Red Dawn

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?

Casting:  As noted by both the L.A. Times and Wall Street Journal, studios increasingly are casting international stars to broaden the global box office appeal.  For example, in Sony’s The Green Hornet Taiwanese star Jay Chou, of limited English or Hollywood experience, was chosen in part to broaden the U.S. centric appeal of co-star Seth Rogen.  Producers cast Byung-hun Lee, a major Korean movie star, and South African actor, Arnold Vosloo for key roles in G.I. Joe, a film executives worried would be too American for international audiences.  In the end, the movie grossed more than 50% of its $302 million abroad with South Korea accounting for a $16 million alone.

Versioning:  You may have trouble finding some recent blockbusters in foreign countries.  Captain American: First Avenger was retitled as simply First Avenger and Battle: Los Angeles became World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles.  But studios continue to explore more substantive versioning as well.  Producers of The Other Guys sought to re-shoot a key scene involving Derek Jeter with an international soccer star such as Cristiano Ronaldo, and while the player wasn’t available the WSJ quoted the film’s director Adam McKay teasing the future, saying: “It’s a whole new way of looking at movies.  Rather than trying to veer your audience toward the film, just tweak your film to the audience. Next, I’d like to start tweaking movies by region, one version for the Midwest, another for the East Coast, and the South.”

Settings:  Hollywood blockbusters that most rely on foreign receipts are also featuring emerging markets as backdrops for the action.  Fast Five was set in Brazil and did 2x the business of the previous iteration of the series in that country.  Mission Impossible 4 was set partially in Mumbai, Dubai, and Russia, and even Cars 2 featured a host of international locations.  Fast Five producer Neal Moritz admitted to the Times that Brazil “not only was right for the movie but also for the international marketplace.”  Studios are even opting for international locations for their world premieres.  Michael Bay demonstrated his global savviness quoting the BRIC acronym like a Davos presentation when discussing the Moscow premier of Transformers with the Hollywood Reporter.  

Genre:  The growth of the international marketplace is changing the very nature of what Hollywood produces.  For example, a surefire hit in the U.S, Anchorman 2 was shelved because it’s brand of American humor didn’t translate overseas as well as pictures from more global comedy stars such as Sasha Baron Cohen of Bruno and Borat fame.  Indeed, many expect the overall number of comedies produced to decline in favor of action movies that required less cultural awareness to understand. 

Distribution Channel:   Many rural communities in emerging markets are difficult for studios to reach; however, companies like IMAX are opening up new opportunities with portable domes equipped with IMAX screens that broaden the reach of movies beyond economic centers like Shanghai and Rio.  

Production Sourcing:  Despite the growing importance of the international marketplace, Hollywood’s share of box office receipts in many international locations is actually declining against improving local competition.  To combat this trend, studios are investing big dollars to produce or co-produce locally developed content.  Hollywood-Bollywood studio partnerships have led the way in recent years with Indian hits like Saawariya backed by Columbia Tristar and even Tamil content produced by Fox-owned joint ventures.  Indian studios such as Reliance MediaWorks are supporting this trend with the development of top flight studios so Mumbai scenes in Mission Impossible no longer have to be shot in Vancouver.

So, how does a Communicator follow the Hollywood playbook?  To sum: Make multiple locally resonant versions of your content featuring stakeholders from different regions, with exciting but easy to follow themes, through creative distribution channels that reach all audiences.   Or partner with local content producers than can help you reach those audiences but add to the complexity of message development. 

Sound easy?  Well, here’s how the CEC can help…

Managing Communications Across Global and Virtual Teams

An Overview of Cultural Values that Shape Interpersonal Communication

Brazil Country Profile

India Country Profile

China Country Profile

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

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:

1. Defining and Differentiating Your Company’s Unique EVP

A winning EVP depends on employee voice and feedback for authenticity. Communications can support HR in:

• Getting direct input from employees on their values though focus groups or other listening methods

• Conducting employee engagement surveys that test for the most important EVP attributes

2. Engaging Employees Through Your EVP

Communications can take a leading role in bringing the EVP to life through organizational alignment by:

• Helping leaders align their actions to the EVP

• Tailoring EVP communications to specific stakeholder segments

• Enabling employees to represent your EVP externally

The insights provided by a deep understanding of what employees care about have important and diverse implications, from strategy meetings and leadership communications to employment branding and recruiting. Check out our full set of resources and tools on EVP for more guidance on Communications role in EVP creation and application.

CEC Related Resources

• Rebuilding the Employment Value Proposition
• Audience Listening Guide
• Best Buy’s Employee Listening System

CEC Related Blogs

• Comms & HR: Partners in Employee Engagement
• A Winning Employee Value Proposition—Recruiting Needs Your Help
• Peeking Down the Hallway – What’s HR Doing?

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.  

2)      Health: from access to accountability. Concerns over health status are rising, and not just in the developed world.  In the past, these concerns translated into demands for greater access to affordable health care, both services and medicines.  The new trend to watch is consumer interest in accountability as well – expecting their peers to do more to keep themselves healthy and expecting institutions to help.  One manifestation: a Danish surtax on fatty foods.  Others may be on the way, and Communicators should watch out for changing public expectations.

3)      Control freaks. Economic volatility has for many families exposed an insecurity and vulnerability they had not felt in more than a decade.  Empowered consumers’ response?  Focus on what they can control.  This can translate into activism (e.g., the recent “Occupy” movements in various cities).  But it also shows up in consumer shopping behaviors, as consumers rush to options that give them flexibility, convenience, and price: JC Penney’s Findmore kiosks, free Wi-Fi at Tesco, or Monoprix’s shopping app.  And it shows up in personal saving and borrowing behavior.

That’s what struck me.  Browse these yourself (access available here – and bookmark the page so you can catch updates as they are posted) and tell me what trend you are going to watch!

CEC Related Resources:

• Audience Understanding Overview
• Stakeholder Engagement Topic Center
• Tools to Help Others Engage Stakeholders

CEC Related Blogs:

• CEC’s Top 4 External Communications Tools
• 3 Tips for Customizing Global Messages
• Can You Trust Managers with Stakeholder Relations?

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. One idea is to have CRM systems for stakeholder engagement – something similar to a Salesforce.com but for the entire stakeholder universe. This would impose some rigor around capturing all stakeholder interactions and sharing them with the business partners as they prepare to engage with stakeholder groups. This will allow a more 360 degree view of the stakeholder and help the organization prepare strategically for how and when to engage with specific stakeholders around specific business initiatives.

This leads to the second important point: taking a learning posture during stakeholder engagement and using these occasions as a diagnostic tool to understand how stakeholders make decisions. How much listening vs talking would you say you do when you meet stakeholders? Most members we have spoken with say that while they should be doing more listening, in reality, most of these conversations are around telling stakeholders all the things the company is doing to build a good reputation.

While Communications has a LOT of knowledge about stakeholders, it hasn’t been so good at sharing that information back inside the business at key decision points, to help business partners inform their strategy. Communicators are trying to take on a more consultative role with the business when it comes to managing reputation, but currently business partners don’t rely on insight from Comms in making decisions.  One company that has made some progress in terms of bringing “social intelligence” to inform business strategies is BBVA with its integrated stakeholder listening process.

How do you listen and observe when and how stakeholders make decisions around specific outcomes? Do you capture that knowledge anywhere – do you use CRM systems? Do you have examples of specific business outcomes that were shaped by information about stakeholder decisions that you provided as communicators?

We’d love to hear what you are doing in this space (through the comments box or by contacting the CEC team directly) and how you’re bringing stakeholder intelligence to business decisions!

CEC Related Resources:

• Building an Outcome-Focused Reputation Management
• Stakeholder Engagement

CEC Related Blogs:

• 3 Steps to Build an Outcome-Focused Reputation
• Is It Good to Have a “Good” Reputation?
• Reputation Management: 3 Tips to Cope with New Threats

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

Communicators at one of our members, Southwest Airlines, used ethnographic techniques to understand their stakeholders and advise changes to the business model. Communications collaborated with Marketing to use ethnographic techniques to uncover consumer behaviours and “in the moment” reaction to messages, i.e., Southwest Airlines shifted the messaging of a price hike from an ‘apologetic’ tone to a ‘rational’ tone, based on the insight that customers are comfortable with fee hikes as long as the explanation is upfront and clear.

How have you used ethnography to understand stakeholder behaviors? What did you learn from your experiences? What might you do differently? We’d love to hear your ideas!

 Related Blogs:

• CEC’s Top 4 Internal Communications Tools
• Integrate Your Listening Efforts
• Are You Limiting Your Communications Potential?

Related Resources:

• Deepen Your Stakeholder Understanding
• Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan
• Anatomy of a Business Value-Focused Communication Function

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

• Don’t wait for your annual employee engagement survey to address change fatigue in your organization.  After all, with 82% of employees experiencing at least one major change in the past 6 months, odds are that the negative effects of a high-change environment are being felt throughout your employee ranks.  See what we communicators can do spot the symptoms and protect your business’ bottom line. 

              Additional Resource: CEC’s study on Building a Change-Ready Organization

 Coaching Leaders: 10 Tips for Effective Presentations

• CEOs may be experts at setting strategy and managing a leading organization, but unfortunately not all of them can walk up to a podium with confidence and truly engage their employees, investors, or stakeholder audience.  That’s where Communications can shine.  These 10 presentation tips are sure to effectively prepare your senior leaders for their next speaking engagement.

              Additional Resource: Communications Leadership Coaching Overview

 5 Questions That Will Change the Content of Your Next Message

• Stop assuming that your stakeholder audience knows what you know and start giving more consideration to their vantage point.  Consider these five questions when crafting your next message and you’ll find that the content reflects

              Additional Resource: Tips for Improving the Content of Your Messages

 The 7 Freshest Ways to Engage Your Audience

• What happens when someone zones out of a conversation? Their nods of agreement go on auto-pilot. Their eyes glaze over. Their mind wanders. Why? Because they’re not engaged in the discussion. They’re being talked to, not with.  Here are 7 ways to ensure audience engagement as you look to 2012.

              Additional Resource: Stakeholder Engagement Topic Center

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.
2. Moderate the discussion effectively: It’s relatively easy to get people in a room together. It’s much harder to facilitate an effective, result oriented discussion among them. Create a comprehensive discussion guide with the right set of questions to ask as well as follow-ups, and prompts that may be useful during the discussion.
   CEC Tool: Here are some suggestions that help with issues like dominating or disruptive participants.
3. Analyze the findings: Interpreting the results from a discussion can be confusing. In order to develop a compelling story, consult with business partners and interpret the quotes, phrases, and keywords from the discussion that relate to your objectives.
   CEC Tool: Read some of our guidelines to develop the key takeaways from the discussion into a report.

Use our Focus Groups Toolkit to learn more about how to run a focus group as an audience listening method.  And don’t forget to look at the following resources.

Related Blogs:

• CEC’s Top 4 Internal Communications Tools
• Integrate Your Listening Efforts
• Are You Limiting Your Communications Potential?

Related Resources:

• Deepen Your Stakeholder Understanding
• Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan
• Anatomy of a Business Value-Focused Communication Function

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.

2. How to Optimize Your Twitter Strategy to Support Business Outcomes

• What it is: This toolkit walks you through creating a Twitter strategy that focuses on driving stakeholder action to enable business outcomes. It also contains guidance on developing meaningful metrics, getting your tweets shared by others, getting started on Twitter, and selecting monitoring tools.
• Why it’s cool: Tweeting to share is nice, but tweeting to support business outcomes is better. This approach relies on Twitter’s functionality as an information distribution channel to engage key audiences and improve the corporate reputation.

3. Tailor Messages for Local Audiences

• What is it: Use this series of questions to understand when your audience will be most receptive to messages.
• Why it’s cool: Because generic messages don’t account for cultural differences among local communications teams, it’s essential to tailor the tone, content, and language of messages based on the values of local audiences.

4. Benchmark Your Team’s Budget Allocation

• What it is: This online benchmarking analysis tool will help you in the budget planning process by providing benchmarks for key budget areas, including media relations, social media and your corporate website.
• Why it’s cool: Using data we’ve collected from more than 70 member organizations on 2011 communications resource levels, you can view the benchmark data set through lenses such as industry, business model, organization size, function structure, and geography.

CEC Related Blogs

• 4 Tips to Boost the Impact of Your News Release
• How Not to Waste Your Time on Twitter
• 3 Tips for Customizing Global Messages

CEC Related Resources

• News Releases in a Networked Environment
• How to Optimize Your Twitter Strategy to Support Business Outcomes
• Tailor Messages for Local Audiences