Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for 2009

Lundquist’s Report on CSR Websites | Not Good News For Sustainable Business

Shock and aweSomeone, I forget who, asked me recently “Do you think that CSR in companies has now come so far that it can be absorbed into mainstream business reporting?”

I think I stared a little, slack-jawed at the idea companies had embraced CSR and sustainability en-masse.  It would be nice to have this cynicism proved wrong … unfortunately it has been proved right.

Lundquist, an Italian communications consultancy, has released its 2009 report on corporate website CSR content (specifically excluding CSR reports).  It’s not pretty reading; in fact The Guardian has called the report “damning”.

(You can read the report’s executive summary at the bottom of this post).

The websites surveyed are all members of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, supposedly world leaders in CSR.  Here are three titbits from the report:

  • over a third either have no CSR contact details, no refreshable content on CSR (such as news stories) or no value-added content (such as an FAQ or glossary)
  • over half publish no CSR targets whatsoever
  • less than half describe an environmental management system

The staggering conclusion has to be that the world’s leading companies are being horrendously slack about CSR.  But is this fair? [Read more…] about Lundquist’s Report on CSR Websites | Not Good News For Sustainable Business

Would You Buy a Casket from Walmart?

Walmart hopes its low price brand promise can take a bite out of the funeral home business by offering caskets for purchase through the Walmart website, which can be shipped in as few as 48-hours.  Walmart is also offering a layaway plan, so customers can pay off their caskets over a 12-month period.  With price tags ranging from $895 to $2,899 according to the BBC, Walmart is offering its caskets as a beta program to “understand customer response.”

walmart_caskets

What do you think of this extension of Walmart’s product offerings?  The company has grown to offer products to fit just about any stage of a consumer’s life, so perhaps Walmart’s leaders believed that capturing part of the market share of the deceased was the next place to go for continued growth?

There’s something about buying a casket from Walmart that doesn’t sit right with me.  On the other hand, caskets are expensive.  Maybe there is a target consumer who would comfortably turn to Walmart to help them find a final resting place for their loved-ones during their time of mourning.  Or is the correlation of Walmart’s ‘cheap’ brand image in stark contrast to what people are looking for to honor their lost loved-ones?  It’s hard to say.

So far, funeral home owners aren’t overly concerned by the Walmart threat, claiming the human-touch they offer to consumers is far more important than the lower prices Walmart offers.

Would you buy your loved-one a coffin from Walmart’s website (they’re only available for purchase online)?

What Will Google Think of Next? GPS for Smartphones

It’s TomTom and Garmin’s turn to be worried.  Google has rolled out its free navigation service using Google maps available through Motorola’s Droid smartphone (and coming soon to more phones).

It appears Google has done it again.  What do GPS companies have to worry about?  Let’s take a look:

  • Google’s navigation tool is free: Instead of paying for a GPS or a mapping service subscription through cell phone providers, consumers can benefit from Google’s usual model — free.
  • Google provides one-stop-shopping: Yes, this navigation tool is just one more way that Google is on track to rule the world by providing access to every kind of information you could possibly need at your fingertips at anytime and on one device.
  • Google is a brand people know and trust: Like it or not, people know the Google brand and trust it.  That ready-made brand recognition and trust is likely to go a long way in terms of shifting consumers from stand-alone GPS devices and subscription services.

Put it this way — if Google’s new navigation tool for smartphones works well and keeps its free price tag (and becomes available on more smartphones than Motorola’s Droid), there will be little need for anything else.  In other words, the same things that happened with online search, online email, and so on, will happen to GPS.

The question becomes not whether or not Google will be successful in its new venture into GPS, but will any other company be able to challenge Google in that new venture?

According to the New York Times, even the progressive Apple is behind in this area.  Can anyone ever compete with Google?  What do you think?

Xstrata — Communicating Corporate Ethics

Xstrata is a major global diversified mining group, based in Switzerland and the UK, that knows how to communicate via its website. Take a look at the Homepage —
Xstrata

First the abstract image at the top changes; I had to mention this since I like abstracts. The Home page is loaded with information links, but is not overwhelming. The navigation on the upper left is good, the company prominently displays updates on its merger, the About quickly describes the company to new visitors. Finally, stock price and links to reports are available Nicely done.

The company also does a good job communicating the nature of the industries in which they compete. On the Commodity Businesses section you can use the links to more information–

Microsoft is Late to the Party – Again

Once again, Microsoft is desperately trying to copy their cooler competitor, Apple.  This time, the company is jumping on the brick-and-mortar retail location bandwagon.  Introducing Microsoft Retail Stores!

There is no doubt that the Apple stores have helped Steve Jobs and friends create one of the most powerful relationship brands by surrounding consumers with another branded experience where they can share the brand they love.  The Apple stores employ cool employees, give free training sessions to new owners, and the Genius Bar is always hopping with satisfied customers getting the help they need and further interacting with the brand.  It’s a fun store to hang out in!

Can Microsoft create anything close to what Apple has developed with its retail stores?

Let’s face it.  Microsoft has a lot to live up to in comparison.  I suppose that’s why the first store, which opened in Scottsdale, Arizona, has a modern design that practically duplicates the design of an Apple store.  I guess Microsoft copied Apple’s Mac Guy vs. PC Guy commercials, so why not copy their stores, too?  Check out the similarities in the exterior and interior pictures of the Scottsdale Microsoft store below.  Incredibly similar to an Apple store, wouldn’t you say? [Read more…] about Microsoft is Late to the Party – Again

Down the Garden Path: Anatomy of an Unfortunate User Experience

Obstacle Course

I recently took a rather twisty trip through the website of a “membership organization, think tank and educational resource.”  I was trying to access a report,  and since I do that sort of thing a lot—for an assortment of different topics I write about– I’m pretty accustomed to the various strategies utilized to extract (a) information about me, and (b) money from me.  But some extra challenges made this attempt worth a post.

The following comments are not about this particular organization, which is not only respectable but also provides value.  It’s just that their website offers an excellent example of the “unfortunate user experience.”

Here’s what happened:

  • I went through the registration process in order to access a specific report.  I wasn’t surprised when it turned out (many screens later) that the report itself wasn’t accessible under the “free” membership level.
  • But I persisted, and it turned out that a briefing-style version of the report is in fact free.  Actually, there are several kinds of free content available on the site, some of it high-value.  But!  You don’t know this until you try accessing a variety of items, and occasionally stumble on something you can view without charge.
  • For some types of free content, including the briefing I was trying to see, you still have to put the item in a “cart” and go through a “check-out” process.  There’s no charge, but every time you “buy” a free content item, the system sends you an email confirming the “purchase.”  And of course you are offered frequent opportunities to “upgrade” your membership.
  • Finally (although I could go on for much longer), the briefing turned out to be in slide format.  Not a problem in itself, but the page is arranged so awkwardly (due to a humongous–yet pointless!–banner at the top) that you have to scroll far down even to see the slide.  And you have to do that for EVERY SLIDE, because the slideshow does not play automatically.  The slide display is a fixed size (quite large), which means you have to scroll down even further after viewing a slide in order to see the notes (which contain most of the information).

Now here’s why all that is important—and relevant.  This website committed several offenses against the user, and the organization lost brand credibility in the process.  Notably:

  1. Expectations violation. At the beginning I thought of the organization as an information resource, but by the end of my visit, I thought of it mainly as marketing machine.  And a dysfunctional one, at that.  Did I mention that the “new member orientation” slideshow did not work?
  2. 2. Unnecessary inconvenience. And did I mention that every single thing you do on this site results in opening a new tab?  (At least in Firefox—didn’t test in IE.)  In trying to register and access just one report, I ended up with about a dozen tabs.  And that’s only a single example from a series of challenges encountered during the visit.  Each was relatively minor in itself, but they added up to a significant level of aggravation.
  3. Mixed messaging. By the end of my visit I had been exposed to many labels, logos, and taglines, but had no idea about the actual purpose of the organization.  Every page I visited delivered a different message—and returning to the home page provided no help.  It is so crammed with links (including literally dozens of sponsor badges) and things to buy or sign up for that I still cannot tell you what their essential value proposition(s) is/are.

Your company’s Careers site is probably not in danger of seeming too much like a store.  But it may well be violating expectations in other ways, as well as causing unnecessary inconvenience and delivering mixed messages.   Those failings won’t deter people who need a job from searching the posted openings.  However, they will be a discouragement for quality candidates in search of career opportunities with a quality company.

The site I’ve been critiquing actually had some very good information to offer, once I figured out how to work the system.  So I’ll visit again—but I won’t look forward to it.


(The illustration is a plan view of the garden at Chateau de Choisy, a seventeenth-century French palace.)