Marketing and Reputation

Sometimes it’s darkest just before the light.  Here are 11 great articles to assess the times we’re in, and plan for better days.  

Five C’s for Communicating in this Crunch

We’ve developed a gut-check list of “Five C’s” to help guide communications on dire economic subjects, from news releases to corporate Web sites to internal communications.

10 Tips for a Challenging Economic Environment

9. Communicate authentically. Strong leaders acknowledge the challenges they struggle with and, by doing so, build trust among followers. Rather than being a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength.

Marketing and PR tactics, budgets likely to change during recession

What companies don’t realize is their marketing budget will go a lot further and create much more buzz in a down market. As your competition pulls back, you should become much more aggressive. When you do, you will achieve top-of-mind status and grab market share as the economy stabilizes and will be able to remain on top during the next upswing in the economy.

Are You a Media Savvy Leader? How Agency Heads Can Boost Results in a Tight Economy

I think the inability of the PR business to really comprehend what Web 2.0 is about is shocking. So, real leaders get in there and they take a look at the trends in media and online and get active there. For example, if you’re going to offer a CEO blog, you have to be prepared to spend an hour a day doing it—not every other day. Also important is understanding and respecting the online world’s mindset of sharing—it’s all about developing conversations with constituents.

Your website can thrive in a recession

It is 14 times cheaper to allow a customer to complete a task on a website than to have the customer complete the same task over the phone. The Web is 35 times cheaper for completing such a task than a face-to-face interaction. Isn’t that a compelling business case for a website during a recession?

Leading through uncertainty

The range of possible futures confronting business is great. Companies that nurture flexibility, awareness, and resiliency are more likely to survive the crisis, and even to prosper.

Time to Reboot: What to Expect in Politics, Policy and PR in 2009

For those in consumer PR, this will be a tough year as product-side clients retrench. But if you are engaged in advocacy PR, public affairs or crisis communications, 2009 may be a robust year for your business, especially if you can hitch things to the “change” agenda in Washington and on Wall Street.

Social Media Begins Forcing the Totally Transparent Layoff

The combination of social media technology such as Twitter—where people post updates about themselves online at Twitter.com—and a cultural shift toward greater personal disclosure means more and more employees will document details of their dismissal, said Jennifer Benz, a communications consultant based in San Francisco.

Give Data a Human Touch to Weather the Economic Storm

The key, say many experts, is to use customer data and analytics for its original purpose: forging stronger customer relationships.

Market Smarter in 2009: Make the Right Choices

Remember two words: frequency, consistency. Even with finite resources, it’s vital to maintain a level of frequency and consistency. It is crucial to stay in front of your customers and prospects. You should never disappear for stretches at a time. If that means you need to focus marketing efforts on a few of your strongest market sectors, do it.

5 Lessons on Marketing for the Recession

Lesson: Keep hiring channels open and be pickier than ever. For anyone who hasn’t read Hard Times or any of the Studs Terkel interview compilations, they are an incredible insight into people’s attitudes and behaviors throughout history. I highly recommend 

In an effort to start rebuilding confidence in the ethical integrity of American business, 17 companies have come together to found the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance. The companies are inviting both private and public companies to join them in pledging to uphold four core values: legal compliance, transparency, identification of conflicts of interest, and accountability.

The founding members include such industry giants as Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, Dell and United Airlines. Any company accepted into membership, as a minimum requirement, has to subscribe to the core principles of the alliance. If within a year of joining, the company cannot demonstrate that it meets BELA’s minimum standards and practices, it can be removed from membership. Member companies will be audited every two years to make sure they are in compliance with BELA requirements. Of course, egregious unethical behavior that could have been prevented can be grounds for removal.

So, do efforts like this work? They certainly can. Think of other industry initiatives that have tackled shortcomings in other areas, such as ISO certification to improve quality and environmental performance. Once expectations are articulated and made formal, companies usually can do a good job of training employees in principles and guidelines.

ISO has done a good job of continuing to ensure that certification means something. The group has kept rigorous standards in place and made sure that certification is not only hard to earn but equally hard to keep.

BELA potentially can have the same impact over time. It plans to make sure that good systems and practices are in place to foster and demand ethical behavior inside a company. A public so badly burned by ethical shortcomings in so many American companies will be cynical for years to come, but BELA is to be applauded for trying to turn the situation around. To learn more, check out the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance.

Peter Faur, RightPoint Communications Inc.

1. Make a list of critical vs. non-critical activities. As in, which ones will impact my customers and the current or future survival of my business?  Then, focus only on those essential activities. Eliminate, delegate, or postpone everything else.For me, that meant I cancelled a bunch of non-essential social, community and volunteer activities. This is a great way to find out what you’re really, truly passionate and energized about. I found I easily ditched my boring Dreamweaver course but nothing was going to get between me and my djembe drumming class (great therapy!).
2. Figure out what you can reasonably do and what you can’t, with the understanding that you need to get some rest and take extra care of yourself during a stressful time. I had over a thousand emails/alerts in my inbox, most of them to satisfy my endless cravings for information. Without mercy, I deleted everything that didn’t require action.
3. Set expectations up front.  For me, clients consistently identify reliability as one of my core brand attributes. While waiting for hours in the hospital, I sent each of my key clients (and suppliers) a personalized but brief note. I let them know I had a family situation and that I expected to meet my deadlines, but there was a small chance I may need a bit of extra time. All thanked me for letting them know. Turns out I met every deadline.
4. Be authentic (but not needy). Many of my client and peer relationships have turned into valued friendships. People in my network genuinely wanted to know how I was doing.  Although it would’ve been easy, I refrained from giving them an aloof, conversation-closing “everything’s fine.” I showed them the real me and shared what I truly felt – fear, hope, exhaustion, gratitude, imperfection.  In less than 30 words (they want to know you’re OK, but enough already).
5. Ask for help from your support system. It doesn’t need to be big. It doesn’t need to be lasagne. Despite my fierce need for independence, I asked my mastermind group, my friends and some of my close clients to send their positive, healing thoughts, if they were so inclined. They were grateful to feel like they could help. I was grateful to feel supported.  Strangely, it made us all a little closer.

Here’s a few things to remember when you’re creating a strategy:

• Social media thrives on interaction, so make sure you’re giving your fans and followers something they can’t just read off your website.
• Add some personality to messages so that your fans know there’s actually a person on the other side of the connection.
• Remember that different communities have different personalities, so don’t just spam them all with the same line. If you’ve done your job correctly, people who belong to more than one social community may be following your account on each, so it is a red flag to see the same line of content on each. That flag says you’re spamming me.

2. Turn blog posts into advertisements.

If you’re blogging consistently, you’re on the right track. But if all your blog posts are about your own product or service, you’re really just advertising. Don’t do this! Provide value for the readers of your blog. They didn’t come to your blog to read about how awesome XYZ service is, although you can definitely link to that service or even mention it at the end of a post. The more in-depth and interesting your blog posts are, the more people will realize that a) you know what you’re talking about, and b) you’re not just giving them a used car salesman-type pitch. The best blog posts get the reader to think highly of the author, which makes them think highly of the company, which makes them remember that company when they have a need for your product or service. Be subtle. Give readers the perception that you’re awesome, but don’t shove it down their throats.

Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding” in action. Welcome to “guaranteed-to-fail branding,” a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes.

Roy Disney said, “You need branding when your product has nothing to offer.” Roy’s uncle, Walt, invented Mickey Mouse and created the Disney empire. At the time, the word “branding” was reserved only for cowboys branding herds of cattle by the fiery iron.

The word “branding” is dangerously overused. Many people use branding as a cure for all kinds of problems in all kinds of businesses. To lay claim to a deeper understanding of this elementary word, branding agencies all over the world have developed some cute variations of it, from “emotional branding” to “primal,” “sensory,” “musical,” “internal,” “external,” “holistic,” “vertical,” “abstract,” “nervous” and all the way to “invisible” branding. However, to see these distinctions, you will need special 3D spectacles.

The list of branding types is almost like the three MIT wizards who took an academic conference for a ride by submitting a paper in all fake jargon: “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.” Their paper was accepted.

Haphazard Branding

There are hundreds of such branding terms pointing to the same thing. Let’s analyze and see how this historical process of branding ownership marks on animals got transformed into a word circus, bending the state of mind among corporations, institutions and many governments.

Branding is often presented as a culturally, emotional or lifestyle crazy, sugarcoated packaging process. Sometimes it is like rap music, with spinning colors or psychedelic pastel overtones accompanied with hip-hop idea drivers. Other times it comes with esoteric concepts to camouflage the products or services just long enough to get the customers’ attention. Most of the time, it comes as juicy ideas under some new blanket term of branding that is designed to create a safe and secure feeling for the corporation while waiting for the thunder from the charge of anxious customers.

For some reason, if the highly anticipated traffic doesn’t show up, then the term is changed immediately to the likes of “primal branding,” with a twist or a new style dance added to the circus. The same single promotional process is re-named repeatedly.

The idea is that when share prices fall, call the branding team and let it apply its “fiscal branding” to mail fancy brochures to shareholders. When products fail, let the “visual branding” make logos makeover, and when elevators don’t work, give it to the “yo-yo branding” unit, as they are real experts in north and south mobility. Floor please.

Today, branding is a mixed bag of basic, traditional advertising tools, simply waxed and packaged to appear as intellectual advice with an expensive price tag. It is targeted to fit any hungry frame of mind, and is designed to make corporations feel ever so comfortable with terms like “verbal,” “digital,” “audio,” “smelly,” “silent” or “loud” branding, as all these terms are designed to offer great safety and invisible lifelines to sinking ships. But does it work?

Just Promotional Tools

At times it does, as corporations do need solid and real branding. However, it most often fails, frequently due to lack of substance, quality, intelligence and experience. What is now being offered in the name of branding includes perfumed stationery at the banks, as sensory tickles, jingles and chimes for the funeral parlor — just raw promotional tricks.

These approaches fail because they are just basic promotional tools and skills and because they are trendy quick fixes. Branding has been defined so many times by so many experts that it is almost useless to redefine it. Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.

The presentation of fancy fireworks at a huge marina as a big branding exercise might be merely ordinary to some other company. Hundreds of hired people walking on a busy street with their foreheads painted with the names of products might be kinky, tacky or too smart, all depending on the culture and mental level of the client.

Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding” in action, to others it is getting the word out at any cost.

Welcome to “guaranteed-to-fail branding,” a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes.

Most of the time, the creative powers overtake the process, and fancy jargon becomes the Band-Aid while the Laws of Global Corporate Image, Rules of Corporate Nomenclature and Name Identities, Cyber Domain Management, Principals of Marketing and Global Branding are all completely ignored as being too rigid, too serious and too formal.

Solid Training, Thorough Skills

Let’s face it, these branding rules are very hard to learn and very difficult to apply because they require solid training and thorough skills. Simple, raw promotional skills backed by big budget fireworks are only “accidental branding” at play, where everyone becomes happy as long as there is some noise. In the recent past, this is how “high volume” or “intense” branding got the center stage. Today, in this budgetless environment, it is only a dream for most agencies to get such mega breaks.

U.S. businesses are still very much overdosed with over-branding. Massive turnover in the advertising and branding industry, compounded by the Internet , e-commerce and outsourcing has created a large glut of branding consultants with too many faceless, nameless consulting services and Web sites.

The market is simply glutted. Western branding agencies are losing their grip by not producing world-class standards and are becoming a laughing stock by adopting, in a panic, monkey-see-monkey-do campaigns.

In reality, you definitely need proper branding today; the type is not the issue. However, first you must have something very good to offer. You also need highly specific and proven branding with highly tactical positioning skills, under proper corporate and brand name identity and image laws, rather than raw graphic and promotional tools.

‘Useless Branding?’

Empty concepts and poorly designed and beaten up products and services can’t be resurrected with some abstract branding terms along with some flashy campaigns. Big money spending will not buy big image anymore. It worked in the past, but times have changed. Today, the latest cyber-branding techniques are in big play. Corporations are opening up to a debate on this subject among senior management and ignoring the old, traditional branding methodologies.

As e-commerce matures by the minute, the masses of customers have successfully ignored the expensive blitzes and pretended to have some type of an early Alzheimer’s condition to justify their memory loss. Nothing sticks in mind any longer.

The blasted, useless messages are instantly forgotten. The 15-minute fame suggested by Andy Warhol is now only a 15-second blip on the global e-commerce landscape. What was previously shoved on 24-7 ad campaigns and lasted at least a year is now completely forgotten the very next day.

Should we now re-define branding all over again? Should this word be re-invented? How about “useless branding?” No, not yet.

 – Naseem Javed

– 7-27-05

When creative concepts collide unexpectedly, this sudden accident incubates a branding process, which can result in a random selection of a weird strategy. This gives birth to an extreme name identity, whereupon a major advertising process kicks in. All things are combined — shaken, not stirred — and that’s how we refer to today’s trendy branding. To avoid a catastrophe, we must first learn the secrets of the various branding tricks and become aware of the bigger risks.

Right now, in good old England, they have big corporate brands like EGG, as in ham & eggs, http://www.egg.com; ORANGE, as in juice, http://www.orange.com; and THUS, as in “thus far, this Scottish Telco is still having difficulties,” http://www.thus.net.

Wandering Off the MMap

And then there’s MMO2, a very big telecom name in the UK, created as a cute play on the then very popular millennium year 2000. It was fashionable to use the Roman numerals for 2000 at the time, and so MMO2 came into being — but it soon became outdated in 2003, 2004 and 2005. Now they’ve just dropped the MM to be proudly rebranded as O2, as in oxygen, at http://www.o2.com.

Naturally, you would need oxygen after such a mm-mega surgery. Accidental naming can create a lot of crashes and cause injuries during the long term care of a major brand.

There is also GO, as in go where? And NOW, as in right now. ETC is also supposed to be a gentleman’s gentleman-type magazine for very straight-up guys.

The influence of such strange and experimental naming is also spreading outside of England. In Australia, Quantas airlines almost called their no-frill airline Oi or Oz air, but settled on JetStar, a name already used by so many others in aviation. In Asia, there is now a short-lived fad for two-lettered corporate identities. And no, you can’t ever find them on search engines.

Dancing in the Air

Here in the U.S. we have TED airlines, as in what’s left of United. With only one single peanut per passenger to offer, United Airlines so brilliantly chopped the Uni from their name to come to this unique invention of TED. Like, half the airline with half the things chopped, except the engines, of course. That deserves half an entry in the half-naming hall of fame. Just as Blue, Jazz, Tango and Song airlines are trying to dance in the air, so TED is now attempting its trampoline routine.

It seems that all over the globe there is a rush to find four-letter words for airline brands. Is this the revenge of the disgruntled flier? Maybe. The fact is, airlines are in the fast-chopping mode.

“Cut everything in half and than half again; do it slowly and do it painfully.” Of course they all are losing big money. Who could be surprised about their losses? But one could question the old branding fanfare. To frequent fliers it became obvious, way before the 9/11 tragedy; it all started with the peanut packets being replaced by one single peanut. Now all you might get is just a picture of a meal, a great take-home souvenir.

The peanuts and monkey business are almost over — now you even pay for a cracker and dare ask for butter. All you are allowed is simply to dream of demanding an extra satin pillow with silky blankets. Today, the stage is nicely set to get a greyhound bus service in the air. Cut the washrooms, give them a used parachute. The naming of airlines has taken a major turn from country-specific to discount-coupon-specific and from first-class to no-class. While Asian airlines are boosting super luxury classes, here in the U.S., it is time to fly a TOM or a DICK or a HARRY. Thank you, Britannia, we are amused with these yoyo monikers.

The Global Wordplay

Real advertising was invented in England, and let’s face it, they are great at it, just like the global branding that came out of Japan while America provided the largest arena to play out the branding games.

Meanwhile, our good old McDonald’s in the U.S. is unhappy about McJobs being included as a word in the OED, the Oxford English Dictionary, mother of all the English words and a slap to the French because their Larousse dictionary is poorer by a few thousand French words. Wow, we have more four-letter words than the French — merde.

To Big Mac, the jobs of “Flippin Engineers,” “Moppin’ Mechanics” and “Latrine Sentries” are not to be laughed at. True, Big Mac does help tens of thousands at entry-level jobs and helps students as well. Somehow they later become very obese and try to sue them — in revenge?

Here is a new twist: the fast-food freedom fry, fatty chow-maker now wants to sell children’s clothing and introduce McKids in a big way. Why not go for McSleep: Eat and sleep and complete the life circle — indeed, a million dollar tag line on Madison Avenue. Watch out for the naked kids running around at the golden arches drive-ins exchanging and re-fitting pantaloons — French, that is.

America is better off with business name brands, which give us a clear advantage, provide global identity and a leadership position, rather than just simple English words from the dictionary that can get lost in the crowd. Name wisely, or just go to McSleep.

Naseem Javed – ABC Namebank

Recently the news media was all a twitter about billionaire movers and shakers getting together to discuss the increasing need for philanthropy in the U.S. and abroad. Bill and Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffet were alleged to be attending the secretive meetings. Personally, I was heartened to learn that humanity was top of mind for global leaders because if there ever was a time to lead and address need, certainly, that time is now.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

If your organization has been sitting on the side lines waiting for a better time, a better place, it’s time to move off the fence. Starting a community based program (aka corporate philanthropy program) would be a good place to start. If enough companies birthed mini-versions of Buffet and Winfrey-like programs, the world would be a vastly different place. Why not start now?

To get started, I’ve outlined five simple D’s to create an A-level program that would do any company proud. To begin:

Define your company’s purpose for the program. Start by asking and surveying employees: what do we want to accomplish? What should the purpose be for the program? What value can the organization uniquely bring to the world/state/region/city that would make a difference? What needs should be addressed? Where we can be of value? What matters most to us? Then whittle the ideas down to the top 5 or 10 for consideration and exploration.

Discover your passion. Once you’ve defined what matters most to your employees, discover all you can about each need or topic. Ask employees to discover: who currently addresses this need? Can we collaborate with them? Ask them to discover what programs are addressing these needs and why they are successful? Have them talk to groups about their experiences. Inquire about their strengths. Their successes. What worked? Why it worked and how it worked? What did they learn from this experience? What did they value most? What value to do they continue to bring to this need? Stay away from weaknesses. Focus solely on strengths-based results. Only by understanding what works and why it works can we mirror and replicate success…Choose to focus on creating success with your program.

Dream your passions into life. Now that you have a handle on what you wish to create, dream about it. Imagine the answer to this question: It’s five years out and the New York Times is interviewing your company for a story about your corporate philanthropy program. What successes would you play up? What successes were most important to you? How did you make a difference? Where did you address the greatest need? How did you do that? What was most effective? Play with these questions in your mind…Consider: What if we …..? Imagine if we….? How could we? Dream big. Let your imagination lead the way. When we dream, we shift our minds from limitation-based thinking to the unknown where we can freely explore new avenues of possibility. Play with your dreams and see what forms. Then follow your company’s heart to the place that resonates best with your organization’s voice and mission.

Design a successful process. Once you have your dream established, it’s time to design a system to implement and execute to it. Take your dream and make it real by putting a foundation to it and processes in place. Make it real and tangible. Let your employees determine the processes and foundations. Invite collaboration and knowledge sharing. When employees are invited to participate in ventures that matter to them, productivity, morale and success increases exponentially.

Deliver a program that makes a difference in the world.  Implement your vision with the utmost compassion and of course, passion. Once your organization has a handle on its strengths, host your own mover and shaker meetings with other like-minded organizations to share best practices so that the circle can begin again.

Lori Schwind

I’ve been a “quality” person after reading Pirsig’s book some 10 odd years ago, and as I try to apply the quality principal to my clients as a freelance Web designer, there seems to be an increasing swing towards measuring ROI from online marketing in terms of the QUALITY of customer delivered rather than the quantities.

This is not really that surprising as the online market becomes more saturated, competitive and consumer-savvy. The interest in the volume of Web site traffic turns to an interest in conversion metrics which turns converts into ways or how often we can keep a customer returning for more.

As the costs of gaining a new customer go up, it becomes increasingly important to get the right (quality) customers, not just any old ones. Of course, the Internet makes it potentially easy to gain customers, but it is unfortunately often just as easy to lose them as well.

All of which got me thinking: Do different forms of online marketing typically deliver different qualities of customer, rather than quantities or volume? This has been my experience thus far:

Search Engine Marketing – can deliver quantity and quality. Quality will depend on the “quality” of your keyword targeting, timing, choice of search engines, etc.

• Affiliate Marketing – perception, rightly or wrongly, that the quality of customers delivered is lower in the long-term scheme of things. However, the volume of conversions can be very high.
• E-mail Marketing – this really depends a lot on the quality of the list, the quality of the offer, the timing, the brand, etc. It is the most effective for converting existing registered users or repeat selling to existing customers.
• Interactive Advertising – for something such as banner advertising, click-through rates drop, as opposed to a PPC text-based link, but I haven’t seen anything or read anything to know about the quality of the customer that gets through. Even though volume is lower on banner advertising, perhaps the quality of the customer is higher (wealthy, frequent visitor). PPC does deliver a high quantity of click-throughs, but depending on the quality of the keywords and program choice depends on the quality of the customer.
• Viral Marketing – volumes can be very high (or next to nothing), but the quality of those customers…? Conversion rates tend to be low but of those few who convert I guess it’s a potpourri of valuable customers and not-so-valuable ones.

Most businesses, and managers with targets to hit, need a mixture of volume of sales and value of customers, so as ever, it’ll be a choose-your-best-marketing mix scenario in terms of what, how and when to use the above online marketing avenues.

I’d be interested in hearing from others about their experiences with online marketing venues and results – email me at hk@sparkmaninternet.com.

~Holly Sparkman

An opinion piece in today’s Daily Mirror raises an interesting point: George W. Bush (who is partly blamed for the banking crisis); Andy Hornby, former CEO of HBOS, the failed U.K. bank; Rick Wagoner, CEO of nearly bankrupt General Motors; and Jeff Skilling, disgraced CEO of Enron, all hold MBAs from the Harvard Business School. Allan Mullay, the Ford CEO who is being severely criticized for his $21 million compensation package, holds an MBA from MIT. In fact, many of the world’s top banking executives hold MBAs from major business schools.

The question raised by the piece is this: Do these schools devote enough time to the study of ethics and values? Supposedly, business schools are receiving strong criticism for creating a mindset of self-interest and self-preservation that ignored the need to balance the interests of all stakeholders a business touches.

Business schools move their students through quickly; a typical course of study lasts 12 to 24 months, and it can be difficult to sandwich in courses on ethics, good values, and corporate citizenship. Even so, the best business schools will make this happen. Tomorrow’s leaders need to understand that they must, in fact, lead in the area of corporate citizenship.

One proposal is to require students to take a kind of Hippocratic oath upon graduation. The oath might touch upon such issues as selfishness (“considerations of personal benefit will never become more important than the interests of the enterprise I manage”) and transparency (“I swear to represent my enterprise’s performance accurately and transparently to all parties”).

Carried to its extreme, this would seem to require a licensing board and the possibility that someone could lose his license to practice business. That seems to be a little much. I’ve always opposed licensing journalists and PR people, and I feel much the same about business people. In this country, anyone should have the right to go into business and succeed or fail as skill and enterprise dictate. The market should be able to shake out incompetence. The law should be able to give a comeuppance to ne’er-do-wells.

That said, top business schools need to move beyond teaching the ins-and-outs of net present value and hurdle rates. In my MBA program, a common theme was that executives existed to maximize shareholder value, and that’s fair enough. We’ve seen the damage that can be done, however, when that notion is emphasized to the exclusion of others, such as fair play and an understanding that shareholders – and society – pay a price for unethical behavior.

Business schools can make a great contribution by helping their students understanding their responsibilities to a variety of audiences beyond shareholders.

Peter Faur, RightPoint Communications Inc.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has put together a series of videos called “Policy Translated,” whose purpose, I gather, is to cut through the fog and simplify major policy issues for Americans. You can see the one on corporate social responsibility here. Go ahead and watch. I’ll wait.

If you decided to skip ahead, though, I’ll summarize. Companies contribute everything they need to contribute to society by being in business. They create jobs, pay taxes, make shareholders wealthier (at least ideally) and keep the economy humming with their purchases of goods and services. Demands for companies to do anything more will be the death of capitalism. Or, in a word, refried Milton Friedman.

This whole line of thinking depends upon setting up straw men that have nothing to do with modern thinking about CSR. No reasonable human is dreaming of the day when corporations will take every cent they make – and then some – and hand it over to social agencies. Of course that would destroy capitalism; who would deny that? But that’s not what CSR is about.

This either/or approach to the discussion of corporate responsibility is tiring after a while. For decades, companies voluntarily have set aside resources to do their part to make their communities better. There’s nothing new about this. And there’s nothing to force companies to do so. Companies may feel pressure from demands for corporate responsibility, but the decision of how to respond to that pressure is theirs and theirs alone to make.

Whenever I see these simplistic critiques, I feel like borrowing the line Ronald Reagan used to disarm Jimmy Carter: “There you go again.” (The issue Carter was attacking Reagan on, incidentally and fittingly for this day and age, was health care reform. But that’s another story.)

If the Institute wants to make a real contribution, it can do better than the “take a swipe” videos it has produced. What do you think?

Peter Faur, RightPoint Communications Inc.

A recent Wall Street Journal article validated many of the tenets upon which I founded our firm nearly nine years ago. The article was entitled, “M&A Blind Spot. When negotiating a merger, leave a seat at the table for a marketing expert.” Unfortunately, this rarely happens.

The article talked about the integral role of marketing in securing and consummating a deal through internal acceptance by the organization. It reminded me of a statistic I heard nine years ago to explain M&A failures. Dr. Michael Hammer said “that 80% of mergers and acquisitions fail and that 50% of the reasons that they fail are due to personality and culture clashes between the companies and their leadership.” This is just as true today as it was a decade ago.

In my opinion, marketing and branding are lynchpins of a successful merger and acquisition. All too often, however, marketing is just an afterthought. Bankers, lawyers, and accountants have a place at the M&A table to ensure that the deal lives up to its potential in regards to risk minimization, asset evaluation, and legal due diligence. But where are the marketing experts? They should be at the table as well to ensure that the organization embraces the merger, positioning it with positive benefits inside and outside the company. Effective communications and messaging can win over all the critical stakeholders and ensure success.

Find me a lawyer, accountant, or banker who can manage all this:

1. Vision and direction
The company must have a clear sense of direction and vision after the M&A plan is laid out. The vision should be in simple language (with examples) so employees can relate to it and understand the benefits for themselves and their company. Marketing departments and their leadership are trained and experienced at creating this kind of messaging.
Creating a new, combined vision is clearly the role of marketing. Imposing one company’s vision on two merged entities often alienates half of the people the instant the merger is launched.

1. Overcoming uncertainty through employee engagement
   Without doubt, uncertainty is the number one issue after announcing a merger or acquisition. Overcome it by enrolling the staff through relevant messages and experiential communications programs.
   Marketing professionals understand consumer insights and motivations that translate into actionable tactics and communications. With knowledge and understanding, employees gain motivation. After internalizing the merger value proposition, they finally gain inspiration. They will be engaged and enrolled.

2. Understanding where your employees stand on issues
   Companies should segment their employee audience the same way they segment and analyze their external audiences to measure their acceptance of change and learn the best ways to communicate with them.
   These are the types of questions that marketing will answer:

– What motivates employees?
– What inspires them?
– What are their opinions of management and the corporation?
– How do employees relate to management and management communications?
– What forms of communication do the employees prefer?

Marketing professionals are analytical. They are in constant search of insights and buyer values that can be deployed toward an internal employee audience as well as an external one.

1. Experiential communications
   Particularly in an M&A situation, old forms of internal communications are no longer relevant or successful alone. New and more creative methods, with involving and entertaining communications, are more appropriate for adult learning.
   Media should vary by audience: video games, gadgets, viral campaigns, role playing, one-on-one meetings with senior folks, skits, outings, company-wide challenges, events, internal trade shows, a staff radio station, a webcast-whatever draws them in. The key idea is to engage the employees to participate in the exchange and learning.

2. Developing the message
   Like any other marketing campaign, internal branding starts by understanding the change readiness of the organization, followed by developing messages that are relevant and meaningful at all levels-corporate, team and department, and individual. The company needs a clear positioning and sense of what it aspires to be.
   The messages should be presented by the leaders of the organization who know their business and the marketplace best.

3. Establishing brand ambassadors
   Seek out the critical internal stakeholders and opinion leaders for their support and help first, then build consensus within the organization.
   Involve the full spectrum of employees. Ask for their input into the program-they know the customers and the business from all angles.

4. Project management, not ad hoc effort
   Treat the plan like a program-management launch. Assign a great program manager and allocate the proper monetary and HR resources for the effort to succeed.
   Reinforcement is critical. Your employees need to see the message all the time, in lots of different media via different channels. You can emblazon it on a lapel pin, a parking-lot sign, a redesigned uniform, or a lunchroom banner. Or anywhere else that it makes sense to remind people.

5. Measurement and Feedback
   Take measurements and make adjustments. The campaign will need fine tuning as it gains momentum. Gauge how the organization’s culture is receiving the message and reacting to it. Then modify your emphasis as needed.
   Budget for post-campaign analysis and an audit of effectiveness. Conduct before-and-after employee surveys to measure business literacy, brand awareness, and awareness of M&A messages and corporate initiatives.
   In the end, what matters is an educated and aligned workforce motivated to get behind the sale, acquisition, or merger. You want your people to be inspired to work for your firm. They should be proud of what it stands for and what they do. If they care about being part of the process, they will spread the word to your clients and to each other. By enrolling your employees, you will accelerate the changes you have planned and get down to business faster, with fewer internal squabbles, and with a steady stream of re-energizing successes that will sustain itself over time.

Is your company facing a merger or acquisition, or just going through major changes such as ERP implementation or reengineering? Don’t forget to reserve a place at the table for professional marketing counsel. With marketing present as an equal partner with the lawyers, bankers, and accountants, you will ensure success of the merger and win over your employees, who are ultimately responsible for making it all happen. 

Spada, a UK public relations consultancy, has come out with a study that links the length of corporate sustainability reports with the likelihood of winning corporate sustainability awards. Here is the study.

Environmental Leader has looked at the report and summarized the findings in their daily newsletter. Check it out here.

Do you think this is true from your experiences?

Have you ever noticed how quickly professional development disappears when the recipient tries to apply it to their own situation? I realized in a big way last year after a brand presentation at an IABC/Iowa chapter meeting about branding and the power brand.

”We’re all about brand,” said one veteran communicator after the meeting. He worked for one of the large insurance companies in Des Moines so I asked him if he felt his company’s brand was different, inviting, relevant, and truthful, and if he and his co-workers knew how to live the brand daily. His eyes narrowed slightly  when he realized the answer, and he told me, “your right. We aren’t about brand”. His chinned dropped and the smile left his face when, after discussing it a bit more, he discovered his insurance company employer was about brand identity, not brand management.

As he walked away discouraged, I realized that I didn’t help him. I didn’t encourage him. I didn’t arm him to become a brand warrior inside his company. I didn’t tell him to become subversive; that’s what it takes to move organizations down the road to being a great brand. Here’s what I should have told him:

1. Be observant – Make sure you’re doing a lot of walking around your organization, listen to co-workers including executives and the front-line staff. If you’re a large corporation, travel to other offices, participate in different task forces and groups. Watch and listen how sales people engage customers on the trade show floor. Watch and listen to the production staff talk to each other. Review the mission/vision/values statements and annual reports. Begin to define your organization’s brand. If it’s already been articulated, learn it.
2. Be connected – Start conversations with the executives, the front-line staff, the sales team and the production crew. Talk with the guy in the mailroom and the person at the front desk. Begin to refine your organization’s brand promise and build relationships with those who are in a position to easily communicate it.
3. Be vocal – Try the brand promise out on co-workers, on managers, on customers. See if it’s comfortable with everybody, if they can live it. If you get push back, probe a little deeper. See if it’s because that employee can’t live up to the brand or if the company can’t live up to the brand. Only by using it in conversation will you determine if the brand fits, if it’s authentic and believable in the marketplace.
4. Be courageous – Once you’ve determined that the brand that fits, start using it to drive your communications and to drive your behavior. Be a leader and get noticed. When others notice, share your story, your findings and encourage them to take it to heart. Hold others accountable when their actions conflict with the brand – even those above you on the organizational chart. This is how to build your personal brand. Let people know that you’re a brand warrior!

And be ready to bold if the brand is not embraced by others. If your organization doesn’t want you, others do.

By Mark True

Words and phrases including “blog,” “wiki” and even “chat room” make some business leaders nervous. They’re not sure what to make of these new social media. The technology seems mysterious and a bit scary to people who are still trying to find their way around the Internet or figuring out how their BlackBerry works.

If the wild world of online media makes you hyperventilate, relax. Take a deep breath. Despite the hype around Skype, behind the stress caused by RSS, it all comes down to a fundamental process as old as humanity: communication.

What really matters is how well you communicate with employees, customers, shareholders, the community and other important people. The methods you use, while important, are secondary to the quality of communication.

A recent illustration of this principle involves computer maker Dell. Unhappy customers took their complaints about Dell’s products and service to the “blogosphere” – that online place where everyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can share their opinions with the world. Despite the outcry over problems with Dell, which quickly reached hundreds of thousands of people thanks to blogs with names like “Dell Hell,” the company resisted joining the virtual discussion.

Apparently, however, the pressure became too much. A few months ago, Dell created “Direct2Dell,” a blog intended to improve communication with customers about issues ranging from the company’s battery recall to new products. The company’s critics considered the action too little, too late and charged Dell with paying lip service to open communication with customers. On the surface, bloggers said, Dell seemed to be improving communication, but in reality “Direct2Dell” represented more of the company line.

Last week, Dell posted a new “Online Communication Policy” and held a news conference to announce it. The policy, aimed at Dell employees, recognizes the value of online communication tools, lays out expectations of employees who use them and states the company’s commitment to “transparent, ethical and accurate” communication. Translation: no more company PR disguised as real, direct dialogue.

Time will tell if Dell’s policy makes a difference, but for now the bloggers are skeptical. “Dell Hell” creator Jeff Jarvis wrote, “Isn’t it always a company’s policy, in any interaction – by blog, telephone, or letter – to be open and honest?” He wondered if Dell’s 500-word policy might have been boiled down to three words: “Tell the truth.”

What can your company learn from all of this? It doesn’t matter if you choose to communicate through blogs, chat rooms, e-mail or good ol’ face-to-face interaction. What matters is that you communicate honestly and as completely as possible. The latest technology won’t save you if your stakeholders feel you’re not being truthful with them.

It’s the quality of communication that ultimately matters.

Robert Holland