How does the world’s largest beverage company prevent its 92,800 worldwide employees from engaging in unauthorized interactions with external stakeholders?

They don’t.

How do the proprietors of the “best-known product in the world” ensure that the uncontrollable Wild West of social media won’t be used by employees in ways that could instigate waves of litigation, damage the company’s reputation, or devalue the net worth of its multi-MULTI-billion dollar brand?

With just five words:  Have fun, but be smart.

Recently, I spent some time perusing Coca-Cola’s online social media principles.  For what it’s worth, here’s my review:  Crisp, bubbly and refreshing.

More specifically, here’s the paragraph that jumped out at me…see what you think:

The Company encourages all of its associates to explore and engage in social media communities at a level at which they feel comfortable.  Have fun, but be smart. The best advice is to approach online worlds in the same way we do the physical one — by using sound judgment and common sense, by adhering to the Company’s values , and by following the Code of Business Conduct and all other applicable policies. Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

We hear it over and over again from companies in Insurance, Healthcare, Pharma, Energy/Utilities, and Financial Services:

“We want to use social media, but we just can’t! There are too many regulations and risks.”

We’ve been investigating this claim and how much of it is true…what CAN you actually do?  Based on conversations with social media pioneers/”survivors” from the highly regulated space and quantitative research from our social media diagnostic (CEC members, take the diagnostic here), we’ve come up with a few conclusions.  Check out our article on Forbes.com about six social media principles for companies in highly regulated industries!  Let us know what you think.

By Mike Wellman

There’s a great scene in the first season of Mad Men where Don Draper presents a pitch for a new ad campaign to Eastman Kodak executives.  They had asked Don to emphasize a remarkable new technology used in their new slide projectors and, specifically, how the “wheel” would revolutionize the category.  In typical Don Draper fashion, he ignores those guidelines and instead provides a sentimental, personal pitch that touches on how the product would give people a new way to connect the present with the past.  His campaign doesn’t include busy scientists or tongue-in-cheek cavemen reinventing the wheel, but instead holds an emotionally provocative image of a carousel.  It’s a moving scene and a good reminder that to do our jobs well, we have to look past the blinking lights and understand how people’s lives will change as a result of that technology.

Recently, we’ve been trying to do just this by understanding how the availability of social media has changed consumer behavior and information preferences.  I’ll admit that as a member of Geeks Anonymous, I easily get caught up in all the latest social media bells and whistles.  Some are worth paying attention to, but I think most (Blippy comes to mind) probably aren’t worth the time.  Twitter’s changes are certainly worth paying attention to, as is the elephant in the room – Google Instant.

Read More »

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. Read More »

Within the span of a week, two incidents caught the world’s attention…so today’s question for us as communications professionals is:  Are these two stories (analyzed at a root cause level) connected?  You decide.

Story A is the disgruntled employee at a beer distributor in Manchester, CT, who, on the day he chose as his last day of employment, comes to work with a big bag full of guns, kills eight co-workers, and finally ends the incident by killing himself.

Story B is the exasperated jetBlue flight attendant, who, on the day he chose as his last day of employment, comes to work with a head full of rage, shouts foul language to passengers over the PA system as his flight lands at JFK airport, deploys the plane’s emergency slide, and finally ends the incident by killing his career.

Is there a connection between these two stories, which occurred just 100 miles apart, but ended so differently? And do communications professionals have a role in preventing, as well as handling, these kinds of situations? Read More »

Scott Stevener (Corporate Research Team Lead, Monsanto)

By Rebecca Canan

Have you ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test?  (If not, here’s a link to a free mini-version)  What personality type are you?

A couple years ago, we looked at various personality types and which are suited to which type of profession.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the combinations who were likely drawn to Communications included:

• ESFP (Extroverted Sensing, Aided by Feeling)
• ENFP (Extroverted Intuitive, Aided by Feeling)

One great excerpt about ESFPs: “ [Do] not generally enjoy the world of business, especially the corporate world…they often enjoy public relations.”  Or this one about ENFPs: “ Conventional business world is usually not appealing to ENFPs because they dislike excessive rules, regulations, or standard operating procedures.”

Hmm, sound at all familiar?  Maybe like you or your team members?

Now, this isn’t to say that we can’t come up with processes, rules, and data-driven approaches…it’s just not what we prefer to do.  It’s more natural to go on instinct, gut feel, or our inherent creativity.   That said, many of our business partners demand more data and analytics when it comes to our Communications activities and our value to the organization.  Wouldn’t it be great if someone could teach us how to apply data in a smarter way within Communications?  And tell us a story about how it’s actually worked?

Please join us on August 12th for a conversation with Scott Stevener, Corporate Research Team Lead at Monsanto.  Read More »

Linda Locke (Principal at Reputare Consulting, formely SVP at MasterCard)

By Rebecca Canan

As I’ve talked about in a previous blog post, it seems there is no limit to the amount of information that people are willing to share on social networking sites.  We are swimming drowning in a sea of data — people are talking candidly about almost everything; their words are being documented publicly on the Web for anyone to see.  How can we leverage all that audience insight in a scalable and smart way to help our reputations?   How can we take an “outside-in” approach to incorporate what stakeholders are saying (and reading) into our own internal reputation management?

We’ll be exploring that BIG question at an upcoming August 12th webinar with Linda Locke from Reputare Consulting – formerly SVP at MasterCard.  We’ll also be joined by Scott Stevener from Monsanto and Karin Kane from Evolve24.  During the session, we’ll show CEC members how they can take advantage of the tools and technologies now available – not only for traditional media monitoring, but also for social media monitoring – and apply them in a way that proactively manages their company’s reputation.  Sound lofty?  Maybe.  Sound impossible?  It’s definitely not. Read More »

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to generate no shortage of commentary.  Not only on the environmental, political, and economic consequences of the disaster, but also on a topic much more personal for corporate communicators: BP’s communications strategy.  If you’ve seen such commentary from activists (e.g., James Hoggan) or from news outlets covering the broader story (e.g., CNN), you’ve likely noticed a certain schadenfreude that permeates these remarks.  Of course, this makes them interesting, but mostly irrelevant to corporate communications professionals, aside from the minority who are responsible for crisis response in companies capable of major industrial accidents.

For the rest of us – and even for that minority – there are a couple lessons to be gleaned from BP’s handling of the Gulf Coast oil spill.  Lessons that are more subtle than the prevailing commentary and much more relevant.  Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

As communicators, we often have to deal with snippy and critical comments from others in social media, yet stick to the high road in speaking for our organizations.  But what happens when the urge to snark back is just too tempting?  Nestlé’s recent experiences offer up a case in point.

Here’s what happened:  Nestle posted a status update on its Facebook “fan” page, requesting that people refrain from using altered versions of the Nestlé logo when posting on the company page; otherwise, the posts would be removed.  Not surprisingly, a few people complained that Nestlé was acting overly authoritarian for an open social media forum.  Now, this in itself would not be a huge deal—a lot of brands are concerned about their logo usage and brand integrity.  But here’s where the plot thickens.  Rather than letting a few unfavorable comments go or respectfully acknowledging them, the company moderator got into a petty, sarcastic, and heated comment battle with fans.  Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

Last week, I learned a firsthand (and inadvertent) lesson about the new rules of media relations.  Here’s the story timeline:

• Washington DC has a series of blizzards across the week, leaving behind more than 50 inches of snow.
• Mid-blizzard, CEB (parent company of CEC) sends out an email stating that the office would be open regular hours, but to let your manager know if you were unable to come in.
• I laugh in disbelief.
• In aforementioned state of disbelief, I sign on to my personal Twitter account and tweet about it.
• Thursday morning I wake up to find that my seemingly personal and innocuous tweet has been cited in the Washington Post (PRINT AND ONLINE VERSIONS) with the context below—my own emphasis added:

Some Washington businesses that urged employees’ attendance have been getting pounded on washingtonpost.com and Twitter. Employees of Rosslyn-based Corporate Executive Board expressed exasperation that their office was initially open: “bec54″ wrote, “Boycotting CEB’s decision to stay open today by sitting on the couch in my fleece onesie. This snow is INSANE.”

[INSERT PANIC]  Pounded!?!  My fleece ONESIE?!?!  NOOOOooooo! Read More »