eCommunications for global organisations

Last year, I introduce the eBook ‘Your Online Journey Starts here’ at an event in Brussels, with Toyota, Microsoft and VCE (Volvo Construction Equipment) who shared their own experience with online communication.

We have captured a summary of my presentation which gives an overview of some of the key topics of the ebook.  It is intended as a simple introduction to how the internet is changing communication for global communicators, and what they can do about it.  To find out more check the video (below) or download the ebook (below).

Apologies for the poor sound quality!

I must admit this is my first WIZZ AIR customer experience. And some wise people say you should not have high expectations with a low-cost airline. But how can an airline forget about a country with the size bigger than Europe?


I tried to do an online check-in this morning and realized that while even Bermuda appears in the list of nationalities, China does not appear anywhere on the list. So no online check-in for people from China?


Check yourself:

After spending a short while with customer service on the phone they agreed that this is an issue and they promised to send me an email. >> Unfortunately this email did not find it’s way to my Inbox.


After spending some time in filling out the WIZZ AIR ‘online claim form’ I received an automated email that referred me back to the website & call centre (calling from Belgium costs 1.15Euros/Minute) >>> No other actions were taken on the claim. So far the approach to customer relationship management.


I just hope the WIZZ AIR pilot will know the world map better and fly us safely to the destination…

(This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog)

If there’s an issue that’s impacting your organisation around which you want to orchestrate a shift in opinion or behavioural change amongst a set of people large or small, it’s not enough to do the right thing and explain it effectively. Two factors play a part here:

1. People don’t trust you. Trust in pretty much every sort of organisation is at rock bottom and falling, so people will need to hear it from others to buy into what you do and say.

2. With regards to the web in particular, search. You can’t push your content, people will find what they want; such is the nature of the web – meaning that it’s quite likely that they’ll pick another site out of the thousands that show up in Google.

So what do you do about it? Beyond doing and saying “the right thing” (not so easy in itself) and a solid media relations set-up, you’ll need to become ubiquitous online. What does that mean? That your web tentacles reach far beyond your own web presence. Others communicating around your issue should be talking about you so that when people are on the aforementioned ‘other’ site on your issue that they’ve found on Google, you’re present too.

How do you make it happen? You’ll need to know who all the other players are on your issue and communicate with them in mind rather than hollering in a void. Reference their content or even feature them in person, comment on their content in your own output, and make sure you’re giving your input wherever you can on other platforms. Assuming – again – that your message is solid, people will take notice and will soon start talking about you, giving you the third-party credibility you crave (assuming they’re being nice!) and giving you airtime in other places where people might land.

Will it come easy? No, Rome wasn’t built in a day – it’ll be a slog, but you won’t regret it.

…To become a climate ally!

Just seen this campaign initiated by Kofi Annan:

Download the song at www.timeforclimatejustice.org and become a climate ally. Music and movie stars come together in a new campaign for climate change.

We are at day 2 and I believe this campaign gets all the ingredients to become the holy grail of the viral marketing.

1. a universal quest
2. great ambassadors
3. a song
4. several viral mechanisms built on typical WEB2.0 platforms
5. an original way to sign the petition by downloading the song
6. the right time with the Cop15 window
7. an excellent production (who has done this?)
8. participation features such the “upload your tck and put it on the map”

This will be a huge success.

As you can see, I am very enthusiastic about it.

After months of hard work, editing and designing, we have just gone live with our latest eBook, “Your Online Journey Starts Now - A Survival Guide for Corporate Marketers”. Writing an eBook takes time and perseverance and I hope that the outcome is worth it. I am sure a great deal can still be improved, and I look forward to your feedback in order to update it.

It is written for the corporate marketers who want to take advantage of the current crisis to shift their communication to a web based model.

Read it, share it and enjoy!

Looking forward to your feedback.

Perry Belcher explains how social media can create benefit for your business. A clear and simplified way of outlining some of the basic principles of Social Media Marketing.

A friend of mine just sent me this absolute beginners guide for twitter (thanks Bryony).

She found it quite useful and there are even things in there I wasn’t personally aware off.

How can Twitter as a social media tool help you grow your business? The author maps out 3 priorities:
1. provide value to your audience. This is the basis for everything else
2. drive that audience to your blog
3. grow your audience

Definitely worth a read

Here an interview from a Social Media presentation I gave at The Hub last week together with Oihana (eMarketeer at The Hub):

I do believe that the shift towards social media is not only important for Corporate Marketers.

The fact that you have to become more transparent also means you have to start reviewing your current business operations: How compliant are we really? And how do our stakeholders perceive our performance?

Some years ago it would have been a great opportunity for a Business to move towards social & environmental responsibility to gain a competitive advantage. Today it becomes more and more a must to not fall behind your competitors and to avoid a potential crisis.

Being truly transparent does not only mean that a corporation needs to implement a CSR report that is compliant with GRI standards we are talking about a process of change management that is not to underestimate. It’s not just about the numbers but also about the motivations & meaning given to these values by each and every employee.

Only in the moment a researcher from the R&D division, your supply chain partners and the external maintenance guy live up to this philosophy and come to work every day because they truly believe they help save the environment and add benefit to the community by working for your organization, you can talk about a successful implementation of this approach. It’s not just a one off exercise. It’s rather a cultural transformation of the whole organization.

Last Monday SCA Packaging celebrated SCA Packaging’s Design Challenge 2008. The final winners were announced and over 100 industry professionals enjoyed a day full of workshops & presentations by industry professionals.

Well done SCA Packaging and thanks for the nice collaboration.

In his blog, Web Ink Now, David Meerman Scott wrote a very compelling post, telling companies that the single most important question a client should ask a prospective social media agency:

“I tell people to ask the prospective agency to show the agency’s social media presence. Ask about such things as blogs, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, Web site(s), Facebook profiles, and any other stuff you have.”

I think this is a valid point and it is something that as an emarketing agency we feel is key.  Most of our team have personal blogs, twitter accounts, and we are active in various forums and online channels.  I wrote about this in a previous post as this constant experimentation is part of our philosophy which we call ‘living the web’.  Understanding and having first hand experience of these channel is critical to be able to guide clients in these projects.  We often use our learning from our direct experience with platforms like wordpress (for blogs) or ning (a free platform to build your own social network) and we translate this to our client needs (as we did with a packaging company called SCA Packaging as part of an online design contest).

However I would disagree with David when he says that this is ‘the one question’ you need to ask.  I would say that you also need to look at two other key factors in selecting your agency:

1) What is the depth of experience that this agency has (how long have they been working in this field with the type of client you represents).  There is nothing worse then choosing a recently converted ad agency that is trying to reinvent itself for the web.  They might have a nice blog, some cool videos, but what they really need is years of experience working on web projects with real companies, in the real world.

2) Project management skills.  The hardest part of our work in communication, be it online or offline, is to translate a strategy into a concrete and effective campaign.  This requires more than great ideas and passion about technology.  This requires the ability to manage projects, to hit deadlines, to align different skills in different organisations to reach a common goal.

So my suggestion for selecting your agency would be that there are three questions to ask:

1) What’s your experience (years and clients) in social media/web communication?

2) Do you walk your talk (show me what you do as an agency and what your team does in this space)?

3) Can you make things happen (show me what you did)?