PRESIDENTIAL PARALLELS, THREE (AND FINAL)

“It’s too much hype and hyperbole.”

“Employees don’t want to be marketed to.”

“We get a lot of pushback if we don’t stick to the facts and make our media as objective as possible.”

Those are the responses we hear when broaching the idea of an internal campaign – to drive behaviors, get buy-in, encourage adoption of new technology, and, in general, asking employees to know and feel and act differently.

Serious objections, we admit.  On our side, these rejoinders arise:

• How to gain attention and capture hearts and minds when today’s society is afflicted with ADHD?
• What are results to date using straightforward no-nonsense media?
• How many employees respond to emotional stories versus statistics and studies?

The issue, we believe, isn’t so much with the idea of campaigns as it is with the recent quality of American political crusades.  Mud-slinging.  Slight un-truths or un-remembering.  Slogans with little reality and less soul.  In short, glitz without substance.

There’s a place and time for campaigns inside.  There’s also care to be taken in creating and delivering the exact right messaging, based on the appropriate business case with the perfect (okay, almost perfect) blend of tools.  Scientists respond to stories just as much as facts.  And vice versa for marketeers and HR pros.  Bottom line, it’s all about actions. 

Our thanks to Ross Perot, former Presidential candidate:  “The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty.  The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”

GO DIRECT, YOUNG PROFESSIONALS!

There’s a corporate America practice that has us flummoxed. 

It usually doesn’t work 100 percent of the time for 100 percent of the people. 

It requires lots of preparation and cajoling. 

And it truly needs a major support system, bolstered in part by human resources, policies and procedures, and heavy-duty communications.

The culprit:  Cascading information from managers and supervisors to staff and teams.  Somehow, many times, information gets stuck in the middle.

Our solution?  Straight from a Forrester Research survey, revealing (no surprise) that 66 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they care about, while only 18 percent trust brand information found on Facebook, Instagram, and the like. 

Instead of labeling it in the same league as the somewhat tarnished multi-level marketing, think of it as the friends and family kind of swap, using employees to ‘sell’ to other employees (in this case, to exchange data and info).  Online and social media make it incredibly easy to sell to those you know; internally, most companies host communities and affinity groups on their intranets, encouraging conversations and collaboration.  And if we plot out a well-defined influencer network and map, so much the better.

[Yes, we know the downsides:  That kind of freedom makes brand and corporate messages so much harder to control.  And timing would be, to an extent, loosey-goosey.]

Yet the power and meaningfulness of direct connections overcomes, to us, any objections.  Your take, dear readers?

COMM-CENSUS

Waahh!

The cries you hear are coming from the Midwest, which, says the U.S. Census, is no longer the heartland.  Instead, metro areas increased by nearly 11 percent over the last 10 to 12 years, as did western and southern regions.

Some other numbers that count:

• Latinos, along with a more concentrated Asian upswing, lead the people growth surge by major margins – like 65 percent in Texas, 55 percent in Florida, and, yes, nearly half the increase in Arizona and Nevada.  [That’s not so good for the GOP.]

• City hoods have become more integrated, with the most prominent example being Atlanta.  [That’s great news for promoting the U.S. of A. as a true melting pot.]

Other drool-worthy stats for demographers and psychographers range from Detroit’s “credit negative” status (a 25 percent decline) to the year 2041, the so-called date for the “majority minority” switch in this country.  [Translation:  At that time, whites of European ancestry will make up less than 50 percent of the population.]

We could spend even more time pondering the population shifts and transitions.  What becomes crystal clear to us, in our professional roles as chief communicators and change mavens, are the implications to our work (not to mention the companies we work for). 

A few of our top-of-mind thoughts: 

• Families and personal life take center stage, with policies and advertising and communications reflecting that focus.

• Diversity gets real.   Nope, not a simple nod to mixing color and gender.  Rather, language and visuals and behaviors become keenly attuned to everyone’s needs and inclinations. 

• Words and pictures matter.  Partnering with human resources experts, draw up different kinds of guides that segment and introduce messages and design and translations that will resonate with the various employee populations. 

• Internal and social-media communities will form naturally, gravitating towards like-minded colleagues who share specific values, yet welcoming other more diverse individuals and teams.

Is this a vision, an evolution, or a brand-new world? 

WHY GOOD THINGS MIGHT (RE)APPEAR IN SMALL PACKAGES

Flash fiction.  AOL’s CliffNotes in comic video formats.  Retailers that gobble up high-end sale sites.

These three newsy trends all say small:  Fiction that’s usually less than 1,000 words.  Classics reinterpreted quickly for the non-reading public.  And designer duds at reduced prices for an hour or so. 

Thinking further, we figured out that packaging also ties the three together.  Which got us ruminating about the power of packaging inside corporations. 

Externally, we can all vouch for the impact of great packaging.  After all, CPG companies spend millions and more on product look and feel, the way it’s displayed on shelves, in aisles, and end caps, how it appears in advertising and online. 

As consumers, we’re attracted to bright shiny objects as well as cinematographically-challenging movies (Inception, anyone?).  Many of us, regardless of generation, are captivated by the speed of Internet search and purchase, not to mention the ever-changing possibilities of digital networks.  That, too, is packaging at its height, one of many time-proven ways to get us hooked into and using brands.

Rarely, though, do we ever get well-packaged communications as employees.  Here are just a few examples to trigger some thoughts:  For many and often legal reasons, communicating about benefits tends to be long and involved and simply not all that engaging.  In quite a few businesses, corporate announcements are often ignored or stored in e-folders for later reference.  Even major initiatives that bring good change to life don’t necessarily receive the kind of overall look and feel they deserve.

No, we’re not advocating good looks without quality content and well-defined metrics.   Nor do we espouse internal advertising-type campaigns that are glitz sans information, and lack in-depth analysis and use of WIIFMs, up and down the ladder. 

We’d like to continue the form-versus-function debate re communications:  Does it matter if the package is Tiffany blue or UPS brown?  Or, simply, that something worthy is inside?