Brand Central Station

Nobody ever likes to think about what they’ll do when things go wrong.  As corporate marketers, a big piece of your job is to make sure things go right.  So, what are you doing to make sure a crisis doesn’t permanently derail your company?

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by Mike Bawden
President & CEO; Brand Central Station

There was a recent article that appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer about Procter & Gamble and the financial impact it appears their re-focused charitable efforts are having on the company. (Read it here)

This story caught my eye for two reasons: First, only P&G could pull off a global good-will effort like this. And it’s interesting to read about the groundwork they are laying for a variety of their consumer brands in emerging and developing markets. In addition to the awareness and market-building efforts, P&G’s philanthropic program also enhances the value of the company in the eyes of shareholders who are becoming focused on results beyond the bottom line when evaluating their equity holdings.

But the second reason this article was of interest is that it was sent to me by a client.

This is a company not of hundreds of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in sales but of just over one hundred employees and sales that are, shall we say, significantly less than anything in P&G’s portfolio. Yet we’ve managed to work with this client and establish a national connection to a leading health association (The American Diabetes Association) and put together a corporate social responsibility program that will achieve the same kind of awareness and market-building objectives P&G is striving for on a global scale.

For many marketers, whether they’re inside an agency, working from home or cloistered away in a marketing department somewhere, the marketing strategies and actions of the mega-brands (P&G, Pepsi, AB/Interbev, etc.) can all seem out of reach. The fact is, though, their not … and marketers who don’t seem to understand that are destined to live out their professional lives doing more of the same and wondering why they’re not getting better results than they did the year before.

I’ve written about corporate social responsibility programs before. They’re interesting to put together and, done right, can not only have an impact on your company or brand’s growth; they can re-energize your employee base and help build long-term equity in your brand’s value. That can mean better margins on the sale of products to retailers or consumers and, just as important, it can mean better multiples if you decide to sell your business to an investor group or acquiring company.

Doing the right thing, the right way can be a tremendous benefit to your company.

More on this at another time.

No, it’s not the latest iteration of Mad’s classic “Spy vs Spy” comic drama.

When it comes to advertising creative, it doesn’t always have to come down to an “all or nothing” proposition, does it?  For small and mid-sized businesses especially, the hard reality is that many times the design, content and sometimes finished production of a  piece needs to be done in-house or it won’t get done at all.  Some agencies look the other way, some get all “high and mighty” about it.

Here’s the reality: it’s gonna happen, get over it. 

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(Company Press Release)

BOSTON – Innoveer Solutions, an award-winning customer strategy and solutions consultancy, today announced the availability of its most recent white paper, “The Pursuit of Partner Relationship Management,” which details how companies can expand their reach, reduce costs, and minimize risks by sharing more sales-related responsibilities with their business partners during uncertain economic times. The paper is now available in the white paper library on Innoveer’s website.

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Times are tough.  We all know that.  And the employment news lately has been bad.  Nearly 600,000 people lost their jobs in November.  And unlike past job losses and economic downturns, the news is reported in real time by those employees directly impacted by the cuts.

Thanks to blogs, IM’s, discussion boards, social networking sites and micro-blogging tools like Twitter, employees are writing about their personal experiences – and the effect is rippling through organizations that have nothing to do with the layoffs.  Kami Huyse, writing in her Communications Overtones blog, provides seven suggestions to HR directors on how to approach announcing layoffs and handling the resulting need for discussion and empathy inside the organization:

The layoff (especially mass layoffs) will most likely be blogged, Twittered or otherwise related in a public forum

The company should consider putting out an official story about the layoffs and voicing genuine concern

The company will always be the bad guy, but this can be mitigated by doing the right thing

A personal touch is needed for these situations, forget mail, e-mail or SMS messages

Minimize faceless and policy-driven thinking

Remember that investors, future employees and your mother is watching how this is handled

Remaining employees will be demoralized by a brutal layoff – they could be next after all, plus they will have survivors guilt

HR staff and corporate managers shouldn’t fall into a trap of thinking they only have to worry about employees’ feelings when layoffs hit their operation.  The social aspect of online media today means that the losses and trauma experienced by employees at one company are now shared through their informal networks – networks that extend beyond the walls of the enterprise and can include friends, family members and colleagues at other businesses all over the world.

Job loss creates very real grief in both the person losing the job and that person’s friends and family.  According to this piece on job loss grief, written by Carolyn Wilkin at the University of Florida, there are steps to the process of dealing with job loss grief – and there are things people can do to help their friends through those steps.

Corporate owners and managers should be proactive though, recognizing the potential for lost productivity if they fail to recognize and deal with the side effects of the broader economic stresses on the economy.

This article by Jim Ylisela at Ragan.com caught my eye right before the weekend hit last week. The piece talks about the attributes that make for a good mentor, and Mr. Ylisela’s point is that the people who are good mentors aren’t always the ones who are best at what they do.

Over the weekend, this concept kept returning to me as I spent time with my kids and many of the volunteer groups I work with throughout the year.  I suspect, as does Mr. Ylisela, that there are a lot of good mentors out there who have never been given the opportunity or taken the chance to be the mentor they could be just because they don’t feel like they’re ready.

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