Note: I attended this seminar on behalf of my agency, but the content below is my own and does not represent my agency’s official position on any subject.
A great seminar
Yesterday I was fortunate to have a front-row seat at an internal communications seminar that I have been working on for awhile on CBP’s behalf. We planned the event, featuring Jeff Smith, a partner in the Chicago office of Prophet Brand Strategy, in conjunction with the Federal Communicators Network/Government Printing Office, and the International Association of Business Communicators was kind enough to sponsor breakfast. (Although I have to shun 700-calorie muffins from Costco, it was nice to see that others were enjoying them at least.)
A lot of people—particularly Jeff Brooke, who leads the FCN—cooperated to make the event happen, and I was holding my breath that it would work out. So it was a great relief that it ultimately did, although unfortunately some people could not attend due to a tragic accident on the Red Line that morning (condolences to the families of the Metro employees who lost their lives so tragically).
Future events of this kind are being planned and I’ll announce them here and on GovLoop.com when that happens—in the Forum, on the main page, and in my groups.
Why it matters
I was so thankful that the seminar worked out—it was an opportunity to bring outside internal communications and branding expertise to a large federal audience in D.C. that could then bring the information back to their respective organizations.
Of course, it is kind of sad that we only listen to common sense when it comes from a third party. But that aside, the presentation really hammered home the message that that we are wasting our time if we overload employees with uninspiring messages that lack context. Why does any organization do this, when they could in fact be using every communication opportunity to build up their engagement with the organization—and in turn boost the effectiveness their interaction with the public?
The event was also chance to hear input from federal communicators in other agencies, which I truly enjoy because they are such a smart, talented, and really decent and dedicated group that is frequently underappreciated.
What the speaker said
Here are my notes from the presentation, rendered as close to the original as I can. (Some of the content here resulted from interaction between Mr. Smith and the audience.) The Federal Communicators Network may receive a condensed copy of the slides for public viewing—will post those later if possible.
1. Internal communication begins with the brand – your organization’s personality, reputation, the set of expectations that people have, etc.
2. (My comment: Useful image, seen in the documentary “Our Brand Is Crisis”: Brand is like a picture frame within which every message should sit.)
3. (Participant comments: 1) For federal agencies, where it is sometimes difficult to persuade leaders of the importance of communication, discuss with leadership as an operational need – something that facilitates mission effectiveness. 2) Think about how the employee feels when he or she get the news about the agency from the outside rather than the inside – not good.)
4. Some benefits of a strong brand – increased sales, price premium, customer loyalty.
5. (Participant comment: For federal agencies, infer benefits that are applicable in an agency context.)
6. Benefits of a strong brand to agencies with respect to workforce – increased pride (and therefore stronger retention rates), a boost to recruitment, enhanced alignment/focus around the mission, increased acceptance by employees of new programs
7. A brand is a consistent idea that can be implemented flexibly – just like a song that can be sung in different languages and dialects – messages do not have to be robotic in terms of using the exact same words all the time nor do employees have to act like robots to represent the brand well.
8. You do not control your brand. It is not what you say, but “what others say behind your back.” (My comment: Getting this wrong is an extremely common source of communication mistakes.)
9. You build a brand through strategy, conveyed through the customer’s (stakeholder’s) experience (My comment: add accountability and transparency when you mess up.)
10. (Here the speaker described Prophet’s model of branding but I don’t think I will do it justice by summarizing it here – the discussion went too quickly.)
11. How do you develop a brand? Start with data – do your research – but you can’t ignore creativity either.
12. (My comment: Effective branding is like effective parenting – work hard to instill the right values, and then set the child free – giving advice but not telling them what to do every minute.)
13. Employees are the connection between the strategy and the delivery of the experience. Yet they are frequently neglected when it comes to communication and it shows in their interactions with the customer.
14. (Speaker and audience commenter agreed: It is ideal for organizations to solicit input from internal communicators along the way – not ask for help at the end.)
15. The goal of strategic internal communications is to persuade employees to be fans of the organization—don’t use words like “advocates” or “ambassadors” because they don’t have the same power and sound phony. The right word is fans because fans are passionate about their organization, they share a common connection/community, they support each other, they are emotionally invested in the organization, their enthusiasm is infectious, they are knowledgeable and interested in learning more, they want to tell others about the organization, their interest cross typical lines such as age, and they are supportive of the organization in good times and bad.
16. (My comments: First, remember that the more you engage people the higher their expectation that you will be accountable when you make a mistake – so a commitment transparency is very important when embarking on this kind of initiative. Second, organizations commonly make the mistake of thinking they have to present themselves as perfect in order to gain support. That is not true – they simply have to be honest, accountable, and responsible for their actions.)
17. Key success factors for internal communications: have a strategy and build your employee fan base; make sure communication is both top-down and bottom-up; and be clear, consistent, and simple.
18. It is important to listen to employees and anticipate their reactions before communicating. Think twice before you hit “send.”
19. (My comment: In the future it will be most important to get employees to communicate with each other and that will be the area of focus – meaning internal social media. What leaders say has less and less relevance as the younger generation enters the workforce; Generations X, Y, and the Millennials are heavily reliant on their peers for information.)
20. Start with the mission objectives, translate them into key goals per specific audience, create messages accordingly, and deliver them with a specific tonality and a specific look and feel.
21. Create a template that leaders agree with so that all messages fit into the same song sheet.
22. Survey results showed that internal communication was seen as a separate function that belongs at the most senior leadership level of the organization—not in human resources or marketing. (My comments: 1) Organizations need to staff and fund the function for it to work well and 2) I disagree with the assertion that internal communication is not marketing—I see it as a combination of marketing and organizational development.
23. The flow of good internal communication is that the employee hears, understands, believes, and then lives the values of the organization (the brand).
24. To get senior leadership to take internal communications seriously, show them what is at stake – the business results that will be compromised without it (echoing the participants’ comment at the beginning of the presentation).
25. Conclusion: Take control of internal communications with a systematic approach, strategy, and framework. Manage to objectives. Link to the mission every time. Demonstrate progress to win management support. Consider the potential of every communication request to help or harm the strategy. And be relevant, clear, and consistent.
26. And one more time, repeating #18: Think about how people will react BEFORE you hit “send.”
Note: Crossposted to Govloop.com
January 28, 2010
January 7, 2010
New year, new opportunity to engage employees the right way?
(Cross-posted to the Forums as GovLoop.com)
Seven years ago, I joined the government just after working as a brand consultant and director of a branding think-tank. During a time when most people still thought of the brand as the logo (or "corporate identity,"), I had adopted and was practicing the European belief that my consultancy specialized in. Essentially, this is that branding is really about integrating the external **and internal** communications of an organization, both visually and in words. Starting from there, I wrote a research paper on an issue that the sociologist Georg Simmel identified in the early 1900s (of course without calling it branding). Basically, the problem is that no sooner does an organization define its brand, then things change and the brand has to change along with it. So there is an inherent instability in the branding process that makes the organization confusing to its stakeholders if not managed properly. Later, I called my approach to this problem "total branding," started a blog, etc. Anyway, the problem (or "challenge") is magnified today in the era of social media for a lot of reasons, but all of them boil down to the fact that the organization is subject to public discussion by anyone and everyone, all the time, and that discussion affects its reputation significantly. How do you adapt a large organization effectively in a fast-changing world? In my view and in the view of many other experts, the best way is to equip an army of knowledgeable and credible employees who are inspired and empowered to talk. (Note: this is my view, not necessarily the view of my agency.) All of this is a prelude to a **big** announcement:U.S. Customs and Border Protection, together with the Government Printing Office, has teamed up under the auspices of the Federal Communicators Network to bring the public a series of free seminars in communication excellence this year. The first event is taking place Tuesday, January 26, from 8:30 - 11 a.m. If you are interested in branding and/or internal communication, you **will not** want to miss it. More details to follow soon...along with a link to register.
December 1, 2009
November 30, 2009
Was at Starbucks, thinking again - the artisan sandwiches look so gross, who buys them them? But the Via pitch is starting to get 2 me.
Biggest mistake in high-tech mktg.: "The product speaks for (sells) itself." Not to the end user it doesn't!
November 29, 2009
Subverting the marketers of evil things
Like many Americans I've been spending time with family and friends
these holidays, shopping the Thanksgiving sales, seeing a movie,
watching some interesting TV. And though I try not to think about work
stuff too much, I am always in the end a marketer, and I often process
what I see through the lens of "what can this teach me?"
these holidays, shopping the Thanksgiving sales, seeing a movie,
watching some interesting TV. And though I try not to think about work
stuff too much, I am always in the end a marketer, and I often process
what I see through the lens of "what can this teach me?"
At the same time, I also tend to reflect on what I see through the
lens of right and wrong, or at least my personal beliefs about that.
And though I don't believe in being preachy, when I see what to me are
"bad" products being marketed extrarodinarily well, I tend to think
about how I'd love to launch my own marketing campaign to put them out of business, or at least minimize them to a small corner of the market.
A big example is fast food and the sugary beverages that go with them.
Now, let me be the first one to say that I am no purist when it comes
to food. (Try to take away my french fries and you will definitely
emerge with some battle scars.) But the extent to which they have
invaded our lives is just scary. I can imagine that many lives would
be saved or improved, and that our national healthcare bill would
decrease significantly, if most of us avoided [insert your addictive
fast food of choice here] and chose to consume natural, healthy foods
and drinks instead.
The very sad thing is that bad products have some great marketing
minds behind them. I tweeted a couple of days ago about Coca-Cola and
their addictive signature soda, full of unhealthy sugar and caffeine,
which is marketed with some of the smartest methods imaginable. It's
not just Coke, of course, but every other big brand in its space; and
I could complain about McDonald's but there are lots of McD's wannabes
that are doing the same thing as it is. The genius is not just one
thing but a combination of advertisements, memorable images, catchy
jingles, product placements, and numerous other tactics that
collectively put the item firmly into the "memory bank" (as a
Coca-Cola company spokesman noted in a CNBC interview this week) of
the American people.
The marketing genius behind fast food is reinforced by the physical
addiction it creates. As former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, the
author of The End of Overeating, noted in a recent interview, when
marketing is used to push some combination of sugar + fat + salt
(which is what fast food pushers generally offer), the person reacts
much like a lab rat, with their brain chemicals going off and their
memory centers stimulated. Suddenly you have a pretty much helpless
person who, unless they are well prepared for the situation, is going
to consume the bad food, even if they are obese or simply know better.
The fact that fast food is physically addictive makes the comments of
Coca-Cola (purveyor of sugar + caffeine) on CNBC a bit disingenuous.
The spokesperson said that foods like Coke are OK because people can
simply "consume it in moderation." But anyone who has been around
little kids for even 5 minutes knows what a lie that is. If your
palate is spoiled by sugary foods, and you're used to your daily sugar
high, you don't want to consume these things in moderation. You want
to consume them endlessly. And if Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and all the
other fast food purveyors had their way, that is exactly what you
would do, with or without their token "guides to good nutrition." And
you do have a choice - you can choose sugary orange juice, or sugary
"energy drink," or any of many other kinds of sugar-loaded beverages
aside from the token few low-calorie versions.
Despite all of the above, I can't really blame Coca-Cola or any other
company for trying to make a profit. Profit is the engine of the
American economy. Without profit our standard of living drops to zero.
And I don't even blame them so much for the spin they put on the truth
("just consume it in moderation"). America is a free society, and
ideas as well as products compete in the marketplace. It is really up
to the consumer to find out the truth for themselves. The problem,
however, is that – speaking broadly – institutions that could
challenge the marketers are just not as good as marketing their
messages with tactics that are equally as good as Coca-Cola’s or
McDonald’s. There is no icon of the federal government or any
independent think-tank that matches the red Coca-Cola brand. And even
if there were, there is no well-designed website or savvy social media
campaign that informs me about findings like Kessler’s. Instead, I
stumbled upon Kessler’s book completely by accident. Of course I
already knew that water is better than soda, and that baked potatoes
were better than french fries. But nobody has made it cool to be
healthy.
I say, either the current fast food kings and queens are going to
start their own healthy eating brands (cannibalizing their current
customer bases by turning them off to bad foods), or someone is start
a company that makes healthy eating cool, or someone can start a
campaign like the anti-smoking commercials that makes fast food and
sugar drinks seem really disgusting.
Until that happens, until the memory banks on fast food are filled
with unappealing images and consumers’ minds are saturated with
objective information about what different kinds of foods do to their
physical and emotional functioning, salad and water fans will be in
the minority.
There is an ancient debate among marketers as to whether our job is to
fulfill demand or create it. To me it doesn’t really matter. If you
are selling a product that you know will hurt people over the short or
the long term, it is your job to either fix it so it’s harmless or
sell something else that will actually provide a benefit. In the long
term, you win anyway, by becoming a name that people not only know but
really can trust.
November 28, 2009
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