CEC Insider

“What’s the most resilient parasite?”  Moviegoers will recognize this question from Christopher Nolan’s recent psychological thriller, Inception, and respond, “An idea!”

Perhaps it’s indicative of a London summer turned dreary (yes, I know, I shouldn’t be surprised!), but living in Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard’s dream world for two hours in the Chelsea cinema this past Saturday was, I’m not ashamed to say, my weekend highlight.

Despite criticism that the film was either too complex or not deep enough, the fast-paced, action-packed drama was entertaining.  Nolan captivates his audience with a world in which it is possible to share dreams – that is, enter into another person’s dream while you are both sleeping – and steal deep secrets metaphorically locked in a safe or other secure location.   But extracting knowledge isn’t enough for the ambitious cast in Nolan’s film; instead the group is challenged to perform inception – to plant an idea in someone’s mind.

This is a particularly dangerous – some say impossible – task because, as one character explains, “the subject’s mind always knows the genesis of an idea.”  In other words, it is not enough to give someone an idea; for them to truly believe and act on it, they need to consider themselves the originator of that idea.

And here is where I can’t help but notice a link to Communications – we can no longer be successful if we solely focus on cascading our messages through channels to reach our audiences.  If the goal is for  stakeholders to act on our messages, we must find a way for them to feel they discovered these messages (and by consequence, discovered us). Read More »

I am as guilty as anyone of listening to the rumour mill. Information just seems so much more exciting when it’s a little bit illicit.  Whether it’s while you are making a cup of coffee (or tea for us Brits), grabbing lunch, or passing each other in the corridor, these informal exchanges with colleagues are the most powerful flow of information in your company. So, who are the most influential nodes in your employee network? How can we leverage the conversations already going on for our strategic advantage?

CEB has been partnering with Rob Cross, an expert in all things to do with social networks, to better understand the answers to some of these questions. Rob has developed a scientific approach of mapping influence across organizations and highlighting those individuals who hold disproportionate power – those who excite and build energy, and those who kill it – within employee networks. We are excited to host a webinar with Rob on the 20^th July to share some of the themes from his work.  CEC members can register for the webinar today.

Read More »

As I’m getting more and more “Out of Office” auto-messages from CEC members away on their summer vacations, I started thinking about my own upcoming trips and what books to bring along with me.  In the spirit of sharing, here are a few selections from my own summer reading list.  Some are business-related; another is personal; one is borrowed from What Salespeople Should Read This Summer; none are from the Twilight series. 

Please help contribute to What Communicators Should Read this Summer—what’s missing from my list? Or does anyone have opinions on the books listed below?

(1) Strengths Finder 2.0—Wouldn’t you like a list of your customized strengths?  And wouldn’t it be great to  find opportunities to leverage those strengths more often?  This book guides you through its philosophy that you should spend more time developing and enjoying what you’re good at—and less time “fixing” the things that are “wrong” with you.  To help you diagnose your natural aptitudes, the book has a handy online assessment, which—if you’re like me—you’ll quickly skip to FIRST and THEN go back and read about the philosophy/implications.  It could be helpful for Comms team members to each take the assessment and then reconvene to explore ways to animate different strengths across the team. It’s also helpful for some solo reflection time by the pool with a notebook in hand. Read More »

Sometimes you see something, and you just have to share it.  When I caught this movie trailer earlier today thanks to my favorite geek-friendly blog, Techland, that’s what I had to do. That’s also what this movie is all about—how the power of social networking and viral growth led to the meteoric rise of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as a major media player.  It seems to me like it may be a “must-see” for corporate communicators this fall.

Communicators, I have to be honest and say that I really just wanted you to see this and don’t have much to add in terms of commentary beyond surprise that Justin Timberlake has a film career (did you know he was in Shrek the Third?) and mild interest in how many “likes” the trailer will get on Facebook.  It’ll be interesting to see if the movie will have the same sort of pull that the network itself did and if the PR team at Sony can harness those same emotional triggers to promote the film.  That brings me to our diversion for today:

If you were on Sony’s PR team for The Social Network, how would you promote it?

Public Affairs, You Confuse Me.

Calling all communicators in the business of Public Affairs—what makes you stand out from the rest of your peers in Communications?

• Do you have key legislators and lobbyists on your BBM contacts?
• Are you the sole owner of CSR and community relations initiatives?
• Are you the policy guru, spotting nefarious legislation and getting your company ahead the messaging curve?
• Do you spend countless hours grooming your CEO and other executives for government testimony?

Read no further if you have an answer and wouldn’t mind sharing it with me. Continue on if you think I’m a confused Millennial. Read More »

I love social media, I really do.  BUT sometimes I think about certain sites and wonder, “WHY in the world do people (read: me) do this??? It’s so creepy!”  Now, I say this a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’s shocking how much people are willing to sacrifice in terms of privacy for a little dose of pleasure.  You can see exactly what “friends” are doing via their Facebook wall, photo albums, and Twitter updates.  It’s a treasure trove for marketers and communicators because of all the personal insights it gives about stakeholders’ lives.  It’s also a jackpot for every stalker/burglar/psycho ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend out there trying to track down someone’s whereabouts (!).  It’s just plain creepy if you think about it.  I mean, is there no limit to the amount of information people are willing to share?  I recently read an article in the NYTimes about people posting photos of their food each time before they sat down to eat it.  Really???

So, with that said, here is my list of the Top 3 Creepiest Social Networking Tools.  Drumroll please…

#1: Foursquare

Foursquare is a mobile application that enables you to “check in” to a place when you’re there.  It then lets friends know where you are, tracks the history of where you’ve been, and sees who you’ve been with. Read More »

May was a big month here at the CEC – we wrapped up our biggest research initiative of the year and presented it for the first time at our headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

For me, the most memorable moment in discussion came during a segment on media monitoring.  This topic can seem quite mechanical – the sort of thing you’d assign to a mid-level person on your team.  But the discussion in Arlington really brought home for me just how strategic it needs to be.

Most of the comms executives participating in the discussion described what I can only characterize as a disjointed approach: one tool for traditional media, another for blogs, another for twitter, and so on.  For a few, responsibility for each type of monitoring (traditional vs. social) even resides in separate groups or departments.  Now, a few folks did describe more integrated systems.  But even in those cases, typical reporting is channel by channel, perhaps with some overall statistics on company mentions, tonality, and/or share of voice.

Does any of this describe your department’s approach? Read More »

I don’t need to tell anyone that today’s communications environment is very different to even 10 years ago.  I set up my first email account 10 years ago and only checked it once a week (I’m pretty slow at these things); now I spend most of my waking hours searching the web, checking email, and pretending to know what I’m doing on social networking sites. When we talk to our members about the changes they’ve seen, there are three things that they typically refer to:

• The decline of traditional media—most commonly the hit to newspaper circulation
• The sheer amount of communication “noise” that we are all exposed to on a daily basis (fun research by University of California on this)
• An explosion of new channels—most of which fall under the category of “social media” (there are so many I can’t keep up—foursquare is the latest to baffle me)

While all of these characterizations are true, there is one fundamental flaw: they are just the symptoms of what’s really going on.  Read More »

I’ve learned a lot about learning over the years.  Some people learn best by reading.  Others by listening.  Some people need to have a sensory experience in order for a new idea to lock into their brain. No one style is better than another, it’s just that we’re all different.

Many communicators, for instance (being the verbal maestros so many of us are!) learn best by talking.  Sometimes words just blurt out of our mouths (ideally not in the midst of eating a Sloppy Joe) and as we hear ourselves speaking out loud, a new thought begins to take shape.

Such a blurt occurred recently for me during our first-ever Preview of our new CEC Annual Executive Retreat series, “Influencing Stakeholders in a Networked Environment.”  In discussing the new reality of influence–the idea that people today are much more likely to listen to and believe ideas from “unofficial sources” (real people) as opposed to anything we say in our “corporate” communications–I blurted out the not-quite-fully-formed thought, “There is no such thing as social media.” Read More »

If you’re like me, you regularly get hit with social media newsletters, blog posts, and expert proclamations that all declare they’ve found the definitive new social media search engine or analytics tool (e.g., ”13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools!”).  However, when I begin playing around with these “essential” tools, I’m often disappointed either because (1) they miss too much or (2) they pick up too much.  This prompts me to ask, “Which free tools are actually worth the time???”  Based on conversations with (often frustrated) communicators and CEC’s research, I’ve assessed some of the popular search tools available and provided a quick review of what they can—or can’t—give you.

As context, here are the basic criteria I used when reviewing a monitoring tool:

• Is it actually free? (If the answer is “no”, it didn’t make my list.  This happened with a couple tools like Jodange and Filtrbox.)
• How relevant are the results?
• How timely are the results?
• How comprehensive are the results?
• Is the interface easy to use and interpret?

In addition to the popular tools that I reviewed in the table below, I came across these other fun tools: Read More »