Flashback Friday

With the weekend now about ten minutes away I wanted to do something a bit unusual. And that's talk about us. Not me, mind you. Us. Otherwise known as BlueChippers. 


This week, as we've worked together to hit home runs for current clients, pitch to new clients and improve how we work, a few things really leapt out. So, at risk of having you see me as a a bit soppy, I want to pause, and to 'flash back' to some great moments for our team.


It's different here
Everyone says that when they're recruiting right? For example: "We're different. We do x, y & z for our people. We really care." And then by week three you're wondering how they even made that stuff up, let alone said it with a straight face. 


But here's what our people (not me!) say:


1. The values are real - respect, integrity, persistence, excellence - with actions behind them 
2. There are no politics
3. People tell the truth even when it hurts
4. You have a real opportunity to do your best work and to grow personally and professionally
5. We have fun and laugh together...


Although at midday today when we were all heads down, hands on keyboard you might wonder about that one!


A star team...not just a team of stars
"You know it's harder to get a job at BlueChip than it is at [insert name of leading investment bank here]" said a well known recruiter recently.


Well actually it might even be harder because not only do we hire hungry, humble and smart people, we are uncompromising when it comes to "fit". And by "fit" we don't mean a gender, cultural or educational background or personality type. We mean "fit" with our values. 


While we do unashamedly go after the best people in the market, we want to only work with other people we want on our relatively small "boat". 


People who say stuff like:


- "I don't want to delegate that to him/her because it won't give them enough challenge"
- "We can do this better...here's how it might work"
- "So and so did a really good job on this" and (yes, it's true)
- "We shouldn't charge our client for that because..."


Doing our best work...so clients get REAL results
When we're recruiting and an entry level candidate says "I don't want to do that fluffy kind of PR", they suddenly have our full attention. 


People who are already BlueChippers want to make a difference, do their best work and achieve a great outcome for clients.


They hate fluff, they loathe tactical-only campaigns, and they always want to understand the big picture. 


In many ways, while the recruiters think we're mad, BlueChippers are actually people who already work like we do. Our culture calls out to the right people.


They're people who want to do great work. And they are prepared to hear feedback in order to get better and better at what they do. 


So when something's not working, they call it out. To our clients, their colleagues or their boss. We call it (full credit to Patrick Lencioni) the "kind truth". One set of words to describe giving feedback to each other is this:


"Bad news does not improve with age. But the kind truth improves with observation". 


It hurts way less when the person giving you feedback cares, and has carefully observed what's going on for you. But still delivers exactly what you need to hear, knowing it might sting.


Valuing values
This week I've marveled at the ability, the team spirit and the talent here at BlueChip. 


But most of all I've been humbled by the evidence of our values at work. 


They power our team, they help us reach the stars for our clients, and they ensure we enjoy the time we spend with each other.


Above all, values help us all "be the best we can be".


Happy weekend BlueChippers - whether you work here yet or not!

News...morally bankrupt or giving us what we want?

How quickly, fueled by genuinee public outrage, and years of restrained bile, media can turn.

In this case, on itself.

It raises a bigger question than the obvious one of media ethics.

There's a very good reason for the media furore. And it's not phone tapping.

News of the World, and possibly other News Limited titles, intervening in the private lives of grieving people was simply the thread that unravelled the whole ball of yarn...and led to this particular tangle.

The British public are rightly outraged at the notion of media, or anyone, inserting themselves into the investigation of a child's death - and them profiting from such morally bankrupt activity.

But really haven't the media just been giving us what we, the avaricious public, been consuming on demand and gravitating towards by reading ever more salacious details of other people's lives? I'm thinking maybe the whole ball of yarn here has as much to do with media consumers as media malpractice.

There is no justification in my mind for the actions of media party to this behaviour.

But where's the line? And what part do we, the public, play?

I'm speaking here as a media consumer, not as a PR person. As a PR person I tend to think decent journalists have a hard time of it as they set out to do a very worthy job. As a PR person I also strongly believe both media and PRs should work in ethics-driven cultures, and be under scrutiny - nothing beats sunlight to help encourage good behaviour.

Possibly since journalism (and PR) began we've all been reading, hearing and watching and probably will continue to, news that's delivered via foul means as well as fair.

It's just that rarely do we lift the bonnet to see how the engine runs. Because all we care about is whether or not the car gets us from point A to point B in the style we want to travel.

High brow economics commentary? Page three girls? Perhaps a dodgy used car sales person running from the cameras? Or perhaps your taste runs more to celebrity weight loss/infidelity/surgery stories. Or to civilian deaths in another country's conflict.

We've all become, to some extent, voyeurs entertained or informed at some cost to others - whether that cost is their dignity, their safety or simply their right to suffer unseen.

I have no moral ground to stand on here. I read newspapers, listen to radio, read online news and occasionally read 'one of those' magazines while waiting for something better to happen or avoiding my email.

That makes me too complicit in the decline of media standards. Some media would argue that my profession does also...but that's a debate for another day.

If one lasting and fundamental good could come from this 'you wouldn't read about it' saga, it may simply be this: that media are more accountable.

For the most part the many journalists I've worked with, sometimes at cross purposes to, and alongside, are exceptional people.

For often average incomes they work, day after day, to report news that people should know. That's news that is in the public interest. It's news that holds people, governments and businesses accountable. And it's news that sometimes changes the world.

For that ridiculously important task many get little more than a byline or story credit. Very often the money and professional opportunity doesn't adequately cover the grief that goes withnthe job. There is however, for those journalists, the great satisfaction of knowing they really did make a difference.

It's just a shame that media organisations, guided by the scandal and sauce-loving public, have increasingly rewarded another kind of journalist and photographer - and apparently private eye.

That's the kind who really does only care about money and ego.

But they will, sadly, continue to be rewarded by the average reader. Because actually, until now, we really didn't want to think too hard about where our 'news' was coming from or how it was sourced.

In my private nirvana, news consumers and those who serve them, would actually want to know about the kind of ethics and behaviour that generated the headlines.

It's happened with clothing, chocolate and coffee. Maybe one day we'll read news that comes with a "free trade" or "ethical" label. If no-ones rights were infringed, it's okay to read. If so, straight to the bin.

Yes, that's fantasy land. Because media, and many others do believe the means justifies the ends.

But should we all be a bit more careful about that kind of thinking?

Sometimes nothing justifies the ends. Sometimes the means in itself is so wrong that it represents the slippery slide to an ethical wilderness. Once lost, we might never emerge to see the greater good, or innthis case, the public interest.

Network science and why it will change what we do

En route to the US to attend the PAICR conference I watched a documentary about network science. It helped explain why financial services (and many other) marketing and PR efforts are seemingly unpredictably successful or unsuccessful. And why measurment remains a challenge.

In short, my takeout is that relying on opinion leaders or influencers is an unproven and probably unsuccessful way to change opinions and behaviour.

The implications for marketing and PR are huge.

If I have it right, it means:

- Average people are just as likely to start a trend as the more connected among a population
- A product, service or idea won't be successful unless it's time is right
- If the time is right an idea, product or service will spread incredibly rapidly

Our job as marketers or communators then is to do what I was taught at uni - make stuff people want. I beleive it was more appropriately called "the marketing concept" and it followed on from what was taught in high school economics - consumer sovereignty.

More appropriately to the finance sector, only sell services or ideas when they will add value and the conditions are right for clients or investors to take them up.

This Fast Company article about Duncan Watts' work talks more about why targetting opinion leaders is a waster of time.

PS In 1992, I dropped my 2/rds complete Honours thesis about Roger's diffusion of innovation framework and social change communication. Sounds like that was a better call than I realised at the time!

Ethics in PR (now stop laughing!)

Today the Public Relations Institute of Australia sent out a link to the PRTV edition about ethics.

It's easy to laugh when the concepts are linked - "PR" and 'ethics'.

My second, more sombre reaction (as when interviewed) is that ethical behaviour by PR people is impossible if they don't really know what they're communicating about.

How do I know? Let's call it bitter experience...stories for another time.

The short version is that as so-called professional communicators we have zero credibility if we don't really know what we're talking about, trust the people we work for and ultimately, take extreme care in how we present facts AND nuance.

Yes, we should follow a code of ethics.

Yes, we should "do the right thing", meaning be honest and truthful.

More than those things we should question whether or not what we're asked is right.

And ultimately satisfy ourselves with an answer we can live with.

I certainly can't claim the moral high ground - as a younger PR I sometimes felt very uncomfortable with the "party line". It's career threatening to say "Excuse me Chairman, are you entirely sure we should present things as you've just described?".

More recently we've walked away from several potentially great (exciting, newsworthy) jobs when we felt unsure of the merits of our client's story, or just had a feeling that 'something wasn't right'.

This is not an argument that PRs need forensic accounting skills. However it is reasonable to expect that senior people in our profession can read both people and data, pay attention to the P&L and do a little due diligence on potential clients and employers.

Long term, if we believe our own mantra, our personal reputation is our most valuable asset.

Perhaps in PR the universal ethical guideline is simply enlightened self-interest.

Annual Reports & Shareholder Reviews - avoiding the 'house of pain'

Here are some practical tips for those involved in the annual report & shareholder review process, written by one with some scar tissue on the subject. While some aspects of the reporting process are outside corporate affairs or investor relations control, many things can be done to make the process more efficient and produce a higher quality product.

Want the 30 second version? This week I'll also post Top 5 things in best annual reports and Top 5 annual report shortcuts.

The annual report house of pain
This is when:
- a process starts without clear criteria
- everyone is an expert on language, images, design and content
- hence no-one agrees
- deadlines are missed
- things are done at the last minute and of course...
- quality suffers.

Throw in a 4am finish and you have a living hell.

Typically at some point in this nightmare (usually too late) the CEO will decide that they really doesn’t like a particular image and they want it changed. Or the General Counsel will suggest the language and punctuation needs their personal stamp on it. And who can blame them? There were probably no clear criteria set out for the visual identify or language style guide of the document to start with.

Criteria
It sounds simple, but some clear objectives and criteria for the annual document suite can make judging success far easier. How to decide what success looks like for this year’s report?

Simply look around at your peers, previous experience, and best practice sources then take the draft objectives for the document and criteria (for messages, images and overall meaning) to your CEO and then Chairman. This needs to happen BEFORE anything else. How do we brief designers, writers or contributors if we don’t know what our criteria are for a successful report in the first place? How can the effectiveness of the reports be judged if no one set out objectives? The answer “poorly” and “I don’t know”.

Similarly, if you don’t have a style guide, you better get one fast before the documents are written. If you don’t have a style guide everything is up for debate - which word to use, how abbreviations are referenced, and where the comma goes, and on...and on...and on.

Audience analysis
Annual reports and shareholder reviews are for shareholders... but are read and interpreted by everyone from analysts to customers, employees, suppliers and high school economics students. We may care more, or less, about some of these audiences but we do need to know who matters most. We also, I argue, need data about what the most critical audience or two currently thinks about the company.

Typically at least one part of an annual report or review is a message driven document. Companies invested significant sums in creating and delivering messages to audiences. This is almost pointless if you don’t have facts (not your ‘gut feel’) about what those critical audiences think, THEN create messages and deliver them in a way that works for, or influences, the current mindset of the most important audiences.

Right now, whether talking to retail or institutional investors, humility goes a long way. How do we know? Because it makes sense but it’s also backed up by data from investor research telling us just how annoyed some shareholders and investors are.

Structure
Ultimately I have no doubt most annual reports have great ‘bones’. However some are limp, lifeless things with no clear logic in the presentation of information.

Starting with good structure, before anyone begins to draft and two things happen. First the document writes itself. Phew. Second, no one can find a word out of place because the logic and simplicity of a good structure is that every word fits in the right spot with crossword-like precision.

Overall document structure
This you can glean from convention - competitor reports, your own previous years’ reports, best practice guides such as the AICD or Australasian Reporting Awards and of course any major focus for the year. This document structure is increasingly a content hierarchy rather than a typical fishbone ‘table of contents’.

And please, if you are doing an online version, do not create an ‘online table of contents’ that mimics the printed document. It’s not good use of readers’ time and it wastes a perfect opportunity to actually communicate a message. BHP Billiton [URL] is a great example of how to use this space for messages rather than a bland listing of contents that sit behind the first report or review landing page.

Formula for each section
The format for each report section can also be gleaned from convention. The Chairman’s letter, video or transcript may differ in structure to a divisional report but there is a basic common format.

It’s this:
1. The result, compared to the previous corresponding period.
2. The things that led to that result – company driven or from the external environment
3. How it compares to a relevant reference - others in the market, the overall market or more on previous years’.
4. How this result will be repeated, improved on, or avoided in the year to come.

Tip – the best reports talk to streakers, strollers and scholars - see here for more: http://financialservicesmarketingpr.blogspot.com/2009/04/streakers-strollers-scholarsyes-they.html.