Red Dawn seems to have all the ingredients of a surefire Hollywood success.  It’s a remake of a successful 1984 film featuring Charlie Sheen and  Patrick Swayze about a group of teenagers banding together to save their small U.S. town from a Soviet invasion.  The new cast of up and coming stars have already been featured in blockbusters like Thor and Transformers and seem tailor made to appeal to the tween and teen audiences that have fueled recent hits like Twilight and Harry Potter.  So why is MGM spending more than a million dollars to digitally edit the finished film and delay its release until November 2012?  Because in the new version the invading force is a Chinese army, and in Hollywood today, you do not want to upset the Chinese, who sanction only 20 foreign movie releases per year.  (The “digitally re-mastered” enemy moviegoers will see is led by a much less commercially important North Korean force).

It’s another example of a new reality for Hollywood where screens abroad now account for nearly 70% (and growing) of box office revenue, according to the L.A. Times, and studios cater all elements of production to international audiences particularly in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China whose growth has helped studios survive a massive drop in DVD sales.  So, how’s Hollywood changing and can Communicators learn from their efforts? Read More »

Communicators often need to use numbers to narrate a story. However, for people who love playing with words, it can be a “scary” prospect to conduct quantitative surveys. The challenge lies in asking the right set of questions, gathering information that meets the desired objectives, and analyzing the data to build your story. The question then becomes, “What is the best way to gather the information required to fulfill my desired objectives?”

When researching on best ways to conduct quantitative surveys, we discovered that launching a quant survey is much more than pressing a launch button that sends out a questionnaire. Communicators need to focus their efforts on building a solid hypothesis to test and developing clear objectives for the survey.

The four steps below will help you get the most out of your survey efforts:

1. Build a Plan – Communicators should think about why they are doing a survey and how they plan to use the results. This involves creating a hypothesis of what you want to show with the study, understanding the central problem, and identifying the variables that influence it. Learn how to integrate the problem and its causes into a description of reality.
2. Spend Time Designing – Once you have the built a survey model, you need to do much more than make a list of questions. Designing the survey involves developing and testing hypotheses as well as thinking about whether you will want to track results over time or not. Read more on survey design to understand how to select your target audience, data collection tools, and the survey parameters.
3. Maximize Participation – Getting a high number of responses on surveys can be a frustrating process. You need to convince a large number of people to take 15-30 minutes out of their schedule to respond. Find out how you can maximize survey participation by creating a launch and promotion plan before even making the survey.
4. Conduct In-Depth Analysis – Sorting through vast amounts of survey data can be daunting.  Start cleaning your data by looking for outliers (high or low responses), which can really skew the validity of your results. Look at how you can analyze surveys and build correlations to tell a story with the data.

CEC Members: Download the complete tool for How to Conduct Quantitative Surveys. This is one of the accompanying tools to Step 4 in Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan.

Related Blogs:

• 3 Steps to Be a Better Listener
• CEC’s Top 4 Internal Communications Tools
• Integrate Your Listening Efforts

Related Resources:

• How to Conduct Focus Groups
• Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan
• Anatomy of a Business Value-Focused Communication Function

Corporate Communications often finds itself at the mercy of the organization to sets its agenda for the year. While Communications’ efforts should certainly support company strategy, consider these 5 Communications-specific trends that will influence the function’s ability to have a real impact in 2012.

1. Stakeholders have (even more) power.

The age of individual control over what, when, and how to consume information continues in 2012.  New devices, like the Kindle Fire, new services, like Spotify, and new mobile apps, like Zite, that took off in 2011 will further enable people to act in ways natural to them. Chances are, reading/viewing/listening to dry corporate messages isn’t something most people like to do naturally! As a result, Communications’ approach to everything it creates must be stakeholder-centric, not company-centric.

Smart teams will kickoff the year by asking themselves, “Do we know where our key stakeholder groups go for information?” Determine how your stakeholders consume information with CEC’s audience listening guide, and then use that information to develop a stakeholder-centric communication plan.

2. Communicators look to build their business partnership skills.

In 2012, the Corporate Communications function grows up. Once just the PR-engine for the company, Communications is now expected to impact business results in a much different way by coaching leaders to communicate more effectively, developing internal communication systems for employees to connect with one another, and feeding stakeholder insight to business leaders, to name a few roles.

A new set of skills is required for communicators to live up to these new expectations. Clear writing and a solid understanding of channels won’t cut it, but a focus on business partnership skills such as critical thinking and negotiation will enable communicators to grow into the position of consultative business partner.

CEC members, we can help you: See how your skills stack up compared to peers; develop a plan for your skill development in 2012; and equip yourself with smart tools to build skills in the moment.

3. A global mindset pervades the function.

Communications execs are asking two things of their teams this year: 1.) partner with colleagues in remote locations and 2.) customize messages for local audiences in other countries. At the root of this global focus in the function is the simple fact that emerging markets are key for corporate growth. Communication teams that spend time in 2012 building an awareness of cultural differences of local audiences will discover new solutions to age-old collaboration challenges (e.g., Why does no one use our intranet portal to share information?) and deliver messages that are more resonant.

Visit our Global Management Topic Center to take the stress out of collaboration or download communicator’s guides to India and China to get up to speed on cultural trends that impact the function’s communication efforts.

4. Blanket trust-building to strengthen corporate reputation is called into question.

Tight budgets over the last few years have forced communicators to think hard about where they place their investments, and dollars spent tracking high-level reputation measures are being scrutinized more than ever before. One communicator sums it up nicely: “We have done reputation measurement for several years and I have not taken any radical, meaningful decisions as a result of any of the data we’ve got.”

In 2012, we expect to see leading communicators focus reputation efforts not on building an even bigger bank of goodwill through high-level reputation tracking, but instead on sharing information that influences a small set of targeted stakeholder decisions that drive business outcomes. Contribute to our 2012 research on Building an Outcome-Focused Reputation.

5. Agile workforces meet the challenges of uncertain environments through strong communication and a focus on learning.

Much remains uncertain and unsolved in 2012. And yet, the show must go on. Companies will attempt to grow. The smart ones know that employees who proactively adapt, seek to learn from peers, and feel a personal connection to the company are excited by and contribute to these fast-moving companies.

Communications, then, must support the development of an agile organization by helping leaders to share key market context that helps employees to make decisions in line with strategy, partnering with HR to connect employees to one another, and supporting a culture that empower employees.

CEC Related Resources

• 2012 Strategic Priorities for Communicators
• 2011 Communications Budget Benchmarks
• What’s in the Works from CEC in 2012

CEC Related Blog Posts

• 4 Comms Execs Priorities in 20123 Stakeholder Trends to Watch in 2012
• Top 3 Insights from Communication Gurus in 2011
• Top 5 CEC Blogs of 2011

CEOs are gearing up to share their 2012 strategy with employees through live and virtual town halls, blog posts, and Q&A sessions. While no one underestimates the importance of company leaders’ plan for the year ahead, employees often leave strategy sessions unsure of what, exactly, they should do with the insight and how they will be expected to contribute.

One of the best tools to think about engaging employees in strategy conversations is your employment value proposition (EVP). Your EVP is the set of attributes that employees value about working at a company. Attributes like compensation, future career and development opportunities, and work-life balance are usually at the top of the list. Understanding what employees value and feeding these insights into leadership communications and business unit discussions about the implications of company strategy.

EVP, or employment brand, is usually the purview of Human Resources because of its importance in recruiting and retaining employees. But Communications can play an important role by supporting HR in crafting and communicating about the EVP, and taking the lead on driving employee engagement through organizational alignment with the EVP.

Learn how you can support HR in creating a successful EVP and engage employees through your EVP. By breaking the EVP realignment process into two stages, it’s easy to see just how big a role Communications can play: Read More »

We all know that the effectiveness of what you write depends in large part on how well you speak the language and values of your audience.  This is doubly so in today’s socially networked environment, where your audience is also the messenger – if they choose to be (CEC members click here for more on that).

So it’s no wonder that the 850+ participants in the CEC Skills Maturity Assessment have indicated a real interest in improving their ability to create engaging content and – as a necessary precursor – to listen to audiences and learn what they care about.

There are many ways to learn about your target audience, all featured in a new CEC member resource center dedicated to developing this skill.  I want to call attention to a tool we’re adding to the mix, thanks to a partnership between CEC and Iconoculture, the leading syndicated provider of up-to-the-minute, segment-level insights into consumer values and trends: audience understanding in less than five minutes.  This series of one-page outlooks – grouped by industry, demographic segment, and geography – gets you quickly up to speed on key values, trends, and language.

I’ve mined these for three trends to watch in 2012, as they cut across many countries and demographic groups:

1)      Idealistic youth + social networking technologies = higher standards.Young adults expect institutions (both government and private) to do good, not just seek profit or power.  Most – especially in Asia – remain quite optimistic, despite macroeconomic challenges.  And all are quite ready to mobilize.  In many ways, this isn’t brand new – earlier generations of young people have felt the same way.  But modern social networking technology let them share information and ideas faster and wider than previous generations (think “Arab Spring”).  This means that unflattering information about your organization will be discovered in the blink of an eye and that “social responsibility” initiatives had better be more than lip service.   Read More »

One of the key activities for communicators in terms of reputation building is stakeholder engagement. Members tell us that they focus heavily on stakeholder engagement activities and are trying to be smarter about it – prioritizing key, influential stakeholders and keeping a pulse on what they are saying about the company. These activities involve not only monitoring for risks and potential issues, but also take the shape of more proactive engagement through thought leadership events, engaging and meeting with industry leaders, and promoting good corporate citizenship efforts.

Currently, most stakeholder engagement is focused around reputation risk management and justifying or positively reinforcing existing reputation activities. Some of the ways in which communicators manage reputation with stakeholders include:

• Stakeholder mapping and monitoring: this involves keeping a pulse on what stakeholders are saying about you, so that you may identify and preempt potential risks. Think of this one as good “housekeeping” to prevent issues or crises from rising. For example, Monsanto utilizes stakeholder-centric monitoring to prioritize issues for specific stakeholder groups. Other companies identify and prioritize reputation risks by mapping “degree of sensitivity to issue” against “strength of company position.”
• Stakeholder conversations and thought leadership: more proactively, communicators identify influencers and discuss issues of concern with them to establish the company as a thought leader in the industry. This is in addition to other thought leadership and executive communications programs. Chevron for example, holds thought leadership stakeholder discussions on important issues to the company.

These tactics are great if you, the Communications team, were the only ones engaging with stakeholders! But more and more it is your business partners and employees who have more frequent interactions with stakeholders.  Adding additional pressure is the fact that the external environment is becoming increasingly complex as stakeholders become more resourceful about how they access information and form perceptions about you.

The problem is that business partners and employees don’t necessarily know all the risks to reputation as they are having conversations with stakeholders, and won’t think through those interactions as strategically as communicators do. Read More »

Listening to audiences is important to any communicator. But how often do you sense that what people say is different from the way they actually behave? Nod your head if you agree that there is a need to observe audience behaviour firsthand, understand their reasons for irrational behaviour, and do this in the most efficient way possible.

While ethnography has traditionally been used by marketers for understanding consumer behaviours and more recently by companies like Intel to inform strategy and planning, communicators can use ethnography to uncover the underlying behaviours and values of their audiences.

Thinking about how to apply ethnography? While it may sound like a daunting academic exercise, anyone can do some version of an ethnographic study without necessarily needing to use outside resources.   In the CEC ethnography tool, we propose that you consider a combination of participation, observation, and interviewing to find out more about your audience.

Here are three key steps to help you become a better ethnographer:

1. Design Ethnographic Study – Select the location, audience, duration, and observers.

2. Prepare Field Observation Guide – Develop questions and focus areas of investigation.

3. Conduct Post-study Debrief and Analysis – Analyze, and interpret the information gathered.

Sound complicated? Use our Ethnography Toolkit  to learn how to navigate each step.

Case in Point: How Southwest Airlines Uses Ethnography for Stakeholder Listening Read More »

As 2011 draws to a close we look back more than 200 blogs published by CEC Insider during the calendar year.  The posts featured below were our top 5, having been downloaded by more CEC Insider readers than any others.  They address five communications topics that, while all different, are sure to remain of interest to communicators in the new year.  

3 Skills to Improve Your Job Security

• Job security does not exist. One of the most effective ways to ensure your future employment is to develop new skills continuously.   Since launching the CEC’s overhauled competency framework in the spring, nearly 1,000 communications have already taken the Skill Maturity Assessment to indentify and address the skill gaps of themselves and their team. In this blog, we examine the three weakest skills of most communicators.

               Additional Resource: CEC’s Communications Skill Maturity Assessment and Diagnostic

  Spot the Symptoms of Change Fatigue Read More »

As communicators, we like to think that we’re good at listening. But, how often do you see messaging and communications strategies that don’t really resonate with audiences? We’ve discussed how the Outcome-Focused Communication Plan can help to improve your performance. Now, let’s talk about how you plan to listen to your audiences in a timely and productive manner. One effective way is through a focus group discussion aimed at gaining in-depth knowledge, insights and multiple viewpoints on a situation or initiative.  

According to Wharton’s Americus Reed: “A focus group is like a chainsaw. If you know what you are doing, it’s very useful and effective. If you don’t, you could lose a limb.” While our market research colleagues are experts at running focus groups, we as communicators probably feel like we’ve been handed a chainsaw with no instruction manual if we were asked to run one. CEC has created a quick guide to help you make the process easier.

Here’s how you can use a focus group to better listen to your audiences:

1. Select the type of focus group you will run based on your objective for listening: The right type of focus group choice depends on your resources, team capabilities, and what you’re aiming to learn. Focus groups vary widely based on your objectives. They differ based on the people moderating it, the type of interaction that occurs and the kind of conclusions produced. Understanding that communicators operate under various restraints, select the group most appropriate for your situation.
    CEC Tool: Look at some tips on how to find a moderator within your comms team. Read More »

The end of the year is often thought of as a time for reflection — and getting things done.

As you close out the year and get revved up for 2012, check out some of our top tools and templates. In the last year, your CEC external communications peers have been using these guides to do their jobs faster and more effectively.

You can also check out our top internal tools.

CEC’s Top Four External Communications Tools

1. How to Write News Releases for a Networked Environment

• What it is: Use this guide to ensure that your news releases are strategically focused, designed to appeal to key audiences and optimized for multimedia use.
• Why it’s cool: The media landscape has changed drastically in recent years. This toolkit will help you stay ahead of the curve by improving your news releases subject, style, media content and format. Read More »