Forge Ahead

“After two days in the desert sun, my skin began to turn red,
After three days in the desert fun, I was looking at a riverbed.”
- America

A horse designed by committee

That Twitter is a very real and very serious communication channel for businesses seeking to connect with customers is not news to most folks these days.  That Twitter is now being used by the government agency that rides herd on the investment community, on the other hand, might well be a surprise.

In this post from SmartBlog on Social Media, Emily Molitor reports on how the SEC — yep, that SEC — has developed a fairly sophisticated social media strategy comprising Twitter feeds, YouTube, a mobile site and an investor-specific microsite.  Mark Story, the SEC’s new media director, notes that the agency has three Twitter feeds that target specific audiences: news media, investors and job seekers.  That’s smart.  And it’s a smart move that other companies — including those the SEC monitors — should adopt.

We see a two-fold lesson here.  First, anyone who doubts the utility and business value of Twitter and other social media tools for B2B as well as B2C communications is either not paying attention or just plain stubborn (bet you know someone like that).  Second, when an organization whose job revolves around regulations and investors can find use for not only one but three Twitter accounts, it’s time for all Luddites to pull their collective heads out of the sand and recognize that the camel train is just about ready to leave them behind. Unless, of course, they enjoy sucking sand.

Inflexibility is rarely a viable business strategy, especially when it comes to communications.

“He said, ‘My name’s the teacher, that is what I call myself,
And I have a lesson that I must impart to you,
It’s an old expression, but I must insist it’s true.”
- Jethro Tull

The man and his Pad

While Apple CEO Steve Jobs has rarely been known for openness and accessibility, this story in Wired proves that not only can old dogs learn new tricks, they sometimes can set the pace for other dogs in the neighborhood

Over the past few months, Jobs — who is notorious for being tight-lipped and rarely responding to media calls — has decided to reach out and touch someone.  Or, to be more accurate, reach out and touch someones who are special.

Breaking with his monk-like tradition of letting others do the talking, Jobs has been sending personal e-mails to customers, reporters and others in a “return” to one-to-one communication from the top.  As helpful as mass-distribution channels such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs can be in getting the word out, Jobs knows that the most effective communication is based on one-to-one communication, even when that communication is pounded out on the keyboard of a MacBook Pro (we’re assuming here, of course, that Jobs is not typing his messages on a ThinkPad . . .).

What’s the lesson here?  Simple.  Jobs is relying here on one of the most fundamental tenets of Marketing 101: identify and connect with key opinion leaders who can help carry your message — credibly — to the masses.  Just as Everett Rogers wrote some 50 years ago in his seminal book, The Diffusion of Innovation, the strategic use of thought leaders to spread your message can not only speed up the process by which an innovation (like an iPad) is adopted, it can often help reshape your reputation and build a powerful network of influencers upon which you can rely in the future.

Perhaps this new-found openness on Jobs’ part was tied solely to the launch of his newest baby, the iPad.  Or maybe not.  Maybe he’s found religion in the wake of his health struggles over the past few years.  Either way, Jobs is once again leading the pack and demonstrating that the best CEOs remember that their success — and the success of their companies — begins and ends with individuals who are treated as such.

“I am the eggman, no,
They are the eggmen, no,
I am the walrus, goo-goo-goo-joob.”
- John Lennon

I am he as you are me

This from the “Oh no, this cannot be true” files …

A report from today’s Homeland Security Wire citing a story by USA Today’s Rick Jervis indicates that BP’s 582-page emergency-response “plan” may never have anticipated a massive oil spill like the one threatening the Gulf of Mexico and entire East Coast these days, but gosh darnit, it did warn that a spill could endanger animals such as “seals, sea otters and walruses” in the Gulf.

Okaaaaaaay …

If you’re suddenly wondering if you’re remembering your fourth grade elementary school teacher’s lessons (and countless documentaries on “Animal Planet”) accurately, you are.  No such animals live in the Gulf of Mexico.  Maybe Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, but not in the warm waters off St. Petersburg, Fla.

While the “plan” (and again, we use that term pretty loosely here) was approved in July by the Minerals Management Service, an arm of the federal government, it now would seem that the massive document comprises mostly boilerplate language that was not tailored to the specific situation at hand.

It’s certainly true that many crisis plans have common strategies and tactics, however, comma, each crisis plan must be tailored to the organization’s specific environment and the contingencies that may be faced.

To cut and paste boilerplate language and call it a crisis response plan is not just lazy – in some cases, it’s absolutely criminal.

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• BP, Minerals Management Service, MMS, walruses, oil spill, Gulf of Mexico, otters, seals, Homeland Security Wire, emergency response plans (seminal.firedoglake.com)

“In the land where I was born,
Lived a man who sailed to sea.”
- The Beatles

"And he told us of his life"

When it comes to figuring our how to make money, there’s no one better than Warren Buffet.  And when it comes to figuring out how to talk about that money, it’s no surprise the master is yet again at the top of the class.

In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Karen Berman and Joe Wright explain Buffet’s effectiveness in conveying financial information about Berkshire Hathaway’s performance in his annual letter to shareholders.  Recognizing that we humans experience our world through stories just as much when we’re adults as when we’re children, Buffet boils complicated financial information and data into simple, logical and easily grasped stories.  He knows that from the time we are two, we learn about the world and see the word through stories.  That’s just how our brains are wired.  He innately understands that the financial communicator’s role is less about data transmission and more about good, old-fashioned storytelling.

Every story has a beginning (“Once upon a time . . .”), characters (“and there was a company . . .”) and action (“this happened, this happened and then this happened”).  And most important, every good story has a moral or, in today’s MBA-jargon world, a “takeaway.”  For example,

“Once upon a time, there was a company that sold widgets.  And they were very good at selling widgets.  But one long, cold winter when there was a dark cloud across the  land, no one would buy their widgets no matter how hard they tried.  So what did they do?  They went out and talked to the people and asked them what they wanted in their widgets and how the company could serve them better.  Then they went back to their factory and made some changes.  Some of those changes were easy and didn’t cost anything, and some of them were hard and cost a lot of money.  But they knew those changes were needed if they were going to sell widgets again.  And you know what?  Once spring came, the people started buying widgets again, slowly but surely.  And things started looking better for the company.

And the moral of the story is the company did what it needed to do to turn things around so it’s a good time for you to buy copious amounts of  their stock.”

Well, perhaps it wouldn’t be that exact moral, but you get the idea.

"Once upon a time"

So what’s the moral of this story?  If you’re in communications, get in touch with your inner child and start believing in fairy tales again.  If you do, I’ll bet your results will no longer be grim (badda-bing), and you and your colleagues will live happily ever after.

The End

[Note: This post also appears on "A Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious"]

“It’s a small world, after all.”
- Robert and Richard Sherman

We knew it all along

In business, “Thinking Big” is an imperative.  We celebrate “big thinkers” and avoid “small minds” like last year’s fruitcake.  But the “size = quality” equation doesn’t always work in public relations where it’s often more effective – cost-wise and results-wise – to narrow one’s focus.

From newspapers, magazines and newsletters to blogs, e-zines, Twitter and satellite radio, the potential ways to reach stakeholders are multiplying almost as fast as the spam choking your Inbox.  But as the number of channel choices goes up, the effectiveness of any single channel goes down – and fast.

Fact is, the days of a monolithic culture are gone.  Don’t believe it?  Ask a 10-year-old to identify any two of the following:  the Fonz, Uncle Miltie, Johnny Carson or Walter Cronkite.  Without a case of DVDs or TV Land, the chance of that kid knowing these towering icons is less than K-Fed’s chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize.  While still influential, mass media channels are growing less powerful as singular communications tools every day.

To connect with stakeholders today, think small.  In a fragmented world brimming with communications clutter, eschew shotguns scattering data (and money…) in favor of rifles that hit targets with laser-like precision.  Need to reach medical specialists?  Skip the national news release and order a generous helping of targeted journal articles with a side order of professional association newsletters.  Need to talk with neighbors?  Hold a coffee klatch instead of a news conference.  Want to get input from teens on a new product?  Implement a mobile market research program and leave the Facebook posts, e-mail blasts and magazine contests to the dustbin of history.

Choose the right tool for the job.  Remember:  a bigger hammer does not make a better house.

We met today with a very, very smart client.

A Stitch in Time

Traditionally, the week between Christmas and New Year’s is dead time around most corporate hallways.  From California to the New York Island and all points in between, you can swing a proverbial dead cat and pretty much catch air for all 360 degrees.  By the time late December rolls around, most of us are just plain burned up worn out and hung up wet to dry (or, as Arlo Guthrie once put it, “hung down, brung down, hung up and all kinds o’ mean, nasty, ugly things”).  Most of us have about had it with all those conference calls, staff meetings, Webinars, training sessions, HR workshops, lunches-at-the-desk and late-night, burn-the-midnight-oil-to-hit-an-unreasonable-and-likely-artificial-deadline-adrenaline-and-caffeine-fueled-team projects.

Quite frankly, we’re tired, and we want a rest.  The last thing most of us want to do is think about all the fun and games that await us in the months ahead, much less do something about it.  Whatever hassles we know we’re going to face come the New Year can just sit there and wait politely to meet us cuz we’re shuttin’ down.

But every now and then, you come across a really, really smart client.  One that sees the week of no calls, no meetings and no interruptions as an opportunity to prepare for tomorrow.  And the next day.  And the day after that.

Our team met with our client’s corporate communications  team today to capitalize on the empty hallways and conference rooms.  In a mere six hours, we sketched out the core messages that will guide interactions during 2010 with the media, analysts, employees and investors for this 30,000-person company.  In one of the most basic spokesperson training exercise, we asked them to identify the 10 questions they really, really hope never to get.

Then we wrote answers that will be ready when the phone rings.

The corporate communications team now has a “message manifesto” for the toughest questions the firm is likely to face over the next 12 months that will be sitting on the desk of every senior executive in the company on Monday, January 4, 2010.

That’s more than just smart planning.  That’s job security.

A stitch in time, indeed.