All posts by Sebastian

A lesson in communication

Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

Have you noticed how good many schools have become at communicating with parents? I get regular text messages about school events, my daughters’ homework, as well as reminders about term dates.

They’re also good at using ‘real’ message boards (as opposed to digital ones) positioned at entrances to remind parents about events or simply to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Nice eh? It makes me smile anyway.

Many companies could do a lot worse than take a leaf out of a school’s exercise book when it comes to communicating with their customers and employees. Letter home anyone?

What a grind…Starbucks readies itself for the harshest of cuts

Communicating in a crisis, Social media, Talking to your customers, Working with the media

Poor old Starbucks. The 8th December looks like it could be a bad day for the baristas as UK Uncut takes its ‘day of action’ protest to the coffee giant, accusing it of dodging millions in taxes.

I’m sure their PR team will be in full crisis planning mode for what is guaranteed to be a day of less than positive media coverage.

So what’s Starbucks saying about it right now? Well, to be fair, it’s not the radio silence that many a corporation often employs when facing down some bad news. Check out their website and there is at least some blog content addressing the issue. But it’s a bit, well corporate, and frankly still seems to duck some of the issues.

When you have politicians on the radio (Today programme, 3 December) openly talking about boycotting your store, your brand is in serious trouble. If they used the same creativity when it comes to their crisis management as they do to market their coffee, they might have a chance.

A free coffee on the 8th December for any British taxpayer who can show their most recent P60 tax certificate? There’s an idea…

Quote, unquote

Working with the media

The New York Times has apparently banned the practice of allowing its sources to check quotes before they’re published http://bit.ly/Q08kvR. Supporters of a free and balanced press will be delighted and, perhaps surprisingly, there’ll be quite a few PR people happy to see the back of this invidious trend.

In media training, reminding the interviewee not to request quote approval is always high on the list of ‘things not to do’. Not only can it offend the interviewing journalist but it devalues the whole process if the interviewee thinks he/she will have a second go at ‘tidying’ up their comments (it also makes for a tedious toing and froing for the PR and the journalist).

Piers Morgan recounts a cautionary tale in his diaries of some quotes arriving back from approval following an interview with erstwhile chatshow celebs Richard and Judy. So annoyed was he that he printed the original quotes together with the amends requested by the couple – making them look ridiculous.

The lesson of course is to prepare properly, get some media training and trust yourself to say it right first time.

What’s your company doing to celebrate the Olympics?

Talking to your employees

If your preparations for the Olympics have been little more than telling your employees that they need to plan their travel time more carefully to avoid being late for work, read on…

Don’t fight it
Sometimes it’s better just to go with the flow than swim upstream. Companies currently struggling against the wave of Olympic mania gradually sweeping the country might do better to think about how they can actually strike gold for employee goodwill and engagement.

So here’s five tips to celebrate the arrival of the five rings:

  • Get some big TV screens in the office – or even small ones
  • How about a daily Olympic themed raffle?
  • Every time Britain strikes Gold; every employee gets a bonus – £5? £10? Or maybe 15 minutes off the work day…
  • Early drinks on Friday to bask in the Olympic glow
  • Relax and enjoy.

2012: there are some good news stories waiting to get out

Communicating in a crisis, Working with the media

Ahead of the greatest celebration of sporting achievement this country has ever seen (Ipswich Town’s 1981 UEFA Cup win aside), the country’s media are in meltdown it seems; scrabbling desperately for absolutely anything that can fill their pages/screens with tales of London 2012 incompetence, disaster and failure. As a country we don’t just accept failure, we positively wish it up on ourselves.

Pick a pocket or two
Of course, the G4S debacle doesn’t help, but the BBC’s News at 10 I thought plumbed new depths last night with a feature on hoards of foreign pickpocketers ready to descend en masse to relieve the luckless ‘unfortunates’ attending the Games of their handbags, valuables, phones, wallets…

The media do of course love a bad story and in terms of managing that, there isn’t much you can do other than hope that Team GB starts to deliver on the gold medals. Surely then they’ll have something to celebrate.

Of course there’s the whole bun fight on legacy to come next. You just can’t keep a bad news story down.