eCommunications for global organisations

Recently, many of us in Europe felt the effects of Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption. During this, social media proved itself to be useful outside of letting people send information home. It saved weddings from disaster, sent news stories around the world, and got a selection of stranded passengers a free breakfast in Bangkok.

Aurelie Valtat of Eurocontrol maintains that social media’s “human touch” is essential in a crisis. “People are happy to know that you’re listening to them. Be human: it doesn’t hurt to be a normal person. Be in tune… show that you care. ” She dealt information out to stranded passengers every two minutes, watching the organisation’s number of followers grow from 300 to 7,000 in a few days.

ZN’s Phil Weiss, who used Facebook to rally passengers stranded with him in Bangkok to demand treatment according to their rights, agrees with Aurelie.

“The key is to know who you’re talking to, and give them the information that they need. Eurocontrol’s efforts placed them in comparison with other organisations, like some airlines and the European Commission, which face big challenges in forming similar strategies for similarly effective communication.”

Both were speaking at an event hosted by ZN, which took place on 22nd June 2010 in the striking surroundings of the Brussels Air Museum. They discussed how the eruption had an impact on social media, with Simon McDermott, co-founder of Attentio, and the European Commission’s Gilles Gantelet.

The emphasis of Eurocontrol’s Tweeting was on crisis management rather than a communications revolution: “normal”, pre-volcano service has since resumed, in case the organisation is seen as a “super travel agency… there is a detailed plan in place, but every ash cloud is different.” Simon McDermott’s advice for organisations yet to embrace social media was simple: “Use it: learn it!”

Gilles Gantelet said that “[the Commission] has been impressed by Eurocontrol… we are also aware that there were some things that we were unable to organise in terms of communication.”

Photos, videos (of the event and of interviews with the speakers) and discussions will shortly be added to the IABC community. In the spirit of social media, questions and comments were Tweeted live into the event: you can find them under #ashcloudbxl on Twitter.

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…

…still, it seems to be quite an organic growth with no pre-defined output…

A new discovery during the birthday celebrations of our colleague Nico:

I just picked up this recent post from Helen Dunnett (disclaimer: she is a client of ZN and we think she is great) on some feedback she received from various audiences in political communication when approaching the internet as a core communication tool.  Over the past year she has been sharing her experience and enthusiam about the web and it’s power to transform communication with her rapidly growing network. 

Her comments will be very useful for those trying to find the best way to explore the web as a core strategic tool in getting the right message out to the right audience.  We have, in the course of our many meetings with a number of players in the Brussels political scene been confronted by many similar questions so it is great to see them put from a client perspective, from someone who has been able to make the case for this and seen the benefits for her own organisation follow.

After reading the objections she has faced my suggestions to the bold communicators interested in taking this further are the following:

1) Everyone now accepts that the internet is an important and powerful tool in shaping perception on critical issues.  The key problem is they don’t know how to act on this knowledge.

2) A personal and direct exposures to the tools and the social networks that are driving this change is key to enable communicators to form the correct strategy.  So like or not, you need to sign up to a number of online networks (linkedin.com - which most people do passively, facebook.com, and others that you find interesting) and actively use the tools (by posting on forums in linkedin for instance). 

3) The right tools for you and your organisaton keep on evolving so it is best to do some background reading of ebooks and follow some blogs (Helen’s own called learning curve or the one written by my colleague Steffen could be a good starting point). 

4) Meet regularly with people (agencies, consultants, colleagues) so you can learn about what works and gain insights from other people who have faced similar situations than you.

5) Get started.  Take some small, below the radar, steps with some online initiatives to get comfortable with the territory.  Start a blog, take it personally and see for yourself how it can help to get your message accross.

6) Get help.  Once you have decided to move forward in this space, surround yourself with a strong team with the right advice and experience as well as technology, create a plan and sell this to your management.  Then go forward and start learning.

The McKinsey Quartely (a publication of the consulting firm) has just published a new report entitled Six ways to make Web 2.0‘.

They had previously written another article on the topic which we covered in this blog.  I always find these articles particularly useful, not because they uncover some hidden truth, but because they provide powerful arguments to convince senior management that ‘it is ok’ to go down a more adventurous route because McKinsey is saying so (and so are other big companies they are quoting).

The name of the article is a bit confusing as less and less people feel brave enough to use the word ‘Web 2.0′ as it has been so overused it has stopped meaning a great deal.  Social media seems to be the new term in vogue.  However it is better to say what it actually means, which is a collection of minor web tools such as blogs, wikis, rss feeds and numerous other ones that can be integrated into a campaign and are generally associated with online communities.

Other than that, the key learnings from the article (the so-called ‘Six ways’ to make Web 2.0 work) are the following:

1) Transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top.  In a nutshell don’t count of these projects to happen exclusively through grassroot movements.  Agreed and reasonably obvious to anyone who has been involved in such projects.

2) The best uses come from users - but they require help to scale.  The idea of creating a communication or development approach that will evolve with user input is very correct and leads to the ‘permanent beta’ approach in which a project is never finished but is constantly evolving feeding on user input.

3) What’s in the workflow is what gets used. The point made here is that the tools need to fit ‘easily’ within the existing workflow of the users or add value to an existing one.  

4) Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs - not just their wallets.  I would stress needs and desires first, as it is often the simple desire to communicate and learn about each other that make these initiatives work and very rarely some sort of cash incentive (which can help with short term marketing campaigns but never achieves real community building).

5) The right solution comes from the right participants.  Again it links to the importance of ‘user adoption’ - people need to find a relevant use for the technology being introduced.  But then again, we hope that management or whoever introduced the technology, has put some thoughts into the purpose of the new technology before it started the roll-out and isn’t trying to find out what needs might be answered by the technology after the technology has been chosen.

6) Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.  In this point they raise the issue of legal and HR fears created in large companies by these initiatives.  It is a big obstacle but it is large a conceptual one as in practice very few companies find problems they cannot deal with using common sense (don’t post confidential stuff and don’t insult people).

So no great break-through insights but a useful summary of some critical thoughts that need to go into this kind of project.  I would however urge leaders to think about web 2.0 and web 1.0 as part of the same whole and not to think of them as distinct.  Web 2.0 is simply an evolution of web technology and shows how certain tools can be taking further and gain more ‘user engagement’ through innovative use of different channels and tools - but it is part of one strategy, and should be driven by a clear and integrated business strategy.

We have a ’strategic’ plan: It’s called doing things.

 ”Imagine if you will, begins the newscaster, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the morning’s newspaper. Well it is not as far fetched as it may seem”.  In this great clip from 1981 you are briefly transported back in time to see how the future of journalism was perceived.

Watching this clip, which I found on Conversationblog,  is a way to remind ourselves how far the ‘information revolution’ has changed our media consumption habits.  I was actually sitting at my computer with my morning coffee as I watched this, feeling that reality has taken us much further than the 1981 reporters had imagined.The end of the report makes the whole concept sound far too expensive and declared the future of printed papers safe.  Would they still feel this way now?