Re:think

Sponsored content: Caveat emptor

The digital economy is driven by content – both push and pull. So it’s not surprising that sponsored supplements, reviews and blog posts are on the rise, and the traditional church-and-state lines between advertising and editorial are ever blurring. What is surprising:  only the staunchest of journalistic purists are crying foul from within the crumbling walls of their print media ivory towers. What’s even more surprising:  I, having now spent more of my career as a communicator than a journo, count myself among them.

Before shocked gasps begin to reverberate through cyberspace at that declaration, allow me to clarify. It’s not that I don’t support the digital revolution that’s given rise to citizen journalism, the blogosphere and an unprecedented era of consumer connectivity and engagement. It’s just that I miss the bygone era where news meant novelty.

Sponsored content can be relevant and newsworthy, as well as a way for marketers to generate pre-launch buzz and drive engagement. But more often than not, sponsored content is about manufacturing news where there is none. Where’s the novelty? The innovation? The sheer newness?

 “It’s new...for us. So go out there and get us some coverage,” has become a familiar client-to-consultant refrain. In a sea of me-too followers, there are sadly few true newsmakers. And when those who report news can be ‘bought,’ when their content can be influenced because it’s sponsored, – well, it makes this editor-turned-flack long for the return of pure news.

Can your CEO drive shareholder value through employee engagement?

I recently read a fascinating Harvard Business Review article that ranked The Best Performing CEOs in the World based on the shareholder value they deliver. The authors analyzed data collected from more than 2,000 public company CEOs to determine which factors increased the likelihood that an executive would rank high. These included being a company insider, taking the helm in troubled times and having an MBA.

 

Not surprisingly, Apple CEO Steve Jobs topped the list. While Jobs doesn’t hold an MBA, he did deliver an impressive 3,188% industry-adjusted return (34% compounded annually) after he rejoined Apple as CEO in 1997, when the company was underperforming. From that time until the end of September 2009, Apple’s market value increased by $150 billion.

 

Of course, shareholder value is but one measure of a CEO’s success. Studies have shown a direct correlation between a company’s performance and the engagement levels of its employees. "In good times, employee engagement is the difference between being good and being great, and in bad times, it's the difference between surviving and not," says James K. Harter, Ph.D., Gallup's chief scientist of workplace management and well-being and co-author of 12: The Elements of Great Managing (Gallup, 2006). "In good times and bad, low engagement reduces performance and profit.”

 

So what can a CEO do from a communications standpoint to positively affect engagement levels?

 

Be a visionary

 

The reason Steve Jobs and his contemporaries, like Jack Welch, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, repeatedly pop up on Most Admired lists is that they are visionaries. And they communicate that vision to employees from the board room to the stock room. Not every CEO can be as dynamic and charismatic as these c-suite elite, but every leader can be a visionary. One of the best ways to be perceived as such is to involve your employees in defining or refining your company’s vision. At a recent Town Hall, my current employer’s new President was asked what his vision for our organization was. His response: “The first order of business for me as your new President is to get around to all of our locations, speak to you and listen to you. I want your ideas for where we should take our business and how we'll get there. From a company perspective, we want to grow, get stronger and earn our place in the hearts of our customers. We're on the right trajectory, but we need to pause, listen to all of you, and plan accordingly.”

 

Help employees understand where you’re going and how you’ll get there

 

In The Strategy-Focused Organization (Harvard Business School Press, 2001), Robert Kaplan and David Norton write that only 7% of employees fully understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of them in order to help achieve company goals. When I worked as a Senior Publicist at Corus Entertainment early in my career, I was impressed by the culture of transparency CEO John Cassaday fostered. He shared his performance objectives with the entire organization. When he divulged quarterly performance, he not only recognized the contributions of all employees, but provided guidance on what each employee could do in their day to day work lives to help the company meet its goals for the upcoming quarter.

 

Play to your strengths

 

I’ve worked with CEOs who can produce a highly engaging memo, blog posting or employee magazine column, but are lacklustre speakers. I’ve also worked with CEOs who are brilliant off-the-cuff speakers, but write like lawyers or accountants, with the undecipherable penmanship of doctors. If you’re a natural in front of crowds, communicate through Town Hall sessions or by attending divisional team meetings – and create a podcast of such sessions to share with the larger employee population. If you’re a dynamic writer, start a blog or post comments and questions on employee intranets and discussion boards. Never stop working on your weak spots – hire a speechwriter or take an improv class if you must – simply reduce the frequency you use these communication methods.

 

Foster a culture of recognition

 

Employee reward and recognition programs are most effective when they’re not only endorsed, but modeled, by the c-suite. Many organizations have President’s Awards, but recognition need not be as formalized as that. Make an effort to remember the names of the employees you meet and what they’re working on. This can be a challenge in large organizations, but one CEO I worked with solved that issue by hosting breakfast roundtables with a cross-functional sampling of employees once a month. Those sessions also served as insightful and informal focus groups.

 

You can also make recognition personal and meaningful by eschewing ‘well done’ emails or communicating praise through an employee’s manager. If you can’t say it in person, take a page out of Corus Entertainment’s John Cassaday handbook and send a handwritten note. There is little more inspiring and motivating for an employee than being recognized from the top directly (I still have a couple of Cassaday’s handwritten cards to me).

 

It’s easy for CEOs to focus their attention externally on driving customer satisfaction and shareholder value. But often the key to improving those performance indicators is to take a good, long look inward at your people and find ways to actively engage them. As celebrity CEO Jack Welch once famously quipped: “The soft stuff is the hard stuff.”

Can you clearly articulate your personal brand promise?

 

The current recessionary environment has caused the war-for-talent pendulum to swing decidedly in favour of employers. Not surprisingly, it has also spurred a significant uptick in business tomes, blog postings and articles on the topic of personal branding.

 

As communicators and marketers, we’re conditioned to recite our organization’s elevator pitch or boiler plate with practiced ease. We can articulate that one differentiating quality our company has that no one else can credibly lay claim to.

 

Yet even the most seasoned communicators falter when it comes to articulating their personal brand promise. Standard interview questions like “What can you tell me about yourself?” and “How would you describe your current role?” strike fear in the hearts of job seekers everywhere, and professional communicators aren’t immune.

 

So why is it so difficult to communicate who we are and what we do when clear, consistent key messaging is our stock in trade? There’s an overriding perception that selling oneself is infinitely more complex than selling a product, brand or company.

 

But it need not be. After all, who knows more about you than you? Below are some key questions to ask yourself to prepare for the next time you’re expected to answer questions about yourself.

 

Is your message clear and focused?

 

As communicators, we constantly extol the virtues of having – and repeating – one clear, focused message. We sometimes forget this in interview situations, when we’re keen to show the breadth and depth of our experience and skill set. No one is a master of all things. Know what your differentiating quality is and communicate it clearly.

 

Can you describe who you are and what you do in 140 characters or less?

 

We all know what a powerful impact simple and incisive headlines, taglines, tweets or status updates can have. Why not put that power to work for you? Be able to tell your story in one sentence. Whenever I was asked to describe my work as a branding consultant, I responded with a question: “Have you ever watched or heard of the show Extreme Makeover?”  When the person invariably said ‘yes,’ I told them: “That’s what I do for brands and companies.” Keep it simple and make it memorable.

 

Are you consistent?

 

If messaging is what we say, tone of voice is how we say it. A consistently expressed tone of voice can take a brand – or a company – from good to great. Take Apple for example. The visual and verbal expression of the Apple brand is consistent whether you look at the company’s website, an ad for iPod or iPhone, product packaging or even a keynote address from CEO Steve Jobs. Furthermore, all visual and verbal touchpoints stay true to the essence of the Apple brand – simple, sleek, modern. Learn from Apple’s example and adopt a tone of voice that is uniquely yours and apply it consistently, whether in an email communication, on your C.V. or speaking in person. Resist the temptation to explain what you do in different ways to different people. To repeat an earlier point: Keep it simple and make it memorable.

A very viral holiday

I recently received a holiday e-card from British internal communications consultancy Home that brought home the power of branded communications on a shoestring budget.

 

For years now, organizations have faced the same holiday conundrum: Do we stick with the personalized-yet-costly printed holiday card or design an e-card and donate the cost savings to charity? Should we send a green message by printing on recycled paper or completely reduce our carbon footprint with an e-card?

 

I myself have long been a proponent of the hand-written card. When I was an entertainment publicist, I would take a week to pen personal greetings to my extensive list of media contacts. It was a differentiator for me and my organization since everyone was jumping on the e-card bandwagon at the time. And my choice engendered heartfelt responses from my contacts, who were charmed by the gesture.

 

As someone who has worked closely with animators and production studios, I have received my fair share of slick, high-production value e-cards. And while they were a strong representation of the company’s brand and work, for me, they lacked the personal feel of a printed card.

 

Home’s e-card is both personal and poignant. The introductory email draws the viewer in with intriguing copy that demands clickthrough: “Here’s our homemade Christmas e-card. Filmed in one take. In the meeting room. On an iPhone. All expense was spared in the making of this film.” This, the viewer thinks, I have to see.

 

The scene: All Home employees, with balloons, noisemakers and glowsticks in hand, sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” There is little choreography or synchronicity, which only amplifies the authenticity of the video.

 

The video highlights the agency’s people, not its portfolio. It doesn’t muddy the waters with several messages. There is only one overt message: We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, which serves to make the unspoken messages more powerful: we are one team, we know how to have fun, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we are here for you.

 

As if that weren’t enough, the charitable tie-in is relevant to the agency’s brand. The message: We’re donating the money we’ve saved on this year’s Christmas card to the charity, Shelter. Because no one should be homeless at Christmas.”

 

Sheer brilliance.

 

Protecting an endangered species: the employee magazine

Up until quite recently, I was a harbinger of death to the employee magazine in print format. An early adopter of social media, I am an advocate of online employee communities and interactive e-zines aimed at generating two-way conversations, fostering storytelling cultures and connecting global workforces.

 

But I am also an advocate of customizing communications strategies and vehicles to meet the unique culture and needs of each workplace.

 

I joined my current employer as Manager of Corporate and Internal Communications a year ago, fresh from a consulting career where I advised tech-savvy global organizations on how to engage employees to deliver on their brand promise. I was full of ideas on how to bring this luxury retailer and tech dinosaur into the digital age, starting with our employee magazine, muse.

 

Fortunately, my consulting days had taught me that a research phase should lead and inform every project. So I conducted a communications audit that included a comprehensive review of materials and vehicles and one-on-one interviews with senior management and corporate employees. Since 90% of our workforce is store-based, I supplemented the audit and interviews with employee focus groups across the country. I eschewed the quick-and-easy online survey approach for several reasons:

 

1)    This was a prime opportunity for me to introduce myself, a new employee, to a large number of colleagues

2)    I wanted employees to feel that their opinions were being heard – by a peer, not by a faceless corporate survey

3)    I knew I would get more from qualitative feedback than quantitative data

 

What I discovered in those rich, animated conversations led me to reconsider the fate of muse. With a passion that surprised me, employees told me that they saw muse as a differentiator for our company; a gesture that some might view as antiquated, but one that truly made them feel valued as employees. Several commented that they collect the issues and proudly display them on their coffee tables at home.

 

To a person – Gen-Ys, Gen-Xers and Boomers – employees said they would be disappointed if we replaced the print edition with an online version.

 

So we didn’t. Even in a recessionary economy, where cost-cutting is king. Why? Because feeling heard and valued is key to engagement; and maintaining engagement levels is key to weathering a recession.

 

We issued two newspaper-style interim editions – at significant cost-savings – to allocate the lion’s share of the 2009 budget to a redesign and content overhaul. Our creative agency took its design inspiration from the fashion and lifestyle magazines our employees consider their style bibles. We took our content inspiration from our employees themselves. We adopted a peer-to-peer tone, infused the magazine with snappy, visually rich articles that speak to all aspects of the employee experience – and we polybagged the premiere issue with a sweet treat from our holiday shop. And the response from our employee base was overwhelmingly positive. (Click here to view a PDF of the premiere issue:

Muse Holiday 2009)

 

This experience was an invaluable reminder that one size does not fit all. It taught me that the tangible and tactile can be the strongest of connectors; that traditional strategies and vehicles can peacefully coexist alongside the innovative. It proved to me that the employee magazine, while arguably an endangered species, is not dead.

 

As communicators, we can’t always accommodate the wishes of our employees. Sometimes, we have to make or communicate unpopular decisions – and manage the fallout. But we should always take the time to seek their input. It’s not only empowering for them, but ultimately enlightening for us.

Smart messaging in a scandal

 

There are some important communications lessons to be gleaned from recent scandals involving public figures.

 

Any communications professional who’s witnessed the beleaguered Jon Gosselin in a media interview has experienced a few cringe-worthy moments. He’s brash and unscripted. His tone and delivery make him appear adversarial and emotionless. His expression says he’s tired of the media circus, but his actions prove he’s not ready to remove himself from the ring.

 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Tiger Woods, the media darling – an articulate, intelligent man forced to publicly respond to accusations that threaten both his image and his marriage. Except, his response came just a bit too late. And it sounded just a bit disingenuous.

 

So what can we learn from these two very different men and the ways they’ve weathered the media storms swirling around them?

 

Be timely

 

Crisis Communications 101 dictates a quick response to potentially damaging public revelations. It’s easy to forget this when you’re inundated with calls from your manager, your legal team, your publicist, your sponsors…and potentially a long list of former mistresses. If Tiger had spoken out soon after the first accusation was made, he may have been able to stem the tide of me-too accusations and media lashing that followed.

 

When you’re a multimillion dollar personal brand like Tiger Woods, there’s a certain amount of approval time that goes into any public statement. There’s something to be said for taking the time to thoughtfully prepare, but there’s also a time to cut through the red tape.

 

Be authentic

 

As a communications professional, I’m a proponent of preparation and key messaging, but I also see the value in veering off script to personalize the delivery of the message. That’s because as a former journalist, my 'spin' meter is still highly attuned.

 

While there’s a certain amount of relish that comes with a public figure’s fall from grace, the public can be very forgiving of those who handle scandal with dignity and authenticity. But the two must go hand in hand. Jon Gosselin, even with his monotone delivery, appears authentic; an everyman who refuses to be a publicist’s puppet – to his own detriment. But he has yet to field an interview with dignity.

 

Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is the poster child for dignity. But really, who says ‘transgressions’ in regular conversation? Woods’ carefully worded statement sounded too unlike him to be credible. Facing a public scandal unscripted or over-messaged can be equally damaging. Communicators must seek a balance, must understand the person and personal style of those they are messaging and work with it, not against it.

 

Public figures and communicators alike, take note.

Is social media making us anti-social?

As I immersed myself in the Monday edition of Metro to avoid making inadvertent eye contact on my morning commute, I paused at a comic strip that made a sharp-witted observation on the anti-social nature of social media.

The scene itself is fairly innocuous - one that takes place on sidewalks, at bus stops and on subway platforms all over Toronto.  Two octogenarians are watching a pair of teens, who, predictably, are absorbed by their iPods and oblivious to the women's presence. "They're missing a golden opportunity to annoy us with their music," comments one of the ladies.

Now, the teens may have been listening to a shared playlist and therefore 'socializing' within their own 'network', but the presence of the earbuds was a barrier to conversation - and music sharing - outside of that exclusive network. In becoming a tribal society that values niche interests and personalization over mass communication, are we missing something?

In today's world, where interaction is increasingly limited to 140 characters or less, conversation is becoming a lost art. As businesses and individuals, we're eager to 'join the conversation' on Facebook and Twitter. But we increasingly - and actively - avoid exchanging the social niceties that were once the norm of polite society. And in so doing, we're missing golden opportunities for rich, real world dialogue.

While social media has drastically altered the communications landscape in interesting and enriching ways, we should never lose sight of one irrefutable fact: face-to-face interaction is still the most powerful, and the most personal. As often as we seek opportunities to plug in, to join in or generate online discussion, we should also seek Conversation Unplugged. It's something worth listening to - no matter who it might annoy.

The Yellow Duck Principle

Innovation has become a groan-worthy word in organizations everywhere. That’s because many people still affix an upper case I to the word. Upper case Innovation is the realm of scientific and technological breakthroughs. It’s where the Apples and Googles of the world live.

 

But there’s something to be said for lower case innovation as well. It’s not about breakthroughs, but pushing boundaries. It’s not about being first to market, but doing things smarter. It’s about finding novel approaches and new twists on traditional models and ideas. It’s about applying The Yellow Duck Principle to every project, every process and every campaign.

 

I first encountered The Yellow Duck in my final semester of j-school at Toronto’s Ryerson University. I was interning at a weekly paper and one of my first assignments was to cover the launch of a new addiction treatment and resettlement program for homeless men at The Good Shepherd Centre.

 

As I listened to dignitaries and program graduates speak about Transition and scribbled shorthand notes, I glanced around the room and wondered how I could make my piece – which wouldn’t hit until the following week – stand out from what the established journos at the dailies would deliver in the next morning’s edition. I sat down to speak with the program’s Executive Director, and instinct nudged me to request a tour of the facilities by some of the current participants.

 

On the tour, I filled my notebook with personal stories of struggles, setbacks and triumphs. I discovered a native Canadian artist who had rediscovered his passion for painting poignantly beautiful watercolours. And I found The Yellow Duck.

 

As one of the program participants showed me around the living quarters, my eye fell on a plastic yellow duck sitting on a bedside table. It had tufts of hair taped to its head and chin, and even though it might have no relevance to my story, instinct once again nudged me. I asked: “What’s with the duck?”

 

And with that simple question, I unearthed my story’s lead. Turns out, the duck was something of a mascot to the men of Transition – an unbiased sounding board and silent support. He was Serenity Duck, so named in a contest that cost each participant 25 cents. As the men graduated from the program, they donated a lock of their hair to Serenity Duck as a symbol of hope. When I met the duck, he had already sprouted a mohawk and small goatee.

 

I raced back to the newsroom and feverishly typed out my piece, which, instead of the two-inch news brief I had been assigned, was now feature length. I had to dig deep for the courage it took for me, a lowly intern, to hand that story to my editor. I lived in mortal fear of his slashing red pen. But I knew I’d struck journalistic gold with my lead sentence: A plastic yellow duck is helping homeless men in Toronto to make a Transition in their lives.

 

That piece became my first double-page spread as a published journalist. From that moment on, I was a proponent of The Yellow Duck Principle.

 

And so, I challenge you to look for The Yellow Duck in unexpected corners and in every conversation. You won’t always find it, but your eyes should always stay open. When instinct nudges, follow its lead. Take a detour. Ask a question. Take a risk. And every once in a while, you’ll spot a flash of yellow that tells you you’re on to something.