Corporate Eye

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Archives for 2009

Is the Honeymoon over for the iPhone and AT&T Wireless?

iphone-attIf you’re one of the many customers who would love to have an iPhone but don’t want to switch your carrier to AT&T Wireless in order to use one, then there may still be hope — albeit slim.

Last week in Washington D.C., FCC Acting Chairman Michael Copps spoke in front of the Pike & Fischer Broadband Policy Summit (read his full speech here).  Copps labeled exclusive deals between handset manufacturers and cellular carriers as restrictive to innovation and creating an unfair market of competition.  He called for an investigation into the matter.

Let’s face it.  From a consumer standpoint, eliminating exclusive deals between handset providers and wireless carriers would be wonderful.  Talk about opening up the field of choices for consumers!  I’d certainly get an iPhone if I didn’t have to switch to AT&T Wireless!

But how would eliminating exclusivity affect the brands involved?  [Read more…] about Is the Honeymoon over for the iPhone and AT&T Wireless?

Hyundai’s Social Networking is GREAT for Business

According to the Hyundai’s Assurance Program, if you get laid off from your job, you can return your car and not even have to worry about honoring the rest of the note payable. Really. Hyundai says you can do this, no questions asked, but of course certain restrictions do apply.

The new Hyundai’s Assurance Program has gotten its share of attention on the web from many blogs and websites. A journalist from The Huffington Post gave a well-written review of the program, while another blogger from The Simple Dollar wonders whether or not the idea is fiscally sound.

What I find interesting is the commercial that I saw about it on television the other night. It seems that they are promoting the idea via Facebook and Twitter. And, they’re asking everyone to buzz and tweet about it. They want everyone to talk about what it is they’re doing, bringing them more business and exposure. The idea of social networking for business exposure is certainly not new. But, in questionable agreement with the Simple Dollar blogger, don’t you have to make money while getting all of that *exposure*? So if (most) everyone is returning their cars if they have undue hardships (possibly many in a shaky economy), then what do you do with that inventory? How do you or can you re-sell an sold car?

Sharing this information on Facebook and Twitter can be a phenomenal plus for the car company’s marketing campaign. Like any viral marketing idea, someone is bound to tell someone else and them someone else. A brilliant way to market a program that works and interests most everybody. Because the program is so necessary and timely for some, I would imagine a marketing strategy like this will take off in a very short amount of time.

How do you think the Hyundai’s marketing plan fits into the social marketing community? Is it buzz-worthy? Will it out-last other car company’s marketing tactics? What do you think?

Small Brand Strategy – Not Just for Electronics Anymore

ipod_shuffle_in_handMiniaturizing products has been the hot thing to extend brands in the electronics market for a long time.  As we all know, history is cyclical, and therefore, so are consumer demands.  For many years, consumers believed “bigger is better” and demanded the largest version of just about every product you can imagine — from SUVs to laundry detergent, and everything in between. 

I read an article on Branding Strategy Insider this week that discusses the hot topics at Reuters Global Luxury Summit this month, and it appears the cycle has changed and smaller is the cool thing again (and that’s not just for cars).

There are a number of reasons why it makes sense to return to focus on small:

  1. Market conditions: The current state of the economy makes it cost prohibitive for many consumers to purchase products in bulk or to purchase the biggest and boldest option from the hottest envy brand (e.g., a gigantic Louis Vuitton bag). 
  2. Cost of entry: Many consumers are interested in trying a product or brand, but the “larger” versions that dominate store shelves these days are too expensive for a trial purchase.  Smaller brand entry versions make testing a product a lot easier and less frightening in this economy.  Hopefully, the new customer who tries the smaller version will like it and return to buy the product or brand again and again.
  3. Global market introductions: If a brand wants to break into a new global market, a smaller version is a good way to do it successfully.  Not only are the customers in many markets around the world struggling, but many of these markets are still at the early stages of growth.  Consumers in emerging markets are just beginning to learn about making intelligent purchase decisions, determining value, and so on.  Offering smaller product versions is a great way to slowly integrate a brand into a new market.

How many times have you considered trying a new brand but you can’t find a small size?  Rather than investing a large sum in a large version of a product or brand, you forego it completely for two reasons: you don’t want to waste money and you don’t want to waste the product if you don’t like it. 

What does that tell you?

A small brand strategy might be just want your brand needs right now.

What do you think?

Image: Flickr

Standing Up for the Stakeholder

Oddly, the Sunday Times ran two separate articles about corporate-speak this week, and though I would happily assign most examples of corporate-speak to the bin, I do want to defend some of it, and one word in particular.

Blue sky thinking out of the box

The corporate-speak the ST was decrying falls into three main groups:

  • Long-winded and pretentious phrasing, such as:

    “High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process”

    This example is highlighted by the Plain English website, and they translate it as:

    “Children need good schools if they are to learn properly”.

    It’s best to avoid this kind of writing: it is often intended to impress or to intimidate, and usually ends up with the reader suffering from bad brain fog.

  • Management-speak clichés, such as ‘thinking outside the box’ or ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’. These are familiar to all of us by now, but they must have been fresh and surprising at some point.

    Now they’re like Christmas cracker jokes, and just elicit a groan. New clichés, please…

  • Jargon: language characteristic of a particular group or subject. Examples: ring game; toe-loop; pinking; deboss; and scuppers. (These are from poker, skating, sewing, printing, and sailing.)

And jargon is the type of corporate-speak I want to defend.

Technical term? Provide a glossary

3i-industry-glossary3i industry glossary

All industries have their own technical terms. If you are deeply embedded in an industry, these terms don’t seem unusual at all, and each so precisely describes its subject that it would be absurd to use any other. Even though outsiders don’t have a clue what you mean. This is why we recommend using a glossary on the corporate website to explain any that might have crept in without being noticed.

And there is a clear need for using plain English wherever possible, at least if you’re trying to communicate with someone who is not within the industry, and therefore couldn’t be expected to know the technical terms.

This isn’t easy. One of the difficulties many website managers are dealing with is how to provide their information in an easily understandable form, appropriate for the audience they are aiming at.

Betting on the corporate website

Take, for example, our use of the word ‘stakeholder’. This word was vilified in both those articles in the Sunday Times this week.

The original meaning of the word was ‘someone entrusted to hold the stakes for people betting against one another, and required to hand the stakes to the winner’. This would have been someone trustworthy and independent, who probably didn’t have a stake in the bet.

Yet today it often means almost exactly the opposite: someone who does have an interest in ‘the bet’ – and probably a strong interest. In corporate terms, it describes people who are affected by, or who can affect, the actions of the business; those who have a stake in the success of the business. We use it to describe people with an interest in the corporate website. Examples include: investors, journalists, job-seekers, analysts, employees, suppliers …

This sometimes happens to words; the language changes constantly. (There’s a fascinating list of changes here, if you’re interested).

Does it matter? Does this change in meaning confuse people?

I don’t think it does, at least in this case. Using the words appropriate to the situation is important. In this case, using ‘stakeholder’ is a useful shortcut for ‘group of people with an interest in the business and therefore in the corporate website’ and will be understood by our primary audience. Avoiding using it will lead to repeatedly using long-winded phrasing; something to be avoided in itself.

What do you think? Is there ever a case for using jargon? Should all the language on a website be suitable for the averagely intelligent, averagely educated 14-year-old, or can some of it be more complex?

Is it even possible to remove all corporate jargon from the corporate website?

Please: No More Ethical Businesses!

thinking ape

An interesting blog on Apesphere caught my eye last month.

“Has “CSR” become a code word for “profit trumps ethics”?” asked Andrew Newton, before reaching this rather worrying conclusion:

CSR has become shorthand way of saying a company’s ethical behaviour is only useful if it preserves or enhances the company’s bottom line (paraphrase)

Companies exist to make a profit, period.  But should every business decision have to produce a maximised return on investment?

If you scratch the surface of many companies’ CSR policies, you soon discover that underneath it’s little more than donating money to worthy causes.

While this is admirable, it has nothing to do with changing corporate behaviour and the decision-making process.

Worse than greenwashing

This isn’t just greenwashing.  Greenwashing is a marketing ploy through which a company intentionally attempts to deceive customers by adopting the green trappings of an eco-friendly company.

This is a real failure by the commercial world to understand that CSR means businesses decisions should be guided by wider considerations and not just profit alone.

That’s not to say that companies should become charitable institutions; far from it.  But if responsible behaviour requires a cut in profits, then a CSR business should take the cut in profits and understand there’s more to life than money. NOTE: a profit is still made!

Nor is this charitable giving, scheme membership or standard compliance. It requires every single business decision to be measured against a notion of responsibility alongside the financial return on investment.

But isn’t CSR Ethical Imperialism?

Injecting ethics into a business seems like the next, most logical thing to do.  After all, ethics is all about morality, and without that how can you define responsibility?

The big trouble is that ethics is also about culture.

Consider the USA, UK, South Africa and Japan, or Venezuela, India and China.  None of these share the same culture.  All have a political system founded upon the specific ethical considerations of their population in general.

Western proponents of ethical business need to be careful that they’re not advocating a form of imperialism.  Neither capitalism nor communism are perfect enough to fit every human society on Earth – nor are western business ethics.

Chiquita’s Ethical Dilemma

One example of how unsuited ethics is for the corporate world is the plight of international banana magnate, Chiquita.

In 2007 they were fined $25m for supporting an illegal terrorist organisation in Columbia – the AUC and they now face protracted lawsuits from Colombians claiming damages.

Chiquita first started paying “danger money” to the AUC in 1997, as the Colombian civil war reached it’s most recent peak.  In 2001 the AUC was officially recognised as a terrorist group in the USA, making such payments illegal.

That still leaves 3 years before Chiquita stopped making the payments and informed authorities that they had been the victim of extortion in 2004.

Ethically, what else were Chiquita supposed to do?

Refuse to pay danger money, leaving their employees open to attack and kidnapping?  Withdraw completely, abandoning thousands of people and leaving a hugely profitable business in paramilitary hands?

In 2001 they published their first Corporate Responsibility report, which embraced the SA8000 standard.  Tellingly, this states that in 2000 one of their Colombian plantations couldn’t be assessed “due to safety concerns”.

Chiquita are judged (quite fairly) to have broken the law and are now faced (quite rightly) with a multitude of legal cases from Colombian families.  However, trying to enforce embedded ethics onto business will only encourage multinationals to fight shy of being in a similar situation, not encourage them to remain engaged.

So Please, Less Ethics…

This is why ethics should be left out of business.  When faced with difficult decisions all ethics does is muddy the waters with compromises which make no-one happy.

Instead of trying to recreate the 19th century ethical business models to support industrial manufacturing, companies ought to be inventing 21st century business models needed to support an exploding global population.

These sustainable business models must be based upon sustainability: the principle that you only take what you can replace or what will “grow back” naturally.

Which means founding all business decisions upon a sustainable “return on resources” alongside the traditional return on investment.

… And More Sustainability

So, please, less of the ethics.  Ethics are a personal belief, founded upon one’s life experiences and culture.  They are not a universal language.

Instead, let’s have more sustainability.  Let’s preserve the raw materials (mineral, animal or human) upon which all businesses are founded and ensure profits can be sustained for generation after generation.

And, as Andrew implies, let’s get away from our obsession that the bigger the profit, the better the business.  As someone wiser than I recently said:

There are many things which money can buy, and a few things it cannot.

But there’re many more things which money should never be allowed to buy.

Photo credit: Thinking Ape by flasporty from flickr under Creative Commons Attribution License

Some Really Good Advice That’s Hard to Get (Part 2)


advice-2

As promised in a previous post, here’s a roadmap to the four articles that comprise Dr. John Sullivan’s analysis of “127 suggested features or capabilities for the corporate careers website of the future.”  The links will take you in order to the articles archived on Sullivan’s own website.  (Links to the ere.net version are provided at the end of this post.)

Part 1:  Contains an analysis of the current state of most Career sites; a list of “16 Reasons Why the Web Is a Powerful Recruiting Sales Tool”; an index of the “18 Categories of Website Features or Capabilities” that will be discussed in the series; and discussions of the first three categories, which are:

  • Careers page easy to find on the lead-in page
  • Immediate “wows” to get their attention
  • Quick identification features

Each category has its own list, so Part 1 contains the first 23 of the 127 suggested features or capabilities.  (The category names in the individual parts sometimes are not the same as they were on the index list, but they are similar.)

Part 2:  Covers the next five categories, which are:

  • Initial classification of the visitor
  • Features that provide personalized information
  • Personalized features and expedited treatment
  • Features for attracting employed top performers
  • Features for attracting active job seekers

This group brings the features/capabilities total to 56.

Part 3: Covers the next four categories, which are:

  • Other information-gathering elements for all visitors
  • Careers page features that sell them on the firm
  • Jobs page features that sell visitors on this job
  • Features that make it easy to find jobs

This group brings the features/capabilities total to 92.

Part 4:   Wrapping up with the remaining six categories:

  • Features that bring the firm to life and make the firm appear genuine
  • Features that help assess job qualifications
  • Features that provide feedback to candidates and that answer their questions
  • Elements that help build the relationship over time
  • Geographically localized features
  • Other things to do related to the site, including metrics

The features and capabilities in the last category (Other things . . . ) are not numbered, so they are not included in the 127 total.

The links provided above are to the Sullivan site because the articles are more readable there and the titles are part numbered.  If you prefer to read them on ere.net (where the list numbering is continuous) here are the links in order:

Ere.net Part 1

Ere.net Part 2

Ere.net Part 3

Ere.net Part 4


(Thanks to “Solo, with others” for a lakeside view of the advice business.)