s investor site and found much to like.  Similar to a well-engineered engine, the site seemed to do exactly what it was supposed to with a minimum of fuss or wasted energy.

Rolls-Royce-sm

To start, the tab for investors is the second tab listed on the top banner on the Roll-Royce home page.  No hunting involved here, as you would be hard pressed to miss the link.  The main investor page is well laid out, with the main links listed down the left hand side of the page, plenty of white space and a generally pleasing color palette, although there appears to be three or four different shades of blue printing employed, which is about two  more than I would prefer. Otherwise, things are where you can find them and digging into the tabs leads you to good information.  For example, the Share Price Data tab gives you an option to create your own share price chart with custom dates and comparisons to the FTSE All Share and FTSE Aero Defence indexes.

But then I dug just a little deeper, and of course, I found something that just didn’t sound right. Knowing that Rolls-Royce has been through many changes over the years, I wanted to see how they described themselves and their businesses, so I went to the Company Profile page. Here’s their introductory sentence in the section titled “Company overview”: “Rolls-Royce, is a global business, providing and supplying integrated power systems for use on land, at sea and in the air.” This is a sentence that reads as if it was lifted from a corporate mission statement written by a consultant. It begs to be explained, but of course, it isn’t.  What do they mean by integrated power systems?  I think Rolls-Royce is trying to say that they do more than make engines, but they are saying it in such a vague manner as to obscure the issue even more. Considering that the large majority of Rolls-Royce’s sales and profits come from their businesses of making civilian and defence aircraft engines, you would think that they would want to expressly acknowledge this fact.  Instead, eager to position itself in the greater power systems global market, we  have the use of the phrase “integrated power systems”. This can mean anything from alternative energy to electrical transmission grids. This is fuzzy writing.

I am comforted by the fact that their engineering appears to be better than their writing.

Strategy, Social Media, and the Dangers of the Shiny Object


Glitter 2

Commenting on a recent article by Jeremy Owyang, Albert Maruggi (founder of marketing firm Provident Partners) remarked:

Just spent a couple of days with health care marketers from a cross section of hospitals. I also had a session with a billion dollar plus business insurance company on their modest, and I mean modest social strategy.  My radar highlights significant hype fatigue, maybe even disappointment with the social space.

The problem may be adopting social media without a strategy.  Maruggi’s comment includes a link that leads to a few other links, which lead to posts that are (a) short, and (b) worth reading:

These posts are all written from the marketing point of view, so as you troll through them, remember that a big part of recruiting is marketing the employer brand.  But consider this also:  marketing the company as an employer is NOT the same as marketing the company’s products and services.  In fact, there can sometimes be a very big difference.

So while it might be a strategic mistake from the product marketing perspective to chase every “shiny object” (in this case, new social media platforms and technologies), it might not be a mistake from the recruiting perspective.  From the product marketing view, strategic focus may be on effectiveness with the largest possible audience—while recruiters may need to reach very specific groups of people.  The super-techie, super-social-media types might actually be impressed to see recruiters turn up in some edgy online locations, so if those are the folks you need, it’s a different situation.

Back at home base, Jeremy Owyang’s post was about three essential qualities for corporate media posts.  He says, look for people who:

  • Fulfill meaningful business objectives (“These individuals will be able to use brand monitoring tools, have analytical abilities, and be able to benchmark their efforts that tie back to business metrics–not social media metrics.”)
  • Bridge both internal stakeholders and customers (“This quality requires the professional to be able to relate to internal teams that may not understand the social culture, be empathetic, be able to communicate and train them . . . “)
  • Show credibility with the technology (Beyond expertise with current technology, they need to be “capable of learning new technologies, evaluating, and then applying for business needs.”)

Summary?  Whether it’s technology or people—keep strategic concerns in mind when making social media choices.


(Thanks to jayniebell for the great glitter.)

What’s the Real Number?

step-chart

In my random walk down the streets of the FTSE 100 investor web sites, I decided to visit one of the biggest.   At first blush, I was impressed by the site.  A clean, spare design allowing you to find what you want with a minimum of clutter and prominently featured in the center, a Financial Summary with some impressive looking numbers and graphs.  “Aha”, I thought – “lead with your strengths.” The numbers and graphs showed a steady progression of revenues and adjusted operating profit.  But if there has been one lesson learned from the Bernie Madoff scandal, it has been to be suspicious of a stair-step progression of profits.  Real life tends to be less linear.

Sure enough, when I looked at the numbers a little closer, the profit this company is displaying is Adjusted Operating Profit, which they define as “before amortisation of goodwill and intangibles, profits less losses on the sale of PP&E and exceptional items”.  This is not what you would call your normal Net Earnings.  In fact there is a term for this type of financial disclosure.  It is referred to by sophisticated financial types as “earnings before the bad stuff”.

Being a naturally curious type (some might say cynical) I went looking for the real profit number.  You know, the one that companies are required to show as a result of following standard accounting practices.  Under U. S. disclosure practices, if you deviate from GAAP accounting standards in presenting information of this type, you are required to prominently disclose the reasons for doing so and provide a reconciliation to GAAP accounting.  No such luck here on the main Investor page, so I went to the Financial Results page.  No such luck there either, where you are confronted with a segment breakout of financial results, but the line for profits by segment is accompanied by an asterisk telling you that they are referring to – wait for it – “adjusted operating profit”.  They even compound the sin on this page by calculating their Margin percentage using the adjusted operating profit number.

In fact, the only disclosure of the actual profit number that I found on the web site was in the Downloads section, where you can access the company’s annual report.  You actually have to go back through a number of annual reports to reconstruct the numbers for Reported Profits.  When you go through this exercise, you find that results are nowhere near as linear as the company wants you to believe.  Reported Profits declined in 2005, 2006 and 2008 from the prior year’s Profits, or, three out of the five years shown.

So the question is, do they really think that investors are that stupid or do they really believe that such things as amortization, selling off parts of the business and restructuring costs don’t count?  Either way, as an investor it would make me nervous.