Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Stakeholder

H&M: taking responsibility

Browsing H&M to see if I could buy a voucher online (I can’t – only in stores), I inevitably ended up in the corporate pages “just to see”, and found something rather interesting on their CSR landing page.

H&M CSR landing page

This is the CSR Manager answering questions in a ‘column’ – which she’s been doing since February. It’s not quite a column, although it does convey corporate opinion; it’s not quite a blog, though it does express personality; it’s not quite microblogging, either. It may even be achieved technically by RSS.

The technology doesn’t really matter – or only in that there isn’t really a conversation going on, and whatever technology they’re using at the moment wouldn’t allow that. What does matter is that the person responsible for CSR in that organisation (Ingrid Schullström) is showing their face, taking responsibility, discussing issues and responding to questions – presumably, questions that have been emailed in.

She gets a name-check on the corporate organisation page too, as responsible for Environment and Corporate Social Responsibility. That is unusual – good for H&M.

So what next for H&M; will they feel able to remove the timelag between emailed-question and posted-reply by allowing a blog-style comment and reply? Or even a microblogging connection? I know it takes a lot of time and effort, and is a significant step (from which it might be difficult to retreat) but it would be very interesting to see.

Proud of your website? Win some recognition in the CorpComms Awards 2009!

business people applauding

Are you particularly proud of your online communications this year? Is your corporate website or your online annual report the envy of your sector? Do your stakeholders, from investors through to employees, only have good things to say about them?

Grab some internal and external recognition for both you and your hard-working team by entering one of the online categories in the CorpComms Awards 2009. They are:

  • Best corporate website
  • Best online annual report
  • Best understanding and use of new media

The awards, run by CorpComms Magazine, are now in their fourth year. They aim to ‘commemorate the exceptional work and creativity of this most dynamic of industries’.

The closing date for entries is Friday 10 July 2009, and no entries will be received after 31 July 2009.

The awards event will be held on Wednesday 25 November 2009 at the Park Lane Hotel, London.

For more information, including additional categories, contact details, entry forms and dinner bookings, visit the CorpComms Magazine website.

It’s not the R—it’s the I

On his list of “13 Trends in Corporate Recruiting for 2009” (discussed in the Fast Forward post recently), John Sullivan includes as one of the forward directions: Reinforcing the business case for recruiting.

He points out that “as budgets tighten and slow economic growth continues, recruiting budgets will face constant constraints.” How to cope? Sullivan concludes that successful organizations will “reposition themselves as non-transactional,” focusing on “systemic issues” and working with the CFO and risk management “to demonstrate the importance of supporting recruiting even during times of reduced hiring volume.”

“Key focus areas,” he suggests, will include “predictive modeling, dollarizing recruiting results, and showing the dollar impact of vacancies in revenue generating positions.”

Since Sullivan’s analysis was written (in October 2008), the news about employment has been generally overwhelmed by news of unemployment. Record numbers of lay-offs, business closings, and other factors are relentlessly reducing the number of jobs available to Americans. So while Sullivan may be absolutely right in saying that good recruiting is not less valuable when you are hiring fewer people—what if there is no hiring at all? And what if there is no money at all? Companies losing billions and firing thousands seem unlikely to spend as much money on recruiting . . .

In that scenario, even if one could “dollarize recruiting results” to show a fabulous Return on a tiny Investment, there might not be much interest in spending any dollars. And that brings us to three questions:

  1. Assuming there is a recruiting budget at all, how much of it should go to web presence, and how much to other types of outreach (advertising, outsourced staffing, job fairs, campus recruiting, etc.)?

  2. If there is a specific budget or budget area earmarked for online recruiting—how much of that should go into the website itself, and how much to other types of online presence (implementation of social media strategies, development of virtual tools and events, podcasting, vlogs, etc.)?

  3. And if there isn’t a recruiting budget at all . . . what does that mean for web presence?

One obvious hurdle in answering questions 1 and 2 is the need for metrics to support the value of web presence. While some companies (probably not most) have traffic analysis around the website itself—and may even have taken that analysis further by, for example, integrating web statistics with cost of hire—few companies will at this point have metrics that reflect the cost-to-value ratio of social media activities.

With economic concerns at the forefront of just about every business consideration these days, it’s worth taking a look at each of these questions in turn. So stay tuned for an ROI series during the month of March. And in the meantime, consider Sullivan’s detailed 2008 discussion of recruiting in hard times.

PETA Advertising Strikes Out Again

I’m not a fan of shock advertising (I think it’s a cop out most of the time).  I’m also not a fan of PETA advertising and marketing.  In fact, I’ve written about my opinion related to PETA advertising before.  There are so many examples of PETA’s misguided marketing strategy (remember sea kittens or the banned Super Bowl ad?  I could go on and on.), but an outdoor billboard that PETA recently resurrected in the U.K. is yet another reminder of a marketing strategy gone awry (and that still has no clue how to connect with a broad audience).  Check it out below.

peta_fat_kids_meat_ad

The PETA brand suffers from an exclusive message (and I don’t mean that in the “special” sense of the word — I mean the opposite of “inclusive”).  The PETA brand message is, “You’re either with us or against us.”  There is no half-way with PETA.  In the 21st century where relationship brands are becoming more and more important, this is the wrong strategy for PETA (or any other organization that wants to grow) to follow.

I also think that PETA suffers from delivering messages that aren’t believable.  One of the most important elements of marketing and copywriting is crafting messages that consumers will actually believe.  Gone are the days when consumers took words like “free” at face value.  The same can be said of extremist messages like PETA’s ‘meat makes kids fat’ message.  The masses don’t believe it.

I do believe there is merit to many of PETA’s fights, but extremist, exclusionary marketing is not helping the brand.  Check out the comments on this article from Brand Republic to see what people are saying about the billboard.

Your thoughts?

Intercontinental Hotels vs. Starwood Hotels Rewards Promotion Battle Begins

intercontinental_hotelWhen the economy is weak, keeping loyal customers happy becomes more important than ever.  For hotel brands, it’s the perfect time to launch a rewards program promotion, so I was particularly interested when I came across an article on SmarterTravel.com where writer Tim Winship compared current rewards program promotions from Intercontinental Hotels and Starwood Hotels side-by-side in order to determine a winner.  In the end, he gave the win to Intercontinental Hotels, but not by much.

Tim looked at both the Intercontinental Hotels and Starwood Hotels reward programs from the consumer’s perspective (as you’d expect for a travel site).  He looked at the type of rewards given, the flexibility in redeeming those rewards, the amount of time given to earn and use those rewards, and the alternative reward options.  Intercontinental Hotels took the win primarily because of its flexible alternative reward options.  However, those flexible alternatives are only included in the fine print of the promotion details.  In my opinion, that’s a missed opportunity.  Consumers don’t like to be tied down to a single choice.  They inherently like options.  It gives them a sense of control over their buying decisions.  A sense of control is even more important when the economy is weak and people feel uncertain and in a state of flux.  [Read more…] about Intercontinental Hotels vs. Starwood Hotels Rewards Promotion Battle Begins

PDF Ebook Resources to get you started in Social Media

I almost entitled this article as “Don’t Let Your Business Lose Out in the Social Media Land Grab”.

You will already have read on this blog how important social media is and will be to the corporate world, but you might still have some reservations. That is fair enough, and to be honest, I still have reservations about some of it.

But really, if you do nothing else with social media for your business, at least make sure you secure your business names, brands, and as important, your own name.

Just like in the domain name world, in most cases only one person can hold these uniquely named accounts. You might not think of a Twitter account as being prime real estate today, but in fact business is already being done there, people are already passing off their own lunatic rantings as those of major brands and celebrities, and you can count on it only getting even more crazy in future.

So, grab your names. Go now.

Back so soon? OK, now what next?

The key to making the most of social media for your business is to work out which parts and tactics work for you, and which do not. That means getting your hands dirty and trying things out. I have had terrific return on investment from blogging, Twitter, and to a lesser extent, LinkedIn, but have found MySpace less than stellar and I am still finding my way with FaceBook. You will not know if these services will work for you unless you take a look.

If you want to look at Social Media for business, check out “What is Social Media” by iCrossing, which is a bit old but still explains the basics: http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks/What_is_social_media_Nov_2007.pdf (PDF)

As a professional you will need to be on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com

Seeing as I already mentioned Twitter, and Twitter is one of those services where only one account can hold a particular name, you really need to get started with that service today: Twitter

Mari Smith is the Queen of FaceBook, and she has a free FaceBook tips report telling you how to get started, how to avoid common mistakes, and how you might use it for business. Get it by adding your email address, right here: http://marismith.com/facebooktips/

Finally, for individuals in this challenging career environment, I have to point to Chris Brogan’s report on how to use social media to find work :http://www.chrisbrogan.com/free-ebook-using-the-social-web-to-find-work/

Hopefully these free resources will give you an idea of the potential social media holds for your business, but the key point is grab those accounts and get started!

This was a guest post by Chris Garrett. Chris writes for several blogs and companies including Cogniview, the leading provider of PDF conversion software, as well as his own blog Chris Garrett on New Media where you can get two free ebooks just for subscribing.