Greeks just the latest to cut comms when they shouldn't

I've spent much of my career arguing with executives NOT to cut internal comms budgets in times of crisis. I've usually lost (most memorably, when Worldcom slashed its European programme after Bernie Ebbers got convicted), and always been proven right.

This week saw the most jaw dropping example of a crisis-driven communications budget cut ever. Greece shut down its national broadcasting system on Wednesday to save money.

Here's why communications is the LAST thing you should cut in times of crisis.

ONE: Information keeps people calm. Lack of it just heightens stress. You must keep the news flowing.

TWO: Getting out of a crisis usually requires some sort of behavioural change. And the best way to inspire that is with a really good communications programme. How are you going to do that if you've cut budget, resources and channels?

THREE: If you don't communicate, someone else will. And they're unlikely to take your line. When you choose to give up control, you can't complain if you don't like the results.
Let's hope Greece's commercial broadcasters can fill the void left by this sad decision

Video interviewing should be a core marketing skill

Back in our in house TV studio for a fair about of work lately.

We're blessed to have the facility, and in these days of social media and short attention spans it's getting more of a workout than ever before.  I get called on a lot to anchor chat show style conversations because of my background as a journalists.  The average marketer seems terrified of the prospect of interviewing someone on camera.  And, I must admit, I've seen some mighty wooden attempts.

Here are my three best tips for being an on camera interviewer.

One.  Prepare the right questions.  You must distance yourself from the corporate line or any underlying agenda.  This almost guarantees boring interaction.  Instead, consider what your subject is best at talking about.  Then think about the questions your audience would most want to explore.  Combine them.

Two.  Keep it short.  Don't be afraid to cut your interviewee off when he starts to drone one. You can be polite about this ... look interested and inject a follow up question.  Keep your questions punchy and direct, so that they encourage short, direct answers.

Three.  Ignore the camera.  I know it's hard, but you must do it.  Imagine it's just you and your subject.  Have a chat.  Enjoy yourselves.  Let the camera capture it.  The results will be far better than if you try to hard.

Keep it fast and funny to avoid tedious events

Off to the European Sponsorship Association awards inside the rock 'n' roll museum at the O2 arena last night.  Which sounds a lot more glamorous than it was.  Lots of luvvie agency types, decent food, no top ups on the bubbly and truly tedious content.

Let's be generous.  Award ceremonies are tough.  Everyone wants to win, but most people don't care about much outside of their own category.  Hosting organisations often use awards as a cash generator (those entry fees can be steep), so it's in their interest to have lots of them.  Which can make for a long night.  We've all been bored by bad productions of the Oscars, and that's celebrating one of the most glamorous industries on the planet. 

How to make corporate award ceremonies interesting?  Here's some best practice I've seen.

ONE.  Invest in a professional, comic host.  Professional comics in the UK seem to be doing this as a regular sideline.  Back in the states, people like my journalism-school classmate Greg Schwem have made a whole career of it.  They research the industry, poke fun and get everyone engaged in little spurts between the award distribution.

TWO.  Award at breakneck speed.  Let's face it, nobody cares about anything other than who won.  The World Communications Awards are masters at this.  Flash the nominee names, call the winner, snap the photo, on to the next.  No speeches and please no corporate promos or case studies.  That might be interesting but do it in a different way.  Which leads to...

THREE.  Put winners in a take-home pack.  I am interested in learning from the winning entries, honest.  Just not over a nice dinner when I'm trying to chat to colleagues.  Produce a booklet that lists all the winners and gives a one-page case study of their winning efforts.  (Smart award committees make this a part of the nomination process, so it's a simple cut and paste job from their application.)  Print it in advance, give it out to people as they leave.  That saves time, and becomes a valued resource after the event.

Sadly, none of these things happened last night.  And we didn't even win our category.  (Begrudging congratulations, Cisco.)  Here's hoping for a better result next time.

Marketers have a critical role in finding the future

Collapses in the retail sector dominate the news today.  More gloom and doom to come, they speculate.  Let's not wallow in depression yet.

The three big names on reporters' lips today are all victims of the digital revolution.  HMV and Blockbuster lost their market to online distribution.  Jessops, they say, to photography merging with smart phones.  For every loser, however, there's a winner. (Can you say Amazon?)

These collapses weren't just bad luck.  In each case, the company failed to spot the changing market and do something about it.  What if HMV had been first with something like iTunes?  Why didn't Blockbuster think of LoveFilm?  Jessops is a trickier case, but certainly putting more emphasis on storage, printing and sharing of all those smart phone shots could have extended their lifespan.

These are strategy decisions for top management, but marketing plays a role.  How can we contribute to keeping our companies ahead of the evolutionary curve?

ONE:  Watch the trends.  Research is the less sexy, but absolutely critical side of marketing.  Pay attention to how the world is changing and extrapolate how it may rock your piece of it.  Advise management on how they can get ahead of the curve.

TWO:  Talk to a teenager.  Complement that formal research by using the hip, trendy ones.  Technology is driving our world, and they're driving technology. Get into their heads.

THREE:  Think outside the box.  Marketing is often the refuge of the creative in otherwise conservative corporations.  Use that.  Get crazy.  Brainstorm.  Consider wild and wonderful market extentions.  Most of the ideas will be impractical but one or two might be great. 

Your creativity could save your company.  Use it.

To be opportunistic, be prepared

Snowed in today.  Thanks to a full complement of communications technology, it doesn't really matter. Work continues as normal.

But the weather-generated shut down is big news, and a big opportunity for marketers.  The PR types have grasped this for ages.  You can be fairly sure that certain incidents are going to happen with occasional regularity.  Weather gridlock.  Lost children.  Some idiot leaving sensitive information on a train.  So you prepare your campaign materials, linked to what you have to promote, and wait for the inevitable to happen.  Then you jump all over it.

You'd think traditional marketing types would follow this model, but there's little evidence of it.  Both my personal and work email boxes are receiving the same levels of traffic as ever from incoming direct mail today, but almost nobody is using a timely angle.

Only three companies grabbed the opportunity.  Lucky, that.  I get to mention them all.

ONE:  The Garden Centre.  First out of the gate, as the forecasts told us to prep for the worst.  Remember those poor birds who won't be able to get to their food supply, and drop by for some bird seed.  Opportunistic, practical and tugged at the heart strings.  Good stuff. (But no, I didn't buy.)

TWO:  HSBC.  The bank took the chance to promote the depth of services available through online banking.  Even if I already bank online, had I discovered them all?  Experience the convenience of banking from your armchair and thank heavens you don't have to battle up to a branch any more.

THREE:  Weight Watchers.  A surprise.  I wouldn't have thought there was a natural angle for them.  But here it was.  The weather is frightful, you probably don't want to go outside.  But exercise is important.  So here are ideas for stuff you can do in your sitting room.  A creative stretch that shows almost anyone can link to almost anything if you think hard enough.

The big surprise?  No grocery stores.  I'm on the email lists for Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's, and not one promoted their home delivery services.  I can't imagine a better opportunity, as we're all locked down making due with what happens to be in our fridges.  And yet, all three missed the boat.  Better luck next storm.

Learning from the Australians (and savouring some fine wine)

The recycling team finally turned up this week for the post-holiday glass pickup.  While the drinking may have been intoxicating, the empties were sobering, both in quantity and quality.  Health would benefit from drinking less, finances from less splurging on top quality stuff.

Amongst those excellent bottles was at least one Australian.  Just twenty years ago, the idea of wines from down under keeping level company with Mersault and Bordeaux was unimaginable.  What happened?  In part, some great marketing.

Examples worth remembering.

ONE.  Use clear language.  Before the Australians, traditional wines had demanded knowledge.  Labels told of the maker and the region, but not the grape variety.  It was up to you to educate yourself to what was grown where, and what it might taste like.  The Australians were the first to start using grape varieties, cutting across all those confusing nuances of terroir.  A a chardonnay or a merlot tasted a certain way, and led to shopper certainty.  Not for the connoisseur, of course, but it sure opened up the lower (and much bigger) end of the market.

TWO.  Remember the whole chain of influence.  There's a famous story about a trip for London-based wine writers, hosted by the Australian wine marketing board.  This was a make-or-break moment; these writers were immensely powerful.  On the day the writers (all men, it was the '80s) landed in Sydney, the board had bottles delivered to their wives.  "This is what your husband will be drinking this week.  We hope you'll enjoy it, too."  Evidently, the writers came under unusual pressure when they came home to give favourable reviews.  Brilliant.  All too often we forget that people are influenced outside the office as much, if not more than, inside.  The Australians used that beautifully.

THREE.  Have a good product.  Throughout the '90s, the French reaction to surging Australian sales was "it's just marketing".  And yes, that helped.  But it would have been a short boom without a great product.  Marketing got people to try.  Taste got them to stay.  Marketing and product need each other, just like those grapes need yeast to become wine.

And that wine?  It was Gemtree Uncut Shiraz 2007.  Good luck finding any.  I bought it direct from the charming winemaker, who swore with passion that it was his best vintage ever and would be exquisite if laid down for five years.  I gave in to the marketing.  And the product paid off.

Tips for sanity checking campaigns

Stopping off for a coffee between meetings in London today, I noticed the pictured tent card on my table.  I could win coffee for a month ... OR a free iPad.

My immediate thought:  A month's worth of something as inconsequential as coffee adds up to an expensive item like an iPad?  Jeez, this is expensive.  Must buy less.

Probably not what the marketer behind the campaign had in mind.  Perhaps my reaction was a renegade, pedantic one-off.  But it did bring to mind some rules of sanity checking before launching a campaign.

ONE:  Ask your mum.  Or your kid, or anyone else who has nothing to do with what you're promoting.  We all tend to get blinkered by our own little worlds.  It's amazing how some distance can reveal the blindingly obvious.

TWO:  Think like your enemy.  Put yourself in the shoes of the person selling against you, and then poke every hole you can think of into your argument.  Find your weaknesses.  Because, believe me, they will.

THREE:  Keep it simple.  Had they offered me free coffee for a month, I might have found that a fine offer.  A chance to win an iPad?  Cool.  (Although I, like seemingly everyone else in that particular Costa, already had one.)  But offering me both invited confusion.

No more coffee "out" for me this month.  Maybe I can save up enough for an iPhone 4.

Rule of threes drives new marcomms blog

One of my best bosses ever believed fervently that the human brain was programmed to instinctively process in threes.  Think about it.

Reading, writing, 'rithmetic.  Red, white and blue. Bacon, lettuce and tomato.  Father, son, Holy Ghost.  He had a point.  He based his whole management style on it.  I'm just pinching it for a blog.

I've been thinking I needed to start blogging professionally for a while.  Specifically, since I met Sharif Khalladi, author of The Social Executive, at an event last summer.  His starting point, which I've long agreed with, is that transformational leaders are great communicators.  It follows that in this connected age, those leaders must embrace social media.  For executives in marketing or communications, that need is much greater.  Those who don't will soon be left in the last century.

I'm not new to blogging, of course.  I was a social media early adopter and my blog on the latter half of the work/life balance reaches its sixth anniversary in May.  If you're more interested in fine dining, opera, museums and travel, check out Ferrara's View.  But if marketing communications, PR and internal communications loom large in your world, you might want to check back here.

What will you find?

ONE.  Observation.  I'm a trained observer, of course, thanks to that fine journalistic education at Northwestern University.  The corporate world throws up a lot of quirky stories.

TWO.  Education.  I shudder to admit it, but I've passed the 25-year mark in the corporate world.  I've seen a lot, made plenty of mistakes, managed to do some things very well.  I'll pass on the benefits of my experience.  Use it as you will.

THREE.  Entertainment.  We spend the majority of our waking lives at work.  It should be fun.  You won't find weight, lofty or erudite here.  I promise to keep it quick, relevant and entertaining.

So that's the promise.  Three observations relating to the world of corporate communications in every entry, written to amuse you whilst, hopefully, giving you some insight to help you do your job better.  I hope you'll be back.