All posts by Debra Yearwood

Government Relations, public relations

Etiquette – Things You Learned in Kindergarten

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Over the years, I have  helped many clients prepare for their first meeting with a legislator. I have seen presidents of national and multinational corporations, men with billion dollar budgets and thousands of employees break out in a sweat at the thought of presenting their organization’s perspective to a Minister.  I have also had clients whose complete lack of regard for the time and opportunity afforded to them by a meeting with a Minister come close to derailing their corporate objectives before they had even presented them.

In one particularly memorable case, my client who had been out at meetings with members of parliament (MPs) all morning called a minister’s office and asked the assistant to organize a lunch in time for their arrival since they were falling behind schedule. Given that the assistant in question worked for the Minister of Finance it’s fair to say that she had other things too attend to that morning, not the least of which were all of the other visitors waiting to meet the minister. She didn’t call a caterer, she called me.

When people told me government relations was exciting, I was skeptical. I had worked in politics for years and met plenty of lobbyists. While the issues were interesting and the policy solutions often ingenious, the hours were long and moving regulations or legislation is often tedious. Unless it was an election night, exciting is not how I would have described most political action. However, when my day was unexpectedly interrupted by a an outraged assistant previously known for her patience under fire, my heart rate might have picked up. There is definitely a certain amount of drama associated with trying to soothe an angry assistant, while madly pantomiming to your own assistant to call the florist and send a massive bouquet of flowers BEFORE your oblivious client gets there.

Although the client in question headed up a multi-national who could make the nation’s GDP drop when they had a strike, they were still people dealing with people. The cost of the flowers and my time while I sorted out their faux pas was negligible, but that little moment cost them a good deal of credibility. For a large corporation if you perform enough small blunders the cost to your reputation starts to take a tremendous financial toll. Whether you’re annoying a minister’s assistant or frustrating a customer, bad news spreads quickly. Social media means it spreads at the speed of a key stroke.The customer/stakeholder/follower is not always right, but they always deserve to be treated with respect.

Some Simple Tips To Keep In Mind

  • Consider how you might feel if positions were reversed.
  • Treat people the way you want your favorite human treated.
  • Respect the time of the people you are meeting with, including the time of their staff.
  • If you are going to be late, give them a heads up.
  • If you are going to be early, try to avoid their office unless you have no choice and then stay out of their way.
  • Most importantly, play nice.
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Communications

Is There Value to Using Case Studies in Business?

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Books
Books (Photo credit: Rodrigo Galindez)

Harvard first developed case studies as a way to engage students in their executive training programs. Complex or difficult cases were presented to students and they were asked to familiarize themselves with the materials as well as gather additional information. They would then be tasked with suggesting reasons for the problem outlined in the case and possible solutions. The cases allowed students to take a very practical look at real world challenges. They were not geared to have one “right” outcome, but allowed for many different solutions.

The case study in the social sciences is more of an analysis of an individual, project or organization and is used to showcase exceptions or standard behaviour. A case study in this context is really a research approach, a real life examination.

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) frequently shares case studies with its members. These studies are useful tools that work in a different way from either the business or social science approach. In this instance the purpose of the case study is to show how a problem or challenge can be successfully resolved. These documents are usually a few pages long and provide details around the challenge and resolution. They are a great way to explore possible solutions for your own challenges and the ideas showcased can often be modified for alternate use.

When I was in school case studies were interesting things. They brought life to the phenomenon that was described in my sociology textbooks. Where the text was often dry and uninteresting, the case studies made the subjects compelling. They brought the issues to life. As a communicator, case studies are often what I use to explain why I think a certain direction should be taken or why we should avoid another. Yet when I look around at business sites, the case studies there rarely resemble those illuminating stories I recall.

Although case studies are meant to illustrate how the firm works and supposedly thinks, too often those objectives are forgotten in the rush to showcase big name clients or big money projects. The challenges illustrated in the studies are not complex, unusual, difficult or in any way challenging. In fact, many of the case studies I’ve read recently made me think that the company involved would have to be staffed by idiots not to resolve the challenges with ease. More concerning, the way problems were resolved not only lacked imagination but did not seem particularly geared towards the client.

I was so disheartened by what I was seeing that I was tempted to tell my own clients to avoid these stories on their websites, but that was not the right answer. This takes me back to Harvard and my own recollections. The case studies there were compelling. They were written to intrigue, to provoke conversation and engage thought. Here is an example of a case study presented by Harvard:

It was five minutes before show time, and only 15 people had wandered into the conference room to hear Lancaster-Webb CEO Will Somerset introduce the company’s latest line of surgical gloves. More important, sales prospect Samuel Taylor, medical director of the Houston Clinic, had failed to show. Will walked out of the ballroom to steady his nerves and noticed a spillover crowd down the hall. He made a “What’s up?” gesture to Judy Chen, Lancaster-Webb’s communications chief. She came over to him. “It’s Glove Girl. You know, the blogger,” Judy said, as if this explained anything. “I think she may have stolen your crowd.” “Who is she?” Will asked. Glove Girl was a factory worker at Lancaster-Webb, whose always outspoken, often informative postings on her web log had developed quite a following. Will was new to the world of blogging, but he quickly learned about its power in a briefing with his staff. After Glove Girl had raved about Lancaster-Webb’s older SteriTouch disposable gloves, orders had surged. More recently, though, Glove Girl had questioned the Houston Clinic’s business practices, posting damaging information at her site about its rate of cesarean deliveries–to Sam Taylor’s consternation. This fictional case study considers the question of whether a highly credible, but sometimes inaccurate and often indiscreet, online diarist is more of a liability than an asset to her employer. What, if anything, should Will do about Glove Girl?

Although the story was not about life and death, it does capture your interest. It also doesn’t go on for pages. A solution should be equally short and be as interesting as the problem. Case studies are a great way to engage current and future clients. They showcase how you think as effectively as a blog, but they show the practical side of your skills. There are a few considerations to keep in mind if you use case studies.

Tips For Case Studies

  1. Write as though you are telling a story. Provide a setting and context for your characters and choose your hero (here’s a hint: the client is the hero).
  2. Keep the story short, 250 words is plenty to set the scene. The next 250 should resolve the issue.
  3. If you prefer shorter stories, then state the problem in a couple of short descriptive sentences and the solution should be equally briefly. This approach works well for people who are looking around your site and just want a taste of what you are about. For an example of doing this well, check out writespeaksell.com, Jeanette Paladino does an excellent job of briefly profiling the challenge and how she resolved it.
  4. No matter your approach, make sure you get the client’s permission to tell their story.

Have you ever used a case study to make your point or sell a skill? Has a story of someone else’s experience ever helped you to decide on using a service or maybe avoiding one? Do you look at case studies or testimonials when you go to a site? If so, what do you think? If not, how come?

 

 

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Communications

Valuable Repetition

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The Value of Repetition - CommStorm

If you were lost at sea, would you send your distress signal once?

I watched a man move two chairs off a truck. He maneuvered his way through the glass doors of a cafe, around the sign welcoming patrons, down the hall and out of sight. He came back empty handed and headed out to the truck where he used the same patient, methodical movements to take two more chairs into the cafe. He did this 12 times and I watched him the entire time from my viewpoint inside the cafe by the window. He never ran, he never hurried and his movements completely captured my attention.

My husband has watched me prepare filo pastry treats with the same concentration. My own movements have been repetitive and one would think, uninspiring and yet we watch. When someone knows their job well, the sureness of their actions captures our attention. The music of their movements speaks to their ability and although you can’t hear the music they are moving to, you can appreciate the rhythm.

I thought perhaps the attraction that comes from watching someone perform such repetitive tasks was because we enjoyed watching expertise at play.  Malcolm Gladwell explained in his book, Outliers, that 10,000 hours of practice is required to become an expert at just about anything. Even if you haven’t performed a task for that long, if you have done it repeatedly, you get better at it. Except for one thing, the cognitive scientists (including the one who Malcolm references) have said that the theory is wrong or at least it does not tell the whole story of how someone becomes an expert. So why do we watch? What is it about simple repetitive acts that capture our attention?

In advocacy and in marketing, we use repetition to assure that messages are heard. It helps our audiences to process the concepts and ideas being promoted. We all process information at an automatic and unconscious level, so while we may hear the words, or see the visuals we are not necessarily taking it all in.

Think about what happens when you are driving. You move in and out of traffic, you note road signs and lights, pedestrians and cyclists, the state of the road and the temperature in the car. You are taking in a vast quantity of information. This activity is called pre-attentive processing. We see and hear but it does not interfere with the song we are singing or the story we are listening to on the radio unless we get a pre-attentive cue. A pre-attentive cue is something out of the norm or unanticipated, something that we are predisposed to respond to, like a threat. A visual pre-attentive cue is the bright red flag in a field of yellow flags.

Higher level thinking, the digesting of information happens when our brain sifts through all the content being fed to it and digests the relevant bits.   Our brain will pick some things over others based on our biases. To ensure that the messages we want to be heard are heard, we can use repetition or surprise. In fact, you could say that the repetition becomes a surprise because it captures our attention, it stands out.When we repeat an idea often enough, we force others to hear it and interpret it. They can then break it down and contemplate it. Repetition allows us to understand how something works in the moment, while it is happening.

As I watched the man move the chairs I chatted with my daughter and sipped my coffee. I also wondered about why he moved so slowly, why despite the mundane nature of the job he did not hurry. I realized that by moving the chairs in a slow methodical fashion he avoided all the obstacles and made sure that he did not damage the chairs or injure himself. Repetition allowed me to compare, consider and comprehend in real time not just what he was doing but why he was doing it.

Do you find yourself watching when someone is performing a repetitive task? Have you ever used repetition to get your point across to someone?

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Management

Lean Back, Do The Job You’re Capable of Doing

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Sometimes Doing A Job Right Means Leaning Back.

When the chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg wrote Lean In, she wrote it to encourage women and to argue for a more equal approach. Whether she achieves her objective remains to be seen, but she certainly got a stream of thinking going. Most of the commentary has been positive, praising her for reinvigorating feminism. Some of it has been less favourable, her insights are useful, necessary even in a culture that often assumes that everything is equal between men and women, but hardly original. For me, her book prompted a series of questions that revolve around a central question. Why do people do the jobs they do?

 

Why Do We Stay Or Go?

What makes people stay in positions they find unsatisfying while others will find new challenges?  What makes people climb the corporate ladder while others strike out on their own and start independent businesses? Daniel H. Pink, author of the book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, might say that those who leave have met their basic needs and now seek that upper tier of the needs pyramid. They are trying to self-actualize.

Economist might argue that we are not so much reaching for spiritual satisfaction, as we are the more basic needs of food and shelter.  In economies where jobs are scarce people are often forced to start their own businesses out of necessity rather than desire. I’m not sure what the right answer is, but that’s probably because it’s some combination of all of those things. Still, it makes me wonder why some bright capable people are increasingly finding their way to independence while other people who would be better off on their own remain inside organizations.

 

Middle Management Mindset

It would appear that there is an interesting phenomenon that happens at the middle management level. Some leaders discover that they have found their niche and stay in place. Most realize that they are out of their depth, and struggle to avoid sliding backwards or look forward towards still more responsibility. As colleagues and I once noted on seeing the upward trajectory of a particularly incompetent co-worker, the rise in success is often directly inverse to the level of incompetence. In effect, dismal workers will continue to prosper because most leaders would rather promote than fire. Some people just keep moving up as leader after leader palm their hopeless employee off on an unsuspecting department. I’ve seen this in government, high tech and countless other sectors.

The employee quite naturally assumes that they are great at what they do, so they keep doing it. Their confidence grows and thrives and they take on ever increasing challenges. That brings me back around to Lean In. Sandberg notes that studies show that a woman will chase a job if they feel they have an overwhelming number of the skills required to do the job.  While men will chase a position even if they have about half the skills, perhaps even less.  The implication is that women should give themselves an ego boost and go after the big jobs. Frankly, I find that idea disturbing.  Just because someone feels confident that they are ready for more responsibility doesn’t mean they are actually capable of delivering on it.

 

How About Something Completely Different?

I’m all for women having more confidence and tackling the big jobs, but I like their approach better.  That hesitation in the face of opportunity means that when they do leap, they are ready for the role. I wish more men behaved like women. Just for a change, why not have people go after jobs they actually had the skills to perform? I’m not saying that everyone should have one hundred percent of the skills needed before applying, that would be very tedious. I just think  it would be more productive to have employees who knew what they were doing. Leaders who knew what they were talking about. One of the reasons we have so many incapable leaders is because we keep hiring people with an emphasis on their self-confidence and not their core skills. In fact, we place so much emphasis on bravado, attitude or attractiveness that there should be no surprise that we are continuously chasing what it takes to make a great leader. It should be no surprise either that we lose good people to their own or other businesses.

What do you think? Lean in or lean back?

Image courtesy of stockimages/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Management

Do The Job You’re Capable of Doing

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What makes people stay in positions they find unsatisfying while others will find new challenges?  What makes people climb the corporate ladder while others strike out on their own and start independent businesses? Daniel H. Pink, author of the book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, might say that those who leave have met their basic needs and now seek that upper tier of the needs pyramid. They are trying to self-actualize.

An economist might argue that we are not so much reaching for spiritual satisfaction, as we are the more basic needs of food and shelter.  In economies where jobs are scarce people are often forced to start their own businesses out of necessity rather than desire. The truth probably lies somewhere between. Still, it makes me wonder why some bright capable people are increasingly finding their way to independence while other people who would be better off on their own remain inside organizations.

Middle Management Mindset

It would appear that there is an interesting phenomenon that happens at the middle management level. Some leaders discover that they have found their niche and stay in place. Others realize that they are out of their depth, and struggle to avoid sliding backwards. Then there are those who are not up to the job but still look for more responsibility.  Surprisingly, they have often rewarded for their efforts. This happens because most managers would rather promote than fire.

The employee quite naturally assumes that they are great at what they do, so they keep doing it. Their confidence grows and thrives and they take on ever increasing challenges. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg notes that studies show that a woman will chase a job if they feel they have an overwhelming number of the skills required to do the job.  While men will chase a position even if they have about half the skills, perhaps even less.  The implication is that women should give themselves an ego boost and go after the big jobs. Frankly, I find that idea disturbing.  While I do think women tend to under estimate their abilities, I don’t believe that misplaced self-confidence is the road to success, at least not for the employees left reporting to incompetent bosses or the organizations that stumble under the weight of poor leadership.

How About Something Completely Different?

I’m all for women having more confidence and tackling the big jobs, but I like their approach to work.  That hesitation in the face of opportunity means that when they do leap, they are ready for the role. I wish more men behaved like women. Just for a change, why not have people go after jobs they actually had the skills to perform? I’m not saying that everyone should have one hundred percent of the skills needed before applying, that would be a waste of talent. It would be more productive however to have employees and leaders who knew what they were doing. We have incapable leaders because we often hire with too much emphasis on self-confidence and not enough core skills.

What do you think? Lean in or lean back?

 

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Presenting Ideas, Avoiding The Information Avalanche

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It was Friday afternoon and as I sat in the hotel conference room I wondered how long it would be before the speaker finished. I was restless, well restless and sleepy. I was convinced that if I didn’t move soon I’d drift off.  What if I snored? The topic under discussion was the future of health technology. Prior to the start of the lecture, I had been eagerly awaiting the presentation.  Now I eagerly awaited its end. The speaker was a senior executive in a large technology firm and his presentation was billed as providing invaluable insight into what the future held for the health sector.  However, as the speaker continued with his presentation I couldn’t help but focus on the present. I looked again at the slide that was currently being discussed and looked away. It hadn’t changed in a while.  Not surprising really, the densely packed projection was filled with words in 14-point font, they might have been smaller, they certainly felt smaller. He was sharing in one slide what might have been better shared in six or eight.

I looked around the room trying to find something to amuse or distract me and found myself looking into the eyes of other audience members.  They too were looking for entertainment since knowledge was not to be found at the front of the room. In fairness to the speaker, a mid afternoon presentation on a Friday is never the best scenario, but the room was full. Although this was not a plenary session that would have drawn the majority of the conference participants, it had still managed to get the attention of at least 250 conference goers.  At a health conference, his topic was hot stuff. The problem wasn’t what he had to share, it was how he was sharing it. His tone was fine, he seemed to genuinely care about his topic.  He was clearly very knowledgeable but we were being avalanched with information and no one feels safe in an avalanche.

Even if you have information the audience wants and a venue in which to deliver it, you still need to make sure that the information can be understood and digested. Knowledge transfer is never as easy as sending a package of information from one person to the other. The information has to be deciphered, distilled, decorated and delivered with conviction.  If that sounds an awful lot like product marketing then that’s because that is precisely what you are doing, you’re selling ideas.

Decipher: Avoid using jargon that only you and a select few in your industry can understand. It may make you sound like an authority, but it also makes you frustrating to listen to because you are hard to understand. Make sure that you are doing all that you can to make it easy for listeners to follow.

Distill:  While you want to appear knowledgeable, you don’t  have to share everything you know. Simplify your message. The objective isn’t to do a mind dump, but to create knowledge in the recipient, think sound bites.  By not being discerning with information the presenter risks not only not getting their message across but alienating the audience.

Best practice is to have one concept per slide no more than four bullets. The bigger the font, the better for easy reading.  The letters should be no smaller than 18-20 points depending on the font and even that’s on the small side. The header of the slide should be larger than the font in the body and should give the audience an indication of the points you need to make.

Decorate: Add life to ideas by adding images or colourful text.  They help to emphasize your point and transform your presentation into a multilevel message. Avoid clip art, it rarely meets the challenge and can make your information seem inconsequential.

Deliver: Repeat important messages.  Know your audience. Your enthusiasm can make up for a number of weaknesses, but you have to be understood. The audience needs to be clear about why what you are saying might be of interest to them.

Mix things up. Every once in awhile and try a different presentation style. If you’d like to try something a little different from PowerPoint, consider using Prezi,  Adobe’s Spark, Visme or one of the many other awesome presentation tools out there. Or use them to incorporate some fun into your PowerPoint. The ones mentioned here are free and relatively easy to use. 

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Communications

How to Present Data

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COMMSTORM - How to Present Data

Ever wonder how great presenters get to be great? While what they are presenting is important, how they present it and what considerations they give to the environment they are presenting in is equally important.

In a recent post I marvelled at how data could actually get in the way of strategic thinking.  It isn’t a question of how accurate the data is, though that of course that matters, but even the best data can be overwhelmed by the state of mind of your audience, your own mindset and how you choose to share data.

It is difficult to be persuasive when your body is closed or unfriendly.  I explore those challenges in my post, Body Language – Managing You So You Can Deliver Your Message. Even when we physically present a positive demeanour our tone can change how information is received. A grating tone can have a disruptive effect and a soothing tone can create interest.

A few years ago on a Saturday afternoon I was lazing around the house with the TV on when I found myself following along with avid attention to a documentary. I was more than twenty minutes into the program when I had to ask myself, “Since when did you have any interest in cartography?”

Patrick Stewart
Cover of Patrick Stewart

I like a good map as much as anyone, but the history of map making would never have made my top ten TV list, not even my top fifty, yet there I was mesmerized. It was at that point that I realized that the narrator was Patrick Stewart. Being a fan of Star Trek I had always enjoyed his voice and that enjoyment was all that was required to get me to enjoy the making of maps.

Tone is so influential to how information is received that even if you deliver the identical words, if you change where you place emphases, you can change the meaning. One of my favourite exercises to illustrate how the identical words can have multiple meanings is the following sentence.

“I didn’t say she stole my money.”

If you place the emphasis on different words in the sentence you can get at least 7 different meanings.

I didn’t say she stole my money – someone else said it.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I didn’t say it.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I only implied it.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I said someone did, not necessarily her.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I considered it borrowed, even though she didn’t ask.

I didn’t say she stole my money – only that she stole money.

I didn’t say she stole my money – she stole things that cost me money to replace.

If a sentence this supposedly straight forward can change meaning depending on which word we emphasize, is it any wonder that even the most influential data can be misinterpreted based on emphasis?

To further complicate things we have the audience’s emotions to take into consideration. Were they anticipating the information?  Are they vested in the outcome?  Do they even understand why you are sharing the information? Just because the connection between your data and their interests are obvious to you, doesn’t mean they are obvious to your audience.

The mood of your audience can also have a tremendous impact. If they are tired because it’s mid afternoon on a busy day, you may want to have them do some stretches before beginning. If they are angry it can have a whole host of consequences.  Angry people take shortcuts in their thinking and are more likely to blame people rather than a situation for outcomes. Anger will influence how information is perceived and what actions follow as a consequence. In one study conducted at the University of Illinois (Jennifer S. Lerner) and UC Berkeley (Julie H. Goldberg of and Philip E. Tetlock) noted that people who watched an anger-inducing video were more punitive toward defendants in a series of unrelated fictional tort cases involving negligence and injury than were people who had seen a neutral video. The exceptions to the rule were in those cases where they were told that not only would they be held accountable for their decisions but they would be asked to explain their decisions to an expert.

This gives us a good glimpse into best practices when sharing data, which is having the audience have a sense of responsibility about the outcome or a vested interest in the outcome. Letting them know exactly why you feel the information is relevant to them and telling them that you will ask a few questions at the end to get their opinions on the findings is a good way to ensure that they will do more than daydream while you present. If you can associate a sense of accountability with how they manage the decisions as an outcome, you will also produce more thoughtful contemplation of the data.

Finally we come to the data itself.  Whether you use PowerPoint, Prezi, video or Skype can influence your audience’s reception of your materials. Some people actually feel nauseous when they watch the movement of a Prezi presentation while others want to curl up and go to sleep at the first signs of a PowerPoint. Whichever vehicle you choose, make sure that that you are not overloading your presentation with data. Next week I will explore common pitfalls in showcasing data including when Prezi can outshine PowerPoint.

What about you? Have you ever had a presentation, pitch or a meeting take a strange turn because of how data was viewed? Have you ever found yourself captivated by the delivery style of a presenter?

First image courtesy of Pakorn/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Communications, Internal Communications, Management

Surprises at Work

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I once had a boss who loved to sabotage meetings.  It wasn’t a question of him not liking his staff or even disliking meetings.  It was more that he didn’t want people to enter into discussions with their minds already made up. His theory was that if we all started from the same point, with the same information, we would produce honest and open responses. So, he habitually called meetings without explanation or gave only the vaguest indication of what he had on his mind.

While this concept might have worked in theory, it was a bit of a bust in practice.  I remember feeling completely lost in meetings, staring across the boardroom table at my colleagues who were equally lost while our boss discussed his newest idea.  Now, I’m all for hearing new ideas, but he wanted a decision about what we thought of his idea right then and there. What we discussed was his idea, his research on the idea, his perspective, his contemplation and of course, his bias. It didn’t go well. Not because he wasn’t smart, but because there was no opportunity for the rest of us to research, test or think about the idea as he had.

No matter what genius you call your own, if you really want your ideas to be given a fair hearing, you have to assume people need time to consider and test that idea. No matter your ailment, you probably wouldn’t take medication based on even the best scientist’s suggestion without first knowing some independent testing had been done.  So why would you accept an untested idea any quicker?

So what did we do as a group when my boss presented his surprise idea? We reacted on instinct, impulse and prior bias.  Instead of having an open debate, we ended up arguing over our own biases, perspectives and ideas. The facts had little to do with the discussion. Rather than build on an idea collectively based on our individual expertise, we became little more than the sum of our independent parts.  For those of you who have been taken by surprise at work by unexpected propositions, meetings or changes, you won’t be surprised to know that our meetings frequently ended in tears, anger or frustration – not exactly an ideal or productive working experience. Certainly not the honest and open response my boss had hoped for.

Lessons Learned:

  • No one likes surprises at work.
  • Whether you’re preparing for internal or external meetings, providing a fair warning in the form of a briefing note or clear agenda is central to success.
  • Give participants the opportunity to bring their best thoughts and research to the table and your meeting will prove more fruitful, effective and productive.
  • Taking people by surprise with ideas means that, rather than putting ideas to the test before implementation, at best all you’ll get is the sum of your own parts and some disgruntled colleagues.
  • Even if you’re the best brain on the planet, synergy will always improve on good ideas, not to mention the acceptance of them.
  • Despite the popularity of brainstorming sessions, they have many built in flaws that reduce their effectiveness.
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Communications

Why Spying Will Make Us Communities Again

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Why Spying Will Make Us Communities Again

Over the last few weeks I’ve had lots of practice at feeling awkward for strangers. There always seems to be a new, uneasy revelation in the news about someone’s privacy being invaded. Around the world and in my own neighborhood privacy breaches seem to abound and as these various pieces of information are aired I keep thinking sooner or later people will figure out that what they really want is more face to face time with their neighbours and colleagues. Although the technology to end it may be in the works, I pleased to say that I think it’s still possible to have a private conversation in person. I suppose if I’m giving credit where credit is due, then I’ll tip my hat to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning for our new found need to engage with real people.  After all, it was their efforts that made us realize that “private” isn’t what is used to be.

As I watch the coverage of the American diplomatic incident that left Washington distinctly uncomfortable and the Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, apologizing for saying, “Fu@$ the European Union” in what she thought was a private telephone conversation, I can’t help but think she’ll be having more face to face meetings in the future. I bet German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose cell phone was bugged by the U.S., is also thinking about having more face to face meetings too. Their experiences should certainly make us all consider the value of always being on our best behaviour.

Of course now that Canadian travellers know that their cell phones have been picked up and tracked for days after they had walked through Canadian airports they can feel a little like these powerful political leaders, invaded. Just like their more famous counterparts, the records of all of their calls and emails have been captured by government entities, in the case of Canadians; the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) did the work.

Now we too can think twice about what we say on our cell phones or using them at all.  I haven’t carried one for two weeks and rather than feeling disconnected or untethered, I find myself strangely more in the moment wherever I am.  It could be because no one can call, text or email me to disrupt the moment and I’m not disrupting it by looking at my phone for messages.

Don’t get me wrong.  My decision to not carry a cell phone isn’t a political statement. I don’t have one because I changed positions and haven’t sorted out if I actually want or need one. The recent revelations have simply added to the debate. What occurs to me is that we wouldn’t have to worry about our cellphones being bugged if we didn’t rely on them so much.

More than anything I worry that as more private exchanges are released for public consumption we will start to normalize these intrusions into our privacy. In many respects we already have. Target, Shoppers Drugmart and many other retailers send me specialized coupons based on the things I have purchased while by myself in their stores. Facebook tells me they own my content on their platform, Google tells me they are making my online experience more effective by tracking every move I make and the government tells me they are keeping me safe. As someone in marketing I can’t help but appreciate what can be done with all of that information, but I also know some simple truths.  Knowledge is power and all of that knowledge is an awful lot of power for very few people.  No one needs to know everything about me and I certainly don’t need to know everything about complete strangers. There’s also that small detail about the ethics of intrusion.

Perhaps I’m looking at this all wrong. As a friend of mine pointed out, privacy as we recently knew it was a relatively new construct.  Having grown up in a West Indian family, I know that there is very little that is private in a real community.  I could track the movements of my cousins in Montreal while visiting in Barbados and that is before Facebook, social media or the Internet.  My family never needed spyware to figure out what was going on with family members around the world. Perhaps all this spying and gathering of data is simply a reflection of a very natural human instinct to know. Of course, I actually knew the people “spying” on me and their incursions into my privacy really did keep my world much safer and of course they were never trying to sell me something.

So, whether these privacy breeches are natural, abnormal or just plain creepy, it makes me think it’s time for more dinner parties.  Perhaps we should think about recreating the old fashioned salons, those gatherings intended to entertain and teach.  Those intimate exchanges where the cell phones and laptops are left behind.  I’m not suggesting the abandonment of contemporary media, I am a blogger after all and I make my living in communications and marketing, but maybe a little less time online and a little more time in the world around us would be good, not all of our communities need to be virtual.

What do you think, too much time spying?  Is it time to spend more time in person? Should we just get used to having less privacy?

Image courtesy of adamr / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Communications

Making A Profit With Charity – Cause Marketing

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One of the most challenging aspects of doing marketing for a charity is the apparent conflict of interest the role represents. When donors give money to a charity, they want to know that their money is going directly to the people in need.  This means that when organizations are considered for giving, donors will often ask what percentage of their gift will go directly to programs and services and what percentage will go to administration. The bigger the percentage going towards administration the less appealing the charity becomes. Makes sense right? Well, not always.

The problem of course is that in order for a cause to generate the level of support it requires to be truly successful, it needs to be highly visible.  It’s not enough to do good if no one knows you’re doing it. There has to be awareness and buy in. In order to get those donations, you need to be seen, in order to be seen you have to invest in marketing. You have to advertise and you have to have people in place to do those things. If your revenues are small you may think in order to do any good you have to spend the lion share of it on your cause. The thing is, if you spent 25% of those revenues generating awareness, you’d have more revenues. Your reach would go further and you’d have more money for your cause.  So while a larger percentage of money would go to promotion (administration), a greater number of people would be served.

This is the principle at work behind for profits and it has served them well.  However, people expect charities to behave in a very different fashion from for profits.  While some charities have learned to work around this baffling expectation, most continue to struggle in a world that expects them to get something from nothing.  Despite overwhelming evidence to support investing in marketing, most people don’t want their charities spending money this way and sometimes the charities convince themselves not to do it. I think Dan Palloto delivers an eloquent explanation of this in his TED talk, called, “The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong”. 

What I find appealing about cause marketing is that it essentially looks at this challenge and then avoids it all together.  By blending the charity or cause with a for-profit activity, the dynamic changes for everyone. Donors also become consumers. The distinction matters because consumers don’t care if you spend money on marketing, in fact, they expect you to. Consumers don’t penalize you for getting attention and they don’t care about your overhead. The best part is, consumers feel good about getting something they value and having some of the profits go to a good cause.

In a 2013 Neilson study, 43 percent of global respondents said they had actually spent more on products and services from companies that have implemented programs to give back to society. Men were slightly more likely to have done so than women and younger respondents were more likely than older respondents to spend more. Not only do you get the engagement of more people, but you get the engagement of a younger demographic which is one of the tougher sells in the charitable sector.

The Neilson Company also noted that 66% of respondents prefer to support companies that give back to society and the Cone Millennial cause study found that a cause will prompt over 60% of shoppers to try a product.  What that means is that not only is this good sense for the cause, but it’s great sense for the company.  Consider that in even the competitive brand markets over 80% of consumers would switch brands to one of equal quality if it was associated with a cause.

It should be clear though, the quality of the product matters. With cause marketing  your product  isn’t a convenient excuse to give, it is why you give. As Terry O’Reilly, author of “The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture” and host of numerous radio shows so eloquently put it, “You can’t put mission before margin.”

It doesn’t matter how great the cause is, if the product lacks value or if the quality is questionable, then donors and consumers will walk.  It is the profit that makes the cause sustainable. If you’d like to learn more about how to engage in cause marketing, Arleen over at Garrett Specialties had a great post that shared five ways to do cause marketing.

Have you ever bought a product associated with a cause? What do you think of cause marketing or marketing a cause? Do you remember Bono’s RED campaign? What about the causes supported by Starbucks, Armani or Nike? 

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