Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Got a few responses on my earlier blog on how news makes the front page. The smartest of which came from Stephen Shankland of C/Net who disagreed – sort of – with my comments on Google news.

“In some ways, Google News is richer than any single news outlet, but the flip side is that Google News favors stories that are widely reported. It’s a convenient algorthim that screens out a lot of fringy bunkum, but it also means you miss stories that are important but that the media herd hasn’t trampled to yet. In other words, you only get the news that’s already a commodity. I’m not sure that disadvantage offsets the advantage of seeing a broader pool of editorial sources.”

He’s right – You get the news everyone is reading when everyone is reading it, but you don’t get the news first. So for us news hounds the onus is still on to dig for news sources that have a tendency to break the news rather than aggregate it. And as far as breaking the news go, Shankland along with Ashlee Vance at El Reg, are amongst the best. No pandering to PR people there – they actually clock the hard miles looking for news…

I recently spoke at an IABC conference on Six Sigma in communications. A few of the audience weren’t too keen on my dislike for the Sigma obsession sweeping corporations. The “Hate it, Hate it, Hate it” comments really set them off. That didn’t surprise me – after all, they’d paid to here someone wax poetically and enthusiastically on Sigma. (Don’t get me wrong, you should use Sigma!)

What did surprise me were the comments on the feedback forms that I should use PowerPoint. No particular reason. I just should. Afterall, that was what they were paying for! Take notes? Forget it, I want slides to take home. (Quick reminder folks… most of us speak for free.)

PowerPoint has become an unnatural obsession of communicators. We’ve totally lost track. What we have to say can only be supported by what we have to show. What we show can’t be what we have to say.

Bibek reminded me of my frustration with slideware over real content (just imagine the Gettysburg Address as Powerpoint). And Tufte nailed it. You should definitely buy/read/steal (not from my office) any/all Tufte’s books.

Wired also said it well. PowerPoint Is Evil. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

“Yet slideware -computer programs for presentations -is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.”

Tufte uses an excerpt from Louis Gerstner’s Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? to illustrate his thesis,

“One of the first meetings I asked for was a briefing on the state of the [mainframe computer] business… with Nick Donofrio, who was then running the System /390 business. [I] found Nick, and we got started. Sort of.

At that time, the standard format of any important IBM meeting was a presentation using overhead projectors and graphics that IBMers called “foils” [projected transparencies]. Nick was on his second foil when I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector. After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said, “Let’s just talk about your business.”

… By that afternoon an e-mail about my hitting the Off button on the overhead projector was crisscrossing the world… It was as if the President of the United States had banned the use of English at White House meetings.”

Jonathan Schwartz, our COO, has a great eye for his presentation graphics. Every slide is just reduced, reduced and reduced to it’s Zen-like esennce. They support what he has to say. They aren’t what he says.

Other great presenters – at least in my books – Scott McNealy (ok – I’m a little biased on the first two), Steve Jobs … send me thoughts on others…

So – stand up and speak.

(and anyway don’t use PowerPoint, use StarOffice!)

Reflecting on a day at Katie Payne’s measurement conference, communicators remain overly focused on measuring outputs versus outcomes. A few of the other speakers also touched on this. During my brief presentation I attempted to get at a new way of considering communications measurement (without slides). I think I jumbled a few of my phrases so here goes a quick clarification.

Measurement needs to address four quadrants:

Quadrant One (top left):- Business Requirements & Results. What are the business results required from the program or campaign? What is critical to quality (CTQs) and who are the Suppliers? (for you sigma fanatics).

Quadrant Two (top right):- Operations. This spans the entirety of the communications planning process. From planning through strategy to ideation and tactics. You will also want to measure operating performance – hours of work against programs, training hours, employee retention. I’d also track your cadence – are you able to bring cadence to the activities that underpin the function. While you need to use Sigma throughout the entire process it is especially important for quadrant one and two. Go get a black belt.

Quadrant Three (bottom right):- Outputs. Here you are measuring all tactical outputs from programs. This is the stuff you do. it might include news releases, media calls, press conferences, media tours, web hits, video streams, editorial boards, etc. You also want to measure the outputs from those tactics. Like – opportunities to see (OTS) key messages and brands, articles, photos used, quotes, media recommendations, analyst quotes. The list in both categories is long and will vary dramatically by industry. We measure about 20 categories here.

Quadrant Four (bottom left):- Outcomes. Simply put, did you change, inform and stimulate minds? Doing both drives your business outcomes. There should be a correlation between Q3 and Q4. The link is that between thinking and action. I like to measure this through ARC. Awareness, Recommendation, and Consideration. Are you aware of the company, brand, product or service? Is it being recommended to you – or – would you recommend it? And, are you considering a purchase – or, even if recommended would you consider the company given your values?

All kinds of buzzwords are used by communicators and marketers in quadrant four. Words like Reputation Management, Brand Awareness, Brand Experience. Blah, blah, blah. At Sun we’ve simplified it to one word – Recommend. Are we being recommended by media, analysts, influencers and most importantly customers? I love the idea of us all be accountable to a single metric.

Ideally you will measure the communications cycle through these interrelated quadrants. The challenge most communicators face is getting trapped in the left two quadrants. The world of spin and hype. High performance organizations operate across all four quadrants. I saw one present at the conference – Southwest Airlines. They directly measure the impact of news on web traffic, ticket sales and attitudinal shifts. Really smart stuff and I suspect they are all really valued by their leadership team.

Thanks Katie for a great conference and a fun lobster fest. I’ll be back for both next year.

I’m in Boston at Katie Payne’s great measurement conference. For those of you looking for a cool RSS reader – the question I’ve been asked most – take a look at NetNewsReader. I also like RocketInfo on my SunRay. RocketInfo is browser-based but with the look at feel of an app. You might also want to mess with Firefox which probably the hottest browser on the market. Mossberg loved it and I agree with his comments on IE – which I haven’t used for about three years now.