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Archives for June 2010

Dog Food and Corporate Tone of Voice

Do you read the back of cereal packets?

puppiesI read tins and packets all the time, and was struck by a curious ‘tone of voice‘ mismatch I saw on the back of a dry puppy mix packet this morning. (What, you don’t read those?)

See what you think about these two elements on the packaging:

  • Daily Feeding Instructions

    The section describing how much mix to give your dog is very clear, laid out in a table, so it is easy to find the right amount for a dog by age and predicted adult size. Clear, that is, right up to the final item, which said that for really large dogs who are feeding puppies, the frequency of meals should be ‘ad libidum’.

    As I was taught Latin all those years ago in my north-eastern comprehensive, I can have a pretty good stab at the meaning of this, but I suspect that some people might be puzzled.

  • The Legal Stuff

    Below this section was the legal statement, preceded by a very friendly introduction:

    the legal stuff

    OK, so this next bit isn’t very exciting for everyone, but it’s really important.

    … By the way, this product doesn’t really contain ash, that’s just the legal name we have to use for all the minerals we include…

Interesting. I know it’s a cliché, but wouldn’t you usually expect the legal wording to be the one that included Latin? (Even there, though it isn’t a good idea because it isn’t always easy to understand, even if the meaning is precise, because it assumes knowledge of another language).

Instead, ‘the legal stuff’ is written in a very chatty style, with no legalese to be seen. And it matches the friendly and reassuring style of the copy on the rest of the site, right down to the lack of capitalisation on the header.

I think it likely that the section about the puppy mix was written by a subject expert (perhaps even a vet) and the other section by a good copywriter with the corporate brand in mind, but that nobody looked at the two sections as a whole.

You’re probably not selling puppy mix, but are you sure that the language and tone of voice on your site is consistent throughout? It doesn’t need to be identical – after all, your site has a range of audiences – but it should be consistent. And, even more importantly, it should be written in language that your audience will understand.

Some Notes about Mental Health and the Hiring Process


Labyrinth

In a recent post I noted that concern over post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) could be one reason for high unemployment rates among veterans.  Potential employers may fear—or even assume–that soldiers who served in combat zones are likely to suffer from PTSD.  And unfortunately, it’s not possible to dismiss these concerns as unjustified.  Rates of depression, dysfunction, and even suicide are reportedly high among troops who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, not all or even most combat veterans experience psychological difficulties, and even those who do are not necessarily unable to become productive employees.  As AMVETS communications director Ryan Gallucci explained in a recent Washington Post op-ed:

Veterans’ advocates and media outlets have called attention to how PTSD is a normal reaction to the abnormal and profound realities of combat. This message was intended to help veterans recognize it is okay to seek counseling while readjusting to civilian life. Unfortunately, the public may have received the message differently, assuming that all of today’s military men and women must suffer from some kind of mental illness.

In reality, any job applicant, veteran or not, could be experiencing psychological difficulties, or might have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder.  So it is no more fair to assume that vets are ticking time bombs than to think of every job-seeker as a closet crazy.

Mental health is a complex matter, and there are no simple answers to the dilemmas faced by recruiters and HR organizations.  The best plan is to take a step back, view the entire issue objectively, and approach it as a matter of good management.  The Canadian consulting group Mental Health Works offers some excellent information for employers, including an overview of best practices for the hiring process.  A couple of key tips:

  • When creating/posting job descriptions, identify any essential psychological skills required for the position. “Include any interpersonal or ‘emotional’ competencies that the job requires, such as the ability to multi-task or strong decision-making skills under pressure.”
  • When reviewing resumes, don’t assume that gaps necessarily mean an employee is not capable. “People with a mental illness may have gaps in their resume due to periods of illness or hospitalization,” but if your organization is committed to equal opportunity hiring for people with disabilities, that fact should not be disqualifying.

Unlike physical disability, which is often evident and relatively easy to understand, mental illness can seem like a mystery—and that makes it more difficult to craft and implement positive policies in this area.  For a better understanding of the psychological challenges that face combat troops, read about an innovative program that embeds mental health professionals in U.S. National Guard units.  And for insider views of living with mental challenges, learn from Temple Grandin (an expert on animal behavior who writes about her experiences as an autistic person) and Kay Redfield Jamison (a psychiatrist who herself copes with manic-depression).


(Thanks to AnonMoos—great handle!–for the graphic variation on a classic Cretan labyrinth.)

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 18: What’s Your Strategy?

In terms of financial theory, investors buy stock in a company on the expectation that future cash flows from the company will be enough to repay the investment and pay a return over a foreseeable time horizon. In order to do this, investors must have some visibility into the potential for future profits. This is where the job of investor relations comes in. Clarifying how the company will meet challenges going forward to pay out returns to shareholders is a three-fold task:

Shire Strategy
  • making sure people clearly understand the company, its products and markets
  • laying down a vision for how the company’s strategy will move the enterprise forward in the future
  • and giving them a transparent view into how the company’s profits were garnered in the past.

One can argue on the relative importance of each of these messages. In fact, it’s a bit like a three-legged stool in that each element is essential to the overall investment story. Without an understanding of how a firm will make its profits in the future an investor will not be likely to ante up his money. Similarly, if the organization, its products and markets are not understood, an investor will have little confidence in the enterprise. Finally, if an investor cannot look at past performance of the enterprise as a gauge to how they will perform in the future, conviction that management will deliver for the investor will be lacking.

Today, however, I want to focus on the forward-looking piece of the story, as this is probably the area that we see the least in investor web sites. Most web sites are good at giving you information about past performance, particularly financial performance. Relatively fewer give you a glimpse into where they want the company to go.

One company that does is Shire Pharmaceuticals. While no single page description on the web can purport to give a full discussion of a company’s strategy, Shire’s page (see above), does give the reader some essential basics, such as their focus on specialty biopharmaceuticals and their use of strategic partnerships to develop most of the drugs in their pipeline.

Compass Strategy

Another example is the Compass Group’s Strategy page. Although there is a fair amount of corporate-speak jargon (Who doesn’t want to deliver value to shareholders and customers; and what do they mean by “leveraging the benefits of being a Group”?), there are some useful pieces of information about what Compass wants to do and how they propose to do it once you get past the fuzzy language.

To summarize, a company’s message will be much more effective if they devote more space and effort on their web sites to telling investors where they want the company to go in the future and how they intend to get there.

In this series:
Previous post: Making the individual shareholder feel welcome
Next post: Help your most frequent visitors

Gen Z: New Kids in the World

In the month of May, 2010, 13-year-old Jordan Romero became the youngest person to climb Mount Everest, and 16-year-old Jessica Watson completed her solo sail around the world.  Meanwhile the preternaturally gorgeous and phenomenally talented jazz singer Nikki Yanofsky—who was just 12 when she debuted at the 2006 Montreal Jazz Festival–has released her first major CD.  (Even if you’re not a jazz enthusiast, listen to her ballistic version of Take the “A” Train . . . and marvel.)

Right around age 12 seems to be the new normal for launching a superstar career.  The Today Show recently featured a segment with pre-teen movie critic Jackson Murphy (youngest nominee ever for a NY Emmy) and sixth-grader Grayson Crouch went straight from a school recital to a major recording contract, after posting his Lady Gaga cover on YouTube.

So what’s up with these kids?  And why should you care?

There have always been young phenoms (think Judy Garland or the Jackson Five)—and in any case, your company probably doesn’t need to hire any juvenile sailors or singers.  But these young people are different from the shooting stars of yesteryear, and they are setting a brand new standard for their generation.  That’s the generation, by the way, that will be knocking on corporate doors in just a few years.

Child stars of the past were almost all either “managed” into the limelight by their parents, or they were born into show biz families.  Most struggled with fame and many lost the fight, ultimately succumbing to drugs, criminal behavior, even suicide.  The list of those casualties would be very long.

But these new exemplars seem different: composed, self-directed, realistic, and multi-talented.  They are members of “Generation Z,” a born-after-1995 group also referred to as “Net Gen” because they have grown up with the everywhere Internet.  Their constant exposure to information and entertainment may have created a higher level of talent maturity—and of course the broad opportunities for personal exposure today make it easier for people in general (even oldsters like Susan Boyle) to find fame.  There’s a lot more to consider about Gen Z, though . . .

For some useful insights, check out Penelope Trunk’s post What Generation Z Will Be Like at Work.  In fact, browse around her Brazen Careerist blog, which offers young professionals frank advice “at the intersection of life and work.”  If you’re not in or that familiar with Gen Y, a few minutes in Penelope Trunk’s world will give you a sense of how (and how much) it differs from Gen X.

Then consider that Gen Z is likely to be even more different its predecessor, and you have some idea of what it may be like to recruit the graduates of 2015 and beyond.  Takeaway: Start thinking about the next wave of workers RIGHT NOW.  These kids aren’t losing any time–and neither should businesses that want to grab the best and brightest ahead of their competition.

Needless to say, this will require a corporate website located on the leading edge of design, content, and functionality.

Connecting Brand Messages with Teens on the Social Web

The teen demographic is a coveted consumer audience that can drive big bucks to a business, and these days, teens spend a lot of time on the social Web.  Whether they’re exchanging messages on Facebook or uploading videos to YouTube, they’re an active, influential group, and brands are desperately trying to connect with them.

In a May 2010 report, myYearbook and Ketchum revealed data about online teen influencers and how brands can engage them on the social Web.  The most interesting results show the sources of information that U.S. teen influencers (i.e., the top 15% most active and engaged myYearbook members) trust the most are as follows:

  • 52% trust friends
  • 13% trust consumer reviews
  • 9% trust adults
  • 5% trust what they hear from ads
  • 5% trust information that comes directly from companies
  • 4% trust celebrities
  • 3% trust bloggers
  • 3% trust news reporters
  • 7% trust other sources

If you try to remember what you were like as a teenager, then these results probably aren’t too surprising.  The key for brands to connect with the teen audience on the social Web is to get teen online influencers to talk about them, recommend them, and share content from them.

Interestingly, most teens who responded to the survey indicated that they prefer to share humorous content with their friends online but prefer straightforward content from companies and brands.  This shouldn’t be that surprising given that 2010 is the year of brand transparency for most consumer demographics.

Considering that the study also found that, “the top 15% of teen social network users are 70% more likely to share purchase decision information with their friends” (via eMarketer), brand managers would be wise to take note of the products teens are most likely to recommend and talk about with their online friends.  As shown in the chart below, entertainment, electronics, new food or beverage, clothing, footwear and sneakers, video games, and makeup and skin care products are the most talked about products among teens who spend time on the social Web.

emarketer_teen_influencers

It’s important to note this doesn’t mean that other products aren’t discussed by teens at all on the social Web, but brands that operate in the channels listed above are missing a big opportunity if they’re not trying to engage teens on the social Web where they’re already spending time.