Corporate Eye

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Archives for 2011

Google Rebrands Blogger and Picasa

Two well-known online brands are living their last days. According to a post on Mashable today, Google is rebranding both its blogging tool, Blogger, and its photo uploading and sharing site, Picasa. The rebranding is expected to launch in approximately six weeks.

It’s always troublesome for loyal customers to accept a rebranding, but Google’s business plan in recent years (particularly with the new Google+ social efforts) demonstrates that the Google brand is set to take over the world.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I do have a point. Google is about brand centralization. Sub-brands will be assimilated into the brand family, and that’s an intelligent move by the Google leadership team. Google is no longer just a search company, and it’s time the sub-brands joined the family. I’m actually surprised this type of rebranding didn’t happen earlier.

However, are there sub-brands in the Google family that are strong enough to hang onto their own brand names? What about YouTube? Only time will tell.

Google has rolled out a number of products in recent years that failed while products like Blogger and Picasa (that until now didn’t have the Google brand name attached to them openly) stayed on the periphery. Google’s new focus on social initiatives is changing things and social destinations like Blogger and Picasa need to come into the fold.

What do you think of Google’s expected rebranding of Blogger and Picasa? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Social Games Put Brands in Front of Consumers Who Welcome Them

A lot has changed since the days when Second Life was the cool online game. Today, social games are integrated into top social networking sites and have created a new avenue for brands to connect with consumers. In fact, according to eMarketer, 1 out of 2 U.S. Internet users between the ages of 18-44 play social games every day, and U.S. social gaming revenues will pass $1 billion in 2011.

Research from Saatchi & Saatchi and Ipsos OTX MediaCT tells us some more about the people who play online social games daily:

  • 54% of men play social games daily.
  • 46% of women play social games daily.
  • 66% of tablet owners play social games daily.
  • 53% of smartphone owners play social games daily.
  • 14% of people who play social games do so at work for at least one hour each day.
  • 2 out of 5 social game players prefer to receive new product information via social games (that’s lower than e-mail but much higher than traditional advertising).

One of the most important takeaways from the research is this — players like “social challenges features of the games they play.” In order to get the best results from brand integration into social games, consider how you can integrate your brand as part of a social challenge. The research offers the following statistics:

  • 57% of respondents believe that product discounts are a “very compelling” incentive to complete a social challenge.
  • 37% of respondents believe that product discounts are a “somewhat compelling” incentive to complete a social challenge.
  • 88% of respondents believe that loyalty programs are at least “somewhat compelling” incentives to complete a social challenge.
  • Challenges that can result directly in social action were also found to be compelling incentives for many social game players.
  • 33% of respondents believe that challenges which result in changes to a player’s status in the community were not compelling incentives.

The important thing to understand is that people are using social games and they are open to receiving brand messages and experiences on social games as long as those brands add value to the overall gaming experience. The worst thing you can do is interrupt players with your branded messages. Instead, enhance the user experience. Of course, that means you need to spend a significant amount of time actually playing the game and learning about the community of players before you can truly integrate your brand in an effective manner. That’s a big step that is too often skipped.

Image: Flickr

Making It Easier To Hear That Whistle Blow

I invited Kenneth Kendrick, who has experience of whistle-blowing, for his views on how companies should communicate their openness to such reporting on their corporate websites. Kenneth is looking for work at the moment: he’s open to various types of work, but is looking for quality assurance or advocacy work. If you can help, you can contact him by email.

How to get employees to report unethical practices before your business suffers

Known as the ‘Whistleblower’ for Peanut Corp on Texas I have had extensive discussions with others in the same predicament. Reporting an ethical, or any, violation can destroy both your career and personal life, as it did mine.

Most people I have talked to—and I agree with them—say that having a company policy and procedure in place will make it more likely that your front line employees will keep you abreast of what is happening.

Most whistleblowers affirm that a third party company handling the complaints makes it easier for them to make a report, especially for a smaller business where employees would have a stronger fear of their reports coming back to haunt them. In a larger organization, where the call is likely to go to someone who has no idea of who an employee may be, this can still be effective.

Employees must also understand that they may be one of only a few people who know about a violation, and thus they will be suspected no matter what mode of reporting they use. Any good company policy will have a contact name to report retaliation at the top levels of the organization.

When it comes to your company’s website, this information should be easily accessible, with both an email format and phone number for reporting violations, and for reporting retaliation. Some people are more comfortable speaking, and some writing.

Giving each report a number or code, so that an employee can follow up is essential to making your workers feel that these reports are not being ignored.

Above all else, as we all too often hear, it is the company culture that will dictate open communication. If someone can speak freely about such concerns with immediate supervisors without fear, problems can be solved quickly, but having a hotline on your website still shows that the organization means what it says.

Policies and procedures should strongly emphasize your commitment to open communication without fear of retaliation. Any link on your site that shows how an employee can report a violation, should also have a link to the companies policy and procedure on these issues.

Thanks Kenneth!

How to Build a Successful Branded Mobile App

There are a lot of mobile apps available to consumers, but only a small percentage of those apps become highly popular. However, apps are extremely important to companies and brands because consumers spend a lot of time using them. Research by Nielsen breaks down the average daily mobile activity on Android smartphones as follows:

  • Apps = 56%
  • Emailing and Messaging = 19%
  • Phone = 15%
  • Web browser = 9%
  • Camera = 1%

Now, consider how many people are purchasing new tablet devices such as the iPad. You can bet these consumers are spending even more time using Apps than Android users. Bottom-line, mobile apps are important, but you need to plan ahead to build an app that has a chance for success.

In its recent Consumer 360 Conference, Jonathan Carson (CEO of Telecom at Nielsen) and Heidi Browning of Pandora offered the following tips to help businesses create the types of mobile apps that consumers want and need. Some of those tips include the following:

  • Apps that “give back” are more popular than other types of apps. For example, rewards apps are very popular.
  • The app must be extremely easy to use.
  • The branded experience should be seamless across all devices.
  • The app should be personalized.
  • Provide something useful such as price comparisons or helpful tips.
  • Make sure the app works perfectly.

Once you develop your app, you need to promote it so consumers can find it. If they don’t know it exists, it won’t do them or your company any good. Nielsen’s research states that consumers find branded mobile apps most frequently through:

  • A friend or family member = 28%
  • Searching the app store on their phones = 21%
  • Third party website = 17%
  • Television advertisement = 15%
  • Newspaper, magazine or radio = 13%
  • Apps promoting other apps = 9%
  • Email tips from mobile carrier = 6%
  • Device home page = 5%
  • Carrier home page = 5%
  • Sync software (e.g., iTunes, etc.) = 4%

It’s important to note that the ways that people find branded apps differ significantly from the ways people find non-branded mobile apps. Advertising plays a much larger role in spreading the word about branded mobile apps. For non-branded mobile apps, 45% of people claim to find them through a friend or family member and 58% claim to find them by searching the app store on their phones. Advertising plays a much smaller role in spreading the word about non-branded apps.

Before you develop and launch a mobile app, consider the tips and research provided above and be prepared to create a useful app and to promote it as part of your overall marketing and branding strategy.

Image: Flickr

Reputation in Financial Services

Reputation in financial services.

Insert your favourite joke about our least popular professions – traffic warden, estate agent, lawyer, banker – here.

Except it isn’t a joke, is it?

Financial services companies continue to be reviled by the public and the media. You might be unsympathetic… but like it or not, the financial services sector is a core part of the UK’s economic system. Their reputation matters to us all – and even if you don’t work within the financial sector, their experience in dealing with these issues may hold useful information that you can use in your own sector.

Communicate Magazine are hosting the 3rd annual conference for corporate communicators in the financial sector this week (Wednesday 29 June), to discuss strategies for rebuilding trust. As always, there will be a range of speakers with different perspectives on the topics under discussion: there are over 25 of them (find out more about the programme).

Sessions include discussion of corporate sponsorship, sustainability reports, managing activist risk, crisis management and brand valuation. The keynote speaker will be Stephen Hammond MP, chair of the Parliamentary Group on Wholesale Financial Markets and Services.

And at least one of the sessions will involve audience participation. Do you, like me, dread being called out from the audience for obligatory fun (read: deep embarrassment)? Having acted as scribe for our group at the Social Media in a Corporate Context conference, writing up our thoughts for the Build an App in a Day task, I can tell you that that genuinely was entertaining, and not too strenuous. I’ve no idea what they have in store tomorrow, though!

Interested? Get in touch with Communicate as soon as possible…

Your Jobs In Their Hands: Mobile Recruiting

With over 14 billion downloads of apps for Apple devices so far, it’s not surprising that companies are looking seriously at how apps could be used as part of their corporate communications strategy.

At the #truleeds unconference last week, Dave Martin (AllTheTopBananas) used his iPad to show me the US PepsiCo app which they’ve developed. It’s been available in the States since late January, and will be launched here in the UK within a fortnight.

And I thought it was excellent.


Click to enlargeIt’s a recruitment app, and it includes video , blog posts and tweets, so the visitor can find out more about PepsiCo; and it is possible to interact with the company from within the app – tweeting, for example.

There is also – crucially – a job search feature. This search can be done by keyword (e.g. ‘manager’); there’s a map showing where the current job vacancies are; and the visitor can set up alerts to get notification of new jobs based on the chosen keywords.

Found the job for you? For the Pepsico app, the visitor expresses interest and is then emailed a link to apply (routing them to the central application system). Other companies enable application right from within the app itself.

Nice.

The content for the app is taken from the corporate site (though I imagine you could create app-specific content), and auto-updates: so it doesn’t necessarily create an additional hungry mouth calling for more content.

And these apps can be integrated with your applicant tracking system. If the visitor has already registered, then they will be able to log in to see the status of their application and make any necessary updates to their details.

Thinking that no-one would ever find your app? Obviously you’d advertise it on your corporate site, just as Pepsico do (the page shown above is available from their main Careers navigation) but it would also be findable via the iStore / apps-search functions. Plus, just as your site currently ‘sniffs’ to learn what device your visitor is using, to present them with tailored content (it does do that, doesn’t it?), if they are on an iPhone/iPad, then they could be presented with notification that the app exists, and the opportunity to download it.

Naturally, the company can see statistics about what the visitors are doing with their app. And it seems to work: Pepsico have filled 12 posts through the app already.

AllTheTopBananas have created 35 apps for job boards so far, and 40 for corporates. There have been 550,000 downloads of their apps to date, so there’s clearly a demand, and a growing one:

  • by 2013, there will be more internet access from mobile devices than from desktops.
  • Google searches conducted on a mobile device show different results than those conducted on a desktop: for those searchers using a mobile device, mobile optimised sites are presented first.
  • And interestingly, the top keywords for job searches using these apps are: manager, driver, warehouse. It isn’t just white-collar job seekers using these tools.

So if you aren’t working on optimising your site for mobile – at least, and possibly offering mobile content via an app as well – then you’re at risk of falling behind, no matter who you are trying to attract.