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Bringing transparency to CSR reports

In those far off, misty days of University, one of the terrible misconceptions I used to labour under was that I could play the drums.

My few remaining friends from those days are still trying to convince me of my lack of talent on the piano and guitar as well.

No one mentions singing.

ANYWAY…

One of the drums I keep on banging today is to do with transparency as a foundation of a company’s sustainability, and it’s not just me this time either.  The reason for this is because as regulation has become looser accountability has to be strengthened, and the only way accountability can really be implemented is through transparency.

But how do you do it?  After all, publishing every minute of every meeting ever held will just be a data overload, and while businesses need to move away from secrecy as a default no one’s suggesting the end of commercially sensitive material.

An interesting solution comes from the Netherlands, where the mandatory examination of CSR reports for transparency has been going on for several years now. [Read more…] about Bringing transparency to CSR reports

CSR lessons from the fashion supply chain

Here’s a hypothetical thought.  Suppose I was walking along the street one day and a Chinese man walked up to me and kicked me.

I’m absolutely certain I would say “Ow” and I might also enquire (politely, of course) what had led him to such a course of action.

Now imagine you were walking down a different street in a different country, and a Mexican walked up to you and kicked you.

Do you think your pain or response would be dramatically different because of the different people and circumstances involved?

I doubt it.

One of the very interesting effects (but not intentions) of the CSR and sustainability agenda is the way it breaks down stovepiping between different industries and companies.  Take the recent report from Labour Behind the Label and War On Want (PDF download) for example.

[Read more…] about CSR lessons from the fashion supply chain

comScore Releases 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review Report

Each year, comScore releases a report that outlines what happened in the digital media industry in the prior year, so marketers can get an understanding of what’s been happening and leverage the opportunities created by those trends in the following year.  The complete report is available for free download and paints a positive picture of the digital media landscape that is very promising for 2011.

Some of the highlights from the report follow:

  • Ecommerce spending: Total U.S. ecommerce spending increased by 9% in 2010 over 2009.  Retail (non-travel) ecommerce spending jumped 10%, and travel ecommerce spending climbed 6% in 2010.
  • Social networking: In 2010, 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users visited a social networking site in a month.  The average Internet user spent more than 4 hours on social networking sites each month during 2010, and 1 out of every 8 minutes spent online by the U.S. Internet user audience is spent on Facebook.
  • Search market: The U.S. search market grew by 12% in 2010.  Specifically, unique searchers grew by 4%, and the number of search queries by searcher increased by 8%.
  • Display ads: Display ad impressions increased by 12% in 2010, and social networks accounted for more than 33% of those display ad impressions.  4.9 trillion display ads were served to the U.S. Internet audience in 2010.
  • Online video: The average U.S. Internet user streamed more than 201 online videos and spent more than 14 hours watching online video in 2010.  That’s a 12% increase over 2009.
  • Mobile market: 1 in 4 mobile customers used smartphones in 2010 with 3G usage going over 50%.  In 2010, 47% of mobile users are now “connected Internet media users (via browsers, applications, or downloaded content),” which is an 8% increase over the prior year.

Internet use continues to grow and the mobile market is growing at lightning speed.  Trends show that online video and mobile marketing are the big things for brands to target as well as social networking.  Is your brand represented in online video, mobile and social networking?  That’s where your customers are, and your brand needs to be there, too.  These trends aren’t going to reverse themselves in 2011, and they’re not unique to the U.S. consumer audience.

Image: stock.xchng

Promoting apprenticeships on the corporate site

Are you focused on Valentine’s Day or apprenticeships this week? In case it had passed you by in the all-pervasive wash of hearts and flowers, I’ll just point out that this is Apprenticeship Week here in the UK, and apprenticeships are back in fashion.


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Providing apprenticeships is a great way of demonstrating social responsibility in action, by providing training for the young, the future workforce. A few companies explicitly draw this connection out, such as Mulberry and Rydon, who do so on their corporate websites, and Asos, where the Head of Corporate Responsibility commented in a press release on their new apprenticeship programmes.

With reportedly 280,000 Britons joining apprenticeship schemes last year, and another 100,000 places anticipated over the next three years, I thought I’d see how well this was typically conveyed on the corporate website, starting with those of companies reported in the press to be increasing their apprenticeship options this year.

I looked at a range of corporate websites, including several of those identified in the news as providing apprenticeships; disappointingly, some didn’t capitalise on the publicity by providing information about apprentices on their site, still less on the home page.

I also did a Google search to see what came up in the UK if I searched for ‘apprenticeships’. The top result (at least for me) was to the Apprenticeships site, a helpful site covering apprenticeships in general. The first corporate to come up was BT.


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The Google result was for BT’s corporate site, but in fact this is a single page, leading to a separate dedicated minisite about apprenticeships, BT4Me. This site has a very different design style to the main corporate site, as such recruitment-minisites often do, and includes video diaries and other films. Unusually, this site leads to a Facebook page for BT Apprenticeships: a good place to promote apprenticeships.

A very different approach is taken by BAE Systems, which headlines Apprentice Week on its home page (they’re training over 1,000 apprentices in the UK), and the link on the hero image goes to a dedicated multi-page section within the corporate site.

This section contains an extensive range of content, from a foreword from a senior member of staff and details of the apprentice programmes, to profiles of apprentices, benefits and how to apply. It’s well done, and mirrors the quality and quantity of material usually assigned to a graduate section, with strong impact. BAE Systems clearly take the apprenticeship option seriously.

Jaguar Land Rover (also focusing heavily on apprentices) has a separate careers site, with a dedicated Apprentice section within that site, with videos about the apprenticeships and lots of information about the programmes, benefits and application process, including hints and tips and FAQ explicitly for apprentices. Here the design of the apprentice section mirrors that of the site as a whole (unlike the BT minisite), so looks more corporate. Look out for the video filter, which means the visitor can identify the apprentice videos out of the entire set of careers videos: a neat little extra.

The Tata Steel (UK) website has a dedicated apprenticeship section within the corporate site, with the same type of explanatory information about the programmes, benefits and so on – but also has some older employee profiles, not just recent apprentices, showing the career progression for those individuals after their apprenticeship, which could be reassuring to prospective employees.

Rolls-Royce have a dedicated section too, on the corporate site, at the same level of hierarchy as graduate programmes and general careers. The landing page for this section includes a persuasive quote from an apprentice, explaining the benefits of an apprenticeship over university study. An extensive range of programmes are explained, along with details of benefits, profiles of apprentices and video diaries, and details of how to apply. Most apprenticeships seem to be in the technical industries: this was the first site I looked at where business and finance apprenticeships were offered.

Of course, it isn’t all technical apprenticeships: McDonalds (UK site) has an apprentice section – and I expect that if you’re UK based, you’ll have seen adverts for the McDonalds training. And just below BT on my Google search results page was the NHS, offering a range of health-care, hospitality and catering apprenticeships. Tesco offers apprenticeships in retail. And of course there are apprenticeships in many other fields of work – including new media.

In summary, I’d say that if you are offering apprenticeships, these should be given the same weight as any other type of candidate in your corporate careers section – and certainly, it should be possible to find some information about them, and the more the better. These sites listed here all have good ideas about how to attract potential apprentices, and what information they need to provide.

But the site of the week award has to go to BAESystems, for including a link from their home page in this, Apprentice Week.

Mobile Marketing Matters in 2011

If there is one trend your brand needs to focus on in 2011, it’s mobile marketing.  However, mobile marketing with a local marketing twist will take that trend to the next level.

Yelp is a website that helps people find local businesses, review local businesses, and interact with other users.  If there was any question as to whether or not local targeting through mobile marketing matters, new statistics released by Yelp will put things into perspective for you.

According to Yelp, in December 2010, Yelp mobile app users called a local business every other second.  Keep in mind, that statistic only includes activities by users of the Yelp mobile app, not the website.

More data about Yelp mobile app usage as reported on the Yelp blog follows:

  • 3.2 million unique visitors used a Yelp mobile app.
  • 35% of all searches on Yelp.com came from a Yelp mobile app.
  • Every other second, a consumer generated directions to a local business.
  • A photo was uploaded every 30 seconds from a Yelp mobile app.

The Yelp website has been doing well, too.  Yelp reported the following data on the Yelp blog for January 2011:

  • More than 45 million unique visitors used Yelp.com to make a spending decision based on 15 million reviews on the site.
  • 50% of reviewed businesses on Yelp.com are in the shopping or restaurants categories.

There is no doubt that mobile marketing and geo-targeting are both huge opportunities for brands and businesses, and the popularity of sites like Yelp demonstrates the power of mobile, local and social media marketing when they’re combined.  This is a trend that’s not going away.  The final quarter of 2010 marked the first time in history that smart phone sales outpaced PC sales as reported by research group IDC.  During the final three months of 2010, consumer electronics manufacturers shipped 100.9 million smart phones.  PC shipments for the same time period reached just 92.1 million.

If mobile marketing and local marketing aren’t already a part of your brand’s marketing plan, then you need to bump them up to the top of your prioritization list.  Consumers are looking to their mobile devices to find the kind of local and social information they need to make purchase decisions.  Your brand needs to be there, too.

Image: stock.xchng

Volkswagen Gets Creative in Super Bowl Commercials

The biggest U.S. football game of the year, the Super Bowl, was played on Feburary 6, 2011, and this year, it broke all records to become the most watched television show of all time.  As always, the commercials that aired during the Super Bowl were highly anticipated and buzzed about during and after the broadcast.

Making a statement for the 21st century, Volkswagen debuted new commercials that added a new sense of creativity to a brand that had lost some of its style in recent years.  You can watch both commercials below to see how a brand that had grown a bit stale is trying to re-energize itself.

The first ad features the classic Star Wars music and Darth Vader character through the eyes of a child trying to harness the power of the force.

The second showcases a CGI beetle, representative of the new Volkswagen Beetle.

Volkswagen has been taking a number of positive steps in recent years to drive sales to new heights.  The new advertising creative seems to be a great complement to that effort.  If nothing else, it has certainly piqued some Super Bowl viewers’ interest in what the new Volkswagen Beetle will look like.

What do you think?  Will the new Volkswagen advertising push attract a new generation of customers to the Volkswagen brand?