March 19, 2005

Performance accountability for a corporate communicator

Lee wrote this at 12:28 am:

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If we take as granted that the role of the corporate communicator is to add value to the dialogic exchange between a company and its constituent audiences, then how does one measure one’s own performance?

Is it by how many printed or pdf’d newsletters we get out in a period?

Is it by reader response metrics, like “Did you receive our in-house newsletter?” and “Did you read it?”

Is it by how many blogs per week, or podcasts, we write/produce?

Is it by increased takeup of most wanted responses (MWRs) such as new procedural directives or customers responding to ‘call/write us’ initiatives?

We cannot rely on just consumer sales or in-house work process conversions alone, since multiple factors usually impinge on the data — like other DM initiatives, POS material or in-house managerial pressure.

Where does the role of a communication pro end and a marketing/PR pro begin? Is there, indeed, any division? If there is a division does the Communications Professional risk playing ’second fiddle’ to PR and Marketing pros?

So how DO we value ourselves and our contributions to the marketplace and our clients/employers?

How do YOU value yourself? I’d love to hear your views…

 

 

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March 18, 2005

Introducing blogging and podcasting to management

Lee wrote this at 2:15 pm:

Here’s a challenge:

Take a typical management team — busy, time poor, concerned with meeting budgets, deadlines and KPIs.

Take a typical professional communicator — busy, trying to find new ways to engage in dialogue with the target audience.

Put them all together in a room and see how quickly the communicator can make the managers eyes glaze over.

We communicators may be really excited about how blogging and podcasting can enable even greater levels of discussion within an organization, but unless we can enthuse both management and shopfloor employee in the new tech, then we are pushing a wet string up a drainpipe.

I recently set up a bulletin board at a company aimed at helping employees communicate with each other, share knowledge and throw around ideas. The result was less than impressive.

Whilst management were keen to introduce any new technology that allowed their teams to keep working but also share knowledge, the team members (with all but two exceptions) steadfastly refused to embrace what was for them ‘new’ technology.

Any communication initiative must, first and foremost, consider the target audience. If the audience is largely technologically illiterate (which this audience definately wasn’t), or scared of the new technology (possibly they were), then it is the communicator’s role to ensure management gives enough incentive for teams to change existing behaviours and embrace new behaviours.

In other words, the communicator must become a change manager, using the team manager as a change agent.

So… you can now add ‘Change Manager’ to your portfolio!

 

 

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Corporate gifts

Lee wrote this at 2:00 pm:

Just been having a fabulous email discussion with a long-time friend of mine.

He recently received a company-badged thermos flask as a gift from his employer (everyone in his office got one).

In itself, the idea of the gift is lovely. But the problem he has it that the flask is a ’second’. Which for him raises the issue — “how valuable am I?”

Indeed, over the years I have received lots of promotional ’seconds’ from my employers:

  • t-shirts that were four sizes smaller than the label suggested;
  • t-shirts and pens with the ‘old’ branding/logo on them, but only given once a new branding or logo was being rolled out;
  • a golf umbrella that had puncture holes in the fabric and one bent spoke that repeatedly fell out of its holder
  • a desktop calculator/notepad combination that didn’t work (the batteries had leaked, damaging the circuitry)

… all of which does indeed make one ask the question: “How valuable am I to my employers that they are willing to dump their unwanted, broken marketing junk on me?”

One of the roles of any internal communication is to create a feeling of comradeship between sender and recipient, so that the recipient feels ‘valued’ and that the communication isn’t a waste of their valuable time.

Whether that communication is an intangible like a smile, or a tangible like a newsletter, email or a thermos drink flask, surely it beholdens the organization to ensure that the message it is sending along with the gift is one that enhances the relationship?

If communication is all about dialogue, a one-to-one or one-to-many dialogue, then what dialogue (either verbally or internally) do you think follows the receipt of yet another piece of marketing junk?

 

 

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March 17, 2005

Welcome

Lee wrote this at 1:10 pm:

Hi,

Just wanted to welcome you and let you know this blog will update on an irregular basis - because work often gets in the way!

Kind regards,
Lee

 

 

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