Posted by: lorihowell | October 14, 2013

Can We Really Trust the Ethics of Any Company?

Not  many employees go to work everyday simply to contribute to the common good. Most people have to work because they need to earn a living.

The  same rules apply to companies. Though our culture reaps enormous benefits from altruistic companies who care deeply for citizens, businesses are typically tasked with profitability. Leaders and employees must answer to shareholders or company owners, often putting profit over other important values.

I’m not insinuating that’s okay, just trying to keep my expectations in check.

Forbes regularly publishes a list of the world’s most ethical companies according to the Ethisphere Institute, a New York City think tank. Even more interesting than who appears on the list today, is the fact that McDonald’s was one of two restaurants on the list in 2009.

Wasn’t McDonald’s one of the first companies to practice “cradle-to-grave” marketing? Don’t they still engage in underhanded marketing to kids while proliferating type 2 diabetes?

McDonald’s is an easy target. There are likely political reasons for their appearance on a list of ethical companies. I will remain skeptical.

Similarly, I believe there are political reasons for many mission statements—especially those that espouse community and employees over profit—because, ultimately, companies are most often loyal to the bottom line.

Do you know what your company mission statement is? If your company has a mission statement, do you know how it was drafted?

McD

Photo at right courtesy of RBerteig, Creative Commons.

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Posted by: lindseynewkirk | October 14, 2013

Does Mission-Driven Communications and Organizational Identity Produce ROI?

The main idea I surmised from “Do Firms Practice What They Preach” is that the mission statement is about authenticity.  The companies that had stakeholder and social/environmental considerations already woven into the fabric of their business were the ones that represented their companies honestly and had the highest opportunities to achieve desired behaviors.  The article does leave in question if “accurate mission statements lead to a better reputation and therefore improved financial returns”.

The article “How Does Organizational Identification Form” doesn’t directly mention anything about financial returns, nor their specific mission statements, I deduce that for authentic mission driven businesses, the answer is yes.

As a result of both sensegiving as well as sensemaking, CSA customers found that their personal experiences and connections to food issues were enhanced beyond their relationship with the product.  Similarly the result of sensegiving as well as sensemaking, created a strong work culture that inspired positive behaviors and personal growth for employees outside of work and produced increased value for clients.

Aside from the environmental and social ROI, what are the possible financial ROI’s that could accompany these sensegiving efforts?

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Posted by: Melissa De Lyser | October 13, 2013

Week 2: De Lyser Communicating with Grace … LiveStrong

I wish the LIVESTRONG Foundation well.  I think they do, and have done, extraordinary work for those struggling with the impact of cancer.

I think the MACH 1 Group’s approach to rebuilding trust in the wake of the Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace is the right one:

  • They’ve been honest about their founder “misleading the world, as well as his colleagues at the Foundation.”
  • The focus on “turning curiosity into an opportunity by emphasizing a new direction, a recommitment to patients and survivors and showing the world that the Foundation lives the philosophy of its brand” is also a good strategy – if not the only strategy – if the Foundation wants to survive..
  • They are focusing on what the Foundation is about, rather than fundraising
  • While they have been transparent about the Foundation, they’re policy of “No more comments on any developments in Lance’s legal, personal or professional life” is also good strategy.

LIVESTRONG is a nonprofit.  Nonprofits rely on donations to do good work.  If you are looking to contribute to an organization that helps cancer patients, how likely are you to donate to a foundation founded and named after a liar and a cheat?  Lance Armstrong isn’t just a celebrity endorser for LIVESTRONG he is LIVESTRONG.  He founded this Foundation; it is named after him. Will the trust-building strategy be enough to keep the organization alive?  What other options are there?

 

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Posted by: graceroxasmorrissey | October 13, 2013

Introspection in the Board Room

Is there a real place for having a sense of mission in the for-profit organization?  While mission-driven communications goes to the core of how non-profits operate, its applicability within the market-driven realm has always been rather fuzzy. This is especially true when dealing with intangibles such as core values whose ultimate worth to the organization don’t always line up with the near-term imperatives of the next sales cycle or the current fiscal year.

But a modern company also has to make its way in an evolving set of socio-political circumstances.  In the US, the slew of corporate scandals at the turn of the 21st century and the consequent passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act put a lot of companies on the ethical defensive. And among the shields they put up are reconstituted mission statements proclaiming, nay protesting, their adherence to the highest ethical standards.

As to how much of it involves true introspection in the board room or mere smoke-and-mirrors is central to the question of the place for real mission-driven communication in the for-profit company.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Should mission-driven communication in today’s corporate setting adopt a strategic (winning minds) or a messianic (winning hearts) tone?  Please take into account insights gathered from readings about how it relates to personal and corporate values and behaviors.

2. As strategic communicators, how can we help shape a company’s mission-driven communication in a fundamentally meaningful way, so that it truly becomes strategic rather than just cosmetic?

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Posted by: Natalie Henry Bennon | October 13, 2013

Organizational Identification for Non-Profits

I was particularly interested this week in organizational identity (How Organizational Identification Forms, Journal of Consumer Research, 2011). I found myself trying to relate the findings to a nonprofit that is trying to build support for its work.

The article maintains that people identify with an organization via sensegiving and sensemaking. Sensegiving occurs when the organization formally gives a person a sense of belonging, for example via newsletters or meetings or events. Sensemaking happens informally, via conversations among the constituents, or shared activities among the constituents. Many times, the article claims the sense of belonging is formed via “productive consumption” among constituents. But what is productive consumption? In the case of the CSA, each CSA member consumer the CSA’s produce, and feels they are doing something productive in that. In the case of BLAM, the best I could figure is that productive consumption occurred when they all got drunk together at work; they consumed alcohol, and they felt productive because they did it together and it was fun? I have a hard time relating to this example; I don’t think it encourages healthy behavior and it feels to me like a big frat party where you’re not cool if you don’t drink a lot. But it did create, for many people, a sense or organizational identity.

I am wondering, for a non-profit, how can one capitalize on these ideas to gain any of the following more awareness or support? What kind of productive consumption can a non-profit offer?

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Posted by: kpokrass | October 10, 2013

Is the Truth Always Interesting?

In this past Monday’s J621 class, Professor Donna Davis shared David Ogilvy’s quote “tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.” Ogilvy, who is considered the father of advertising, is absolutely right. As communication professionals it’s our job to pinpoint interesting marketable aspects of items we are tasked with promoting.

But, what if the truth is not fascinating? This is a challenge that I know all marketing professionals have dealt with at one time or another. How do you market an item that is boring or over-complicated? As marketers, we all want the opportunity to market a product that is in-demand, relevant and user friendly. However, as we all know, this isn’t always the case.

If we accept Ogilvy’s challenge, we must sift through the truth and find relevant information that can be marketed as “interesting” to our target audience.  At times this can be challenging, as it is up to us to find context and relevancy. Ogilvy’s statement “making the truth fascinating” also transfers over to this blog.  As a new graduate student, right from the get-go we are inundated with knowledge from many different sources pushing different viewpoints. It’s up to us as critical thinkers and professionals to analyze and find an interesting element to blog about.

Is the truth always interesting? No. But, it’s up to us as communication professionals to make it so.

David-Ogilvy Quote

 

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Posted by: Joel Arellano | October 7, 2013

Misunderstanding the Twitter

The Wilson/Supa and Wright/Hinson research both misunderstand Twitter. Twitter is a semi-public means to exchange text messages en masse, granting immediacy, brevity, a wide audience, and re-transmissibility, which well suit the medium for exchanging time-based information or quick notes that don’t merit a formal email. Wilson/Supa treat Twitter as an undifferentiated mode of communication on par with email, studying whether participants prefer Twitter as a primary method of communication, and whether they perceive Twitter as a “news” tool. The authors never define the latter term, nor do they investigate Twitter’s tactical role among the broader tool set of news media- and they never define Twitter as a medium.

So how do journalists and PR practitioners use Twitter? Neither study pursues this question, though without answering it, we have no context to meaningfully interpret the data. Wright/Hinson mention significant differences in survey data depending on the kind of organization for whom subjects worked, but the authors don’t elaborate or even present their supporting data. Investigating these different applications should have been the basis for studying trends in the use of Twitter.

Both pairs of researchers set themselves up for failure by collapsing a variety of distinct roles into overly broad categories- PR practitioners and journalists. Photojournalists leverage time-based information differently than other journalists, and a PR agent for restaurants will collect and distribute event info differently than a healthcare PR agent. These distinctions deserve more attention.

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Posted by: kgaboury | October 7, 2013

Finding meaning in the noise

Note: I had some issues publishing this this morning, but thought I’d post it anyway since it was already done.

As we go about our daily lives, we’re inundated by thousands of different messages fighting for our attention. Telephone poles are plastered with multi-colored posters advertising rock concerts, billboards hover in our periphery whenever we drive to work, commercials periodically interrupt our viewing of football games. But are they really saying anything?

In chapter one of “Strategic Communications and the Professions,” Dan O’Hair, et al. describe noise as “anything that interferes with communication.”
I’d add one word to that: effective. As the authors point out, communication is a two-way street. The source and receiver of information must have shared meaning, or the communication fails.

I think as strategic communicators, part of our job is to wade through the noise and find some sort of meaning. But are messages that aren’t relevant to us really worth our time? Why is it that the annoying mattress store jingle from the radio gets stuck in out heads? It may be an effective communication, but if we don’t actually need a mattress, it doesn’t mean anything to us. Eye-tracking studies have found that readers of online articles rarely view ads on the side of the page, according to the Techcrunch article. Why, then, are they still so prevalent online? As Lindsey just mentioned, Suster says we’re wired to only pay attention to what’s relevant to us, and everything else is just noise.

How do you respond to the multitude of different messages we’re bombarded with each day, and what do you choose to pay attention to or ignore?

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Posted by: lindseynewkirk | October 7, 2013

Is The Consumer in Charge?

It can be dizzying to see the communications circus that businesses are required to employ in order to engage consumers.  Long gone are the days of static visual bombardment as the efficacy to garner attention.  Is it now the consumers who are (albeit inadvertently and multifaceted) informing businesses how they need to be interacted with?

As Mark Suster points out, we have become wired to only pay attention to what’s relevant to us.  Audiences demand authentic engagement and experience: to interact, to use, to respond and to share.  Then the question is, does it work?

Navigating a strategy in the digital realm is no small feat as we see with the juxtaposition of some almost contradictory trends.  The 2013 Agency Report highlights that there is growth opportunity for agencies as client demand for integrated digital services increases.  Yet Wright and Hinson’s article highlights that practitioners recognize the value of social media but currently don’t spend much time on it.  They also show that there is yet to be significant measurement in the effectiveness it’s impacts on attitudes, opinions and behaviors.  Perhaps that is just to be expected as the industry steers through simultaneous discovery and activation through these complex and newly emerging trends.

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Posted by: kevinchartman | October 7, 2013

Mobile Ready – Are You Ready?

The media and the public have never been so intertwined or accessible. As the Wright and Hinson’s study highlighted, social media networks allow for feedback through which the audience moves from inactive viewer to participant.

News content moves at lightning fast speed over the internet, and its audience is digesting media more and more while on the go. A recent report form Pew found cell phone web use has doubled since 2009. With more content being accessed from mobile phones, this means journalists and marketing, advertising and public relations professionals need to adapt their messaging and platforms to meet their target audience where they virtually reside. While Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms – including mobile specific applications like Instagram – continue to evolve to feed mobile use, professionals working to engage their virtual audience must equally educate themselves and adapt their practices to include mobile device interaction.

While practitioners must keep pace with technological and communications changes, they shouldn’t be so quick to ‘jump ship’ that they fail to develop a consistent audience with whom to communicate. Regardless of the changes in engagement methods, wise communicators will take the time to research where their target audience is and deliver their message there.

Using the right platform to deliver the right message to the right audience is what makes strategic communication.

How do you interact and engage? How discerning are you considering advertisers now have near-direct access to your wallet – while sitting in your pocket – on your mobile device?

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