simply-blogging

Simply launched

On Thursday evening we celebrated our simply summer party at the offices in Soho and launched the Gower Handbook of Internal Communication.
Close on a hundred guests packed the place, but the sun was out so the terrace was a useful overspill.
The gift tree showered copies of the Handbook as well as a few booby prizes such as map of the Gower Peninsula.  The lady for Karian & Box won the free makeover with stylists Coathanger and many guests walked away with an on-the-spot caricature of themselves.
Judge the Poet did an amazing job; guest were asked to give him three words or phrases and he created an instant poem that rhymed and amused.
The Gower Handbook of Internal Communication has taken 2 years to write and features the advice of 29 expert communicators from around the world including, Bill Quirke, Euan Semple, Hillary Scarlett, Susan Walker, Liam FitzPatrick and many more.  The Handbook was edited by our own Marc Wright. It's selling fast and if you order online you can get 10% off.

The press release of the Google age

Over the last couple of weeks, two companies that I know well have been involved in M&A action. Nokia Siemens Networks, who I worked with since its inception to 2008 on internal communications, has announced that it is interested in purchasing parts (specifically the LTE and CDMA assets) of Nortel, the beleaguered Canadian telecoms company that filed for protection from creditors at the beginning of the year.

Last week it was also announced that Pleon, the communications consultancy that I once worked for,  is merging with Ketchum, another Omnicom owned agency.

What I find interesting about both mergers are the publicly accessible microsites that have been specially created for the event. Here's Nokia Siemens Networks dedicated microsite for Nortel employees.

And Ketchum created this.

The content on both temporary sites aims to answer questions that stakeholders could have (in Nokia Siemens Networks case, just employees), by combining the marketing, investor relations, internal communications and customer service information about the respective deals.

Think of it as the press release for the future – a fully working comms centre ready to go as soon as big news is announced. Another one that was created ahead of a merger – and was subsequently taken offline once the merger was completed – was the Delta and Northwest merger site. Created by Delta, the site could be found at www.newglobalairline.com and was neatly designed around employees, customers and communities.

The amount of information on these sites is impressive. Employees at Pleon and Ketchum worried about layoffs, for example, are able to get a detailed FAQ answering that specific question as well as where the key markets will be on Day One, the merger timeline and reasons behind the deal.

These microsites with the mix of text, visuals, video and more seem more effective than sending the traditional one page press release, simply because they are more interactive. The content can be more relevant to a wider audience and reach many more than a traditional press release could. It also focuses the minds of what the message is, cutting down on awkward questions from employees and the press, and the even more awkward stumbling answers from spokespeople, once the deal is announced.

And these sites can be created quickly. According to WHOIS data, the Pleon Ketchum merger site was registered on 29 May 2009 and the merger announced around two weeks later. Seemingly day by day, It's becoming easier and cheaper to create an impressive fully-functioning multimedia site.

These microsites are going to become increasingly common as companies aim to get their side of the story out to information hungry stakeholders who, in the Google age, have come to expect answers to their questions straightaway. If there isn’t a microsite to give them the wealth of information they are looking for, the company stands to lose its voice and ultimately control of the message.

Daniel

Ben Zander

I haven't seen Ben in action for many a long year and then he turns up at TED.  Amazingly he's even more energetic, more moving and more inspiring than ever.

Marc

Racism and Forums

One of the more interesting employee forums is www.browncafe.com a site for employees of UPS - which is completely independent of UPS itself.
One thread that's getting a lot of hits is called "What would you do..." and it describes a particularly obnoxious example of washroom racism at one of the depots.
A couple of interesting observations from the thread:

1. It shows there is no need for an HR moderator - even when dealing with such sensitive issues.
2. Threads can often start mini arguments inside them (there's one here about a gratuitous reference to Arabs) that are as illuminating as the main point.
3. If you don't set up a company-wide forum for your employees, your employees are perfectly capable of doing it themselves and cutting you out of the conversation! 

Marc

I just stared at my phone for the whole conference...

On Monday this week I attended the Corporate Social Networking Forum at RIBA in London. The conference was a showcase of companies dabbling in social media (the agenda can be found here: http://www.corporatesocialnetworking.net/).

It was good to hear what organisations are doing in the way of social networking and the varying results they are experiencing. Feeding the Puppy blog has a very detailed write-up of each presentation (http://feedingthepuppy.typepad.com/feeding_the_puppy/2009/06/corporate-social-networking-forum-liveblog.html) that I highly recommend reading if you have an interest in using social networks in the enterprise (and who doesn’t right now...).

What made this conference different from any other that I've attended was the  sub-conference taking place on twitter throughout the day. It seemed like half the room weren’t looking at the stage, but were instead glued to their laptops or iPhones (including me).

It turns out people were posting throughout the conference on twitter using the #CSNF suffix on their tweets. They were posting key points they were hearing on the stage for the benefit of those not at the conference, as well as conference room gripes (mainly lack of power sockets) and related info on the presentations. The conference chair even asked presenters questions from the tweets he was seeing. You can get an idea of the number of tweets and what they were if you do a search for #csnf on twitter (http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23csnf).

Look out for the article on the conference in this month’s edition of www.simply-communicate.com and make sure that you follow us at www.twitter.com/simplygroup.

Daniel

Chicago, Chicago

Ruth, Marc and I are back in our offices after a busy week on the road in Chicago.

While hitting the streets shooting Vox Pops for an upcoming simply-experience video, Ruth and I put on our feminine charms to sway people to appear on camera. Many obliged in spite of lurking mall security and a few nosy store managers employed by one of America's largest retailers (hint: it's not Target).

May it be noted that Ruth and I had some very productive shoots and only slightly gave in to the temptation of Macy's, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bed, Bath and Beyond and the Gap. We also survived a bumpy 60-minute cab ride with a driver juiced up on Red Bull! Luckily, I bargained him down on the bill after he saw how queasy we lovely ladies were.

When I wasn't filming for simply-experience, I was busy interviewing the likes of Tetra Pak Corporate Brand Director, Khaled Ismail, who was just as charismatic on-screen as off. Khaled offered insight into the creation of the highly successful LiVE Tetra Pak employee engagement program. Be sure to look out for the story in the September edition of simply-communicate!

-Kelly

An easy way to save money and engage employees at the same time

I recently attended a morning seminar in London called Employer branding is dead, so what now? hosted by SAS Design – the design agency, not the design arm of the elite special forces regiment (nor the airline or software company for that matter). I’ll be posting an in depth review of the event, which featured very timely and interesting presentations from Coca-Cola and BT, in the next edition of www.simply-communicate.com, but I wanted to share something mentioned briefly ahead of the keynotes that was very interesting to me.

Every company is looking for a way to reduce costs right now. If you can increase engagement in a positive way at the same time it’s a bonus. “Flat is the new up/growth” as I’m sure you’ve heard, and will continue to hear, many say. However one top four professional services firm has saved thousands of pounds that went with its internal marketing and probably increased engagement at the same time.

How did they do it? It stopped using stock imagery in internal communication and marketing material and started using photos that its staff had taken and uploaded to an internal version of photosharing site Flickr they had running instead. It makes sense doesn’t it? There are plenty of budding photographers in every company, taking more and more photos of anything and everything with their cameras. Why not give them a place to upload shots that they’ve taken at work (and ones that they haven’t too) and use them both internally and externally.

It means that you get a unique photograph that's probably more relevant to whatever it’s beside than the stock image you would have run instead, and people will get a kick out of seeing their work published. Engagement and money saved all round.

Daniel

By the way, if you’re not following us on Twitter, please do. You can find us at www.twitter.com/simplygroup