CEC Insider

Over the past month, one of the most prominent images plastered across the media and web has been thousands of “fan boys” lining up for the latest iPhone 4.  Given the intense passion you can visibly see people associating with the Apple brand and products, few members were shocked when CEC found that emotional connections (more than experiences or trust) drives the active support an organization needs to penetrate today’s networked environment.  While agreeing with the theory, many communicators have argued that their categories/industries are too rational, regulated, or conservative to build such bonds.

Although it’s true that we’re not all Apple, I don’t buy that this finding doesn’t have immediate applicability for every communicator worldwide, and to try to prove it, I’m listing below 10 highly accessible ideas to develop more emotionally resonant content. Read More »

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 »

Customer loyalty is a burning issue for a lot of companies. Marketers know that if you become a “customer for life,” you are worth your weight in gold (and if you’re a lifelong customer at The Cheesecake Factory, just imagine your potential worth!).

So, what makes you loyal to a company?  What makes you want to continue to do business with some companies over and over again, but to “drop others like 3rd period French” and never return?

As it turns out, there’s a single answer to that question when it comes to your service interactions.  Our sister program, CCC (the Customer Contact Council—just like CEC, except for heads of Customer Service) has released the definitive study on the drivers of loyalty in the service environment. The secrets are featured in this month’s Harvard Business Review—you can download the article for free—but I’ll give you a sneak peek a the answer. It’s easy.

No, seriously.  Easy.

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I can’t last an hour in a mall.  I’ve never really “shopped” without a mission to fill a specific (perceived) hole among my material goods.  And the only coupon I can ever remember using was an online discount at last Sunday’s golf course.  I’m oddly proud of all of those facts, and so it pains me to report that Groupon may be the most perfect example of everything CEC has uncovered about succeeding in today’s networked environment.

I assume most are familiar with Groupon’s mechanics: subscribers receive a daily e-mail offering a discount at a local retailer, restaurant, or service provider.  The site shows a minimum number of purchase commitments required by the merchant and a running tally of how many have been made.  Once the minimum threshold is reached, the deal “tips” and the transactions are processed (98% of deals tip).  Merchants acquire new customers, subscribers get a discount, and Groupon takes a cut off the deal.

I never got the appeal as a consumer, but as an observer of business trends, I’m paying much closer attention to Groupon now based on its alignment with CEC’s most recent best practices.

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If not, maybe he or she should.  For the uninitiated, World Cup fever is here once again, and superfans around the world are getting up at the crack of dawn to watch their favorite teams compete on an international stage.  Even in the United States, where Major League Soccer is only 17 years old, conversations around Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, and Robert Green at the water cooler have become ubiquitous.  With all of this passion and chatter in the workplace when one’s team scores a goal, it’s worthwhile for CEOs—and their Comms teams—to ask themselves, “How can we ignite that same sort of support for the company’s goals?”
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We’d all love to get more advocates for our company. But we might be trying to cultivate them in the wrong way:

• Inform: create relevant campaigns and collateral with all the facts—assuming that “to know me is to support me.”
• Invite: provide open-ended opportunities to get involved—assuming that “if I open the door, people will come to me.”
• Offer incentives: appeal to their rational self-interest—assuming that “money talks—and so will they.”

These approaches are completely logical, and sometimes get short-term results—but so often they end up just looking a little too corporate.

A smarter approach to building advocacy is to think a lot less about what WE want people to do, and focus almost exclusively on what makes people want to do things on their own. Read More »

I’m sitting outside Costa Coffee on an overcast April day struggling to balance a fashionably large porcelain mug with the finger gestures that direct the New York Times iPhone app.  As my Americano finally begins to wake me up, I admire a streetscape of eclectic boutiques, trendy bistros, and a colorfully decorated elementary school—all in a vaguely Parisian architectural style.  The comforts of yuppiedom feel extremely familiar.

Finally, a text from a friend interrupts my digestion of the latest Goldman Sachs news and directs me to our lunch destination.  I turn the corner and am suddenly confronted by a much less familiar scene: dozens of merchants selling fruit, scarves, and DVDs in chaotic street side markets; a breeze of fast moving bikes, cars, scooters, and people; and an undecipherable buzz of voices conducting business on cell phones, negotiating with shopkeepers, and asking me for money (I think).

Such are the contrasts of Shanghai’s French Concession where I spent most of my vacation last month.  These streets are still less a microcosm of modern China than ground zero for a rapidly evolving economic and cultural landscape, but I came to believe over my stay that there may not be a bigger or more challenging economic imperative for business communicators in the coming years than navigating the landscape of this complicated environment.

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True to my CEC Insider bio, I enjoy Saturday Soul Searching Strolls. Last weekend, I went on a particularly long walk to clear my mind of all things related to Influencing Stakeholders in a Networked Environment (the major CEC study that’s frying my brain). Oh-ho-ho, what a naïve analyst I am!  Two experiences along the way ignited thoughts about my piece of the study puzzle: animating stakeholder networks to speak on the company’s behalf. In marketing terms, word of mouth.

First, I stopped at Good Stuff Eatery, a burger place owned by former Top Chef contestant Chef Spike Mendelsohn. Despite his fame, Chef Spike was sweating at the register coordinating never-ending orders of Spike’s 5 Napkin burgers and Sunny’s hand cut fries. As he personally handed me my order, I smiled, said “Thanks, Spike.” He grinned back from underneath his geeky fedora, “You’re welcome.” That momentary interaction, that personal connection, sparked a desire within me to spread the Good News of Good Stuff.

Later that night I attended a new neighborhood bar, Star and Shamrock. Inside I asked my bartender, “So, Irish bar, Jewish deli. How’d that happen?” He promptly pulled over the owner who shared, “I’m a Brooklyn Jew who married an Irish girl. Just had to bring the best of both worlds together!”  The bar packed, the owner took the time to engage in a dialogue with me. The next day I thanked Jason for his hospitality…with a shout out on Twitter. Again, I felt connected to him, to his restaurant. I will tell others about it, unprompted.

So, this is the type of word of mouth that you want for your company, right? Of course! Read More »

Among the few things I remember from Philosophy 201 is the quote from the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne: “It is good to rub and polish one’s brain against those of others.”

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. Read More »

According to Time, the best single guarantee of sales success—of any sort—is to get yourself booked on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Communicators will tend to agree, as they’ve spent years building relationships with their own Oprahs: journalists, industry experts, you name it. This approach made total sense in the old world of communication.   But I’m increasingly convinced that it’s not that cut and dry in today’s communication environment. Here’s why:

We live in a highly networked information environment—audiences can now seek out multiple opinions at the touch of a button before they make their own mind up, and they’re increasingly likely to believe “someone like them.”  Both trends we’ve seen for a few years in the Edelman Trust data.

In the past, our job has been to make sure the top of the communication hierarchy gets the right information.  In a network you can’t stop there—it’s all about enabling information “flows”—and that appears to have a whole different set of rules. Read More »