Put it in an Email

I have a been involved in many communication-based projects that have required input from several parties over a short turnaround period. These days, most communication takes place via email. This modern convenience is generally seen as fast, efficient and indispensable. But, from my experience, email is sometimes the worst communication tool out there. Here are my reasons and observations.
1. One of Many - Most people receive several emails throughout the day. The email you send can often be put on the back-burner if there is a more pressing or interesting one to be opened. Also, those who tend not to respond immediately to your email may forget to do so.
2. The Way We Read Email - We seem to read email messages differently than letters. We tend to scan them a little like we scan texts rather than reading them like we do letters, a newspaper or a book
3. Lack of Attention - Emails may be opened while having breakfast, chatting to a colleague, or even in traffic! The nature of the distractions the average digitally connected receiver has to negotiate are ubiquitous, and growing all the time.
4. Too Many re:re:re's - Senders do not use the subject line effectively or the actual subject of the email is not communicated in the subject line.

So here are some tips I have found to be helpful:
1. In my experience, there are good email correspondents and bad ones. If you happen to be working with a good one who reads an email properly and in its entirety; gets back to you in a timely manner, make sure you do the same - keep that channel of communication flowing.

2.Your message is more likely to be read and responded to if the subject line looks fresh and specifically relates to the nature of the email.

3. I have noticed that if I have multiple questions or require feedback on several issues, many of the points buried in the body of the email get lost. Either: try to number the points that need addressing, use a separate paragraph for each point (even if the paragraph is only one line long) or, if the receiver is a scanner and not a careful reader, send a separate email for each separate issue.

4. I am often astounded how much email communication is misread. Even when using the plainest language people misunderstand email messages. I always like to send a summary email after I get a response to ensure everyone is on the same page.

5. Please learn the difference between reply and reply to all.

Happy emailing!

"Junk Shot" Crisis Communication

Crisis Communication or Issues Management as many are calling it these days, is possibly one of the most intriguing but also one of the most maligned Public Relations functions. Intriguing because of the myriad options, angles, tactics, messages and approaches crisis communication can take, and maligned because of its reputation for "spin".

Over the past two months we have witnessed major crisis communication in action. BPs massive oil leak due to the destruction of a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico has been an event that, apart from its devastating environmental consequences, will surely be studied in countless PR classes over the next several years. So how is BP doing with its crisis communications? The Globe & Mail's Simon Houpt has an interesting observation.

In an article published Monday, June 7, Houpt compares BP's Issues Management to the way in which they have attempted to plug the leak.

"After more than a month moving through and then ripping up the handbook of how to fix a gushing well head one mile below the surface of the ocean, the oil giant now appears to be adopting the same approach for its public relations strategy, veering into territory that is both uncharted and potentially risky."

The company has opened a toll free number where members of the public can share their ideas on how to solve the problem, they have bought a 60 second television spot where CEO Tony Hayward tries to allay the fears and concerns of all stakeholders. It has employed two "BP reporters" who travel around the gulf writing upbeat first person accounts of the clean-up operation.

These are what Houpt believes are part of a "Junk Shot" strategy - the strategy engineers, who had run out of more traditional ideas, attempted. It involved pumping debris into the well head to try stop the leak. It was a last resort - they were in uncharted territory.

Some have said that by not communicating that they were in uncharted territory, by not admitting they were stumped, BP lost the battle to salvage trust, did not manage this PR nightmare and failed to get people on side.

This event is unprecedented and so BP's crisis communication plan is bound to be a "junk shot" of sorts. But when one of the BP reporters wrote an article entitled "Ballet at Sea" describing the boats laying oil containment booms; weaving their way over an oil slick - it only served to infuriate people. "Ballet at Sea"? Come on! Those are the ridiculous angles that give PR a bad name.

Another interesting observation in Houpt's article talks about the time crisis communications has to react. Because of the speed of information transfer over social media- companies used to have 24 hours to respond - these days they have 24 minutes. Scary. Almost as scary as this environmental disaster.

Social Media Discussion

Last week we were lucky enough to have a guest speaker in our strategic corp. comm. class who spoke about (among other things) social media.

Dan, who by his own admission wasn't too comfortable with social media until recently, was amazed at how Facebook in particular brought a whole new level to corporate communication. What emerged in class was a discussion around how social media not only gives corporations the targeted audience they desire, but also serves as an instant source of feedback for the organization. In Dan's case, people at the foundation he was working for thought that they knew what their audience wanted. The organization believed that they understood the kind of material their audience would respond to. They were wrong. It emerged during their foray into social media that they were mis-reading their audience and what they in fact wanted was information that was much more personal, local and practical rather than theoretical, global and impersonal.

Dan also spoke about the maintenance of social networking within an integrated communication model. Someone asked how a small company with limited staff could fully utilize social media. Dan said that they shouldn't try - his reasoning being that it needs to be an ongoing discussion - not just a tweet here and a status update there. Will smaller companies hire people only to do social media? Who knows.

Finally, something that Dan said really stuck with me. He said that there are no Social Media gurus and those claiming to be so are to be avoided. "We're all learning as we go along", he said. Too true. Social media is a complex ever-changing thing which seems to take on a life of its own. In some respect it's the closest thing we have to a tangible social consciousness - and who could claim to know how to control that or even to understand and utilize its potential.

When BP spells "Bad Press"

A very important part of PR is crisis management: knowing how to deal with the fallout from a major disaster or scandal. The PR people at BP are, no doubt, working night and day to try to get information out about the devastating oil spill. From what I have seen all the correct steps seem to have been taken, the response has been swift and transparent with constant website updates, press conferences and news releases. One tool that BP decided to employ to keep stakeholders in the loop was a real time video of the oil gushing into the ocean. See it here: http://www.livestream.com/oilspill

How smart was this decision? The thought of thousands of litres of oil damaging the environment is sickening enough, but to actually see it happening in real time is infuriating. Streaming video is without a doubt a powerful tool if used correctly, but this video is nothing but evidence of the harm big oil companies can do to our environment and a display of BPs ineptitude.

If BP wanted to show stakeholders what was going on, perhaps they could have gone for a streaming video of the hundreds of vessels on site trying to clean up the mess. Instead all we see is oil pumping into the ocean. A bad PR decision by a company whose credibility right now is lower than that ocean floor leak.

Can We See Through Transparency?

The smart money in today's economy seems to be on transparency. In a post-Enron, post-recession world where information is no longer tightly controlled by organizations, many PR professionals are espousing the merits of telling it like it is.

There really does seem to have been a genuine and concerted shift towards accountability and transparency over the last few years. Consumers are becoming more and more aware of corporate ideologies and values and seem to want to align themselves with those organizations that best represent their personal ideologies and values.

Will this shift become the norm? Will values and ideologies trump price at the cash register? Will a socially responsible yet under-performing stock be preferred over a high-yield morally questionable one?
I don't know. All I do know is that I know where I'm going to put my money.

Social Media that Blends

Will it Blend is a web 2.0 phenomenon. I had heard of the site and the concept behind it but had never actually seen a Will it Blend video. I had assumed it was another Diet Coke and
Mentos type viral video and never paid it much heed.

But the article I read today explained how Will it Blend was actually an ingenious marketing campaign launched by a little-known appliance company called Blendtec.

What strikes me as clever about this campaign is how it embraced the culture of the web and social media to show people doing odd things that satisfy an almost childlike curiosity - that answers those random questions that all start with the words: "what happens if ...?"

Another thing that stands out about this campaign is the absence of any branding in the name. Had the campaign been called Blending with Blendtec, I doubt the videos would have gone viral.

What was interesting too, apropos of my last post, was the affiliated 'friends of Blendtec' and the very unconventional product placement on Will it Blend? The latest being the iPad.

"I love my new iPad, it does a ton of new things, but will it blend? That is the question." asks host Tom Dickson. Is Apple paying for their product to be trashed and blended into a fine powder? Could it be so? It certainly looks that way. Proving once again that social media is re-writing the rules of Marketing Communications and Public Relations.

The Mighty Amazon

This week in class we discussed Amazon. There was a time that this would have meant I was in a Geography or Sociology class. But today most people would immediately associate the name with the king of the clicks-and-mortar revolution - Amazon.com

Amazon is an interesting case study insofar as its total reinvention of the traditional business model. I don't presume to have enough in-depth business knowledge to fully compare and contrast how Amazon has revolutionized the way we do business, but what I can do is share some thoughts on some things I have noticed about Amazon.

As we touched on in class, part of Amazon's strength is its extensive network of affiliates.
One such program is called the Amazon Associates Program. This allows bloggers and web developers to include Amazon.com advertising on their sites and earn referral fees if they drive sales to Amazon. A great example of "pull" marketing.

But where this kind of marketing really gets interesting is when it goes beyond banner ads and becomes more fully integrated. This is what the partnership between the business networking site LinkedIn and Amazon have achieved very successfully. As part of a LinkedIn profile, a user can recommend books they have read or pick books that they would like to read. Users can write short reviews and recommend titles to others. All the titles, obviously link back to Amazon and include the "look inside this book" feature, customer reviews and new and used copies for sale. It's a fully integrated, targeted solution that seems work seamlessly within the LinkedIn site without appearing too heavy-handed or out of place.

It seems as if Amazon has, once again, got it just right.

"The Dumbwaiter Pitch"

I read the blog entry entitled "Forget Your Elevator Pitch — What's Your Dumbwaiter Pitch?" and, although I was at first intrigued, I'm not too sure I buy the rationale expounded by the writer, Umair Haque.

On one level, it seems right on the money - getting rid of the meaningless mumbo-jumbo that makes up much of corporate communications. But the more I read, the more I realized that the writer's one word approach to defining a brand seems to be flawed.
He states that Coca-Cola has chosen the wrong "Dumbwaiter pitch" by selecting a word that he believes to be inappropriate. He personally believes that Coke does not equal happiness but that "sugar-water" is a more accurate word. I would argue that there are many, many people who may equate an ice cold coke with happiness. Just because the writer seems to think the connection is "tenuous at best" he seems to think it is a poorly chosen word. For some - Coke may well be happiness made tangible. His obvious bias against the brand and his failure to adequately assess Coke's choice of "Happiness" to define itself, lessens the writer's credibility significantly. Furthermore, he's connection to obesity and the Coke brand is totally off topic.

He goes on to say that Apple's dumbwaiter pitch/word is "beauty". Maybe so. But we all know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is by no means universal (much like one's source of happiness) and a very personal observation. Apple may say "expensive" to some, "style" or "media" to others - it's just too subjective. What's more, using the writer's own logic of breaking the product down to it's simplest form (as he did when calling Coca-Cola sugar-water) surely Apple's word could just as easily have been "circuits" or "boxes-of-wires"?

Let us give Mr. Haque the benefit of the doubt and allow him to label Apple with the handle "beauty". Wow! Doesn't that just get you so excited? No , it doesn't do it for me either. Not only does the single word lack sufficient punch but it can also be applied to many other products or businesses as well. Beauty? Come on - how many other folks could rightfully claim that one? Ferrari? Revlon? Tourism Vancouver?

Mr Haque says that he uses this technique to highlight how compelling a brand is when working with, among others, start-ups. I cannot speak with any real authority when I say that Apple didn't think of 'beauty' when they were a start-up , but I'm pretty sure they most certainly did not. A personality needs time to develop. It's easy to label Apple, Lego and Google today. These giants have well-entrenched personalities. What about the those pre-pubescent firms and pimply teenage companies who are finding developing their personalities. Could we really find a believable, compelling one word dumbwaiter pitch for all of them that really rings true? I'm skeptical. Surely clear expression of brand is what is needed. Clear definitions and values, not a one word coverall.

I do however agree with the author when he speaks about the lack of clarity in the elevator pitch (read corporate communications) The problem Mr Haque is addressing is not the fact that more words mean less clarity, but that many words which have no meaning have found their way into corporate communications. Communicators feel the need to express, in jargon-filled terms, the essence of their brand and they become so limited by its vagueness. They hide among the accepted catch-phrases and generalizations, couching ideas in generic syntax and style.

It seems as if in a world of tweets and dumbwaiter pitches we are using fewer and fewer words to describe ourselves and the result is that ultimately the differentiation we seek becomes impossible. Like the dumbwaiter itself our words loose the personal touch.

Instead of choosing fewer words we should choose them more carefully, take more risks and strive for uniqueness in a world were words like "beauty" are, unfortunately, commonplace.

Finally, as an illustration of the fundamental impotence of Mr. Haque's exercise I will attempt to create an dumbwaiter pitch for the concept of the dumbwaiter pitch: dumb.

Like a door in a wall hides what lies behind it, so the content of this blog is, as of now, a mystery. Although I do not know what this blog is going to be about, I do know that some of the best discoveries are made by opening a door in a wall without knowing what is on the other side.
I will approach my posts as if opening a door, with the spirit of discovery.

Much of this blog will be about learning. I am an educator, trainer, consultant, writer and student. I teach, I learn, I dissect, I reflect.

Confucius said:

"Learning without reflection is a waste, reflection without learning is dangerous"

This blog will be one of discovery, reflection and learning.