Andrew Lark

Corporate Journalism

Stowe flags a contender for word (or phrase) of the week: Corporate Journalism.

[...] In conversations with another McKinsey colleague, Tom Hayes, a former NYT reporter, we came up with the term “corporate journalism” to describe what we were doing inside of the Firm: applying classic reporting techniques inside of an organization to determine what, if anything, was “interesting” and deserved attention. That filter, “interesting” is subjective. Through McKinsey’s lens it meant information that could enrich the firm through more client engagements and increase the effectiveness of its consultants.

This takes me back to a phrase that Mark Tolliver used lots when I was at Sun: "evidence based marketing". In short, get rid of all the platitudes and well-worn phrases and start with the evidence - then back into they hype if you must. These two concepts together are powerful - communications, message-making, marketing, the act of business, all should start with investigative rigor and evidence. From there, a fair dose of honesty and transparency is required.

The Speechmaker

Big speeches require a massive amount of effort.

Good communicators know this and smart executives commit to it.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece this morning on how Bill Gates developed his commencement address for Harvard.

What's intriguing is how committed Bill is to the process - this is rare in an executive.

A couple of observations:

1. Pick keynotes your execs can get passionate about. As much as you want to establish a sense of importance, it can only be important to them if it is important to them.
2. Pick issues, topics, themes that those same execs can get really passionate about. Chances are it isn't the industry you are in.
3. Models are useful - speeches by others provide good context and illumination. In Bill's case: "The speech, delivered at Harvard's commencement on June 5, 1947, outlined the Marshall Plan, the bold economic relief program that lifted Europe from the ashes of World War II. To Mr. Gates, the general was describing the challenges facing postwar Europe in terms similar to how the software billionaire sees his own, 21st-century crusade: using philanthropy as a catalyst for reducing global inequities in health, wealth and education."
4. Tone is as important as content. Don't confuse the Exec's tone with the tone required for the audience and speech. Bill groked that: "In late May, Mr. Gates tapped Mr. Buffett again. He wanted to press graduates to become more aware and active in helping solve global inequities but was worried about sounding "overly preachy." Mr. Gates went to Omaha, Neb., for the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, Mr. Buffett's company on which Mr. Gates serves as a board member. After the meeting, Mr. Buffett gave Mr. Gates some tips on delivery and tone."
5. The notion of the single speech writer might work in Political circles but you are going to have a greater chance of success by bringing in collaborators. In Bill's case: "When he started working on the speech in December, he used as a sounding board a Gates Foundation staff member who had written for Slate, the online magazine started by Microsoft. The two traded outlines and drafts of the speech. By the end, Mr. Gates and his staff had met six times for brainstorming sessions, completed six drafts and traded many long emails. Mr. Gates wrote some of the longest ones himself."
6. And, no matter how good you are at collaborating and crafting the content, the exec has to be committed to molding the speech into something special. I'm not talking about the standard rehearsal the day or hour before. I'm talking about time spent on putting their thumb-print on it.

Why 47% of Campaigns Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeeds

Jon Beattie of Marker is up at the Future of Online Advertising Conference - he's put together a great summary of a keynote on why 47% of campaigns fail - a summary of the presentation by Greg Stuart at the Future of Online Advertising conference today in New York. Greg is the former CEO, IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and co-author of “What Sticks“.

He claims: Over US$112 billion ad spend is wasted out of a total of $295bn - Advertisers and agencies use the excuse of “publicity” to justify a failed campaign.

Here are the three highlights I liked:

1. Did the campaign message get through? 31% of campaigns failed
2. Out of 5 advertisers (P&G, J&J, Kraft, Nestle, McDonald’s) that did creative research of online campaigns: 1 was okay; 2 found half didn’t work; 2 all ads failed and had to start again
3. McDonald’s took 20 per cent from TV put 13.4% into online kept the rest and increased awareness by 5 per cent when it had previously leveled out using traditional media.

Dialogue-Driven Communications

Great story in AdAge this morning on P&G moving to dialogue-driven communications. They get that it's no longer about "telling and selling".

Procter & Gamble's Jim Stengel described a major cultural shift that is turning the world's largest marketer into a starter of conversations and a solver of consumers' problems rather than a one-way communicator. "It's not about telling and selling," said the chief marketing officer of the company that once lived by that simple mantra. "It's about bringing a relationship mindset to everything we do."

Too often the focus is on a "digital or nothing" strategy - with an emphasis on moving into the interactive realms. Stengel is right that the imperative needs to be different: "the need for brands to be authentic, trustworthy and generous".

And I like this view: "Market share is trust materialized."

Getting Back On Deck... Thoughts On Corporate Blogging

Haven't been blogging much later - just very busy and on the road in Europe for a week with customers and partners.

Interesting pointer from Stowe to an interview by Paul Dunay with Jack Welch about corporate blogging. Jack's advice? Be authentic.

[from Buzz Marketing for Technology: EXCLUSIVE: Jack Welch Discussing Web 2.0 by Paul Dunay]

Buzz Marketing: So what is your advice for companies adopting new Web 2.0 technologies like RSS, social networking, podcasting and videocasting?

Jack: Just be authentic. Be clear in your vision, and have one message and one view that are authentic. I worked somewhere once where they had different messages for employees, analysts and the press. There should be only one message for everyone, and fight like hell to get that message across everywhere you go.

I was asked some similar questions on corporate blogging (which I've always thought was a bit of an oxymoron).

1. Is "ghost-blogging" a no-no: At the heart of any blog is authenticity and the writer's voice. Ghost-writing runs against the very point of a blog which is to engage in a conversation with the community that surrounds you and your company. You can't ghost a conversation...
2. Is there a place for anonymous corporate blog posts (like the Economist?): No. It's hard to have a conversation with an anonymous person. The intent of a blog is not to publish but to converse. I do see room though for participatory blogs where a diverse range of bloggers blog to a single site. I think this is practical for most companies and more interesting for the readers. The Economist is an anomaly in the publishing world.
3. PR person says blogging is “reputation management”. Right or wrong? That PR Person doesn’t understand blogging or the blogosphere – they are contextualizing it through their own lens. And, they are taking a relatively hackneyed descriptor – reputation management – and applying it to a world in which it has little relevance. Various marketing niche’s have tried it with their thesis – brand managers are doing the same with “brand management”. You only have a reputation in the sense that others assign it to you. You earn it. Of course, it could be argued that everything a company does from a communications standpoint is “reputation management” – and that is the problem with the notion. You would hope that blogging would improve and not destroy your reputation right? But does that mean blogging is in fact reputation management in disguise – not at all.
4. How about internal editing of blog posts? This is common. I encourage executives to keep others involved in their posts. They have legal and HR risks associated with every conversation so why not mediate some of that risk. What they do need to do though is time-bound others involvement and be clear on the kind of feedback they are looking for. Blog posts are like bananas – they bruise easily and are best served ripe. They need to let folks know they have but a couple of hours to respond – or a day. This shouldn’t be a highly iterative process that people take a week or so to get done. Too many companies treat the blog post like a press release – at least initially.
5. Other tips: First, participatory media and platforms – from blogs to wikis and podcasts – represent one of the most significant opportunities available to companies to transform their relationship with customers. They represent one of the most significant transformational opportunities since the Internet. Don’t constrain your engagement. Drive it into every corner of your business. Many of the companies I’ve worked with have seen as much value internally as they have externally.

Second. Just do it. Get going internally and let it evolve. If you get it, get going. Don’t spend hours on consulting fees or hanging with PR people, web teams and lawyers. The technology is available as a utility. A blog can be created in minutes.

Third. The rewards significantly outweigh the risks. But the biggest rewards come not from writing blog posts but rather the comments and resulting dialogue. You shouldn’t look at this as a publishing mechanism but rather a “conversation machine”.

Other tips:

• There are no corporate bloggers – there are just bloggers. Be real. Be authentic.
• Blogging is a conversation. You need to move from transmitting to participating.
• You don’t need a blog to be blogging. Start contributing to others blogs with comments and thoughts.
• Never, never, never spin, lie or pour smoke into the blogosphere. Straight-talk will win you kudos.
• Give it time. Don’t expect raving fans at day one. In fact, expect the opposite for a bit. The blogosphere is very critical and self-correcting. Take feedback and tune accordingly.
• Have fun. This is a relatively informal medium. Revel in it.

Thoughts... Comments...

Measuring Brand Mentions In Conversations...

New firm to track brand mentions in conversations...

On average, Keller Fay finds that people discuss about a dozen brands
each day. The most discussed brands are media and entertainment
products like movies, TV shows and publications. But many people also
discuss food products, travel brands and stores. Target, K-Mart, Sears, J. C. Penney, Gap, Victoria’s Secret and Wal-Mart rank among the retailers most frequently mentioned.

...Mr. Keller said that companies could use word-of-mouth research to
guide their advertising process. For example, he said, Keller Fay
recently ran a search through a database of diary entries for a luxury
goods company to see what consumers were saying about it. It turned out
that people with high incomes were not talking about the brand, but
people who made less money were talking about it a lot. The luxury
goods company, which Mr. Keller would not identify, now plans to
refocus its advertisements to reach wealthier customers.

Those Bankers Sure Know How To Sing...

I guess this is one way to get the message out... Take a look...

I Was Misquoted...

Messages inevitably get miscommunicated. They get lost in translation by the media, analysts and pundits. That's life as a communicator.

Positioning lazy communications - that moment in which the brain disengages from the mouth and pretty much anything comes out - as a misquote isn't just rich, it's arrogant and ultimately undermines credibility.

Look no further than the John Kerry furore erupting this election week. Here is what Kerry actually said:

You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Obviously words of mass destruction in an election week. Rather than just saying "What a really stupid thing to say. That isn't what I meant. How embarrassing. I apologize to the troops." - Kerry has this to say:

My statement [Monday]--and the White House knows this full well--was a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops. The White House's attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe.

(The closest he's come, according to Reuters: "Of course, I'm sorry about a botched joke.").

As the WSJ points out, ""The White House's attempt to distort my true statement" consists in taking what Kerry actually said at face value." So, what he really meant to do was, as WSJ goes on to say, is disparage the president's intelligence and studiousness, to suggest that somehow the liberation of Iraq is the product of Bush's lack of education. But this makes no sense. Bush has both bachelor's and master's degrees from Ivy League universities. How can that be if he is both stupid and lazy?".

What Kerry is trying to say is that is misquoted himself while demonstrating how much more intelligent he is that the President? The argument then is that he is more stupid than my stupidity?

Anyway, the reason I'm writing about all of this is that the story clearly demonstrates several rules from my Messaging Playbook:

1. When your wrong, stupid or just plain silly, admit it. Humility and honesty are the fastest paths to redemption.
2. Going on the messaging offense from a position of existing weakness = bad strategy. First reclaim ground by doing #1.
3. You are rarely ever misquoted. You do or will communicate poorly and stupidly at times. People will forgive you if you ask for forgiveness. Perpetuating the issue by explaining what you were trying to do is the equivalent of handing your competitors a Molotov Cocktail when armed with a water pistol.
4. The past (in this case Kerry's war record) is no antidote to an current messaging fire-fight. The only antidote is the future. Move on fast and do not extend the hype or news cycle.

Thoughts...?

What CIOs Have To Say

Quotes from the Software 2006 CIO Panel courtesy of IT Conversations.

Thomas Beck has some thoughts about the CIO panel from Software 2006 that I put up on IT Conversations last week. He pulled out a few key quotes:

[On dealmaking] "You've got to remember, the people that cut the deal aren't the people that manage the relationship. I don't care if the [software] salespeople leave with blood coming out of both of their ears. I'm not going to see those guys again."

[On the widespread use of wikis and blogs at Motorola] "Where the real work gets done is down in the ranks that interact with each other and exchange information and build ideas and come to conclusions and do stuff. Management is just overhead."

[On introducing wikis and blogs at Motorola] "I purposefully didn't tell anyone upstairs or laterally that this was going on until we got to a scale where we couldn't stop it."

[On vendor dislikes] "The easiest way for you to watch me pull the trap door lever in my office and drop you into a pit of crocodiles is 'tell me about your problems.' 'Hmm... interesting, we have some software that we think will fit your problems.'"

[On vendor likes] "I love honesty. My best vendors pull me aside and say 'you know that idea you have, it's stupid. Don't do it, it's a bad idea and here's why.'"

I used to hate when sales people would ask me to tell them about my problems. Ughhh!