Who do you want to work for?

Recently it struck me that we have been selling in a presentation about values creation wrongly. The main body is fine – all about linking values and behaviours and perception – and we’ve been getting there in the end.

But we’ve been starting on the wrong foot by showing a number of logos and asking what the organisations represented have in common – answer: a defined brand, answer: brand recognition, (answer: a set of values underpinning everything).

We were getting anything but that response though – answer: they make a lot of money, answer: they are international, answer: they are private sector, (answer: what’s it got to do with us?).

What we should have asked is – who do you want to work for? And why? What do you believe about them? What do you think you know? What makes them special? Odds on the top ten would have a sturdy set of organisational values.

Answers (off the top of my head):

• Innocent
• BBC
• Google
• Lush
• Bravissimo
• Twitter
• National Trust
• Marks & Spencer
• Ikea
• DFID

What about you?

What’s a Physics?

Thanks to Daily Mash for providing this pastiche of our week in Ofqual Comms:

CONCERNS have been raised over the standard of science teaching after it emerged thousands of GCSE pupils could not tell the difference between a microscope and a frog.

Question Two: Which one is the frog and which one is the miocropscope?

 

Exam regulator Ofqual has demanded urgent action by ministers before a child suffers serious internal injuries from trying to drink a bag of carpet tacks.

Ofqual said the dumbing down of science teaching has led to children being awarded physics GCSEs for running head first into a wall, while the chemistry exam involves making a glass of Ribena without getting yourself or anyone else pregnant.

And according to Ofqual one child was awarded a ‘B’ grade after claiming that gravity was invented in 1994 by his Uncle Derek.

A spokesman said: “We risk creating a generation of adults who will not only lack vital 21st century skills, but who also risk electrocuting themselves while trying to release the tiny people trapped inside their television sets.”

Am I Brave Enough?

No. But thanks for the offer (which arrived by email).

It’s all a bit Dove advert.

But at least better than this (which I saw in Heat), models recruited from amongst Katie Price’s fan base.

All that said – you can never knock the Bravissimo undies.  Best bras in the world.

Our Panel Said

Follow up to https://caseyleaver.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/what-would-i-watch-a-video-on/

Well, first things first, I needn’t have worried in the least about the attitude of our focus group attendees.  Those that managed to make it were the nicest group imaginable.  So a big thanks to them for that!

What were the results of our extremely unscientific, back of a fag packet, group?

What do they see/go to when they first log on?

• MSN
• Email
• MySpace
• Facebook
• You Tube – but they don’t have accounts
• Not blogs – except on MySpace
• BBC – esp. for news (easier than papers)
• NOT Piczo or Bebo*

(*Himself points out that this might be a localised thing, what are your school friends/ swimming club members/ orchestra band mates on.  Possible.  I know, for example that Bebo is huge with some Irish late teens.)

What films did they show us?

• Potter Pals – The Mysterious Ticking Noise
• Dancing Badgers
• Bring the Ducks Home
• Orangina Advert
• A school friend who jumps up and then “through the magic of TV” appears not to land for ages

What do they like?

• Short (2 mins, 5 mins is too long)
• Something famous or some point of common reference
• Good music, catchy tune or music that everyone knows or music “that you thought you’d forgotten” (Amarillo)
• Things that make us laugh
• Slightly wierd
• Dancing professors in lab coats and goggles
• Famous people: sports personalities
• Unexpected twists
• Things out of context
• Dare Devil stunts (jumping on the back of a cow)

What they don’t like

• Depressing things – unless there’s a big message and even then it should be levened with humour like Comic Relief
• Don’t err on the side of the preachy
• Bad quality – a bit annoying
• Too good quality – a bit annoying

What topics are interesting?

• Truth about food
• Fairtrade
• Making money out of ethical trade
• The size 0 debate
• 60 year olds in a wind tunnel
• Decorated snail experiuments
• CCTV/ Surveillance Society – Mosquito noise, speaking cameras, giving teens a bad name, knife crime

What style do they like?

• Top Gear
• Real Science
• Braniac
• BBC Blast
• Mimickery/DIY style

How do they pass films on?

By email, but preferably in person so they can watch the person’s reactions (i.e. at a PC “Have you seen this one?”)

And finally a plug for Himself’s friend the lovely Alistair Robertson who was partly responsible for this wonder years ago.

Internal Marketing Myth

Frustration Board Game

I am raising the profile of something that was buried in a comment on another post because it’s topical again…  at least for me…

And also because I am looking to be challenged.  Come on, stretch my thinking…

Chris May asked:

Anyway, I was curious about this:

“Since arriving at my current institution I’ve noticed a queue of people coming to me for internal ‘marketing’ advice. They of course mean, and need, nothing of the sort – but it takes a while to persuade them of that.”

Do they all mean (and need) the same kind of thing? If so, what is it? And what causes them to come (mistakenly) to you looking for it?

I replied:

Of course not everybody means exactly the same thing, but the pattern is broadly that:

individuals or teams who provide a service to the rest of, or other members of, the organisation, want help in getting more take-up of their service individuals or teams with a bad reputation want to be thought better of within the institution

They are not mistaken in coming to talk to me – because a lot of the time I can help them achieve their objectives through advising them on how to communicate in a targetted and effective way.

But they are mistaken in thinking that having an internal logo or creating 10,000 posters to spread all over campus is going to be the solution to their problems.

When people arrive requesting support with “marketing” I know two things: firstly, they haven’t thought through precisely what they want to achieve, and secondly, they have not thought about who to target their communications at or what the best way to reach these people is.

And I’m not pretending that the processes that I go through with them are clever, but they do make them stop and think, and what we come up with is more likely to achieve their ends than a mass broadcast or advert-style communication.

Rather, they usually make them stop an think….

But there will always be some people who think that the way to get people to attend their idiosyncratic training course for researchers in particle physics is to send all-staff emails out every week for four weeks with their seminar logo attached!

Bearing in mind the strength of my feelings on the topic I am rather proud of the restraint shown in today’s carefully crafted email:

Sorry, I don’t know of anyone of specialises in the marketing of INSERT INTERNAL FUNCTION – I’m not really aware of it as a discipline, but, as my background is in internal communications in various organisations, I have worked with internally facing functions such as HR and IT.  In my experience such functions often have a hard time getting their messages across to internal audiences – but it is vitally important to work through what you want to achieve and then work out the best way to do it.  Otherwise it can be wasted money and effort (not to mention the air-traffic control point that I mentioned last time we emailed about this).

Can I suggest that we take a step back and get together to work through what you want to achieve?

In fact, it might be an idea to run a couple of hours of workshop – perhaps with all of HRD?  I have a number of tools that we could work through including this: http://www.smartchart.org/

What do you think?

SmartChart, by the way, is a work of genius – and thanks to Laura Dewis for pointing it out.

BA Own Goal – A Terminal Case Study

Writing about http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7317909.stm

And http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/heathrows-big-day-is-terminal-embarrassment-801743.html

Wow! This is a management, PR & Internal Comms case study in the making. I can see this being on the CIPR course next year…

The thing that stood out most for me though was the amount of coverage pointing to underinformed and poorly trained staff – from issue with the initial check in procedures through to baggage handling staff not knowing their way round the grounds.

And then it gets worse, failure to keep frontline customer-facing staff informed:

“Nobody really seemed to know what was going on. Staff seemed as much in the dark as we were.” (more)

“One baggage worker told the BBC the situation was “mayhem” and that the technical problems had been known about for some time.” (more)

“A BA staff member said they would have liked to be able to phase it in rather than ‘do it all at once’.” (more)

So many senior managers will tell you that staff are their ambassadors – but when you break that down it means that they want their IC Manager to inundate people with positive propaganda or that they expect staff members to magically feel ownership of the brand without working on empolyee engagement or brand values.

The simple things like making sure that staff are adequately trained, listened to (because they know more about the practicalities of their day job than you do), consulted about big decisions which affect them and constantly kept informed in emergency situations often go by-the-by.

As Himself said, he would rather have been a passenger in a three-hour queue at Heathrow yesterday than a member of BA staff at Terminal 5!

The Man With No Name

I have always loved Westerns.  And I have always loved Clint Eastwood: particularly in Westerns and in Dirty Harry; but I will make no excuses for Play Misty for Me.

But his best role for me, and one that he has played variations of throughout his career, is The Man With No Name.

The Man With No Name has many qualities that I admire.

What do we do with this Facebook thing?

Adapted from Well, Everything has to Start Somewhere on our work blog.

And more than that, to quote Jane Magé (a former boss):

We are where we are, let’s see where we can go from here.

A quote which I find useful for a variety of occasions…

So, we’ve got this Facebook presence – what are we doing with it? (See other entries for for wailing and gnashing of teeth in this vein.)

A week or so ago we got together to have an open-ended discussion – here are some of the points that arose:

The Spirit of Web 2.0

Writing about http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/tlig/comms/feb08/prog.htm

I went to rather a depressing conference last Wednesday.  And it left me feeling like this <=

To cut a long story short I had not chosen wisely.  Whilst the topic seemed relevant and appropriate the audience at which it was pitched did not really include me.

The other attendees and the presenters were almost exclusively members of IT departments in universities.  They were concerned about things like being able to ‘market’ themselves to the rest of the institution and whether or not they should be allowed to use an internally-facing sub-brand.  They were also interested in proving value to customers and management stakeholders and setting up good basic internal communications.

This was interesting up to a point – since arriving at my current institution I’ve noticed a queue of people coming to me for internal ‘marketing’ advice.  They of course mean, and need, nothing of the sort – but it takes a while to persuade them of that.

But, while I was sat with half an ear on the presenters, and partly to stop myself picking a fight with an obnoxious chap sat in front (who, amongst other things, turned round to tell my colleague that the sound of his typing was irritating – hello?!  new technology conference!), I made a few notes about what I’d hoped the conference would be.

1. What do technologists need to know about communications?
2. What should communicators learn about technologies?
3. Where does editorial responsibility/content ownership lie?
4. Can communication be managed within interactive (web 2.0) channels?  If so, how?  In a top-down way or in a self-governing way?
5. How do Facebook/Bebo/blogs/social bookmarking fit into a communications mix?  (The peer-to-peer benefits are clear, the organisation to member/customer dynamic is less clear…)

Basically, what I need to work out, and what I’d hoped to have the opportunity to discuss, is what do I do with the following list of tools?  Is there a clever way of piggybacking on them or using them that I am missing?  How on earth does crisis management work in these fora?  In fact how do you manage communications through them without looking like you are donning your Nazi jackboots and behaving in a completely inappropriate way?

(Of course, I do realise that most of the point of web 2.0 is the socialist, egalitarian, utilitarian vibe and that by seeking to manage things or use these tools I am proving myself to be a potential member of Prentiss McCabe or worse still Malcom Tucker…)

• Blogs
• Facebook/Bebo/MySpace
• YouTube/ Google Video
• Flash Meetings
• Instant Messenging
• Social bookmarking
• Flickr
• E-portfolios
• VLEs/Moodle
• Podcasts/ Videocasts
• Digital mapping/ Mind Mapping etc.
• Texts/ SMS
• SecondLife
• Wikis
• Web forums
• Email – are we really using it well enough?
• PDA/ Blackberry – web for phones?  Still necessary now we have the iPhone?
• Tiny URLS/ go redirects
• RSS Feeds & Readers

I appreciate that some of these are in no way web 2.0 – but I thought I’d throw the lot into the mix.

So, that’s what’s bothering me at the moment.  How are you?

Is Intensive Farming Coming Home to Roost?

(Sorry, couldn’t resist it.)  I am very much enjoying Channel 4’s Chicken Season so far and have booked the sofa for Friday night for the Jamie show.

One of the most interesting bits for me however has been watching the supermarket and farmers’ PR reactions. 

Yesterday, for example, I received a letter from Judith Batchelor, Brand Manager for Sainsburys, directly referencing the Chicken Out programme, seeking to reassure me, and enclosing two leaflets clarifying their egg and chicken labelling.

Of course, if she’d bothered to pull up the Nectar card data she would have seen that I only ever buy organic eggs and chicken anyway.  But then that would have irritated me because it would have reminded me of their ability to monitor my food intake….

I’m now adding another concern to the moral maze that is my trip to the supermarket.  What type of eggs/chicken are in pre-prepared items?