ClearEdge Marketing Blog

The Importance of Face-to-Face Communication When Announcing Layoffs

Jessica Elliott — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:56:50 +0000

Did you hear about the recent faux pas the HR VP at Carat, Aegis Group’s media-buying company, committed? I read about it in the article, Carat Missive Goes Astray, in the Wall Street Journal. Basically Carat’s senior management team had been preparing materials to announce a restructuring, including significant layoffs. Instead of sending the working drafts of the communications to its intended audience of a select few, the VP of HR sent it to the entire company. It was recalled by the IT department, but the damage was done. In fact, the messaging documents have made their way outside the company and even been published online by Advertising Age.

Yikes! My initial, knee-jerk reaction was not unlike those who posted messages in response to the AdAge.com article. How careless? How could she? It immediately reminded me of a similar situation. In August 2006, RadioShack communicated layoff announcements by e-mail. Approximately 400 employees walked into work on August 29 and received the following message in their inbox: “The workforce reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.”

However, having been the author of layoff messaging in a past life, and one of a handful of individuals with the technical permissions to distribute company-wide e-mails to several thousand employees, I quickly began to empathize with Carat’s VP. After all, one false slip of a keystroke and that could just as easily have happened to me. I don’t believe she maliciously distributed the draft documents by e-mail in advance of a planned formal announcement. It was most certainly an accident.

And that’s when it struck me. The RadioShack and Carat layoff situations are actually quite different. Though both companies, it appears, developed thorough communications plans and messaging to share the unfortunate news, RadioShack purposefully chose e-mail as its method for making the announcement. RadioShack’s decision to alert affected employees that their positions were eliminated by e-mail resulted in a number of not-so-positive headlines. RadioShack defended its actions saying it had forewarned employees at its Fort Worth headquarters about the impending layoffs and that they had told employees they would learn about their job status via e-mail. Given the open office environment, RadioShack felt it was the best way to preserve the person’s privacy and dignity, as opposed to walking through cubicles and tapping people on the shoulder to call them into the office.

Many of the outplacement experts cited in the numerous articles written on the topic said the approach was inappropriate. In a New York Times article, Derrick D’Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of employees being notified about a layoff electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing. “If I put myself in their shoes,” Mr. D’Souza said. “I’d say, ‘Didn’t they have a few minutes to tell me?”’

I believe most workers have come to accept that workforce reductions are part of the normal course of business. While it still won’t be easy for the employee being let go, the person delivering the news, or those left behind, taking a timely, honest, personal approach will do a great deal to minimize animosity. No matter how large or small your organization is, creating a cohesive internal communications plan that addresses how, when and to whom you’ll make your announcements will allow you to coordinate the organizational changes face-to-face affording employees the dignity they deserve.

As you would expect, Carat has received some harsh criticism in the press. While it’s still too early to tell what the exact fallout will be from the Carat VP’s mistake, I doubt it will be much more than a stomach flip at the thought of it happening to you and a reminder to always double and triple check the To:, Cc: and Bcc: boxes of your e-mail when distributing sensitive documents. RadioShack on the other hand continues to serve as a good example of how not to communicate workforce reductions to employees.

Jessica Elliott
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

A Different Kind of Evangelism

Jennifer Higgins — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:32:40 +0000

I was reading an article recently that talked about evangelism. Not the Jim and Tammy Bakker style of evangelism—but customer evangelism. The article started out with this question: What is the most effective advertising tool available?

A. TV

B. Print ads

C. Billboards

D. Your customers

If you answered “D,” you’re onto one of the hottest new trends in marketing—customer evangelism.

The concept of customer evangelism is all about creating true believers in your company. When you build this kind of loyalty, you gain two priceless assets: a pool of repeat customers and ongoing word-of-mouth referrals to new customers.

The tricky part: you can’t hire or buy customer evangelists. You have to earn them. But how? According to Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, the following techniques can help you build a loyal following.

-Constantly communicate with customers to understand what they love about your products and services.
-Share knowledge with customers to increase the perceived and actual value of a service.
-Build “buzz” based on sincere, personal referrals.
-Create a customer community, where people who care about your business, products or services can gather.
-Provide “bite-size” products or services so customers can share the experience without an expensive purchase.
-Aim for a larger cause to create emotional connections.

How do these techniques translate into real life? Today there are plenty of ways to build customer evangelists. For now, I’ll focus on constant communication and building a buzz based on referrals.

Constant communication. Company blogs are perhaps the easiest, most cost-efficient and widest-reaching way to stay in constant touch with clients. Blog content can be posted quickly, it is informal yet controlled, and it provides a forum for feedback on the subject matter posted. Other benefits to blogs that are often overlooked are that they can give companies higher search engine rankings and exposure to a wider, diverse customer community. An example of a company with a wide-reaching blog is Google. Their blog talks about everything from issues they think are important to society to company news. Keep blogs informative, avoid marketing “fluff,” and keep them fresh.

Another opportunity to turn clients into evangelists is through your company newsletter. Even if your client or prospective client isn’t looking to purchase your services right at that time, they are reminded of you and perhaps learned something from your newsletter that they might share with a colleague. Whether your newsletter is printed or sent via e-mail, you’ve established top-of-mind awareness and another chance to connect with clients.

Building a Buzz. Of course “word of mouth” advertising is invaluable. It says something about your reputation as people typically only recommend a company where they’ve had stellar service and have been treated well. Any opportunity to post customer testimonials on your Web site or to include them in a newsletter gives clients a taste of what other similar companies are experiencing and a look at new ways that they themselves might be able to maximize your services.

One final word of advice—keep things natural. While it’s important to encourage customer evangelism, don’t try to force it.

Jennifer Higgins
Senior Writer
ClearEdge Marketing

The Entertainment of Web 2.0 Sites

Nikki Leonardi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:14:28 +0000

No doubt, the basis of Web 2.0 has become an essential part of day-to-day business—offering new ways to communicate and collaborate. Whether it’s through social networking sites or online collaboration tools, these applications are essential for driving innovation and efficiency across businesses. Yet, with all seriousness aside, there is a playful side of Web 2.0 that often presents us with pure entertainment.

Take for instance: Flickr, Plaxo, Wiggio, Yammer—ever wonder how names like these originated or what the solution is that they offer? Welcome to the plethora of Web 2.0 sites with strange names that are unrelated to their service—a collection of Web sites dedicated to services and applications that enhance creativity, information sharing and collaboration. Based on some of the names, you would never intuitively know what their purpose is or what innovative solution they are presenting.

They Do What?
Browsing Web 2.0 sites can often feel like you are on a road trip, deciphering letters on license plates into words and phrases like “ANYWR” (anywhere). Sometimes the names make it clear what vegetable of the day the creator ordered for lunch (CALLIFLOWER) or that they needed a jolt of caffeine before work that morning (Cappuccino). But it’s not always clear what the solution is that they offer. As if anyone would immediately know that Wiggio would allow a group to collaborate online or that Plaxo was a professional networking site.

Clearly, a quirky name is a popular way to get attention among these companies that are trying to revolutionize and differentiate the service they are offering. And for those companies that just have no creativity left there is even a Web 2.0 Name Generator just in case a company or application needs help coming up with a completely unrelated name.

A recent blog posted on CIO Insider went even further citing the following three rules of thumb to qualify it as a ridiculous Web 2.0 site:

1. The site’s mission statement must be impenetrable
2. The site must solve a problem that has been solved a million times already or didn’t need solving in the first place
3. Its name must love the letter “r” but eschew vowels ( Drivl, Grazr, Hngry), or be a refugee from “Jabberwocky” (CurdBee, Egghub, Humyo, Jiffle)

The Entertainment Factor
Clearly some of this just feels like haphazard entertainment, but as marketers, we can appreciate the creativity being harnessed through these sites. The names are often deliberately created to be different, catchy and short, in an attempt to promote their brand and make it easy to remember. Think about it, before Web 2.0 emerged, names like Wikipedia and Google were barely known. Now, “Wikipedia” has become part of our everyday language, and “Google” is a verb. While their name helps, Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Google are successful because they embrace the Web 2.0 credence. They bring together collective knowledge, support interaction and communication, and are constantly evolving based on user feedback. It is more than a “cool” name and an average service that continues to help them come out on top.

Not every name is going to be effective. As the concepts of Web 2.0 continue to produce improved solutions to organizations and individuals, it will be up to those Web 2.0 businesses to not only have an innovative name, but a strong business model too. A marketing strategy, a solid message and a differentiator within the service they are offering will go a long way in the world where 1000 different companies tout their expertise of online project management.

At the same time, the world loves to laugh. Who knows, perhaps some of this silliness will harness your innovation and creativity.

For More Laughs
Check out the Web 2.0 directory, www.Feedmyapp.com, to view some of the newest companies and applications. This site allows people to log new Web 2.0 applications and sites. Over the past year, they averaged 157 new Web 2.0 application listings per month ranging from solutions for pets to solutions for collaboration.

Nikki Leonardi
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

What is Web 2.0 Anyway?

Nikki Leonardi — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:26:31 +0000

Web 2.0 – is that a new style guide for Web sites? A new technical specification? A new release version for Microsoft? Doesn’t that have something to do with Facebook? How is that going to affect my current Web site?

In a marketing agency, these types of questions come up frequently as organizations look to us to update or launch a new Web site project or online strategy. While Web 2.0 is not a new term, it has definitely picked up momentum and is weaving itself into the mainstay of the entire business world. The variety of Web sites, conferences and businesses lending their credence to Web 2.0 has increased immensely over the past few years, creating a buzz among organizations to learn more about this technology and how it works. Yet even with all this information, there remains confusion around what Web 2.0 really is.

Surprising? Not really. This seemingly simple term can be quite complex, especially for those outside of the IT world. And while some organizations have a much better understanding of what Web 2.0 entails, all too often the true value gets overlooked – the impact it can have on a business’s strategy and operations.

So What Is It?
While the name might indicate a ‘new Web release’, in reality it’s not new technical specifications at all, just a way in how current technology is used. According to Wikipedia this term is used to describe the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and how developers and end-users utilize the Web. Most of us are not foreign to this concept at all and utilize this technology in some fashion every day. Social networking sites (Facebook, My Space), wikis, RSS (real simple syndication), even this blog—all are tools that support the inherent concepts of Web 2.0—enhanced creativity, information sharing and collaboration.

But How Is It Really Affecting Business?

The Good:
Obviously this technology is growing into more than just consumer tools and Internet pastimes. Businesses have recognized the benefits and relevance of Web 2.0 technologies and are readily investing in this concept. In fact, studies done by Forrester Research found that one in three businesses across North America and Europe is planning to invest in Web 2.0 tools and technologies in 2008. They also stated that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will grow strongly over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013.

In fact, many organizations have already incorporated some level of Web 2.0 into their strategy, without even knowing this was part of the buzz. Companies have learned that this technology is an inexpensive and easy way to interact with their users. By fostering business communities, corporate blogs and Facebook pages, etc., companies can reach their customer base more quickly and enhance their products and services more regularly based on end-user feedback. Even internally within an organization, Web 2.0 applications can increase information sharing through wikis and internal blogs as well as incremental releases—all greatly reducing time-to-resolution of key issues and problems in an organization. In a TopCoder survey conducted for ComputerWorld, seven in 10 coders stated that traditional corporate development teams could benefit from Web 2.0 techniques, specifically the incremental feature releases, quick user feedback loops and quality assurance programs that include users.

The Bad and The Ugly:
It’s apparent though that not all businesses are ready to open their doors and embrace Web 2.0. While this technology acts as a catalyst for collaboration, it has also opened up a real vulnerability—greater access for hackers, more susceptibility to viruses, risk of employees inadvertently (or purposefully) sharing proprietary information, negative information posted over user groups—that organizations have not had to focus on so intensely in the past.

There also remain a lot of questions and concerns regarding legalities and liability around public disclosure as well as ownership of intellectual property when utilizing these technologies. While companies can (and should) incorporate more procedures and controls to protect themselves, there has been very little regulation as to what that looks like. Just recently the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement addressing the need for greater guidance regarding many of these applications for businesses.

So What’s Next for Businesses?
Web 2.0 is essentially a paradigm shift in the way we not only socialize and communicate, but also in the way business is conducted. Clearly not all aspects of Web 2.0 are a match for every company and not every company is immediately ready to incorporate any of these processes or applications, but it is certainly gaining popularity across the masses and finding new ways to integrate into every day business. Organizations do not really have a choice in IF they will utilize this concept, but rather HOW they will utilize it. So, what about your business; how is Web 2.0 affecting your strategy?

Nikki Leonardi
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing

Be Careful What You Wish For: The Yin/Yang of Public Relations Activities

admin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:05:41 +0000

I just ended a phone conversation with a colleague. We were discussing the Yin/Yang of public relations activities. As a long-time PR person and a journalist, I have a nuanced view of media coverage and it is best described as the Yin and the Yang.

Let me explain.

The Yin
Good PR people often counsel their clients against pursuing the one-off “big story.” You know the “I-want-to-be-in-the-Wall-Street-Journal” story. And the reason is simple, most clients are not very happy the first time their company is covered in the Wall Street Journal precisely because the reporter has done a good and fair job.

I know this from experience. In the 1990s, I was a PR director at a large IT services company and when we finally got the CEO quoted in the local business journal, all hell broke loose. To say the CEO was angry was an understatement. He was furious because the story was “fair” and it covered the market, not just us. He knew the scope of the story going into the interview, but somewhere along the way, he thought that the story would make us look like angels and the others like the devil.

In reality, the story was good, and we did come off well, but it wasn’t exactly as he would have worded it, more importantly many of our competitors came off well too.

It’s important to understand when we undertake a proactive media campaign that the story will — NEVER, I repeat, NEVER — read exactly as we hoped it would.

The Yang
With practice and realistic expectations, we can reverse this perspective and find ourselves very satisfied with a story EVEN when the reporter doesn’t include all our “best stuff.”

The key to being satisfied, even happy, with an article is simple.

Every interview deserves a planned, disciplined PR approach. The PR person should vet the reporter and determine the nature of the story. The PR person should talk with the spokesperson in advance to ensure that he/she has all of the information needed and a precise way of stating it. The PR person can/should sit in on the interview (physically or by phone) and clarify or offer additional information as needed. And post interview, the PR person can and should check in with the reporter to see if anything was missing or more detail is needed.

Preparing for a media interview is as important as preparing for a job interview. You get one chance to make a good impression and simultaneously present relevant information. It’s an opportunity and a challenge and should be viewed as such.

Laura Field
PR Director
ClearEdge Marketing

The Importance of Consistently Communicating Your Company’s Goals

Jessica Elliott — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:43:02 +0000

While studying Communications in college I worked part-time for a nationwide retail company. Our store manager would hold monthly meetings to go through the laundry list of directives being handed down from corporate. All of these important “must do’s” were supposed to support the company’s goals. What were our goals? I’m sure I read about them in a training manual at some point, but I can’t recall ever hearing about them again.

Fast forward to present day and I’m still amazed at how infrequently companies discuss their business goals. I know many companies spend months creating them, send out an e-mail about them at the beginning of the year and then don’t talk about them again until the end of year—when it’s time to tell their employees they didn’t achieve them. Employees don’t intuitively know what management has committed to achieving. You have to tell them. And tell them again. And again.

Given the multiple priorities of today’s employee, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger objective and get caught up in oiling the squeaky wheels. In most cases, your employees want to help the company succeed. Not only is there a personal sense of pride in having been a part of that success, there is also a strong motivation in the form of job security. It’s up to business leaders to ensure their employees know what they can do to meet the obligations that have been made to customers, the financial community, the board of directors and other important stakeholders.

In my communications and marketing roles, I’ve been able to make good on a personal commitment I made to myself back in my college days, “If I ever get the chance, I will make sure employees in the field don’t feel isolated.” What I’ve learned in practice is:

• Inject the company’s objectives into every relevant communication that goes out from senior management. You can use different language to make it feel fresh, but don’t assume that because it’s getting old and repetitive to you, that everyone shares that feeling. At the very least, employee turnover is enough of a reason to repeat the message.

• Consider the office that’s furthest from your company’s headquarters. They don’t have daily, weekly, monthly or in some cases yearly access to the company’s leadership team. The employees in that office want to know that you have them in mind when you talk about where the company is headed.

• In every communication effectiveness survey I’ve conducted, employees look to their managers first and foremost for information about the company, their role and how the two come together. Look to your managers to deliver on the expectation.

• Managers will filter the message. If you want the whole message delivered, you have to remind managers that employees aren’t “in the know.” It’s their job to connect the dots and to help employees understand the company’s goals and where employees fit into that picture.

As you approach the end of the first quarter of 2008, consider the effectiveness you’ve had in discussing where you want to be at the end of the year. Is everyone on the same page? If numbers are off, if customers are unhappy, if partnerships are strained, perhaps the lack of a shared focus is a symptom. If it is, the remedy isn’t all that hard to administer.