Morningstar Communications Luminary Blog

I’ve always been fascinated with communications channels and how news spreads in neighborhoods (where most of us do, after all, spend the majority of our time).

When I grew up (pre-internet), no one could mobilize a phone-calling tree like the moms in my neighborhood when it came time to protest that school board issue or even plan a block party. Most all neighborhood news (and much of the community news), spread across the backyard fences and across those curly phone cords.

Fast forward to today where my homeowners association and church news comes at me electronically. I’m just as apt to learn that my neighbor has bought a new car or taken a vacation on Facebook as I am to hear it from him/her in person … you get the drift. 

But how much have times really changed?

The Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. recently completed a project entitled “Neighbors Online” – a comprehensive look at the range of methods folks use to keep in touch and spread community news. This appears to be a new study, not much comparative data was provided, but the big headline is nearly half – 46 percent – of us still prefer face-to-face conversations as the best way to share news with each other in our neighborhood. Twenty-one percent prefer telephone and online doesn’t show up until we get to the 11th percentile (“reading an online blog on community issues”).

So what do we take from all this, besides just a better understanding of communications trends in what I like to call “cul-de-sac nation”? For one thing, any company that has a broad audience of general citizenry as its customers/stakeholders should by no means abandon the time-tested strategy of getting out and speaking face-to-face with as many segments of the community as possible.

Town hall meetings, community forums, road shows … all of these represent an effort on the part of the organization to talk to their audience in the most palatable way for them.

It’s always about the audience, and research like this can help us hone in a little better when it comes time to start drafting that strategic communications plan.

This past Friday, Morningstar Communications hosted about 20 local executives at an executive breakfast featuring Sheila McLean, director of the North American ECO Network for MS&L Worldwide, the global agency of which we are the Kansas City office.

We call these periodic gatherings “Illumination Sessions” and, based on the feedback we received on Friday, we nailed the name. Sheila shared enlightening data and trends in the environmental sustainability sector and helped us understand the coming regulation/legislation in this space that will have an impact on virtually every single business large and small.

Sheila’s ECO Network works with Fortune 500 companies and other large organizations to determine where they are in their sustainability journey and how to maximize ROI for their environmental initiatives. The case studies she shared were fascinating and described how seriously companies are taking the sustainability challenge. As Sheila described it, we’ve reached a tipping point: no longer is it enough just to be “in full compliance.” Today, in order to gain credit from stakeholders, companies need to show that they’re implementing creative solutions that go above and beyond simply what is required by law.

One of the diagnostic tools Sheila and her team uses with companies is printed below.  Where would you place your organization on this continuum?

I’ve been involved with a number of nonprofit organizations locally over the last 15+ years and I’ve noticed a drastic change (for the better) in how charitable organizations communicate with their key stakeholders – the volunteers, donors, community leaders and others these organizations depend on so desperately to survive and thrive.

Casting a wide communications net for nonprofits used to mean coming up with major funds on a regular basis to pay for design and printing of newsletters, brochures and other controlled collateral – or calling in favors to get in-kind donations for printing and design.

Now, with all the new PR 2.0 online tools available, these organizations are all realizing significantly less budget crunch while still effectively getting their word out. Sure, they still have need for the occasional printed event program or DTC advertisement. But regular, serial communications (and even some one-time messages) can now often be handled online. Recent examples from a few organizations that I’m affiliated with or serve as a volunteer leader include:
•    Ozanam, a child services agency, now uses its Facebook page to successfully drive attendance to events. It’s email address list has increased by more than 100% and its blast email open rate is 27 percent – providing a powerful tool that is already helping reduce its snail mail postage costs;
•    Shawnee Mission Education Foundation recently started a Facebook page that it uses to update stakeholders on foundation projects. It has become a primary means of distributing news for an organization that has a limited communications budget;
•    I no longer get a newsletter in the mail from my church OR my homeowners association. Instead, those come to my email box where I can read them more conveniently (and not kill any more trees in the process);
•    Of course, nonprofits are also increasingly using e-commerce web tools to make it easier to donate money, sell products, etc.

We talk about how the shared media channel (see 4-channel media model ) is valuable because it costs so little in terms of money compared to paid, earned and controlled media. It does take significant time and resources, however, and this is where nonprofits need to make certain they have the staff or volunteers to keep “feeding the machine” and that they’ve addressed their communications strategy holistically. But, without a doubt, shared media tools have come along at the right time for small organizations with increasingly tight budgets.

I've spent the last few years on the corporate side working extensively in internal communications and I've always been fascinated by the relationship companies build (or fail to build) with the people who are so obviously most responsible for their success or failure. (Note: We had a great conversation about this the other night at a local IABC senior pro's dinner).

CBS Television is actually using the – ahem – reality TV genre to give us a peek into a very unique learning laboratory. Their new show "Undercover Boss " chronicles weekly the story of a large company CEO who goes "undercover" to try and learn about the inner-workings of his company and to get an unvarnished view into the life of a rank-and-file employee. That's right, each Sunday at 8 p.m. (CT) we watch the boss put on the apron, the scrubs, the hardhat, etc. and step down into the ranks.

The first episode was Sunday, February 7 and its lead-in was only the most watched television program in history, the Super Bowl. In episode one, "President and CEO of Waste Management Larry O'Donnell worked undercover alongside his employees cleaning porta-potties and collecting garbage" … Wow! Is this must-see TV for those of us in internal communications or not?  I just happened to catch a few minutes of the show as I was trying to recover from Super Bowl queso dip-overload and was glued to the TV set. The soccer moms at our neighborhood party couldn't figure out why I was the only one left in front of the TV watching this innocuous-looking man rummaging through trash and cleaning out toilets before knocking off and grabbing a drink with his co-workers (I told them I could say the same thing about their infatuation with "The Bachelor").

Anyway, I plan to watch the full episode online and won't miss one from here on out. Any of us who have worked in employee communications know how much good it does for morale, open communications, and just good old employee engagement for the people at the executive level to actually pay a visit to the shop floor, have coffee in the break room, or just grab a tray and sit down in the cafeteria. It's the age-old "management by walking around" but it's also "two-way communication by walking around." In this day and age of electronic bombardment, it's refreshing to see at least a few CEOs care enough to flip a burger themselves.  Great job CBS and kudos to Larry and the other undercover CEOs for showing the way.

I consider myself very fortunate to have received degrees from two excellent journalism schools with wonderful reputations. I graduated from the University of Kansas where I, like thousands of others in our area, received the essential building blocks I needed to pursue a career in this business. Much more recently, I received a master’s in communications management from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communication through their well-respected Executive Master’s program.

The benefits I’ve received from pursuing my degree from a national program like Syracuse are almost too numerous to mention and will be the subject of another blog post. But, as a preview, one of those benefits is the commitment on the school’s part to provide life-long learning opportunities to its graduates. I just returned from an alumni reunion in New York City, where, in addition to renewing old acquaintances with corporate communicators from around the country, the school offered several presentations from some of the most important voices in our industry today. The knowledge nuggets and “ah-ha” moments were numerous – and tough to do justice to in a blog post – but there were a few that I want to share right away:

•    Richard Edelman, Chairman and CEO, Edelman, shared his take on the monumental sea change hitting PR. His agency’s “trust barometer” has been a useful tool to show us that people have moved from media and other authoritative sources (“taking Walter Cronkite’s word for it”) to now turning to their friends and family as the people they trust most. We can no longer talk down to or “at” the people who matter most (PWMM) for our organizations. He called this change “moving from the vertical to the horizontal axis.” He urged communicators to “go where the conversations are” and said that, in this day of mass communications on multiple planes that “every company should consider itself a media company.” And, no surprise, he emphasized the importance of good listening (“listening with intelligence”) if we hope to change behaviors in our markets.

•    My friend and classmate Diane Thieke, APR, Marketing Director, Dow Jones @thiekeds: Diane spoke about her new role to help sales people in her organization do their jobs better by understanding and using LinkedIn as a relationship management tool. She also talked about our Web 2.0 world by relaying the story of how her teenage son chooses and buys music in a completely different way than in our generation (out with the corner record store, in with Pandora!)

•    Deirdre Breakenridge, co-author with Brian Solis of “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations,” reminded us again that “nobody owns social media” and talked about the seemingly endless new (many of them free) online tools to help us monitor the conversations and engage in that active listening that is so crucial in PR 2.0.

•    Mark Weiner, who owns a worldwide PR Research firm, showed some fascinating data gleaned from more than 20 years of organizational ROI studies to show that, even though PR budgets are still just a fraction of what advertising gets, PR regularly outperforms advertising on a relative basis and its positive ROI effects last longer than traditional ad campaigns and other promotional activities.

•    Finally, Jim Olson, Vice President of Communications at US Airways had us mesmerized with his stories from the “Miracle on the Hudson” (which has its one-year anniversary this week). Jim’s team received 350 media calls in the first 90 minutes but, thanks to a tremendous amount of crisis communications planning, handled the crisis well in the immediate stage and then followed up on what became one of the great “feel good” stories of the young century.  Among nuggets shared by Jim were the need for organizations to carefully watch search engine traffic on their crisis stories as US Airways found that search engines were the number two way that people sought out information after the river landing (news organizations being the first). US Airways also deftly used social media to help manage the secondary stories and built thousands of Twitter followers once they said that Capt. Sullenberger’s much-anticipated return to the cockpit would be announced on Twitter first.

In summary, a great way to start the new year professionally for me. Here’s wishing you a great year of professional development in 2010 as well.

I was blown away by the quality of education and powerful speakers brought in for last year’s KC IABC Business Communicators Summit and I was pleased to see that Chris Brogan, one of the important national voices in social media, will be the keynote speaker at the next summit in February (registration information coming soon at KC-IABC).

I saw an interview with Chris at whatever the “Blog World” du jour conference in California was this week and he encouraged me because, like Brian Solis who we heard here in town recently, he begins with the message that “it’s not about the tools…it’s about enabling the right connections.”  The tools are the means to that end.

Chris talks about how, in the PR 2.0 world, strategic communicators need to see themselves as being “at the elbow of communications."  We all have two substantial parts of our arms but, without the elbow, they don’t work together.  The elbow provides the connection that makes everything work.

When I look at how we’ve served clients recently, I see so many great examples of using relationships to connect people toward common win-win’s:

•    For our client Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas we used social networking tools to create a “virtual class reunion” which has resulted in dozens of new fans signing up to hear more;
•    The recent visit by our MS&L public affairs head in Washington has resulted in getting an important meeting between one of our clients and a senior Obama administration official;
•    We just showed one of our favorite non-profits how it can build its database and drive event attendance through the use of social networking tools (the target audience is suburban parents and teachers … how much of a stretch is that!)

It’s a great time to be in our business because we’re in the midst of a transformation – we’re using new tools to allow us to facilitate even deeper connections than ever before.  Keep your elbows bent!
 

It’s great to be at an agency where we can call on global resources to help provide valuable advice and counsel to our clients.  That’s exactly the role Neil Dhillon, managing director of our MS&L Washington D.C. office, played when we brought him in for an Illumination session with clients and friends last week.

Neil walks in all the Capitol Hill circles (he was telling us the story of being at the recent joint session of Congress when Congressman Joe Wilson hurled his famous “You lie!” shout at President Obama) and spent many years working in politics, including as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bill Clinton administration.

One area of interest to our guests was Neil’s take on the current administration and how the changes taking place on Capital Hill will affect businesses. Neil talked about the ambitious reform agenda President Obama has taken on in his first year. All new presidents come in with a full plate but, no surprise with what’s happened in the world over the past year, this one is particularly busy.

In addition to the obvious topical area, healthcare reform, Neil talked about the other two major areas of government reforms coming our way – energy and financial services.  For Neil, a financial services overhaul is the most important thing this administration will do for the country and our economy. However, out of these three key areas of focus, he believes healthcare may be the first to pass.

Companies who play in these areas will undoubtedly see new regulations that impact how they do business and, by extension, we all will be impacted as we do business with those firms or are served by them.

Neil’s advice:  Get involved in national policy and start by listening. Use every resource at your disposal to keep an ear to the ground on all of these potential new reforms so that you can be ready to react appropriately when change comes. Even better, influence change before legislation is past. Yesterday, my colleague Sheri Johnson posted on Neil’s suggested ways to get involved. We’ll be talking more about these topics next week, so keep coming back to Luminary blog for more great insights from our Illumination session.