It was with extreme irritation that I discovered this weekend that London’s department stores have already begun to stock their shelves with Christmas goods! It seems that the countdown to 2012 has begun already, and although in my personal life I have no intention of thinking as far ahead as the presents I’ll be buying my family, in our professional lives it’s definitely the time of year where we’re obliged to start making our plans for the year ahead.

We at the CEC are no different, and in our never-ending quest to stay at the cutting edge of the Communications space, it’s vital to us that our agenda be set by our members most pressing needs. With this in mind, we recently polled our clients to identify where we should be focusing our energies with our upcoming work.

Check out 4 trends that we’ve observed from the data:

Observation #1: Engaging employees with corporate goals and supporting change remain the top priorities for communicators

CEC research indicates that the average employee experiences 3.5 major changes every two years, ensuring that the need to navigate these turbulent times, and maintain employee engagement at the same time, remains high on every communicator’s agenda.

• Thoughts from CEC: check our studies, Mobilizing the Workforce for work on engaging employees around organizational objectives, and Building a Change-Ready Organization for work on supporting organizational change management. Read More »

We have just released our annual 2011 Aggregate Benchmarking Report highlighting the key communications budget trends for 2011/2012. In my previous blog, I highlighted the growing importance of staff in communications budgets; but there is another interesting trend that we found from our data: Companies are decoupling their communications and marketing departments’ budgets.

While in 2007, 33 percent of communicators reported that their communications department’s budget was part of the marketing budget, this percentage fell to 21 in 2011. In addition, the share of marketing related expenses in communicators’ non-staff budgets also fell by 10 percent between 2007 and 2011. Read More »

We have just released the Executive Summary of our 2011 Resource Allocation Benchmarking Survey findings highlighting the key communications budget trends for 2011/2012. The budget data collected from our members revealed some very interesting findings that every communicator should take into account when planning for 2012.

In 2011, many communicators saw their budget growth rates drop close to zero as their companies’ revenues stagnated. However, despite slower budget growth, communicators finally saw their budgets recover to the pre-2008 levels when looking at communications budget as a percentage of total revenue.  More interestingly, despite stagnating budgets, communicators across all company revenue bands continued increasing their staff levels at an even faster rate than last year. Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

If you often feel like a “one man island”—you’re not alone. Communications teams dispersed globally often struggle to interact, share information, and collaborate across time zones and geographic locations.

One way that CEC member Novo Nordisk has overcome this challenge is by launching a simple, yet sophisticated suite of online networking tools to facilitate communicator-to-communicator peer learning across their global team.  It may seem obvious, but the reality is that despite the amount of effort that we in Communications put into creating communications tools for other departments in the company, we ourselves aren’t always the best users of this technology.

Of course, just because internal collaboration tools exist, doesn’t mean that they are in use or make life easier! However, there are some fundamental pieces of advice to consider to make an online network work for your team. We had the chance to speak with Tanya Wymer, Strategy Director at Novo Nordisk, who shared the secrets behind the company’s corporate communicator network. Elements of their network include tools that:

• Help communicators find peers in other countries with shared challenges or projects
• Facilitate discussion boards that help communicators get quick help on specific questions
• Formalize peer collaboration through structured mentoring programs Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Are you, as a communicator, living in the past?

If your team still works in the traditional role of communication “creators and influencers”—driving stakeholder understanding and acceptance of the company—then you’re falling behind.

The best Communications teams are shifting to communication “enablers.” This shift requires Communications teams to refresh their thinking about their function—including the way they resource.

Old school, traditional resourcing has three limitations: A focus on service requests, limited integration within the function, and limited collaboration with other functions. The new school of resourcing as communication enablers focuses on strategic partnerships, integrates comms teams, and collaborates among functions.

Your Communications team can reinvigorate resourcing efforts by following these 4 steps:

1. Define Communications’ mission and remit. A clear Communications mission can help focus energy on the highest-value activities and define clear service boundaries.  USAA’s Employee Communications team rewrote its mission to state their focus on enabling employee dialogue.

2. Capitalize on emerging business opportunities. Leading Communications teams proactively enable communication around emerging business needs. For example, you could think about your teams’ core capabilities and brainstorm new services, outcomes, or interventions to apply those unique skills. Nokia did just that to realize that their team could extend its strong dialogue capabilities through training line managers to do the same.

3. Improve integration with line partners. Communications can support cross-functional learning in the use of social media channels. For example, PR and Marketing are separate functions that can work together on social media-led campaigns. For example, Ford Motor Company integrated PR and Marketing, resulting in a 40% increase in the Communications budget.

4. Boost efficiency across the portfolio. Communications can maximize its resources by identifying and removing costly inefficiencies within individual activity areas. ING has implemented a service-level tiering system to prioritize Comms support to the most valued activities.

CEC Related Resources:

Equipping Communications for the Future: Resourcing

Organizational Structure

Integrating PR and Marketing for Better Business Results

According to CEC’s 2010 Resource Allocation Benchmarking survey, most communicators anticipate budget increases in 2011.  While the average department will experience only a modest increase (just over 4%), this stands in marked contrast to the flat budgets communicators were forecasting last year for 2010 and the greater-than-10% cuts they experienced in 2009.   You may remember this image from our CEC Insider post last week:

So where should that money go?  Human nature prompts us to restore what we so recently cut, to regain what we used to have.  I know that’s my temptation, if I can increase my budget next year!

Looking over the 2007-2010 time period, our surveys show that corporate advertising and corporate social responsibility programs were cut disproportionately.  Some areas, like government relations and the corporate intranet, actually saw budgets increases despite overall communication budget declines.  So, will 2011 be a year for CSR programs and corporate advertising to bounce back?  Should it be? Read More »

Downturn.  Recession.  Unemployment.  These terms may be just as associated with 2010 as they were with 2009.  But what will 2011 look like?  Will we see an unemployment rate back near 6%?  Will fewer houses sit on the market for months and months?  Will consumer confidence be higher than we’ve seen in the past two years?  Will we start to see more “good” in the news?

The latest business barometer scores show that senior executives’ perceptions on revenue growth and cost pressures over the next 12 months remain slightly negative.

However, the latest 2010 resource allocation benchmarking results show that Communicators may have a slightly more positive outlook when they think about their own resources for 2011. Read More »

By Mike Wellman

Unlike some of the folks I work with, I feel like I’ve always been a “math” guy.  Numbers speak to me, motivate me, and make sense to me.  It’s one of the reasons my colleagues decided I would be a good fit for handling the day-to-day of our diagnostic and communications benchmarking efforts, and probably the reason I’ve been given the nickname “Dr. Frugal” by my family –hey, I love budgets, okay?  Before you start commenting and calling me names like “philistine,” “Hamlet hater” or “the great non-communicator,” hold on a moment.

After spending a fair amount of time with you communicators, I’ve become a convert and learned to appreciate the true power of words.  It’s IMPOSSIBLE to not appreciate the art of communications and how you’re able to move markets with a 5-minute message, let alone a 5-word message.  The pen is truly mightier than the sword, and it’s fascinating to hear stories about how a smart tagline, crystallized brand, or clear and personal strategy was ultimately responsible for a company’s success.  In my experience, there are three words that organizations can use, but often don’t, to effectively motivate their stakeholders to act.  I’ll give you a hint – it’s not “We’ve Got Booze,” “Want More Money?” or “Free CEC Insights.”  (Though that would be nice!)…. Read More »

Q: Why do we communicators crave true benchmarking data?

A. Lots of reasons!

• To understand how we compare to our peers
• To get a sense of trends facing our function
• To see where peers outsource activities to a vendor
• To understand what new activities we should be taking on
• To make a confident case to company leadership for more resources or different allocation (as Mike recently said—it can help us make the case for a little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”)
• To plan for 2011 (yikes—it’s coming way too fast!)

Read More »

By Mike Wellman

How great would it be to have the title of Chief Communications Officer and a 200+ team of able communicators to help you create an impact at your organization?  How about a fleet of Ferraris while we’re at it?  It sounds nice, but sadly many of the Communications professionals we work with continue to feel under-resourced and underappreciated.  That doesn’t mean that we need to always sing Rodney Dangerfield’s tune, though!  (Am I the only one who loves this video?)

The good news is that the communication demands of today are accelerating positive changes in the structure and skill set of many Communications teams, and job titles are evolving to reflect the nature of the important work we do. Smart communicators are asking CEC for help in making the case for more resources now, in a time of great change, when they know their organizations are more likely to listen.  Here are three useful tips on making an effective case for more people, money, or, access: Read More »