Dialogue-Driven Communications
Great story in AdAge this morning on P&G moving to dialogue-driven communications. They get that it’s no longer about “telling and selling”.
Procter & Gamble’s Jim Stengel described a major cultural shift that is turning the world’s largest marketer into a starter of conversations and a solver of consumers’ problems rather than a one-way communicator. “It’s not about telling and selling,” said the chief marketing officer of the company that once lived by that simple mantra. “It’s about bringing a relationship mindset to everything we do.”
Too often the focus is on a “digital or nothing” strategy – with an emphasis on moving into the interactive realms. Stengel is right that the imperative needs to be different: “the need for brands to be authentic, trustworthy and generous”.
And I like this view: “Market share is trust materialized.”
Getting Back On Deck… Thoughts On Corporate Blogging
Haven’t been blogging much later – just very busy and on the road in Europe for a week with customers and partners.
Interesting pointer from Stowe to an interview by Paul Dunay with Jack Welch about corporate blogging. Jack’s advice? Be authentic.
[from Buzz Marketing for Technology: EXCLUSIVE: Jack Welch Discussing Web 2.0 by Paul Dunay]
Buzz Marketing: So what is your advice for companies adopting new Web 2.0 technologies like RSS, social networking, podcasting and videocasting?
Jack: Just be authentic. Be clear in your vision, and have one message and one view that are authentic. I worked somewhere once where they had different messages for employees, analysts and the press. There should be only one message for everyone, and fight like hell to get that message across everywhere you go.
I was asked some similar questions on corporate blogging (which I’ve always thought was a bit of an oxymoron).
- Is “ghost-blogging” a no-no: At the heart of any blog is authenticity and the writer’s voice. Ghost-writing runs against the very point of a blog which is to engage in a conversation with the community that surrounds you and your company. You can’t ghost a conversation…
- Is there a place for anonymous corporate blog posts (like the Economist?): No. It’s hard to have a conversation with an anonymous person. The intent of a blog is not to publish but to converse. I do see room though for participatory blogs where a diverse range of bloggers blog to a single site. I think this is practical for most companies and more interesting for the readers. The Economist is an anomaly in the publishing world.
- PR person says blogging is “reputation management”. Right or wrong? That PR Person doesn’t understand blogging or the blogosphere – they are contextualizing it through their own lens. And, they are taking a relatively hackneyed descriptor – reputation management – and applying it to a world in which it has little relevance. Various marketing niche’s have tried it with their thesis – brand managers are doing the same with “brand management”. You only have a reputation in the sense that others assign it to you. You earn it. Of course, it could be argued that everything a company does from a communications standpoint is “reputation management” – and that is the problem with the notion. You would hope that blogging would improve and not destroy your reputation right? But does that mean blogging is in fact reputation management in disguise – not at all.
- How about internal editing of blog posts? This is common. I encourage executives to keep others involved in their posts. They have legal and HR risks associated with every conversation so why not mediate some of that risk. What they do need to do though is time-bound others involvement and be clear on the kind of feedback they are looking for. Blog posts are like bananas – they bruise easily and are best served ripe. They need to let folks know they have but a couple of hours to respond – or a day. This shouldn’t be a highly iterative process that people take a week or so to get done. Too many companies treat the blog post like a press release – at least initially.
- Other tips: First, participatory media and platforms – from blogs to wikis and podcasts – represent one of the most significant opportunities available to companies to transform their relationship with customers. They represent one of the most significant transformational opportunities since the Internet. Don’t constrain your engagement. Drive it into every corner of your business. Many of the companies I’ve worked with have seen as much value internally as they have externally.
Second. Just do it. Get going internally and let it evolve. If you get it, get going. Don’t spend hours on consulting fees or hanging with PR people, web teams and lawyers. The technology is available as a utility. A blog can be created in minutes.
Third. The rewards significantly outweigh the risks. But the biggest rewards come not from writing blog posts but rather the comments and resulting dialogue. You shouldn’t look at this as a publishing mechanism but rather a “conversation machine”.
Other tips:
- There are no corporate bloggers – there are just bloggers. Be real. Be authentic.
- Blogging is a conversation. You need to move from transmitting to participating.
- You don’t need a blog to be blogging. Start contributing to others blogs with comments and thoughts.
- Never, never, never spin, lie or pour smoke into the blogosphere. Straight-talk will win you kudos.
- Give it time. Don’t expect raving fans at day one. In fact, expect the opposite for a bit. The blogosphere is very critical and self-correcting. Take feedback and tune accordingly.
- Have fun. This is a relatively informal medium. Revel in it.
Thoughts… Comments…
Measuring Brand Mentions In Conversations…
New firm to track brand mentions in conversations…
On average, Keller Fay finds that people discuss about a dozen brands
each day. The most discussed brands are media and entertainment
products like movies, TV shows and publications. But many people also
discuss food products, travel brands and stores. Target, K-Mart, Sears, J. C. Penney, Gap, Victoria’s Secret and Wal-Mart rank among the retailers most frequently mentioned.…Mr. Keller said that companies could use word-of-mouth research to
guide their advertising process. For example, he said, Keller Fay
recently ran a search through a database of diary entries for a luxury
goods company to see what consumers were saying about it. It turned out
that people with high incomes were not talking about the brand, but
people who made less money were talking about it a lot. The luxury
goods company, which Mr. Keller would not identify, now plans to
refocus its advertisements to reach wealthier customers.
Those Bankers Sure Know How To Sing…
I guess this is one way to get the message out… Take a look…
I Was Misquoted…
Messages inevitably get miscommunicated. They get lost in translation by the media, analysts and pundits. That’s life as a communicator.
Positioning lazy communications – that moment in which the brain disengages from the mouth and pretty much anything comes out – as a misquote isn’t just rich, it’s arrogant and ultimately undermines credibility.
Look no further than the John Kerry furore erupting this election week. Here is what Kerry actually said:
You know, education–if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.
Obviously words of mass destruction in an election week. Rather than just saying “What a really stupid thing to say. That isn’t what I meant. How embarrassing. I apologize to the troops.” – Kerry has this to say:
My statement [Monday]–and the White House knows this full well–was a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops. The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe.
(The closest he’s come, according to Reuters: “Of course, I’m sorry about a botched joke.”).
As the WSJ points out, “”The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement” consists in taking what Kerry actually said at face value.” So, what he really meant to do was, as WSJ goes on to say, is disparage the president’s intelligence and studiousness, to suggest that somehow the liberation of Iraq is the product of Bush’s lack of education. But this makes no sense. Bush has both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ivy League universities. How can that be if he is both stupid and lazy?”.
What Kerry is trying to say is that is misquoted himself while demonstrating how much more intelligent he is that the President? The argument then is that he is more stupid than my stupidity?
Anyway, the reason I’m writing about all of this is that the story clearly demonstrates several rules from my Messaging Playbook:
- When your wrong, stupid or just plain silly, admit it. Humility and honesty are the fastest paths to redemption.
- Going on the messaging offense from a position of existing weakness = bad strategy. First reclaim ground by doing #1.
- You are rarely ever misquoted. You do or will communicate poorly and stupidly at times. People will forgive you if you ask for forgiveness. Perpetuating the issue by explaining what you were trying to do is the equivalent of handing your competitors a Molotov Cocktail when armed with a water pistol.
- The past (in this case Kerry’s war record) is no antidote to an current messaging fire-fight. The only antidote is the future. Move on fast and do not extend the hype or news cycle.
Thoughts…?
