It's Time to Usher Out the THUD Factor in Corporate Communications

Many articles and blog posts have been written about the various types of followers on Twitter.

For example, it's typical for someone who is brand new to Twitter to follow anyone who follows them - even if that follower has little or no reason to follow you or vice versa.  Social media strategist Greg Pincus calls this type of follower The Recipro-pal.  Another favorite of mine from Greg's list is what he calls The Aggressor -- out of the blue, they follow you.  If you've been on Twitter for a reasonable amount of time, you have experienced these Twitter follower types, and many other types as well.

Here's how I deal with the Recipro-pal and the Aggressor:  every couple of months I sort through my relatively modest list of Twitter followers to weed them out.  I feel I'm doing them a favor.  And I know I'm doing me a favor.

Last time I went through this exercise I blocked more than a hundred Twitter followers, which at the time reduced my number of followers by more than 15%.  Also blocked were the hard core selling types -- pay-per-click and SEO specialists, folks who assure me I can make a million dollars selling on-line, and the auto-DM crew.  Not that these people don't have something important to say. It's just that I'm not buying what they're selling and I know that they're following me for one reason and one reason only.

And every once in a while a prostitute slips through my Twitter filter and ultimately get blocked as well.

What's my point? The number of Twitter followers you or your company has doesn't say a single thing about your social media effectiveness.  Yet, the vast majority of corporate communications professionals in North America who participated in a recent Bulldog Reporter/Thomson Reuters study still cite the number of followers as their MOST used measure of social media effectiveness.  And almost as remarkable is that nearly three-quarters of the respondents count the number of visits to their company's website -- versus the number of high value visitors -- as the second most critical social media measure.

What floors me more even more than this, however, is that "clips remain king" in traditional media coverage.

Almost 74% of the respondents said the number of clips is the number one metric they use to measure the effectiveness of their traditional media campaigns closely followed by the number of impressions.  Unfortunately, it appears that our industry is still mired in the old way of doing things.  Are you experienced enough to remember the days of walking into your client's office with a six-inch thick clip book and dropping it on his or desk?  We called it the THUD factor then.  It appears, at least based on the Bulldog/Thompson survey results, the THUD factor is alive and well.

Earlier this summer the Institute for Public Relations (IPR), following its European Summit on Measurement, published the "Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles." 

There's a lot of good information in the Declaration with  most being evolutionary - not revolutionary.

And here are two key points from it that I think corporate communications pros must pay closer attention to if our industry is going to show progress against the objectives set forth at the Barcelon conference:

• Overall clip counts and general impressions are usually meaningless.
• (Social media) measurement must focus on "conversation" and "communities" not just "coverage."

Makes sense to me.  How about you?

Content Rules: Stop the Presses! Wait a Minute! Start the Presses!

Back at the turn of the last century, there lived a great baseball player from Brooklyn named Wee Willie Keeler.  Wee Willie played for four teams and holds the 14th best career batting average in history.  He also is a long-time member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.  For all his accomplishments on the field, W.W. is perhaps best remembered for a quote. When asked about how to become a great hitter, his answer was "Keep your eye clear, and hit 'em where they ain't."  


Hit 'em where they ain't.  


That seems a pretty good guide to a lot of things in life, including marketing content.  Knowing about the Wee Willie Way is why we were only marginally stunned last week when we read Joe Polizzi's blog at the excellent content marketing site, Junta42, telling us that print is back!


You heard me right. P-R-I-N-T. That five-letter word that sounds as old fashioned as, well, Wee Willie Keeler, might be staging a comeback.  Wasn't print too expensive?  Weren't newspapers too messy?  Books were too cumbersome and better left to Kindles and magical tablets like the iPad, and brochures...well, the stupid things just won't let you click through.  And where are the analytics and heat maps? The ROI and the keywords?  God, what will become of us if our only option is to, ugh, just read something?


I mean just as we are starting to figure out how to keep our snorkels dry in the Tsunami of the all-digital sea, this guy Polizzi says we might have to come out of the water and re-think our content plans.  He says there are seven reasons for this.  But, you know, the more I think about it, the more I start to wonder if he just might be right.  Polizzi says:

• We are reading more of our mail, because there is less of it. Combine that with the fact that fewer traditional publishers turning out magazines, and there is more room for content marketers to develop magazines that cut through the clutter and get noticed. 

• Marketing's primary focus is on customer retention and that is what print materials such as newsletters were developed to accomplish. 

• While print production and distribution costs are higher than digital, audience development cost is virtually non-existent to marketers who can simply use their existing database. 

• Print seems to stimulate our thinking and analysis far more than digital.   

• There is a perception among many that a print story still is a more credible source in news and features than anything on the web. People are burned out and cutting back their online time.  Print helps them stay informed or entertained when they choose to "get off the grid." 

There is one more point Joe made, which is that print has been so overlooked and abandoned by content marketers that it just might be the cool new part of the marketing mix. Ultimately, Polizzi's reasoning is simply that opportunity exists where nobody else is looking. So that is how we get back to Wee Willie Keeler and hitting em where they ain't.  I think W.W. just might concur with Mr. Polizzi. 

Open Letter to the HP Board

To the Hewlett Packard Board of Directors:

Once again you find yourselves in the untenable position of searching for a new CEO as the old one departs amid speculation and scandal. Your latest ex-CEO may be leaving even more of a stain on your esteemed Silicon Valley company than his predecessor did just five years ago.

This time you asked Mark Hurd to resign, offering him a $35M severance package after he exhibited what you called "a profound lack of judgment." You may decide to never make public what really happened inside the C-suite, preferring to stick to your approved talking points, i.e., that Hurd's resignation involved a sexual harassment allegation and investigation (although no one is claiming any sexual harassment actually took place) that led you to discover a string of doctored expense reports.

We may never know why the woman involved, Jodie Fisher, hired an expensive sexual harassment attorney and reached a financial settlement with Hurd to avoid litigation. We may never know why Hurd filed numerous phony expense reports in connection with Ms. Fisher that by some estimates totaled nearly $250,000; each between $1,000 and $20,000.

All we know as shareholders is that you're back to square one, looking for an executive to lead Hewlett Packard to not only growth and profit, but back to some form of prominence that the company once held. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that HP was revered here in Silicon Valley, and throughout the technology industry, as one of the best company's to work for.

So please indulge me as I state my case as to why you will be better off looking internally for your next CEO as opposed to going outside the company again.

I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley for more than 25 years so I know the important position HP holds in this community. Further, I've had the great opportunity of working as a consultant to HP for more than 15 years. I worked briefly with John Young, spent most of my time at HP during the Lew Platt years, and was there to help introduce Carly Fiorina to Silicon Valley when she arrived here from Lucent.

During my years at HP I witnessed firsthand as the company made some truly amazing advancements in technology; so many in fact, that I don't have the space to list them all here. Suffice it to say that HP Labs was on par with, if not more exalted than, Xerox PARC, Bell Labs and the IBM Research Centers as one of the world's truly great research facilities, where its scientists and engineers developed some of the coolest technology on the planet.

I watched as countless people at HP celebrated their 30th, 40th and even 50th anniversaries with the company. Put simply, people didn't leave HP. It was a great company, with outstanding management, and everyone worked together to deliver the best-engineered products in the industry. Many people inside the company used to tell me that HP stood for "happy people."

During my time at HP I had several opportunities to have lunch with former CEO Lew Platt, who used to make it a habit to eat lunch in the cafeteria at HP's headquarters in Palo Alto. Mr. Platt used to enjoy talking with HP employees about sports, the news of the day, and the various HP projects people were working on. He treated everyone in the company, from the C-suite to marketing managers to admin assistants, with respect. It came naturally to him, and as a result, the entire company behaved likewise.

At one point during my time at HP I had the extreme pleasure of meeting Bill Hewlett during an evening reception after the completion of a project on which I played a small part. I'll never forget the moment when Mr. Hewlett looked me in the eye, shook my hand, thanked me sincerely for my involvement with the project and then spent 5 minutes talking with me while other people waited for an audience with him. All people mattered to Bill Hewlett, and to David Packard as well. The HP Way wasn't just a slogan or a management trend, it was a way of life for two visionaries who wanted to build the best technology company in the world.

So HP Board of Directors, as you begin your search for a new CEO, I urge you to look for someone from within the company, someone who embodies the same integrity, honor, vision and basic kindness that your founders held so dearly.

There are executives within HP who possess these traits. You know who they are. Your last two CEOs came from outside of HP, and didn't hold the values of your founders, and ultimately ended up tarnishing the image of your great company. Now is the time to show courage and name someone from within HP as your next CEO.

Do You ooVoo?

Skype's announcement of its S-1 filing earlier this week is exciting and welcoming news especially during a period when the global economic picture for the remainder of 2010 is looking rather bleak.  If anything, the announcement was at least a distraction from the Fed's comments that the economy is slowing, the recovery remains sluggish and the threat of deflation looms.  That combined with recently reported unemployment statistics means the announcement of the pending Skype initial public offering (IPO) could not have come at a better time.

The announcement put a smile on my face, but to be honest, it only takes a hint of good news to do that these days.

There are tens of thousands of news stories and blogs posted this week covering Skype's S-1 filing from every conceivable angle.  "Is Skype's Filing Premature?"  "Will Investor's Buy if Customers are Hooked for Free?" "Is the Skype IPO Really Such a Hot Deal?' 

But I didn't see many posts about Skype's competition, specifically in the video communications space. So I thought I'd spend a little time on one competitor in particular.

First of all, I do Skype -- occasionally.  And 100 percent of my Skype calls are of the free video call variety.  That's another thing - Skype as a verb.  "Hey, let's Skype when you get back to the office."  Or, "Skype me when you get settled in Singapore."

You know your company has made it when your company name is used as a verb.  Like Skype. Like Google.

But also like ooVoo, a Skype competitor.  "Do you ooVoo?"   "Why yes, I actually do ooVoo?"

ooVoo is a New York-based video communication service company.  Its customer base pales in comparison to Skype's though the company claims it is adding more than 600,000 customers each month.

The 3Point team has been using ooVoo for quite some time and with great results.

The video and sound quality is truly amazing, for free or otherwise. I encourage you to give it a try.  I find it's a lot easier and more natural to have a conversation using ooVoo's video communications solution than Skype's.  Apparently, so do 8 out of 10 Skype users who participated in an ooVoo blind study.

You can read more about the results of the study here and then you can decide for yourself by downloading ooVoo's free application.

With that said, I'm ecstatic about Skype's plan for an IPO.  Skype released the first public beta version of its software seven years ago this month and since then it has worked doggedly to build a strong global brand and excellent products.  By announcing it's S-1 filing now, it has pumped some life into what is traditionally one of the slowest investment months of the year.  And it keeps 2010 on track as a rebound year for tech IPOs and IPOs in general. 

In a self-serving but related note, if you haven't had a chance to download our eBook on "Communicating as a Newly Public Company," there are some good tips in it and you can get it here.

Like everyone else on the planet, you have a complex and interesting story to tell. There are all of your childhood antics, and accidents. There are the exciting and trying times through your high-school years, and all of those crazy things that happened to you in college. Your family, your job, your hobbies, your dreams. They're all part of the "story of you."

But when you meet someone new at a party, I suspect that you don't recount your entire life story with them; at least I hope you don't. Rather, you start with some of the more pertinent parts of your story -- your name, where you live, where you work, how you know the people who are hosting the party. That type of information.

As you engage in this dialogue, you begin to learn more about the other person and can slowly add other relevant parts of your personal story into the conversation.

Depending to whom you are talking -- someone you've just met or an old friend -- you relate different parts of your life story. It's as if we have an innate ability to edit parts of our personal stories based on whom we're communicating with.

Companies have complex and interesting stories to tell too. Unfortunately, companies cannot rely on some innate "corporate" ability to help them tailor their story for different audiences. That's where a well-designed, content-centered communications plan comes into play.

Think of all of the different audiences your company might engage on a daily basis, often simultaneously. There are employees, customers, potential customers, former customers that you're trying to woo back, investors and shareholders, distribution partners, application developers, user groups, traditional media, industry analysts, bloggers, those following your company on social media sites, government agencies and regulators, and on and on.

At any given time, your company may be telling various parts of the company story via specifically tailored content to a wide range of audiences. Further, there are likely to be dozens, if not hundreds, of people within the company having these variouis conversations.

Without proper planning, through the use of a content-centered communications plan, you run the risk of not communicating the right information to the right audience at the right time. That could hurt your company through lost customers, wasted time, energy and money, and could tarnish your company's brand image.

Even if your company has gone through the disciple of articulating its business objectives and has a clearly defined its brand story, without properly targeting your audiences by segment, and identifying which parts of the company story you're going to tell to each of them, you could create confusion rather than inpart useful information.

Think about the golf story your Uncle tells every single year at Thanksgiving dinner. You've heard is so many times that once he launches into his tale you automatically tune him out. Without targeting your company's story (content) for specific audience segments, you run the risk of them tuning out your message too.

Do you have a content-centered communications in place that tailors your company's unique story of your various audiences? If so, we'd love to hear your story.

Set Expectations To Get a New Relationship Off to a Fast Start

A former colleague of mine reminded me after I posted "Seven Keys to Successfully Transitioning to a New Agency" earlier today to Beyond the Arc that I left out a critical "key."

And she was right.  

So the "Eight Key" to successful agency transition management is this:  the incoming agency should hold an expectations meeting with the client's executive team and communications team leaders to review their expectations -- which are different from their business goals.  

For example, the CEO may have the expectation that he/she is going to be actively involved in business press activities (or doesn't want to be involved).

Setting clear expectations for how the program is going to run, and what each person's role and responsibility is, is key during the agency transition. 

Also, expectations meetings are ideal platforms for client and agency to agree to the establishment of a day-to-day working structure.  For instance, how will the client and agency account team members communicate on a daily basis; which communications tools will be regarded as essential to real-time communications; what will be the schedule for formal weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual meetings to review the progress against agreed to objectives. 

Seven Keys to Successfully Transitioning to a New Agency

Recently, I've been asked by several corporate communications pros what makes for an effective transition from an incumbent agency to a new agency.

It's a great question because for most corporate marketing or communications departments, transitioning to a new marketing services provider -- whether it be an advertising, PR or digital media agency -- is a very significant undertaking.

In most instances, the organization will have just completed a time-intensive, time-consuming, costly and exhausting agency review that took anywhere from two weeks to six months, and longer in a number of cases.   During the agency review, key internal review stakeholders likely sacrificed their "day jobs" to choreograph a thorough review process. 

And let's not forget that long before the agency review was actually underway, the corporate team running the review spent hour upon hour questioning, debating and deliberating the real need for a review and some time wondering if the existing agency relationship should or could be salvaged.   After all, wouldn't it be easiest if we just stayed with our existing agency?  That question crosses the mind of most every corporate decision maker since making a change means lots of heavy lifting, at least in the short term.   Typically, the negative impact of sticking with an incumbent agency where the relationship has run its course is much costlier than the short-term start up costs associated with bringing a new agency up to speed.

Corporate pros who know the agency review drill typically sprint from the completion of the agency selection process to the next critical step:  the transition from the incumbent agency to the new agency.  

To this point, and to help answer the question that's been asked of me of late, here are my seven agency transition management keys:

1. Establish a collegial relationship among the incumbent and new agency with clear expectations set by the client.
2. Insist on transition sessions with the outgoing agency where an extensive and detailed analysis of all immediate outstanding corporate and product issues can be discussed and transitioned.  Clients should be prepared to pay a fee to the outgoing agency at the successful conclusion of the transition period.
3. Clearly determine which agency will be completing press-related activities that are in progress.
4. The client's IT department should be made aware of the transition so it can provide the new agency with access to the client's intranet(s), email, phone system, etc.  The incoming agency's technology needs to be in sync and compatible with the client's systems.
5. The client's international constituents should be alerted to the change in agencies, as well as the company's internal marketing and communications employees and any local and regional agencies that are supporting the company.
6. The incoming agency should meet with the client's executive and communications team leaders to hold a strategy session to ensure the new agency, senior executives and communications team leaders are on the same page regarding the company's business goals and objectives and how the communications program is going to support them.
7. Procurement and the client's financial department should be made aware of the transition so the outgoing agency is paid on time for its final month(s) and the incoming agency is entered into the company's supplier database.

Based on your experiences, are there other transition management keys that should be considered?

Five Marketing (and business) Truths Every Start-Up Should Know

Start ups are, perhaps, the most exciting and the most imperiled companies on earth.  They are the products of great ideas, brilliant observations, dogged determination, perseverance and risk. In the start-up stage, everything is possible and everything is critical.  Cash must be preserved while market share must grow, and thus there is little margin for error.  The competition for dollars between innovative engineers and customer-facing marketers is often intense -- both sides win when neither side dominates, but that is fragile balance to maintain even with level-headed executives on both sides.  So, with that, we offer our five rules of the road for marketing in start ups. This has nothing to do with how to market.  It has everything to do with how to conduct yourself as a company that needs marketing to define and drive the strategy of the company.


1. Learn how to make a decision. I know a start-up CMO who participated in weekly executive strategy meetings for six months with the CEO, CFO, CTO and head of sales. Each week they would discuss their ideas and outline them in detail on a white board in an executive war room and then leave thinking they were on the same page. For all the brilliant thinking and ideas, they never seemed to make much progress.  "The board brought in an outside consultant," my friend told me.  "And the first thing he did was ask to attend our weekly executive staff meeting. He watched us for 20 minutes, and then he asked a simple question that left us dumbfounded:  'How do you make a decision here?' "  The great Harvard Business  School Professor, Michael E. Porter has said that strategy is what you choose NOT to do.  As a start-up every choice you make and don't make is strategic. A large percentage of those choices will have a lot to do with spending money on marketing. But you have know how to make marketing a business decision. You have to agree to a process, and the CEO has to be the final arbiter. That's why he or she has more stock than you. 


2.  Spin it all you like, you are not a market leader so don't act or spend like one.  We can't tell you how many early stage companies flush with venture money try to market like leaders. These are usually companies whose executive team has not worked in start-ups before and assumes that the battle and budgets should be waged just as they were in the corporate world. This is a disastrous approach tied to ego, inexperience, reading too many business books or all of the above. The likely outcome is the rapid disappearance of all those VC greenbacks despite your followers and fans, your great press coverage, analyst reports and speaking engagements. 


3.  Protect your cash. If you are new to the world of start ups, you need to understand that cash is king. Do not over spend your marketing dollars.  Use them cautiously and be sure they are aligned against specific, measurable business objectives. If those objectives are unclear, pull that big red emergency break right away and stop your marketing spending. There might be some squealing as you grind to a halt, but if your ad agency or PR agency or social media agency are the only people asking about strategy, something is very wrong and you are about to spend precious cash on tactics that probably are not aligned with what the business needs to do to succeed -- and your investors probably have the wrong CEO in place.


4.  Practice guerilla warfare. As a start up, you are small and insignificant.  Your resources are limited and your business objective is most likely survival. If you have mastered the first three points here, you are in an enviable position.  How do you -- as an underdog -- fight, much less win?  Understanding the competition is part of the battle:  Market leaders usually fight defensively.  Direct challengers are trying to take market share from market leaders.  Smaller, established companies are looking to outflank large companies and early stage companies must find a niche they can own as a base for future expansion so that they can one day move to the next level and outflank the leaders. 

5.  Learn OODA.  This is not a new martial art.  It is what the military teaches soldiers to do in any new situation. OODA is an acronym for observe, orient, decide, and act.  If you are going to engage in battle against bigger, better fortified competitors you need to learn to read the situation and react faster than the next guy to survive. That is what OODA is designed to teach us. You gather information (observe), form a point of view about an unmet customer need and/or the intentions of competitors (orient), then you make decisions, and you act on them. The cycle is repeated continuously. The aggressive and conscious application of the process gives a business an advantage over a competitor who is merely reacting to conditions as they occur, or has poor awareness of the situation.


So, there you have it.  Five practices that will help marketing become a strategic part of the ultimate start up objective -- survival.  Let us know if you have shared any of these experiences or observations in your start up.

Branded Content

There is now general acceptance that a company's brand plays an important role in generating and sustaining financial performance. A company's brand can help attract new customers, keep existing customers from switching to a competitor, help pave the way for entry into new markets and regions, and even affect stock valuation.

To this last point, stock price, a BusinessWeek/JP Morgan study found that some companies enjoy most of their stock valuation as a result of their strong brand. The study found that McDonald's, for instance, attributes more than 70% of its shareholder value to its strong brand. Disney's brand contributes 68% to the company's market capitalization and Coca-Cola's brand chips in just over 50%.

To some degree or another, every company's brand contributes to its overall financial performance. That's why a company's brand story, along with its clearly articulated business objectives, should form the foundation upon which a content-centered communications plan is developed.

As has been discussed before on this site, content is the engine that drives customer engagement. To ensure the interaction with the customers is fully realized, a content-centered communications plan should map directly back to the company's business objectives and stay true to the company's brand; given a brand's powerful influence on customer perception as well as stock valuation.

A few years back I did some consulting for a publicly traded, global telecommunications company that had a brand reputation as an inventive and innovative company, which was based largely on the licensing of its extensive patent portfolio.

Every time we generated content for this company -- be it press release, an executive presentation, a video, a theme for a developer conference, or a social media program -- we always made sure that it was highlighting the company's inventive and innovative persona. In this way, every time the company used content to interact with any number of its target audiences, the company's brand image was reinforced.

If your company hasn't gone through the process recently, you might want to conduct a brand audit prior to development of your content-centered communications plan. The audit is a comprehensive and systematic evaluation of the brand involving activities (both tangible and intangible) to assess the health of your brand. This process should either confirm the status of your company's brand story, or suggest modifications to it. In any case, the audit should help you develop 3-5 brand messages, any one of which can, and should, be used when you develop content to interact with your customers.

Having your brand story clearly defined -- along with easily articulated business objectives -- will help guide the development of all of your company's content. As a result, your customer engagement will be more meaningful for you, and your target audiences.

Karma

This summer has seen its share of communication blunders and, as we head into August, we are starting to see the consequences. Tony Hayward has been removed as CEO in light of his poor handling of the oil spill. Maybe that yacht race at the height of the crisis wasn't such a good idea? Apple said it would provide iPhone 4 customers with free cases to improve reception issues that happen when the phone is held in a certain way. General Stanley McChrystal is retiring from the US Army after he was relieved of command of NATO forces in Afghanistan by President Obama, following blatantly disrespectful comments made to Rolling Stone magazine. Laurent Blanc, the new coach of the French national soccer team, announced that none of the players who went on strike at the World Cup in South Africa would play in the next match and that future selections would be based not only on talent but on a strong sense of teamwork, as well. The lesson in all of this is that what you say and do and how it is portrayed in the media and online has a tremendous impact on companies and careers. Tony Hayward didn't cause the oil spill but the problem was his to solve. Instead of showing leadership and providing clear, regular and honest communication, he was portrayed as not wanting to deal with the problem by saying he wanted his life back, minimizing the problem by not providing accurate information on the size of the disaster and not caring by going to yacht race at the height of the crisis. Likewise, Steve Jobs probably didn't design the finicky antenna for the iPhone 4 but he did tout its engineering at the launch press conference. Instead of blaming customers for holding the iPhone the wrong way he should have said right off the bat that the iPhone 4 didn't live up to Apple's high quality standards and that they would find a solution. Instead of a story that persisted for a period of time and tarnished Apple's otherwise sterling reputation, it would have been a one day story that might have actually strengthened their image as a company that can do no wrong. General McChystal should have had media training and a thorough briefing prior to letting a Rolling Stone reporter follow his entourage for a month. If he had done so, he would not have made such rookie mistakes. The problem is that most CEOs or, for that matter, Generals and professional athletes, don't understand the importance of communication and, as a result, don't solicit much input from their communications department or agency. If they had, they would have probably reacted differently.

Robert Dudley's Mission of a Lifetime

Robert W. Dudley has accepted the mission of a lifetime. 

As the new leader of embattled BP, Mr. Dudley has a full plate.

Dudley is charged with picking up the twisted pieces of a massive train wreck and putting it all back together.  Quickly.

He'll need to stand in the fire and not get burned.  He'll need to be decisive and fearless.  But also calm and thoughtful.  Never let anyone see him sweat.

He can't afford, nor can BP, to say the wrong thing -- as his predecessor did on too many occasions.

Dudley needs to move without delay to restore trust among regulators and investors.  But also among BP employees at every management level around the world.  I don't know anyone who works for BP, but I can imagine the conversations they have been part of during summer cocktail hours.  And I suspect many of these discussions were unpleasant for BP employees.

BP has been accused by a number of watchdog groups for taking the easy way out -- cutting corners.  One such watchdog group charges BP with a "culture of recklessness." 

How will Dudley move his troops toward a culture that values safety above all else?

Dudley and BP can't afford to do anything less but to deeply engage everyone of its 80,000 employees to rebuild the company's culture and reputation.  The days of pretty boy Tony Hayward and lip-service treatment to important issues are gone forever. 

Here are a few additional suggestions for Mr. Dudley and BP as the company goes through the most important CEO transition in its 100 year history.

• Pay attention to all stakeholders.  Employees, investors, regulators, media, business partners, customers, etc.  Some of the underlying anxieties of a particular stakeholder group may not be obvious at first but could burst on the scene at inopportune times.
• Develop key transitional messages and err on the side of over communicating to key stakeholders.
• Communicate globally.  U.K. CEO succeeded by a U.S. CEO to run a U.K. company.  This is the perfect time for BP to embrace its global workforce and anoint them as true ambassadors of the global brand.  BP needs every employee believing that BP, over time, will overcome its present situation.
• Make any senior management team changes in the proverbial "first 100 days."  Unlike many CEOs, Dudley isn't going to get a honeymoon period and acting quickly could become his biggest ally.  If he has any doubts about any member of his management team, he should take the appropriate action now.
• If Hayward is truly out of the way, insists he stay out of the way.   

How Has Marketing Lost its Relevance?

In 2004, Nirmalya Kumar of the London Business School, published an incredibly insightful book called "Marketing as Strategy."  Professor Kumar argued that CEO's have lost faith in marketing -- that somewhere marketing became marginalized by tactical implementation of communications programs rather than owning a strategic "seat at the table."  Yet, as Kumar states, the importance of marketing as a two-way mirror between organizations and their customers has never been more important.

So we have this odd situation where the importance of the function is growing while the faith of management in those who lead the function is diminished. How did we get to this place where the marketing function is in crisis? How has marketing lost its relevance?

The answer lies, in part, with the subtitle of Professor Kumar's book: "understanding the CEO's agenda for driving growth and innovation." 

Over the years, many marketing organizations and the marketers who run them and serve them have become disconnected from the strategy of the company. My experience is that they often are communications experts not marketing experts.

Like any function under constant pressure, marketing developed its own measures to justify its existence.  Today, that takes place in the form of reliance on communications tactics and a train wreck of metrics, strewn like jackknifed cars along the track. 

We, as marketers get caught up in the latest pretty packaging whether it is social media, SEO or web traffic, and we look for metrics to justify how well they work.  (How many followers do you have?)

I find it interesting how many times I've read leading social media experts stress the importance of understanding the company's business objectives.  I want to stand up, shaking with incredulity, like the comedian Lewis Black.   "THAT IS THE PROBLEM!"  What are the business objectives?  Who in marketing helps set them?  Who in marketing understands them?  

Don't misunderstand me. Metrics are helpful. They are wonderful tools. But they are usually the cart before the proverbial horse. They often are not lead indicators of where the CEO is trying to move the company. CEOs are under increasing pressure to deliver profits. Board members worry about the complexities of financial reporting requirements. And, so, the C-suite agenda is less likely to focus on marketing issues. But marketing still has to find and deliver answers to questions that ultimately drive the growth of the company -- who are our customers?  what do they need from us?  how do we deliver what they need better than our competition delivers it? 

What has to change for marketing to become relevant to CEOs -- and for CMOs to keep their "seat in the suite"? 

Let's start by throwing stuff out. The 4Ps -- product, promotion, price and place?  In the dumpster!  Let's start to think and act like strategic business executives not kids playing with the latest toy and trying to show mom and dad how well it works.


THE THREE CORE QUESTIONS CEO's FACE

Here's an easy place to start.  Answer the following three questions for your company or organization:

1. Where are we?  

2. Where have we agreed to go in five years?  

3. How do we get there profitably and increase shareholder value?

In one form or another that is what every CEO is trying to determine.  Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Radian 6, only matter if they help answer the last bullet, and I believe they can -- when applied correctly to the right problem.

So if that is is the CEO's short list, what should marketing's be?  Let's go back to Professor Kumar.  Here is the set of questions he poses that every marketer needs to become relevant to the CEO and his or her agenda.  You need to answer these. If you don't know the answers, ask somebody. If nobody knows, figure out how to use the tools of marketing to get answers. That is how you become relevant. 

Seven Steps to Making Marketing Relevant Again

1. From Market Segments to Strategic Segments: 

• Who are our valued customers?
• Which customers are unhappy with current offerings in the industry?
• Is the target large enough to meet our sales objectives?
• What is our value proposition?
• Does it fit the needs of customers we are trying to serve?
• What benefits are we delivering?
• Can we deliver and earn a profit?

2. From Selling Products to Providing Solutions: 

• Do we guarantee customers outcomes and benefits instead of product performance?
• Have our sales people developed consulting skills and deep industry knowledge?
• Have we developed effective processes to allocate resources to solution projects?

3. From Declining to Growing Distribution Channels: 

• What service outputs will the new channel provide?
• How will the relative importance and power of existing channels change?
• Which competitors will enter the new channel?
• What changes in channel incentives to existing members will competitors try? 
• What new competences do we need to enter the new channel?

4. From Branded Bulldozers to Global Distribution Partners: 

• Have we identified our most valuable clients on a worldwide basis?
• Are there single points of contact for global customers?
• Have we optimized our supply chain for global efficiency
• Have we harmonized pricing structures?

5. From Brand Acquisitions to Brand Rationalization: 

• Which brands are contributing to our profits?
• What needs-based segments exist in each category?
• How much sales revenue would we risk by deleting non-core brands?
• What is the role of the corporate brand?
• How will we articulate our program to stakeholders?

6. From Market-Driven to Market-Driving: 

• Are new ideas routinely imported from the outside?
• Do we tolerate failures and have processes in place to learn from failures?
• Do we ensure that radical ideas do not lose resources to incremental ideas?

7. From Strategic Business Unit Marketing to Corporate Marketing: 

• How does the organization rate on customer focus in processes, including new product development, order fulfillment, customer relationship management?
• Is the organization organized around customers?
• Are metrics and rewards related to impact on customers?
• Does the organization systematically learn about customers?

Clearly this is as much a shift in thinking as it is in the tools and programs marketing deploys. Social media and digital marketing tied to analytics can move the needle forward only a fraction if marketers don't understand the three most difficult questions any company faces. As marketers, isn't it time we stepped back and started thinking about the metrics we use as vehicles to identify the growth needs of the company rather than metrics that justify the existence of tactics that are often not well aligned with the strategic direction of the company?  Isn't it time we started to help set the strategic agenda of our companies and clients rather than serve as marginalized order takers worried about followers and colorful charts?

Reasons to be Optimistic Heading into a Summer Weekend

Here are a few of the corporate earnings headlines we were treated to over morning coffee, earlier today and yesterday.  

"Microsoft Profit Rebounds by 48%"

"Second Quarter Income Higher at Amazon"

"Optimistic 3M Lifts Guidance For Year"

"Wireless Revenue Drives AT&T Growth"

"Honeywell Outperforms Again"

"AutoNation Profits up 36%"

"CA Exceed Expectation"

"Ford Higher After Strong Q2 Earnings"

"Verizon Posts Wireless Customer Growth"

"UPS Raises Profit Outlook"

"U.S. Manufacturers Continue Streak of Profit Beats"

"Caterpillar Posts Strong Profit and Raises Outlook"
 

These results are reasons to be optimistic about the recovery.

And this too:  "...spending on technology products and services is set to continue growing around the world."

According to a report this week from Forrester Research, spending on IT goods and services in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Easter Europe, the Middle East and Africa will increase this year anywhere from 9.9% (in the U.S.) up to 16.2% (Canada). 

It's true that IT spending in the western and central regions of Europe are forecasted by Forrester to drop by a modest 0.7%.  But the increase in spending throughout the rest of the world is significant enough to offset Western and Central Europe.

A reason for the IT growth spurt?  According to the IDG News Service which viewed the report, "the U.S., and to a lesser extent, other nations, are entering an innovation cycle marked by the adoption of new technologies."

News like this makes for a great summer weekend.

Cluelessness Volume III

I can't swing a dead cat without finding an example of bad communication. This time it is France that takes this week's prize. On July 14, Bastille Day, the French government launched france.fr which was to be a global and multi-lingual portal for all things French -- tourism, investment etc. The problem was that the same day that the site went up it then came back down and has not come back to life since. Visitors to the site receive the following message, "France.fr, a complete and complex site, is temporarily unavailable. We are in the final phase of our audit to find out the causes of the technical failures which led to us closing the site, and are close to finding a solution. We would like to thank all the web users who helped us spot the bugs. We aim to have the site fully operational again in the second half of August, and can confirm that a version with a participatory dimension will be released in November. Thank you for your patience." At least the SIG, France's government information service, bit the bullet and re-set expectations with a new availability date. What I don't understand is how they got themselves into this mess in the first place. I mean this is cyberspace not outer space and creating a website -- even a complex one -- is not like sending astronauts to Mars. This has been an embarrassment for the French government. Maybe it is because the web is inherently a bottom up environment and not top down. The most visited websites -- Google, Facebook, eBay -- were bottom up / entrepreneurial ventures. Maybe this is why Microsoft has struggled with Bing and Live. At this point the damage has been done and my advice to the SIG would be to ensure that when the site launches it works flawlessly -- even it it means delaying the launch past the late August date. The last thing the SIG needs is to make the headlines again with a buggy site.

It Depends On Who You Ask

“It depends on who you ask.” That was the response I received from the head of Corporate Communications of a global semiconductor company during our annual planning session when I asked the question “what are the company’s three primary business objectives for the coming year.” Now I understand that in a large organization that different business units or divisions will have their own specific targets and objectives for the year, but I wasn’t talking with a business unit or divisional communications person, I was in the midst of annual planning with the head of Corporate Communications on behalf of the entire company. If we were going to build an effective plan that reached all of the company’s various audiences in an engaging and meaningful dialogue, we needed a solid foundation built upon clearly articulated business objectives. This wasn’t the first time I’d encountered a Corporate Communications leader who couldn’t succinctly identify the organization’s business objectives. In fact, I’d have to say that more times than not, this was something very few people in companies could clearly state. I’ve seen it happen at big global companies, smaller venture-funded companies, hardware companies, software companies and just about every company in between. And you know what? For decades, it didn’t really matter all that much if the communications people couldn’t repeat the company’s business objectives in two or three sentences. That’s because for decades, having only a general understanding of the direction the company was headed was enough to do effective marketing and communications. For years, if a marcom manager knew that the company was expanding into France and Germany, they took out ads in the top trade publications in those markets touting the company’s newest widget and put out a few press releases that had been translated into the local language. The ads ran, the press releases were issued, some articles were written in key industry magazines and the communications team celebrated their success. But we all know that in today’s digital and online environment this methodology is as outdated and ineffective as group-faxing. A company’s customers today don’t want to hear about what the company thinks about its own product or service, rather they want to know that the company understands their business challenges, has helped other companies solve similar problems and is willing to work in partnership with them to make their business thrive. To accomplish this effectively, a company must align its internal goals and objectives with the needs and wants of its customers, and then enter a long-term relationship where information is shared in both directions so each can achieve success. Sharing and receiving information with customers in an efficient and effective manner is at the heart of content-centered communications. And the starting point for this effort is the clear articulation of the company’s business objectives and alignment of those objectives across the entire organization. Which takes us back to my meeting with the head of Corp. Comm. at the semiconductor company. After much discussion, it was decided that if we were going to develop a truly effective annual plan, one that was impactful, sustainable, and measurable we needed consensus among all of the company’s leadership upon no more than 3-5 succinct corporate business objectives. Our agency took the lead on scheduling meetings with the various EVPs, divisional and business unit leaders and key internal communications people. We led sessions where we extracted business information from the various company leaders and then reconstituted it into a handful of easily articulated business objectives. Gaining consensus wasn’t an easy or quick process, but when we had accomplished it, it gave us the solid foundation upon which to build a powerful content-centered communications program. Clear articulation of a company’s business objectives isn’t a communications panacea, but it is the first step to in entering an ongoing and meaningful conversation with your customers.

Can you recite your company's business objectives, or will it depend on who you ask?

Cloud Computing is Sitting in the Catbird Seat

Cloud Computing is sitting in the technology catbird seat.  

Earlier this week, two leading technology companies betting their businesses on the promise of cloud computing -- EMC, Inc. and VMware -- reported strong second quarter earnings.

For EMC, this was its third consecutive quarter of record revenue growth.  The company's operating cash flow is at an all-time high.

And server virtualization leader, VMware, exceeded analysts expectations with strong second quarter profit and sales results as well.

Google, who along with VMware constitutes half of the so-called Four Horsemen of Cloud Computing, also announced last week that it too grew second quarter and revenue profits -- although profits fell short of the street's expectations.

On the company's earnings call, EMC execs said that sales of its solutions for building virtualized, private and public clouds will grow this year by about 25 per cent.

VMware's second quarter results and rest-of-year guidance were strong enough to earn a price target increase from the analysts at J.P. Morgan -- from $60 to $70.

And if these cloud developments don't excite, then how about this? Cloud computing is helping organizations climb out of the global economic mess!

How?

Well, according to a new study conducted by international research firm Vanson Bourne, a majority of IT business and decision makers say cloud computing is helping their companies do more with less.

A number of the 600 survey respondents believe that the benefits of cloud computing will result in a 15 percent decrease in their IT budget while others said IT savings could approach 40 percent.

Bryan Doerr, CTO at Savvis, Inc. -- which commissioned the study -- says that two key issues are driving organizations to cloud computing: flexibility and a pay-as-you-go model.

Cloud computing isn't the perfect computing model -- yet.

Security issues remain a concern, for example. But among fewer and fewer organizations as security issues are addressed and resolved.

Not matter how you slice it, Cloud Computing is enjoying the view from its coveted perch.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and Universal Access to Broadband

The 14th of July, the national holiday of France. A day filled with military parades, fireworks and patriotism. As I was watching President Nicolas Sarkozy reviewing the troops on the Champs-Elysées, I thought about the values of Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité and how France has provided universal healthcare, five weeks of vacation and a 35-hour work week for its citizens and wondered if it would follow Finland's lead and declare access to at least 1 megabit per second broadband a right for all citizens. Residents of Helsinki have had reasonably priced broadband access for quite sometime but rural Finns -- approximately four percent of the population -- have had to do without. And, without some form of government support, it would be prohibitively expensive to reach those four percent. What is interesting is not that the Finnish government is providing another benefit to its citizens but rather that it has realized that broadband access to the Internet is an essential development tool -- as essential as providing electricity to rural America was in the 1930s. Without broadband Internet access rural Finns would essentially be cut-off from the rest of the world. With it, they have similar access to commerce, culture, communication and information that their urban Helsinki countrymen have. Now that is what I call closing the Digital Divide.