Corporate Eye

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Archives for 2009

Microsoft Asks Employees to Spam Friends and Family

internet-explorer-8It’s not a secret that employees can be some of a company’s most powerful brand advocates.  However, that brand advocacy can’t be forced.  In a move that hinges on unethical, Microsoft leaders asked each of the company’s employees to send email messages to at least 10 friends urging them to download the latest beta version of Internet Explorer 8 (and supposedly last before the official launch of IE8). 

But wait.  There’s more.  Microsoft didn’t just ask employees to annoy their friends with useless email.  For some bizarre reason, the leaders of Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to write the spam email message for employees, so they could simply cut and paste it into a new message then spam away!

The Register got to see the email in all its glory when a Microsoft employee did as he was told and spammed his friends with it.  Seems the recipient of the IE8 spam email message could tell his friend didn’t write it based on the writing style.  Wonder why?  Let’s take a look at a snippet from the email courtesy of The Register: [Read more…] about Microsoft Asks Employees to Spam Friends and Family

Improving Investor Relations Data Offerings with Excel

These days having the annual report somewhere on the Investor Relations website is all but a given.  While some companies publish just a PDF version of the printed document, others publish a web or HTML version.  This published data no doubt meets the expectations of the average investor.  Indeed, such easy access to annual reports is a great improvement over the days when the most the average IR site offered was an electronic way to request the standard snail mail delivery of the annual report.  However, there are some companies providing even more service to their valued investors.

Downloadable Spreadsheet Data

At Colgate’s Investor Relations website, they provide the usual Annual Report options.  There is a link for a PDF file for investors who like to download and view their reports offline, as well as a link to an online Annual Report.  But, there is one extra link.  It is for the Annual Report numbers as a Microsoft Excel document.  (I will refrain from making any comments about the garish color scheme – Oops.)

 Colgate.com - Annual Reports When it comes to investors there are all types.  Some investors care about technical analysis, or analyst recommendations, or even news reports.  Ask around long enough, and you’ll even find investors – some successful – who will admit to just using “their gut.”  But, one type of investor cares about numbers, and not just the headline numbers either.

The numbers investor wants to crunch data.  They want to calculate all those ratios that don’t come printed on the fact sheet.  They might even have a few ratios or formulas of their own that they use to help make their investment decisions.  Either way, before they can do anything else, they need those numbers in the annual report in some electronic format.

Generally, this involves subscribing to a service, or manually exporting values from an investing website or portal.  And, when all else fails, good old typing them into the computer from the page.

The Excel file on Colgate’s IR site eliminates the middleman and gives investors the raw hard numbers in a format that is easy to manipulate and export to whatever program or service they choose.

The Colgate Excel file contains nothing new or out of the ordinary, but it does make accessible the important numbers from the Annual Report.  Inside is the income statement, balance sheet, retained earnings, cash flows, and the 10-year financial summary.  Each of these is separated out as an spreadsheet page and most contain data multiple years of data (usually back to 2005). 

Benefits for IR

While this additional data may seem to be all about giving something more to company investors, it also provides a benefit for the IR Department and the company itself.

By providing its own Excel file, Colgate can ensure that ALL of the data goes with the numbers.  The 10-Year Financial Summary for example contains 6 footnotes on the numbers shown.  This ensures that investors looking at these raw numbers are getting that all important context.  Data provided by third-parties may or may not pass along such information once the raw data has been imported and standardized by whatever system they use.  Even if such information is carried through, its placement cannot be controlled by the company.  By supplying an in-house spreadsheet, the company can ensure that whatever information it deems necessary shows up in a way that they are comfortable with.

A Little Caution

Of course, releasing information in this way cannot be done on a whim, nor can the data be selectively highlighted or formatted.  Straight reproductions of already approved tables within the printed Annual Report are generally the safest way to go and ensure that there is no additional information released within the file. 

It is important to ensure that any variations from the exact numbers or formatting in the approved documents is not characterized as commentary on the data.  For example, something as simple as making certain lines or numbers bold for better visibility on the computer screen could be interpreted by some as the company drawing emphasis or attention to those numbers or fields.  (Or just as bad, as drawing attention away from other numbers or fields.)

Investor Relations Best Practices

While Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets are commonly used they are not the only format available for making electronic information accessible.  Comma-delimited files have the ability to be imported into almost any spreadsheet or analysis program.  However, the extra portability does come at the expense of readability and the increased chance of errors.

Whatever the format, now is the time to look into electronic distribution of data in this format.  Not only does it make the data more accessible to investors, it provides one more avenue of contact for IR.  Posted spreadsheets coupled with an email subscription to their updates ensures that investors regularly receive not only up to date data, but a subtle reminder about the company as well.

Ensuring that investors have correct timely data is one of the primary focuses of IR and making available electronic files like this is one more way to do just that.

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!