The Communicator

There have been a record number of home foreclosures this year. In simple terms, the credit crunch combined with a reduced income has forced home owners to choose between paying the mortgage and putting food on the table. Not surprisingly, many families have opted to service their short-term needs, often to the detriment of their long-term stability.  

Many professional communicators are facing a similar problem at work. For years, they have been building equity with the public through steady investments in their corporate reputation. But as the economy tightened and budgets were decimated, many communicators diverted their funding away from their long-term commitments to shore up projects that would provide ‘quick-hits’ and generate instant revenue.

Faced with certain foreclosure, many home owners choose to renegotiate the terms of their mortgage, allowing them to manage their short-term needs while maintaining the equity they have built up over years of steady payments.

That’s a good idea. Here are a few areas where professional communicators can look to renegotiate, while still securing their corporate reputation investment:

• Maintain sponsorships, especially your support of community or charitable organizations. It’s easy to be magnanimous in the good times, but your continued support during a tough economy will do more to build and protect your equity. Try working with your partners to renegotiate the terms of your sponsorships rather than abandoning them all together.
• Focus on low-cost, high interaction vehicles such as websites or social media. Take a hard look at your current cost-per-contact (how many people you reach vs. the cost of using a specific communications tool), and put a premium on vehicles that engage and interact with your customers. Besides, not everyone needs a high-gloss brochure or expensive chatchkes.  
• Look to Public Relations. Not to fuel the PR vs. Advertising debate, but spending lavishly on full-page ads can send the wrong message in a down economy. Instead, try employing smart and targeted public and media relations to reach your audiences.
• Use freelancers and consultants to support your corporate reputation initiatives and to reduce the cost of maintaining an ongoing program. While corporate reputation may not require full-time oversight, it is important to maintain consistent objectives, principles and tone of voice. Try using freelancers and consultants to augment your in-house team without increasing your headcount or retaining expensive agencies.

At the end of the day, just remember: much like a mortgage, stopping investments in your corporate reputation could leave your company out in the cold.  

Looking for cost-effective ways to manage and enhance your corporate reputation? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

If I had to bet, I’d say that you probably have a few boxes of old brochures and media kits collecting dust in your office right now. Take a look – they usually hide under your desk or on top of your filing cabinets. Some organizations even have closets and rooms dedicated to housing outdated marketing materials.

Thankfully, recent improvements in technology and record-low printing costs offer today’s organizational communicator an innovative solution to reduce cost and waste: Order-to-print materials.

In practice, an ‘order-to-print’ system acts as an online portal, enabling employees to order a variety of collateral material directly from an approved print vendor. An organization can negotiate rather competitive prices with vendors based on expected demand and guaranteed quantities.

There are a number of easy ways to sell this idea up the food chain. Order-to-print systems can:

• Reduce cost: Many communications departments spend a large portion of their annual budgets producing brochures that will eventually be used by other departments. By creating an order-to-print system, production costs for materials are charged directly to the user (say Business Development or HR). This not only shifts expenses off of your departmental budget, it also creates an inherent value to the end-user, which will likely result in more thoughtful use.  
• Reduce waste: Using the traditional method, most communications professionals tend to be optimists and order more brochures than they could ever possibly use. Every year, I’d lament the excess as we recycled boxes and boxes of out-of-date material. Using an order-to-print system, materials are produced on an as-needed basis, thereby reducing waste and budget, while saving trees at the same time.
• Maintain version control: Do you update your brochures annually? Given the pace of change, is that often enough? A big problem with traditional brochure production is that by the time they are printed, they are often out of date. By utilizing an order-to-print system, you can update your content at any time, and be certain that the updates will take effect immediately.  
• Reclaim time: It may not seem like much, but every week my team would spend thirty minutes or more fielding and filling orders for corporate materials. Colleagues could order logoed hats online, but they couldn’t order brochures. An order-to-print system removes the administrative burden on your department, allowing your team to focus on the real goal of achieving their communications objectives.

So take back your office space, and get rid of those boxes once and for all, because this one’s got all the hallmarks of a great win-win: fiscal accountability for the bean-counters, environmental responsibility for the greens and more office space for you.

Need help with your corporate collateral? Contact me at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

Let me start by saying that I respect and admire Barak Obama: you’d be hard pressed to find a Canadian that doesn’t. As a speech writer, I am always awed by the President’s easy tone and passionate delivery. As a world citizen, I am thrilled by what he represents and full of anticipation for what he hopes to accomplish.

However, from an organizational reputation perspective, I believe that the Nobel Institute has taken an unnecessary risk awarding President Obama with the Peace Prize this year.

If the awarding of global honours were an industry, the Nobel Institute would certainly be the market leader. While most of its work goes unrecognized, each of its products holds the highest stature in their respective fields, with its strongest brand undoubtedly being the coveted Peace Prize. With very few mistakes (the most obvious being the oversight of Mahatma Ghandi), the organization has built a strong public reputation for recognizing the world’s greatest peacemakers without the interference of public opinion or political bias.

So it surprises me that the revered Institute would risk diluting their most valuable brand with such a hasty decision this year.

While the pundits continue to debate, it is clear Obama’s nomination was submitted to the Nobel Committee before the deadline of February 1, 2009, and – given that he took office just 12 days prior – there is a valid concern that his nomination and subsequent award were granted somewhat prematurely.

Regardless, the recent media attention has put a spotlight on the transparency of the whole awards process. For an organization whose foundation lies in the lofty ideals of higher purpose, this recent exposure could cause serious reputational damage.   

So what can professional communicators learn from this recent case? Always remember that your brand integrity is a long-term asset, so don’t be beguiled by unnecessary risks promising short-term gains.   

I have no doubt Barak Obama will – in the near future – achieve things that will certainly be worthy of the Nobel Institute’s praise.  But for now, the Award for the Most Unnecessary Reputational Risk has to go the Nobel Committee itself.

If you are looking for ways to enhance your organization’s reputation, contact me for a free consultation at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca

The Economist magazine doesn’t usually make me laugh out loud. But a few issues back, they reported on a $2.5 billion deal between Russia and Nigeria for natural gas exploration rights. The correspondent quipped that the new company, ‘Nigaz’, showed a “refreshing ignorance of politically incorrect language”.

Examples like this are not difficult to find. What seems like a brilliant marketing idea in one culture may be horrifying to another. Europeans are not likely to want to drink ‘Pee Cola’, a popular soda brand in West Africa; Canadians would have never voted for CRAP (the Conservative Reform Alliance Party); and Americans didn’t trade in their vacuum cleaners after hearing that “nothing sucks like an Electrolux”.  

While certainly humorous, these examples are indicative of a larger issue prevalent in most global organizations: one-size-fits-all communications.

In an effort to reduce cost, align messaging and manage risk, many organizations follow a centralized communications model, where all content is generated from Head Office and disseminated into the colonies. 

There are a number of risks inherent with this model, not least of which is pandering to the lowest common denominator.

The greatest risk, of course, is of committing a cultural insensitivity (the likes of ‘Nigaz’) that negatively impacts or even devastates your corporate reputation.

That said, if you’ve read my previous posts, you would know that I am a huge proponent of centralized messaging. It is vital to your brand and your corporate reputation that everyone is on the same page and using the same key messages.

But on the country level – or even regional (think Quebec or Hawaii) – the most successful strategy lies in local customization. While globally-approved key messages should form the backbone, local resources must be engaged to provide strategic guidance, and to ensure that the content and intention are not misunderstood.

Global communications should be a well tailored suit, not a one-size-fits-all Mumu.