Corporate Eye

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How to Make a Paper Bag Interesting

Do you provide information about your market on your corporate website?

This kind of information helps a visitor to place you in context. Are you the biggest player, or the smallest? What are the forces driving the market? Even: who is your competition? (Why tell us that? Well, we probably have a good idea who you compete with anyway – because we’re researching/talking to/investing in/applying for a job with them as well – and it also adds to your aura of honesty and transparency.)

Billerud on their market
Click image to enlarge

I talked about the copy used on the Billerud site recently; today I want to highlight their Market section. They provide a pleasing Flash-based tabbed tool to display details of their various product markets.

So, for example, I can find out that

  • retailers and distributors of fruit and vegetables are demanding better packaging solutions because the quality of recycled paper has got worse; since Billerud is the quality leader in fluting they are in a strong position. And the fluting market hasn’t been affected by the global crisis as much as other corrugated products because the fruit and veg market is less affected by the economy than by the weather conditions. Fluting makes up 25% of Billerud’s sales volume (in tonnes).
  • Billerud are the leading supplier of low grammage pure white liner (which is used for luxury goods as well as for fast foods – now there’s a contrast in end market use) with about 50% market share, but since they’re competing with recycled material, there is some price pressure. In addition, in hard times customers focus more on cheaper products although a quality-leading position contributes to more stable customer relations, less fluctuation in price and more stable demand. Liner makes up 18% of their sales volume.

This is fascinating, even to someone with no business interest in packaging; this section on the packaging market and the issues they face is very informative. I feel I’ve learned something, which increases the value of the site in my eyes.

It’s rare that a corporate site manages to be interesting enough in itself for a lengthy visit.

One free ticket available…

conferenceI wrote a post a while ago announcing that we’d arranged for Corporate Eye readers to receive a 20% discount on the price of a ticket to the Rebuilding Reputation conference that Communicate Magazine are running on 22 September, in London.

That’s still true… but there’s more. We’ve been given one ticket to give away for free to one of our newsletter subscribers. So if you’ve been thinking that you’d really like to go, but that the budget wouldn’t allow it, here’s your chance.

Not yet a subscriber but would really like a chance for a free ticket? See that box in the top right? Sign up for the newsletter there, and you’ll be on the list to receive the next one. As a new subscriber, you should get a copy of the last newsletter fairly quickly – but that’s not the one.

The next newsletter, which should come out early next week is out now, available to new subscribers until next edition is out [edited by Lucy to update], is the one with instructions on how to enter this competition. It won’t be difficult, but you will need to be quick – only one ticket available.

So go ahead – sign-up! You might win a ticket, but if you don’t, you’ll still be able to get 20% off the ticket price, and I hope you’d find our newsletter interesting too.

Of course, if you’re already signed up for our newsletter, just keep your eye on your inbox – and thank you!

Phenomenal Facebook, Part 2: Corporate Recruiting


EY Facebook Wall

Global powerhouse Ernst & Young was the first major employer to implement a full-scale Facebook recruiting strategy.  That was at the beginning of 2007—and by September of 2008 (according to a story posted on Attracting Talent) their FB Careers page had 18,000 “fans.”  A year later (according to our own Facebook basics story), that number had almost doubled.

And today?  48,029 People Like the EY Careers page.

That’s a lot of folks.  In fact, about one-third the total number of people already employed by EY.  Among the Facebook fans are former EY interns and employees, as well as people who want to know more about opportunities at Ernst & Young.

As explained in the EY FAQ:

Facebook allows us to share the EY experience with people who are interested in the firm, and creates a way for interns and employees to stay in touch with one another. The group provides a forum for people to share their questions, experiences, and comments regarding the Firm, and we can let you know when we’re coming to your campus for “Meet the Firms” nights, career fairs, on-campus interviews and other events.

Visitors to the EY Careers page will find an Updates tab (with news and useful information), as well as tabs dedicated to the specific interests of students and experienced professionals.  On the Wall tab, people post (usually) relevant questions about EY opportunities and (sometimes) get answers.

EY Facebook Students


EY Facebook Experienced


EY Facebook Wall


There are no job postings—the Facebook version of EY careers is focused on showing off the employer brand, and on creating engagement.  And it’s engagement approach is so successful that I actually wanted to look around, even though I’m about as far away from an interest in accounting as it’s possible to get.

Ernst & Young is hands-down the poster child of corporate recruiting on Facebook.  So are there any other good examples out there?  Judge for yourself by visiting:

Microsoft Careers

Taco Bell Careers

Science Careers

Accenture Careers (US)

MTV Networks Careers

State Farm Careers

Hyatt Hotels and Resorts Careers

 

Up next in the Phenomenal Facebook series: Enabling Facebook recruiting.


Pay to Play–Intern Style


money

Again, I’m a little bit shocked.  First I found out that aspiring government employees pay to have other people write their KSAs, and no one seems to notice.  Now I’ve learned that prospective/recent college grads (or their parents) are paying to obtain desirable internships.

According to a story in the New York Times, there’s a mini-industry growing up around the unpaid internship market.  The options available to aspiring interns range from matching services to auctions (yes, really), but the big boat in this regatta will take the student from resume to interview to offer to apartment, with tourist amenities thrown in.  All for under $10,000!

Companies say they regard this as a useful service, providing them with better interns while reducing the effort required to acquire them.  Parents say they regard it as a worthwhile investment.  And one assumes that the interns consider it a splendid opportunity–and/or a  way to get something of value without a lot of effort.

Is this okay?  On the one hand, market opportunities are always going to be exploited by somebody, and apparently the demand for internships has been sky-rocketing.  In terms of the fairness question–arguably, only better-off students can afford to spend their summers accruing unpaid experience instead of flipping burgers to fund the next semester anyway.  So perhaps it doesn’t make any real difference if the well-funded compete amongst themselves?

But on the other hand . . . students who can afford to pay for play in the internship market probably already have a lot more connections than their less-fortunate peers.  Should they also get the resume boost of a high-value internship–without an asterisk that says “placed by a paid broker”?

Another thought:  The student who gets ushered into an internship (and doesn’t even need to find an apartment or figure out the city map) may not be getting the full benefit of this step toward professional and personal maturity.

To get the placement side of the story, visit this website for a leading provider.  Then, if your company utilizes interns, you might consider these questions:

  • What is the point of the intern program? Free workers, potential employees, community service, or . . . . ?
  • Is the intern program clearly and effectively presented on the corporate website?
  • Do you know when intern candidates are being “packaged”? Does it matter?
  • Would it be more cost-effective for your company to work with an intern broker? Would that be consistent with your program goals?

In truth, I’m not sure whether this is a big deal or I’m just being cranky.  The program I looked at seemed to promise something like summer camp (take your pick–New York, L.A., Las Vegas, Barcelona, Sidney, Shanghai!) with a bonus of “real world” credit for doing unspecified tasks involved with marketing, fashion, television, finance, etc.

So maybe I just want to be an intern!  Or maybe I just want to think bright, hard-working, un-rich young people have an equal chance to do unpaid work in exchange for undiluted experience.


(Thanks to Daniel/borman818 for the “money shot”!)

Effective Techniques on Corporate Websites

I am continually pleasantly surprised to see how some companies find innovative and creative techniques in their stakeholder relationships. These companies realize the power of their websites and use them to make their company standout.

Gerber

The first site we will visit is Gerber Products—

Note the Story reference and the Timeline. Mouseover the dots and a historical factbite is displayed.

Nice, but these are what I will call Stage 2 innovations (good but not super creative).

Gerber

Click on Corporate and see —

— a compelling offer to get you to sign up for customized information as your child grows.

Take it and they have you as a dedicated visitor for years.

AstraZeneca feedback form

Next is a tool used by AstraZeneca and it is one that will cause you to smack your forehead and say “why didn’t I think of that?”

It appears on most of the website’s pages and simply asks the visitor for information.

This is a well thought out feedback form and is an easy way to get user information.

Next, Corporate Eye deals with all stakeholder groups, so what better to look at than websites that display how they deal with their stakeholders?

Edison

This takes us to Italy’s Edison, which was profiled in a recent post—

This is only a portion of the page. Note how Edison identifies how it relates to each stakeholder group. Visit the MAP to see all stakeholder groups.

Another company that uses a similar stakeholder map is UK and Netherlands based Unilever.

Pepsi competition

There are more creative techniques and future posts may cover these. But for now the final technique for this post comes from Pepsico.

The technique involves design. The Pepsico home page is a perfect example of elegant simplicity. Perhaps I was drawn to this because I favor minimalist photography (shameless pitch–see my online article on Minimalist Photography).

Well designed, uncluttered. Pepsico uses creative navigation–do mouseover on the lower navigation icons and more navigation links are displayed. Very nice indeed.

If you have any examples please post them.

Don’t forget – you can click on any of these images to see them expanded.

Integrating Twitter with the corporate site

Do you have employees who tweet on your behalf? Are you wondering how to authenticate them?

Wal-Mart's Twitter page

You should have a look at the Wal-Mart site, which is a great example of a range of best practices in this area.

Do click on this image to expand it, or open the Wal-Mart Twitter page in another window, so you can see it…

On this page, Wal-Mart clearly identify the twitterers by name, department and job title, together with a 140 character bio, an image and a link to their Twitter account.

It states that these – and these only – are the official spokespeople on Twitter for the company, and that anyone else you find tweeting is not speaking on behalf of the company. This is very clear, and does a great job of authenticating the corporate twitterers.

The page also pulls in their recent tweets, and uses tabs to separate the twitterers by country (US, UK and Brazil) rather than lumping them all in together. Again, this makes sense, not only because the different regions are likely to have different interests and projects, but also because the US/UK and Brazil teams use different languages.

The Walmart Twitter guidelines are available on the corporate site, and are clearly linked to from this page (top and bottom). The guidelines themselves are clear – and the copy neatly integrates Twitter with the Walmart purpose:

Twitter asks a very basic question of its users: “What are you doing?” And we know the answer to that question – we’re working every day to help people save money and live better.

The rest of the Twitter page is well done, too, incorporating related resources in the sidebar: images, video and a location map.

My only quibble is that it took me some time to spot the link to this Twitter page. I arrived direct –via Twitter, of course– and wanted to work out where the page sat in the corporate site.

And it took me a while to find, though the breadcrumb trail clearly indicates it is available from the home page. I was surprised by this — because very few corporates link to their twitter accounts from the home page — and spent some time looking in the main content on the home page and others, and failing to see it. I also checked the sitemap, and again, it isn’t listed as a main page.

However, it is there, and is available from the footer bar on every page, including the sitemap. My suggestion would be to include this as a link from the About section – perhaps in the sidebar – and list it as such on the sitemap. Incidentally, I wonder why these site services pages aren’t listed in the sitemap proper, only in the footer on that page (as on every page)?

Quibble aside, I think this is very well done, and demonstrates a number of best practices for integrating at least one social media outpost with the corporate website.