Corporate Eye

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Site Reviews

How Major U.S. Networks Stack Up: CBS, NBC, ABC Compared

Corporate media is a popular and busy animal. Never a dull moment, there is always something to report, something to analyze,  good news to share and rumors to dispel.  And since there is always something to be shared at all times, I curiously went to three of the major U.S. television network sites to see how they fare in reporting the “media” part of media relations to the public and to the online world. Here’s what I found:

CBS

Grade: B-

The main CBS home page for media relations was very easy to find. Now initially, I almost became frustrated because I couldn’t find the link to get to the media information, but after more scanning I located it. I found out too that the reason that I could not readily find the link was because it was buried within more links. Not a problem though, and actually quite alright. When I clicked on the links within the media section, I immediately saw that there were more links within each sub-section of the media’s section. I like the way that they organized the sub-folders and how it guides you to where you need to be exactly.

The CBS site gives a journalist everything he needs to make a story. Good links, easy-to-navigate pages and clear directions on how to find everything.


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NBC

Grade: B-

The site at NBC was a little more difficult to navigate, as things weren’t quite readily accessible as you would imagine. Although I’m sure it must be there somewhere, I simply cannot find the dedicated media section for the network. I actually sent an email to the website developers department to see if they can give me some guidance on locating the information. I’m sure someone will contact me right away, since I’m assured that the media relations section has to be buried away somewhere.

Now, what I did like about the NBC site though was the value of information that is on the site. The links that were seemingly connected to media (or news) were full of information, just enough to get a good story. But, you have to work for it. Hard.


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ABC

Grade: A

The ABC site has links and information that pointed directly to their media relations sections. There was (and is) a press release and dedicated media section that provided a wealth of information and articles for reporting and researching. Again, good information and easy to find for journalists and bloggers.


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All three of the networks offered some good and some not-so-good elements that make their media relations efforts workable. How do your media relations links look for your corporation? Are they easy to find? Will guests become frustrated when they visit? How can you improve your site?


College Students Craiglists

It all started with Craigslist. It is one of the top ten internet properties and a widely known place to buy and sell just about anything. The founder Craig Newmark — whose official title is “Founder, Chairman, Customer Service Representative”, is an interesting businessman. He doesn’t want to change his somewhat antiquated text-based website, is against placing advertising on the site and is happy with the rather modest financial performance of his business. The only sales sources are charges for placing job ads and real-estate listings in only three cities. Some analysts estimate total yearly sales of only $10 million (USD).

Because of its popularity, Craigslist has an ever growing number of competitors. Perhaps its most prominent competitor is eBay who already owns about 25% of Craigslist and is trying to acquire it. Ebay launched Kijiji a Graigslist-like site with bells and whistles. Another competitor is OLX which received an additional $13.5M in Series B funding from General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund, and DN Capital. Then there is publicly traded LiveDeal.

While these “catch all” classifieds sites are noteworthy, what is interesting is a growing number of Craigslist-like websites targeted toward college students. The main driver is the price of textbooks. A recently launched site CollegeMedium started with books and expanded into other items, jobs, housing and chat.

But wait, there’s more —

SITE

FEATURES

UloopRequires an .edu e-mail address, takes you to full classifieds site for your school
CampustradeNot limited to your school, full classifieds
CampusxFull classifieds, college reviews, scholarship information
CampusclassifiedsFocus on books but offers free classifieds. Accepts business advertising

This is only a sampling. There are more and because of the market potential additional sites are likely to be launched. It will be interesting to observe who will survive.

Piercing The Corporate Veil

Publicly traded companies are extremely careful about what information they release to the public. There is an obvious need to protect proprietary information. However there are a number of sites that help peer past the “corporate veil”. Yes, big companies like to show their good side, but some have misused the extensive power they have to do downright nasty deeds.

I just found a new site Glassdoor that permits employees and former employees to post comments about their companies. Registration is free and permits you to post your views.

You get top management ratings, salary information for positions in the company and company reviews. This is an unusual peek inside of the company. One caution there is always the possibility that disgruntled employees may do a dump. While I haven’t done an extensive analysis, the CEO ratings seem to be in line with the companies ratings on “Best Of” lists.

Another interesting site is Crocodyl.org (Collaborative Research On Corporations). Free registration is required. The input pool is larger than the Glassdoor, “Our aim is to stimulate collaborative research among NGOs, journalists, activists, whistleblowers and academics from both the global South and North in order to develop publicly-available profiles of the world’s most powerful corporations.”

The site has rich content and detailed reports on companies. It also has research tools and a whistleblower section. Another example of the Internet providing an information source for exposure of good and bad company practices.

Seems that the new David just got his cyber sling to battle with corporate Goliaths.

Rating The Corporate Governance Raters

Corporate governance attracts much public attention since it purportedly involves the economic-financial health of corporations and society in general. However, corporate governance is poorly defined because it typically is composed of differing mix of policies, procedures, internal practices all surrounded by laws and regulations.

Simply put –

…the overall purpose of corporate governance, which is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, corporations and society.
Theories of Corporate Governance Edited by Thomas Clarke

OK maybe that’s too simple. Here is a definition from Investopidia —

“Good corporate governance is a situation in which a company complies with all of its governance policies and applicable government regulations (such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) in order to look out for the interests of the company’s investors and other stakeholders.

The corporate need to be in compliance with corporate governance has shaped an industry of advisers, rating firms and other services with an estimated 2008 sales of $52 billion (corp-integrity.com). Perhaps the most influential of these companies are the rating agencies. These firms – which include the Corporate Library and RiskMetrics Group’s ISS Governance Services and S&P – analyze companies against their own criteria and rate whether a company is well governed or not.

These ratings may influence a company’s cost of capital, equity share price and shareowner relations. As such, the companies that compile these ratings have achieved a significant presence in world financial markets. But, there are some problems — extensive studies indicate these ratings bear little relation to actual corporate performance. A recent Fortune article summarized a Stanford University study widely different ratings for individual companies.

The Stanford researchers summarized their findings–

We examine these claims for the commercial corporate governance ratings produced
for 2005 by Audit Integrity, RiskMetrics (previously Institutional Shareholder Services),
GovernanceMetrics International, and The Corporate Library. Our results indicate that the level of predictive validity for these ratings are well below the threshold necessary to support the bold claims made for them by these commercial firms.(Emphasis added) Moreover, we find no relation between the governance ratings provided by RiskMetrics with either their voting recommendations or the actual votes by shareholders on proxy proposals.
Rating the Ratings: How Good Are Commercial Governance Ratings? Rock Center for Corporate Governance Stanford University

A summary of this report is available. The Stanford study is one of a number of other similar studies that question the value of these ratings agencies. Some common themes in these studies include —

  • Over reliance on quantitative accounting/financial criteria
  • “You can’t legislate compliance”
  • More emphasis needed on observable qualitative criteria, such as corporate culture, drivers of employee behavior and corporate integrity practices.

This post only touches the surface of this important subject. Future posts will cover additional aspects of Corporate Governance ratings and related topics. In the meantime, here is a Canadian company that just might be a model of effective Corporate Governance practices —

Note the focus on Integrity, the public display of an “Integrity Hotline” and a clear display of compliance documents. Criteria the rating agencies miss.

Business Visualization – No, not Powerpoints

Business news and articles keep reminding us that organizations need to cope with rapid changes, changes in employee expectations, new organizational models and how to cope with a bewildering glut of data and information.

The Internet has become an important business tool for frontline managers all the way to C-Level managers. However, using the Internet is becoming increasingly frustrating. There is too much fluff, spam and clutter in the results you get.
[Read more…] about Business Visualization – No, not Powerpoints

Spoof all too close to reality

Seamus McCauley points us to a delicious spoof of a corporate website at Buy n Large. Thing is, even the name sounds plausible.

Buy n Large home page

The design of the home page is just right (for today’s view of an up-to-date site – the view in 2057 may be very different): curvy web 2.0 content elements, clean design, lots of white space and a bit of movement to add vibrancy.

Do check out the small print at the bottom: by visiting the BnL web site you instantly relinquish all claims against the BnL corporation …

Buy n Large mission statement

I’m not going to quote the mission statement; go and read it for yourself by clicking on the image. Better yet, go and visit the site itself – read the privacy statement while you’re there.

If I were reviewing this site for real, I’d recommend using fewer stock images, though here they’re part of the joke.

Buy n Large news

The news section is laid out with different sections for the different audiences, and all the news releases are there. I think it unlikely that a corporate site would have so many adverts on their media page – even if they were for corporate products. But the adverts all work, in that they load further pages with product detail on.

As a spoof site, this is fabulous, and I’m already looking forward to the film. As a real corporate site, I’d have a few concerns … but who’s to say what the great corporate sites will look like in another 50 years?

My prediction is that they’ll be much more interactive (by whatever means will be available then) and customised for the visitor. This has no interactive features, and that would be my main recommendation, were it a real site.

What do you make of it?