Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Reputation in Oil Gas and Mining: Sharing Best Practice

Reputation in Oil Gas and Mining: Sharing Best Practice

sharing-best-practiceEarlier this year, I was cold-called at home by a research agency wanting to know my views on oil companies (their corporate image/reputation/behaviour/media coverage) – and of course, about one in particular.

It was a fascinating exercise to go through, given what we do, and it was interesting to think through how one’s perception of a company changes over time. I’d have loved to see the results of the research.

I’m obviously on some kind of list, because more recently I was called by a similar company wanting to know what I made of high street banks (more on that odd experience another time). It’s worth noting that the bank’s agency asked for my views on the website and the bank’s use of social media (as a customer service tool); I seem to remember that the oil company’s agency was also interested in the website.

In both cases, the agency wanted me to compare different companies in the same industry, and it is certainly true to say that what tarnishes one company’s reputation can also affect its competitors – it makes sense to consider reputation by sector.

This year’s Reputation in Oil, Gas and Mining conference will be the fourth, and, building on previous successes, Communicate have expanded it to a two-day conference – 11-12 June, 2014, in London.

Over two days, there’s obviously time for a variety of sessions, and they range from:

  • re-aligning a crisis management plan
  • through navigating the legal landscape
  • to community and activist outreach

…though the one that first caught my eye will be about communicating the corporate ethic, in which a compliance lawyer will share her experience of working on Anglo American’s anti-corruption programme.

There will be workshops, and, as before, an interactive session in which a lawyer, a journalist, a reputation advisor, and activist, a comms head and a senior PR counsel play themselves as a (fictional) crisis takes place – always a fascinating session.

Speakers include lawyers, lecturers, CEOs, several corporate comms, brand and digital executives. It’s looking good: find out more

1 in 2 Americans Read Brand Blogs

blog with mouseBrand blogs are more popular than you might think. According to research from managed WordPress hosting provider WP Engine, 46% of Americans read their favorite brands’ blogs and those brand blogs are influencing consumers’ perceptions of brands and their purchase decisions.

WP Engine found that one in two Americans say that it’s important for brands to publish blog content with one in five saying they’re satisfied with any branded content that isn’t overly self-promotional with the intent to sell products or services. Even more respondents to the WP Engine survey (two in five Americans) say they actually prefer reading content on a brand blog rather than via a third party magazine or website.

In fact, the majority of Americans say they want to read brand content, including brand blogs. They’re primarily looking for brand content that focuses on important issues (27%). On the flip side, nearly everyone (96% of survey respondents) claimed they do not want to read or view content that shows celebrities using branded products. They want useful information from brands. In fact, 32% of respondents identified the top benefit of brand blogs as enabling them to keep up with current information.

To add more evidence that brand blogs are essential parts of an integrated marketing plan today, two out of five respondents to the WP Engine survey agreed that brands that don’t publish blogs are negatively impacted. In all, 19% of respondents believe that brands that don’t publish blogs lose an important tool to communicate with consumers while 12% believe that not having a blog makes the brand look lazy. One in 10 respondents believe that a missing brand blog means the brand is less relevant to consumers.

Of course, publishing a brand blog is only the first step in leveraging a blog as a brand building tool that indirectly drives purchases, loyalty, and advocacy. Think about what your blog says about your brand. Remember, the research shows that consumers want useful information from brand blogs. They actually use that information when making purchase decisions. However, they do not want content that directly sells products and services. Direct marketing on your brand blog is a guaranteed path to failure in consumers’ minds. For consumers, failure also comes when a brand doesn’t have a blog at all, so you can’t get out of this one. Your brand needs to be present. It needs to publish useful original content, and it needs to leave the sales pitches out.

Can you do it?

Image: Svilen Milev

Luxury Brands Shouldn’t Give Up Traditional Media Yet

money affluent richIf you’re marketing a luxury brand to affluent consumers, then you might not want to follow all of the reports and statistics that say traditional media is dying or that investing in television, newspaper, and print ads is a waste of money. According to the Reaching the Wealthy Consumer report from Shullman Research Center, consumers with a net worth that exceeds $1 million are still very engaged with traditional media.

In fact, according to the report, traditional media channels rank first, second, third, and fifth in terms of reach among high net worth consumers in the United States. Television had the highest overall reach of any platform among affluent consumers for the 30 days leading up to the online study (August 20-27, 2013).

Here are rankings of reach among affluent Americans for each of the advertising channels studied:

  1. Television
  2. Websites
  3. Direct mail sent to consumers’ homes
  4. Print magazines
  5. Print newspapers
  6. Email messages
  7. Radio
  8. Facebook
  9. In brick-and-mortar stores
  10. Billboards
  11. Smartphones
  12. Movie theaters
  13. Online newspapers
  14. YouTube
  15. Shopping malls
  16. Gas stations
  17. Online magazines
  18. Tablets
  19. Twitter
  20. Medical offices

When it comes to the engagement rates for these ads, the percentage of affluent consumers who have seen ads and were actually interested in those ads shows a different ranking than the reach rankings. This is particularly in terms of the first place finisher—printed newspapers—which ranked in eighth place based on reach alone.

Here are the top 10 engagement rankings:

  1. Print newspapers
  2. Online newspapers
  3. Twitter
  4. Medical offices
  5. Shopping malls
  6. YouTube
  7. Online magazines
  8. Radio
  9. Print magazines
  10. Facebook
  11. Television
  12. Email messages (tied for 12th)
  13. In brick-and-mortar stores (tied for 12th)
  14. Smartphones (tied for 12th)
  15. Tablets (tied for 12th)
  16. Websites
  17. Direct mail to consumers’ homes
  18. Movie theaters
  19. Billboards
  20. Gas stations

While it might seem at first glance that the data is telling brand marketers to focus heavily on traditional media channels without shifting significant amounts of marketing budgets to digital advertising, a closer look tells us something different. In comparison to American consumers earning less than $1 million per year, affluent consumers are far more likely to have seen (or heard) ads on websites and in printed newspapers followed by on smartphones and in online newspapers. Clearly, mobile and digital channels drive engagement among high net worth audiences, but those engagement levels are a bit different from less affluent consumers who are more likely to have seen (or heard) ads on Facebook and YouTube than affluent consumers are.

Bottom-line, if you’re marketing a luxury brand, then you need to keep a sizable amount of your marketing budget in traditional media channels like television, print newspapers, and print magazines to not only raise brand awareness but also to communicate messages that enhance brand trust among the affluent consumer audience.

Furthermore, you should be testing digital advertising options in online newspapers, online magazines, and so on to determine which digital and new media channels are most effective for your brand and audience. The affluent audience is very different from any other audience. Purchase decisions for luxury brands are unlike any other type of brand. As a luxury brand marketer, you know this. Don’t do your luxury brand a disservice by relying on studies, reports, and statistics that don’t clearly segment the affluent audience from other audience segments. The results won’t be reliable. In fact, the results will probably be very wrong for your brand and your customers.

Image: Jenny W.

Creative Uses for Infographics in the Corporate World

I’ve been thinking about infographics and corporate communications recently, having noticed how more and more companies are including them in their corporate websites – typically in the Media section, or in the About Us section. So I was delighted when Scott Huntingdon suggested that he write a post about infographics. Over to you, Scott…

Infographics are popping up all over the place, in everything from small business blogs to how-to slides, corporate emails to online magazine articles. There is a reason for their popularity, and if you haven’t tapped into their unique tactical power, perhaps you should start thinking about how your marketing strategy and/or communication channels could benefit from creative infographics.

Branding and Beyond

You may or may not have already used infographics in some of your marketing efforts. Infographics like this typically spread branding awareness, communicate the benefits of a particular product or service, or attempt to connect to the customer in one way or another. Below, we can see this exemplified in this 2015 Ford Mustang infographic.

mustang-infographicImage from CJPonyParts.com

This is a perfect use of an infographic: visual representations of one or more communicated concepts, commercial goods or information accompanied by small bits of text to help describe or support what is visually communicated. Here we see what’s new about the 2015 Mustang: The car is pictured itself, while the small bits of images and text tell us in a creative way exactly what’s different about this model (such as how many clowns it could hold).

african-kulula-airlinesImage: Flickr

However, corporations that have used infographics in much more creative ways get much more attention. When Kulula Airlines underwent a brand new fleet design, guess what it included?

The entire aircraft exterior is painted as a giant infographic, not only a highly creative one, but very effective as a means of branding and redesign.

Corporate Communications

Communicating with your audience or target market is not the only way to use infographics effectively. Infographics can certainly help to improve in-house corporate relationships using humorous, engaging or creative infographics, which can easily be shared not just within corporate walls but with your target audience. It’s no secret by now that many times what goes viral on social media contains glimpses of what’s behind the scenes at a particular enterprise.

Additionally, infographics can be used to help deliver a briefing, manage projects and teams, assign tasks, deliver corporate newsletter content, or any other type of in-house communication. Using these methods can actually help clarify and quicken productivity goals, because all of us, not just your target audience, are highly visual creatures, your staff and management teams included.

For example, it’s not unlikely that a flow-chart infographic to present the marketing budget assessment may be a more effective means to communicate how it fits in with overall corporate goals. Humorous infographics can lighten the mood of a serious meeting, just be careful not to use them for something very serious like a merger or buy-out.

We tend to understand information better and more quickly when it is handed to us visually. Most of us forget things we’ve read even recently, but we remember clearly things that we have seen.

Help for Creating Infographics

Obviously not all of us are visual design artists, but there are some great tutorials and tips for creating infographics to be both informative and well-designed. These visual tools for communication are going to be seen around the web more and more, and for good reason: They deliver information in several seconds, make that information more memorable, are highly shareable and add diversity to communication efforts. All of these things are good reasons to use infographics for in-house communication purposes as well as external ones.

Thanks, Scott!

Scott Huntington is a social media marketer from Pennsylvania. Check out his blog, blogspike.com

Why You Need to Harness the Power of Visual Branding

visual branding eyeglassesHuman beings are very visual. We’re physically and emotionally affected by what we see. An image might make us feel something deeply or it might motivate us to take some kind of action. Images can stand alone or greatly enhance words, and you can use them in your brand marketing efforts to boost results.

Visual branding has gotten a lot of attention in recent years as digital and mobile platforms have improved and made it easier and less expensive to add visuals to marketing campaigns across a broader set of media and distribution channels. Furthermore, research shows that visuals improve marketing campaign performance in both online and mobile spaces.

With that in mind, you need to prioritize visual branding as part of your integrated marketing strategy, and you need to convince your leadership team that investments should be made in the creation and procurement of high quality, unique visuals. Here are five primary ways visual branding can improve marketing results:

1. Visual Branding Evokes Emotions

Images can instantly elicit emotions that connect consumers to your brand. Think of ads you’ve seen for charitable organizations, particularly those dedicated to helping sick or starving children and abused animals. Visual branding is a cornerstone of nonprofit branding, but it can be applied to any brand. Take a look at Nike ads. Even Google has embraced visual, emotional branding in recent years with marketing campaigns that focus on visual storytelling.

2. Visual Branding Gets Noticed

People’s eyes are typically first attracted to motion (e.g. online video content or animated GIFs) or color (e.g., colorful images). A web page or print ad filled with words can be designed so white space and typeface draws consumers’ eyes through the copy. However, they’re far less likely to instantly click away or turn the page if a moving element or colorful image captures their attention.

3. Visual Branding Drives Sharing

Did you know that online content which includes an image typically gets more social media shares, particularly on Facebook, than content that does not include image? There is a reason why sites and tools like Vine and Instagram are so popular. People love to share visual content. Make sure you offer some visual content from your brand for them to share, too.

4. Visual Branding Is Memorable

Some images are hard to forget, but even the most mundane image increases memory and recognition for many people who are visual learners. If you rely on text alone, you’ll miss a segment of the consumer audience who is better able to recall images than words.

5. Visual Branding Is Quick and Easy to Consume

As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” While text can give context to images and tell a more complete brand story, an image can communicate a great deal very quickly. Today’s consumers move quickly, particularly online. Visual branding provides another way to communicate your messages to an audience that might never stop to read your content or messages.

How do you integrate visual branding into your marketing plan? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Alfonso Romero