What if you overheard a story around the water cooler?  And instead of the typical office gossip, your colleagues were discussing good news. And you reacted: “wow, this message is spreading like fire among employees (and outside the organization) and that was exactly our goal”?

Research shows that engaged employees are more productive, exhibit less absenteeism and are more likely to stay at their company longer. So how can you capture the power of a passionate group?  The Allstate Insurance Company has proven that engaging them as Ambassadors can drive positive business results.

Allstate’s exclusive, in-the-know employee group has been designed from the bottom-up with the goal of expanding the company’s network of advocates to promote its brand and reputation.

CEC members, join us and Laura Glaza, member of the Reputation Leadership team from Allstate, on November 18th to hear how they’ve designed the program and how the movement has created ambassadors who are excited about speaking on behalf of the company. We guarantee that this is not your standard “corporate” ambassador program. Register here.

For a sneak peak into how the program works, read on.

How can you cultivate employee advocates within your organization?

1. Start with a small group of employees and give them ownership of designing the program.
2. Provide information and opportunities exclusively to this group. And give them permission to share it with their peers inside and outside the company. Let the program expand through grassroots recruiting by ambassadors of peers they think would contribute to the movement.
3. Prompt ambassador participation and keep them engaged with specific calls-to-action and challenges around company initiatives (which ambassadors can help design).
4. Recognize ambassador contribution to the organization both through company and peer recognition.
5. Throughout, keep communications role in the program very light. Communications has provided the opportunity, but that opportunity is most likely to be taken advantage of if it expands through the word-of-mouth of employee ambassadors, not through “corporate” messages about the program nor incentives from the top.

Related Resources for CEC Members:

• Allstate Ambassador Movement (full case study)
• Activating Stakeholder Support
• Word of Mouth and Advocacy Webinar Replay

Related Blog Posts

• Word of Mouth: Not Just for Burgers and Beer
• Get Happy Advocates

Today’s post is the first in a weekly series where I’ll blog about the smart approaches to CSR challenges that we’ve heard over the course of conversations with your peers.  First up: The scoop on the folks at TNT, who came up with a smart method of engaging their workforce around their strategic CSR initiatives…

For readers who don’t know them, TNT is a global transportation and distribution company with operations all over the world.  They’re conscious of the environmental impact of their fleet of vehicles, which are responsible for more than half of their total CO2 emissions.  TNT calculated that some drivers could improve their fuel efficiency and decrease CO2 emissions by up to 25%, so they took an innovative approach to getting drivers to reduce their impact.

In 2008, they launched a competition amongst their drivers, the Drive Me Challenge.  It involves an F1-style dash, in their usual TNT delivery vehicles, and around a racing track!  We’re assured it’s great fun for all involved… But this involves more than racing, like Sebastian Vettel or Lewis Hamilton, around a track ; TNT has added an extra dimension, which ties to their CSR objectives, which link in turn to the strategic success of the business.

Drivers can only qualify for the Drive Me Challenge by driving both fuel efficiently and safely – drivers from all over the world are ranked against this criteria, and only the regional champions qualify for the main event.  As drivers bid to qualify for the finals of the Drive Me Challenge, which has become a very prestigious annual event, TNT has improved the fuel efficiency of their vehicle fleet by 5%.

The thing I love about this scheme is that it has been achieved without typical corporate messaging from communications. Instead, the entire workforce of drivers has been engaged with TNTs strategically chosen CSR initiatives via the following methods:

• Introducing a simple element of competition, rather than having their managers beat them over the head.
• Instead of providing stern instructions for their drivers to drive better, communications have been able to disguise the same instructions as ‘tips’ for success in the competition!
• Better still, the regional champions have become advocates for the CSR initiative — they tend to be influential team members with a high profile in their locality and, because of their success, they have championed fuel efficiency and safety.  Essentially, the drivers are doing Comms’ work for them!

As such, the ultimate CSR objective – measurable benefit for both the business and for society – has been achieved.

• The environment has been spared 18 kilotons of CO2 per year.
• TNT has saved more than €1million in fuel efficiencies.
• Employee engagement has increased markedly.

What do you think of TNT’s approach?  How have you engaged employees with your CSR activities? Comment here!  And click here for CEC’s latest thoughts, as we continue to work upon this project!

Related Resources for CEC Members:

• Corporate Social Responsibility Topic Center
• Sustainability and CSR Discussion Forum
  

By Rebecca Canan

Did you have a chance to attend our webinar last week on social media monitoring?  During the webinar, we invited CEC members to join a discussion with Scott Stevener from Monsanto, Linda Locke from Reputare Consulting (formerly SVP at MasterCard), and Karin Kane from evolve24.  You may have recently seen guest blog posts from Scott and Linda on the CEC Insider.  Below, get the quick scoop from our third panelist, Karin, who manages client engagements at evolve24, a reputation management and monitoring firm.  And CEC Members: if you missed the webinar, you can access the replay here!

Rebecca (CEC): In brief, can you describe how your media monitoring is different from what most communicators use/receive?

Karin: We recognize that communicators can provide tremendous value across an organization when they measure, and share, the insights they can uncover from media.  Because of that, we focus on providing those insights.  We offer the widest selection of social media content, and provide very advanced analytics that allow our clients to measure social media in very distinct ways.  Along with the standard share of voice and sentiment metrics, we measure influence, credibility, reputation, emotion, and risk. These measurements make media monitoring relevant for communications and marketing teams, customer experience and customer service teams, HR, sales, operations and risk management.

Rebecca: We hear from CEC members that they use media monitoring for  either (1) reactive purposes – to alert them to immediate  reputation risks OR (2) retrospective purposes – to track tonality and key message penetration.  What are some new or different applications of this data that you’ve seen companies use?

Karin: Our clients are using social media in a number of very innovative ways:

• Product development teams have found that social media can be a valuable, and less costly, alternative to traditional market research. It provides an open, unbiased environment for people to share their wants and needs, and provides great insights for product features and when it’s measured properly.
• Strategic planners are finding that social media can help uncover “unknown unknowns”, or risks and opportunities that they might not otherwise be aware of.  They’re gaining early warning of these opportunities, getting real time insight in the market environment, and using that for business planning.
• We are also seeing Customer Satisfaction teams using social media in new ways.  They’re looking at how consumers interact with a product, reaching out to customers directly, and getting a much better picture of what customers are looking for.

Rebecca: Can you tell us one fun fact about yourself and/or background?

Karin: I’ve recently become addicted to Foursquare, the social media location tracking program! I was the mayor of Chicago O’Hare Airport’s Terminal Three for one brief, glorious week.

By Laura Newman

I am embarrassed to say that I watched “Out of Africa” for the first time just a few days ago. There’s no doubt I have a soft spot in my heart for Africa—I’ve spent close to a combined three months in Uganda and Kenya, I was in South Africa  for the World Cup two weeks ago (it’s Ayoba time!), and I’ve even visited the Nairobi farm of Karen Blixen, the author of “Out of Africa.” But I’d never gotten around to actually watch Meryl Streep fall in love with Robert Redford in the film.

When I finally curled up on the couch to watch it in my London flat last Monday, I was swept away by the beautiful scenery and passionate romance. But I was also encapsulated by another aspect of the movie—the importance of storytelling.

Having recently taken up a position of advising CEC’s European clients, I am currently wearing “Communications goggles”—I now approach everything with this new Communications lens. So the continuous reference to Karen Blixen as a storyteller intrigued me.

In Communications, is it fair to say we are simply storytellers?

Telling our corporate stories certainly isn’t new to the role of Communications—or corporations for that matter. We’ve written for years about illustrating messages with examples and using anecdotes or metaphors to strengthen our arguments. But recently, something has felt different. Telling stories just doesn’t seem to be enough to create advocacy of our messages.

For those of you who have followed CEC’s research this year, you will know we have emphasized the repositioning of the Communications function. Big “C” Communications (i.e., the Corporate Communications function) is purposefully letting go of message ownership, to instead enable small “c” communications (i.e., communication amongst individuals) to flow. In other words, we in Communications have come to the realization that our messages will have much greater impact if they are passed along networks from stakeholder to stakeholder, rather than pushed centrally from the corporate center.

It was in thinking through this idea that the realization hit me—in Communications, we have strived to be the storyteller rather than enabling storytelling. For our messages to be most effective, however, we shouldn’t be the ones telling the stories; we should enable others to tell their own stories.

To illustrate this point, I would like to share one example from our research (although examples from others, including Ford, are just as powerful). We published this approach from Canadian company TD Bank last year, but as I consider it through this new perspective I feel it has gained even more meaning.

The story unfolds as follows: To compete in a tough financial market, the leadership at TD Canada Trust decided to reinforce one of the company’s primary strategic goals—exemplary customer service. But they just couldn’t agree on a definition, so they instead empowered employees to define it for themselves.  When someone at TD Bank observes a colleague creating an outstanding customer service moment, he or she is able to recognize that employee through a platform on the corporate intranet. Beyond an employee recognition program, with the additional lens of enabling employees to share their stories, this example demonstrates how employees were “mobilized” around the TD Bank strategy and became storytellers themselves.

Perhaps, with this perspective, Karen Blixen would be describing all stakeholders—albeit in a positive light!—when she says: “I belong to an ancient, idle, wild, and useless tribe… I am a storyteller.”

How are you enabling your employees to tell their stories? What about external stakeholders? Are you helping customers or opinion leaders (for example) engage in storytelling about the company?

But for most of us grown-ups (personally, despite my advanced age I still feel compelled to add italics when thinking of myself that way), our days are spent in a mode of relentless multi-tasking—constantly putting out three fires at once, but hardly ever thinking.  How sad is it to be absent-mindedly checking your Blackberry while another person is standing there in the room trying to talk to you?  But we’ve all done it.

OK, constant distraction probably won’t kill you (smashing into a tree “texting while driving” being one notable exception), but to lead a truly satisfying life, it’s important for all of us to occasionally slow down and make the time to THINK.  To have a “spa day” to polish your brain.

That’s why this is one of our favorite times of the year at CEC—because we’ve just now opened up registration for our 2010 executive meeting series, Influencing Stakeholders in a Networked Environment. Though any “day away from the madness” is a good thing, many communicators have told us that CEC sessions are different from any other meeting or seminar they’ve ever attended.  I’ve been hosting these sessions for the past four years, and for those of you who haven’t ever joined us (or haven’t been with us in a couple of years), I promise that there are three things you can count on:

• You’ll be part of an incredibly rich discussion with some of the smartest people in the world of Communications. (CEC members always tell us, “I can’t believe how much value I get from being with people who do the same thing as me, but in totally different industries and situations.”)
• You’ll get to expand your own thinking—to make yourself smarter—in a way that will enrich your career.  (Since there’s no “career development plan” for Comms at most companies, you have to create your own—that’s one thing we at CEC are here to help you with!)
• You’ll leave with practical new ideas that you can bring right back to your team, and begin putting into action immediately.

And…I might as well add a fourth thing:

• Cocktails immediately afterward (no more need be said!)

You can choose dates from May to November, in seven locations from DC to Sydney (if you’ve never been to Australia, now that’s a gift!).  There are sessions exclusively for Heads of Communications, and others for direct reports and team leaders.  If you need any assistance picking the right date, location and session, we’ll happily guide you.

I’d like to extend my personal invitation to you.  Take just one day, even if you have to force yourself to break away.  Your brain will thank you.

If two weeks ago you didn’t know about the American Red Cross’s social media use, you do now. The Red Cross’s innovative fundraising efforts for Haiti relief show that a little social media can go a long way in rallying global support for a common cause.

Given this success, it’s ironic that the Red Cross’s social media manager, Wendy Harman, was initially hired 4 years ago to “make the internet stop.” Red Cross executives were concerned about the volume of negative comments about the organization after Hurricane Katrina, and they wanted to somehow make the criticism go away. (Now, all good communicators out there realize that this is impossible, but can certainly relate to the sentiment.) Instead of staying in combat mode, however, Wendy saw an opportunity to enable advocates to rally around the Red Cross cause. Her journey from “make it stop” to empowering supporters took a few rogue experiments, some excellent listening skills, and the know-how to rein in overzealous business partners.

We’re thrilled to have Wendy share her story at a CEC webinar next Tuesday (February 9 at 11 EST). CEC members can register now for this event; if you’re reading this after the fact, you can check out the event replay here.

Now, let’s hear from you. What did you notice about social media’s role in fundraising for Haiti? What takeaways do you find transferable to the corporate setting?

This conclusion would probably bring even the most superhuman communicators to their knees. Something has got to give. In my humble opinion, Comms needs to stop trying to push more messages into more channels in an outdated hub-and-spoke model.  Instead, Comms needs to motivate stakeholders to share information about the company with their peers. This not only makes universal, 24/7 engagement more physically possible; it also happens to be a more effective way to generate trust and support for your organization.

Here are a couple of things we’re seeing from leading Communications teams that reflect this line of thinking:

• Designing all messages to “flow” by focusing on relevant, shared interests with the audience, and making them simple, engaging, and clear enough for stakeholders to easily share
• Actively managing advocates to connect with others on behalf of the organization (CEC members: register for our Feb 9 webinar on this topic, featuring the Red Cross)
• Structuring the function for an integrated, coordinated approach to communication across stakeholder groups (CEC members: see how Ford has fully integrated Communications and Marketing and achieved a 40% increase in Comms budget)

We’re actively investigating these ideas as part of CEC’s major research initiative for 2010.  I’d love to hear from you if you have any examples of adapting your function and activities for the networked environment (or don’t believe you should).  Contact me directly to arrange an interview, or leave your comments here to kick off an open conversation with your peers.

By Rebecca Canan

One of my favorite parts of work is getting the non-obvious, top-secret scoop about what communicators are doing. With social media as my specialty, I especially like getting the behind-the-scenes tour of their social media platforms. Who manages their blog? What’s being censored (if anything)? How does the company get value from the site? I recently asked these questions of Nick Caplin, Corporate PR Manager for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Check out what he had to say here:

Rebecca (CEC): Nick, how is your Comms team at Sony engaged in social media?

Nick (Sony): We have a very small PR team and certainly a very small social media team. We have one guy whose sole job is to run our European PlayStation blog, which launched in June 2009. He also helps with online forums and partners with the online marketing team. That’s one guy with a huge amount of responsibility.

Rebecca (CEC): Let’s give people a quick look at your blog…can you talk briefly about how you’ve been using it?

Sony Europe’s PlayStation Blog

Nick (Sony): Absolutely. I’ve found the blog particularly useful for reputation management. Frequently in our industry, we are at the mercy of Internet rumors. On a daily basis, I’m dealing with 20+ different rumors, many of which may have a damaging effect on the brand if taken seriously. We use the blog as a way to speak directly to our community, address the issues, and have a two-way dialogue. We don’t respond to every rumor, but if one starts to gain in credibility, we turn to the blog to nip it in the bud.

Rebecca (CEC): How many blog posts do you push out in a day?

Nick (Sony): On an average day, we post between 3–5 stories. It’s very important that we have a regular news flow and spread it out throughout the day to ensure that people keep coming back.

Rebecca (CEC): How many comments have you rejected on the blog?

Nick (Sony): All comments are posted unless they break a basic rule, such as bad language or something really inappropriate. People are more than welcome to criticize us or voice their anger at something. We can’t hide from our issues. It doesn’t mean, however, that we’ll necessarily respond to every issue. If we notice a recurring problem, then maybe we won’t respond in the dialogues with them, but we’ll then write a new post specifically addressing that issue.

Rebecca (CEC): How does Sony monitor social media beyond the company’s blog?

Nick (Sony): We have numerous online news monitors, which track mainstream media, specialist media, as well as blogs and a certain element of social media (e.g., Facebook & Twitter). There is still an issue with ways to fully monitor social media effectively. In our case, if we search for every mention of PlayStation in social media in a day, we would have thousands, too many to effectively analyse. I’m still looking for an appropriate solution. We also use a crisis and issue tool, called Find Agent, which is a text service that monitors all the above sites for certain key words and sends me both a text and an email if it finds a potential issue brewing.

CEC Members: To hear the complete discussion with Nick—including advice on generating blog traffic and coordinating with Marketing—visit the CEC site for the full conversation replay.