Corporate Eye

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Archives for 2009

Stop Trying To Hold Back The Ocean

Ever wondered if you’re truly making the most of the resources available to you?

I recently invited Zack Grossbart, who is expert in telecommuting and works with high-tech companies to help them create strong teams that span continents (see The One Minute Commute) to write a post for us.

zack grossbartZack has been working with and coaching remote teams at organizations like JP Morgan, 3M, Nortel, Hewlett Packard, and the United States Navy since 2001. He has served as a consultant to numerous Fortune 500 companies and is a consulting engineer for the Novell Compliance Management Platform.

Zack began loading DOS from a floppy disk when he was five years old. He began working professionally with computers when he was 15 and started his first software company when he was 16. He has also been an IT administrator and a member of an advertising firm. Zack lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a mile from Harvard University.

Over to you Zack…

Stop Trying To Hold Back The Ocean: Harness The Writing Talent In Your Company

In the old days the marketing department was the public face of your company. Your sales team talked to customers, your channel team talked to partners, and your marketing department talked to everyone. Marketing departments were judged by their ability to control the message and stop leaks.

water overflowing dam

The perfect example of the old way is Apple’s marketing department. They released what they wanted when they wanted and not before. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod reporters had been lured into the room with only the knowledge that Apple was releasing something and it wasn’t a computer. Today even Apple is springing leaks.

Companies all over are trying to plug up the little leaks in their corporate messaging while the roaring ocean of Twitter, Facebook, and personal blogs overwhelms them. They need to stop holding back the leaks and start seeing the world differently.

A few facts

Fact 1. You have writers in places you’ve never looked. Bob from Accounting has a blog about model trains. Sherry from Engineering manages a community of scrap-bookers. Your company is full of writers.

Fact 2. Bob and Sherry are scared to write about your company. There have been too many bad stories about employees who were sacked for complaining about their jobs online. Most blogging tutorials advise you to never mention your company and most companies have strict rules about it.

Fact 3. Bob and Sherry are passionate about their jobs. They work hard, know your products inside and out, and like them enough to keep working to make them better.

Put these three facts together and you have people who want to write about your company and can’t do it.

Stop plugging the leaks and build a dam

You can’t stop the ocean. Your people will keep writing so direct them. Your marketing department must change from being the sole providers of content to mentoring other writers. Focus the power of those writers like water through a dam.

Step 1. Find your writers. Ask around the office and see who has a blog. Use Google to search for your employees and see what they’re saying online. Look for the ones who write consistently and well.

Step 2. Create a place for them to write. You might create a single corporate blog, an employee blog section, or just organize their existing blogs.

Step 3. Guide your writers. Pair them up with someone from your marketing department who can guide them about what content you want and help them review and edit their work.

Step 4. Enable them. Google famously gave everyone 10 percent of their time to work on special projects. Give your writers four hours a week to write.

Step 5. Incent them. By the word, by the article, or on a bonus plan, pay your writers for doing the extra work.

Step 6. Get out of the way. Move roadblocks out of your writers’ way. If the legal department needs to review everything then take care of it for your writers. Make it easy for them to write.

Harness your ocean of writers to generate market power for your company. Let them talk about you, show your customers what an exciting company you are and where you need to improve. Your people really are passionate about your company, and passion sells.

Thanks Zack!

McDonald’s Hypes Free Coffee Refills with Creative Ambient Media

I love creative ambient media promotions, and Cosette West in Canada got very creative in their outdoor campaign for McDonald’s.

McDonald’s had a simple goal – to spread the word about its free coffee refills.  During a time when McDonald’s is trying to directly compete with established coffee brands such as Starbucks, the campaign needed to really make a splash.

First up … Cosette West went big by transforming a street light into a coffee cup and pot of coffee with a big “Free Refills” message that no one could miss.  Check it out below (click on the ad to see the full-size version on Ads of the World).


McDonalds ambient media street light


Second, Cosette West created an outdoor ad at a bus stop that didn’t remain static like most outdoor advertising does.  Instead, this ad changed everyday as the amount of coffee beans dwindled each day that the free refill promotion neared its end — check it out below (click on the ad to see the full-size version).   It’s easy for ads at locations like bus stops to become invisible to consumers who see them everyday.  By changing the McDonald’s ad a bit everyday, that audience is likely to notice the change and therefore, take notice of the ad again everyday.  It’s a very clever tactic.


mcdonalds ambient media bus stop


It’s this kind of creative thinking that makes consumers stop and take notice.  Does it convert and deliver ROI?  I don’t have an answer to that in the case of McDonald’s and the free coffee refills campaign, but if the primary goal was awareness, the company undoubtedly succeeded.  And isn’t that one of the first rules of advertising success — getting people to stop and notice your ad?  Without awareness, there can be no sales.

Brands Hope Virtual Gifts Can Drive Buzz

michael_mooreIf you could give someone a virtual Miller Genuine Draft via Twitter, would it make you want to buy one?  That’s what some brands are hoping for thanks to a tool from AdNectar that enables Twitter users to give virtual branded gifts to one another, similar to how Facebook users can send virtual gifts to each other.  The goal for companies is to create an online brand buzz that translates into more sales.  But will it work?

According to BrandWeek, a Twitter virtual gift campaign through AdNectar can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 depending on the social media scope and duration of the campaign.  Malibu Rum, Nestle’s Toll House, Fisher-Price, Trident Gum, and Overture Films (for Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story) have already begun working on or launched campaigns.

There is no arguing that virtual gift giving on Facebook is popular.  Both branded and nonbranded virtual gifts can be shared on Facebook, but how will the tactic translate to Twitter?  We’ll have to wait and see.  The biggest problem is the potential to clutter users’ Twitter streams as Facebook walls have become.  We’ve almost gotten to a point in the evolution of Facebook where people need multiple accounts to keep the clutter separate from the real content.

Certainly, for people who use these social media tools strictly for personal reasons, the clutter might not be a nuisance, but the problem is looming in the not so distant future.  It’s a problem that many social media users are sure to face, particularly if they use their social media profiles for work-related purposes where sharing a Tickle-Me-Elmo Ticklegram or even seeing one on a business associate’s profile might not be appropriate.

For now, giving branded gifts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, etc. is still in its infancy, and the ROI is questionable.  It’s certainly a good brand awareness tactic, but it remains to be seen if the investment is worth it in the end.  Of course, by next week, there will be another hot social media marketing trend, but for now, head on over to your Twitter account and send a friend Michael Moore’s virtual hat.  Or maybe not.

Image: Flickr

Naming standards and the FTSE100

So what do you think is the best term to describe businesses behaving responsibly within their various networks and communities? (See, its difficult even to describe without prejudging or loading the scales, and almost impossible without using the word ‘stakeholder‘).

Fabian Pattberg recently ran a poll, asking which of the following would be the best term to describe this:

  • Corporate Responsibility
  • Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Sustainability
  • Accountability
  • Corporate Citizenship
  • Corporate Sustainability
  • Responsible Governance
  • Sustainable Responsible Business
  • Corporate Social Performance
  • Others – Ethical Business / Business Ethics, Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, Sustainable Business Culture, ESG (Environment, Social and Government), Business Ethics, Responsible Business.

On closing the poll, the most preferred term was Corporate Responsibility, with 21% of the votes, though as you can see it was a very close-run thing, with four main contenders and Sustainability coming a strong fifth.

fabian-pattberg-poll

(image snagged from FabianPattberg.com)

Now, when we started the Corporate Eye blog, we were unsure what to call this category of posts. We went for Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR for short – because that seemed to be what most companies were calling it, but at the time some on the team were arguing for Sustainability as a title.

But over the summer Chris MacDonald ran a series of posts on Business Ethics arguing against each of the elements of ‘CSR’ in turn. In summary:

CSR “isn’t (just) about corporations, isn’t just about social questions, and it isn’t just about responsibilities”.

So: what to call it?

This is where I confess that my vote in the Pattberg poll went to Responsible Governance, because I think it’s important that Responsibility – or whatever you care to call it – is embedded within the management and strategy of the company. (More on this another day). Clearly nobody else agreed with me, and it isn’t a term I’ve ever seen used in the wild.

So I reviewed the current FTSE 100 corporate websites, to see what was actually going on out there, and found that most companies – by a long way – are calling this section ‘Corporate Responsibility’ (no ‘social’). There are a few unusual cases, as you’d expect: companies that try to find a uniquely tailored title, or companies that don’t have a dedicated section to cover all ‘CSR’ topics, but choose to have separate sections such as Environment and Society.

But overall, the picture is clear:

ftse100-names

Perhaps this isn’t surprising; standardising the names of sections on corporate websites makes it easy for the visitor to find what they’re looking for. What is interesting, though, is the difference between what the FTSE100 companies are actually using, and what the people taking the Pattberg poll thought. The poll results were much more evenly spread among the four front-runners, which aren’t the same as the four front-runners of the FTSE100 usage.

Possibly this comes down to a difference in what terminology people use in speaking or writing about a topic day to day, and what terms people expect to see on a corporate website.

But it is difficult to choose a term that doesn’t carry unintended baggage, because all those phrases mean something slightly different. I think this is why we see FTSE100 companies tending to adopt the same term, so it is easily recognisable by visitors, but people working within that sector will use the term that means the most to them. The corporate term will tend to become bland and inoffensive, and may lose its specificity because of being stretched in many different directions; individuals will use – and will argue vehemently for – the terms that mean exactly what those people want to convey, because the terminology matters.

So, given that we aim to parallel the corporate site, should we change to ‘Corporate Responsibility’ to follow the majority? Or – being pragmatic – to ‘Responsibility’ because it is short, and will fit well on one line in our navigation? I’ll accept that Responsible Governance doesn’t mean enough to enough people to be a sensible choice.

What do you call this on your website?

HSBC CEO Leaves London for Hong Kong

HSBC_Hong_KongThe HSBC brand is steeped in British culture and tradition.  But what happens to the brand when the CEO moves to an office in Hong Kong?

That’s exactly what’s happening at HSBC.  The reason for the move is simple — Asia is where the money is, and HSBC is following it.  The company’s focus has shifted from Europe and the U.S. to Asia, and the CEO’s move shouts that new strategy to the world loud and clear.  But what does that do to the existing HSBC customer base and the brand promise overall?

To many consumers, the HSBC CEO move and clear message of new focus and new direction could be perceived as a slap in the face — a “you’re no longer our priority” message.  Of course, HSBC isn’t the first company to shift its focus in order to keep growing and remain profitable.  And don’t forget that HSBC was founded in Hong Kong and Shanghai over a century ago.  However, recent history has tied the company closely to the United Kingdom, a fact the company has promoted and even used as a fundamental component of its brand image.  HSBC’s message in recent years has been one of differentiation.  The company’s slogan, “the world’s local bank” didn’t come close to reflecting the company’s broader brand image that adamantly differentiated it from other finance companies of the world.

I’m sure HSBC will succeed with its new strategy of focusing on Asia and the East to continually grow shareholder value, but are there lessons to learn from this story?  Is moving a CEO to another part of the world more symbolic in terms of changing the brand image than anything else?

It’s not surprising that HSBC is returning to its roots and following the money, but the CEO move makes the strategic shift more visible and “real” than any press release or executive speech ever could.  I’m certain HSBC knew this when the decision was made.

The lesson to learn from this story?  Sometimes actions speak louder and spread farther than words.

Image: Flickr

Twitter Brand Mentions are More Informational than Critical

twitter_tshirtA new study by Pennsylvania State University reveals that more brand mentions on Twitter are made by people seeking information about those brands than to praise or criticize them (as reported by eMarketer).

By studying almost 150,000 tweets that included brand mentions, it was found that nearly 50% of them were “comments”, which the study defined as tweets that mentioned a brand but were not about that brand.  18.1% of tweets that mentioned brands were posted by people who were providing information to others and 11.1% were made by people who were looking for information about a specific brand.  Nearly one-quarter (22.3%) of tweets that mentioned brands included an opinion about that brand, and most of those were positive comments about the brand.

Here is the breakdown of tweets that included opinions about brands: