Social Media has made communicating layoffs a top priority

As I flipped through the papers today, it’s almost always guaranteed to have layoff news on it. It’s never easy to communicate something like this, especially in such terrible times.(The company will always be the bad guy!) However, it’s interesting to note how companies are going about announcing the lay-offs. (This is purely from an external perspective and I have no idea how the internal comms are handled)

Let’s start with DBS. I did a post on them a few weeks back and the people’s bank really went through a terrible time with the High notes issue being linked with Lehman brothers. To compound their problems even further, DBS was going though layoffs for some of it’s senior staff. How did they go about handling 2 problems? Focus on the layoffs to appease the shareholders that costs are being cut and use lousy customer service to answer the investors who invested in the high notes.

Then there’s Yahoo! who had the recent layoffs of 1500 staff. Every knows Yahoo! has been going through a horrible time because of declining profits and the whole Yahoo-Microsoft saga. I interned at Yahoo! and i know they’ve got excellent internal communications. I’m sure those that were being laid-off would have known well before hand and would have been properly compensated. It doesn’t help that with Yahoo!’s current situation that the economic crisis had to occur leading to cost cutting via layoffs.  The communications to the media and online blogosphere was open and honest.

As i read about the lay-offs, i was wondering why the comms folks in Sunnyvale didn’t try to steer the media towards their new product launches. I mean you have an article from Mashable that says Yahoo! might be the next great app platform and an article from ReadWriteWeb which says Gmail struggling with Email wants to be your task manager too. Both articles came out on the same day. So why focus so much on the layoff news when it might be possible to push out other news which can enhance your reputation at a time like this? In fact, why not keep quiet about it?

I point the finger to social media but more importantly micro-blogging and citizen journalism. This article from MarketingVox, Yahoo layoffs draw more blog coverage than ad campaigns, nicely sums up why today’s companies should be tackling layoffs more seriously. However, it was also nice to know that showing your pink slip online allows others to know that you’re ready for your next job! Tokbox showed how it was able to leverage from Yahoo!’s layoffs.

So it’s inevitable to make a layoff private. It’s also not very smart to focus on something other than your layoff. It should be a top priority because you’re now the Lich King. (WOW analogy for being a bad guy). You can check out this post here, You’re Fired: 7 Public Relations Tips for HR managers in an age of layoffs. on how to communicate a layoff

JUST FOR FUN TUESDAY!!

Gratz on making it pass what i call the worst day of the week! For all Muslim readers, Happy Hari Raya and for all Singaporeans, enjoy the hol tmr (while i’ll be mugging in sch for ethics…)

Anyhows, today’s post will be short cause I just finished doing some work and i’m pretty beat…

But I can’t contain my excitement and I wanna share 2 sites with you. Remember how is tot there were 2 industries whereby web2.0 can be used perfectly because of the community spirit within these industries?

Well, I’ve been given a chance to view them and let’s start with the pet industry!

Vivian has shown me this social networking site for pets! I remember saying on my post on Pet Industry and social media in Singapore and how i tot web 2.0 would fit in perfectly!

Well, the social networking site is called wuffstaff for dog owners and it’s a pretty cool site whereby dog owners come together and share photos, stories, swap discussions on a social networking site! Neat huh?

Thank Vivian!

Next, i wanna share a social networking site on the sports industry. Oscar stumbled upon my post on Sports and Web2.0=Sports 2.0, Should Asia Embrace it? He’s got an interesting sports social networking site called sporting connections he’s set up for sports people to gather and not only discuss, but arrange team matches, training sessions etc.

However, his comments on my post were that while his target market were for Asians to join in, he’s getting more and more European based members.

I’ve asked him how has he engaged the Asian audience but he has yet to reply. While I haven’t seen any efforts to push the site out to Asians, I believe that by posting it on relevant sporting sites (soccer’s pretty big here in South East Asia, basketball’s huge in China) and engaging people who are on those sites to come and join his site.

I really hope to see his site take off cause its got so much potential! So does Wuffstaff, great examples of how industries have leveraged on the community spirit of the industry and used a medium which leverages on precisely the same thing!

Knock yourselves over those sites and have a good holiday as you read this. To the readers who don’t celebrate Hari Raya, its Wednesday, hang in there, we’re reaching the weekend!

F1 Singapore digital media efforts

This is probably the most talked about event in Singapore currently, it’s even bigger than MAN U and Liverpool’s match tonight.

With the road down from Brass Basah heading towards Suntec looking like the Mexican boarder with all the lights, Singapore is really gearing up for the most lucrative sporting event ever. I mean you have A list stars coming down to see THE FIRST EVER NIGHT RACE right here on our little island.

So let’s take a look at some of the digital marketing efforts that some companies have done to leverage on this sporting event.

1) SingTel. It seems their entire marketing budget this year is probably gonna be on the Grand Prix (a little going to PR for the Iphone Launch). They have been banging on this since the start of the year and you can check out their site here. From race simulations to the grid girls, SingTel is really leveraging on the sport to increase its reach for it MioTV.

The only social aspect of this? The Grid girls having blogs and photos of them being posted. Good move on their part? I think so. Consider this before I sound like i’m making a sexist statement. Porbably more than 70% of the fans of F1 in Singapore are males. Sex sells. Enough said.

2) Singapore Tourism Board, or STB for short have also included the F1 as part of a main attractor to tourists. It’s a glamor glitz party for tourists and they’ve even endorsed a 1 million dollar fashion party. This is to attract more Malaysians to come and watch the event.

But whats interesting is that their putting up their efforts on their website here. Think about this for a sec and you realize that tourists come to this site looking for information about Singapore.

So why is it just a one way web1.0 static page? What happened to asking us? (the people staying here for our opinions? Showing videos and allowing comments for the preparation of the event?) Bah… They should have listened to the prime minister’s speech last month about using digital media.

Right, I’m sure they’re other companies and I would really like for you to share with me their efforts!

Nike 10K Run

Nike’s done it again with another awesome campaign. The worldwide 10k run in my opinion is a huge success.

Basically, this campaign is a global event whereby the whole world (selected countries) run 10k together for various causes. One of which was WWF which i pledged my cause to. The purpose of the campaign was to promote the use of their new Nike sport band and iPod sport kit.

Why do i think it’s a successful campaign? Let me tell you from a runner’s experience during the run. The first 1km was jam packed at a slow pace and ppl actually started walking after the first 1k. This indicates that these ppl aren’t serious runners.

Now the only brand that can attract non-regular runners to run 10k would be Nike. The power of this consumer brand itself is enough to attract ppl to take part in this event.It really shows that the people it attracted went beyond their target audience!

In addition, the usual mediums of posters smartly designed with thousands of people waiting to start the run is pretty straight forward.

The use of digital media is really impressive. You can check out the site here. With a progressive chart to teach you how to train yourself for the run to partner details to providing music, Nike has pretty much covered everything a site can do to help runners. (Of course while promoting how their products can help you, but it’s Nike, who wouldn’t want 1?)

Using social media, there was a facebook group and the numbers RSVPing to the event was really impressive. I’m not one to promote setting up a facebook group and leave it hanging, but i guess the brand had enough draw and the campaign enough attention that using this medium was really effective.

Some of their videos involving the run was also featured on Youtube and they had interviews with celebs as well to help propel the event forward.

Wondering if they could have done more here…. Such a campaign was already pretty viral, could it have been fueled more? Perhaps a wiki that can help different age groups and different genders train? And that it can be edited by ppl?

Or how about setting up a blog to showcase the day to day trainings of a particular runner? ( The run today had more females than males!!) I would’ve have loved to see a sports 2.0 in action here…

The best part is the PR involved in this. Already I’ve seen this on the news and how the interview with a minsiter was happily encouraging the run, promoting Singapore to be a sports hub. It would seem Nike has propeled Singapore one step further after our winning at the Olympics. I can forsee more coverage being churrned out if Nike decides to showcase how the run has helped the various causes it was trying to promote.

So there you go, Nike does it again!

Do you think it’s a good campaign? Could they have done better with the use of social media to further fuel the viral aspect of the campaign? Share with me!!

Coca-Cola and the Olympics

With the closing of the Olympics today, I tot it was apt that i write about the last TOP and their marketing efforts. I’ve saved the best brand for the last and its Coca-Cola! (or Coke for short)

Coke is the exclusive non-alcoholic beverage for the Olympics. Having supported the Olympics in Amsterdam since 1928, they’ve been with the games all the way and became the official non-alcoholic beverage in 1986.

This is my favourite drink (Goes best with whiskey) and brand of all time. The brand equity is always number 1 and what they have done for this year’s Olympics has been nothing short of but remarkable.

What I like about Coke is how it ties sports with its brand. While most brands play on the passion of the fans or the excitement of the games, Coke has taken a step back and simply uses its feel good brand to leverage on the optimism that sports brings about.

I quote from this article about Coke’s marketing efforts,

“You will rarely see the Coca-Cola brand around the world in work which shows a lot of athletes running around,” he said. “The tonality of the brand is happy; the tonality of the brand is sharing optimism. There is no competition. The idea is how we can bring the world together in a positive way.”

So with data from market research gathered over the 2004 summer games and 2006 winter games, what’re some of the marketing efforts that Coke has done?

Going with their “Live Olympics” campaign, here’re some of their efforts

1) Like all brands mentioned in the TOP, Coke has an exhibition hall (ok, a 13,000 sq foot center) showcasing its history with the Olympics and their various CSR efforts. This site is expected to attract more than a quarter of a million visitors a day. You can read more about it here.

2) Social media efforts include “Design the world a coke” campaign. It’s basically designing a coke bottle and posting it on your social networking site to display your creative works.

I’m having really mixed responses to this campaign. I agree with Jane who argued that the campaign’s execution was poor. There was no extrinsic motivation for users to go design the bottle and spread the “love” of Coke around. While i realize that Coke’s campaign seems to be in line with harmony and optimism, it seemed by doing mash ups with Yao ming’s bottle was pretty generalized.

Coke as usual has made an impact at the Olympics. While it might already be dominating China, the Olympics was a great opportunity to leverage on its global brand name and reinforce it in the China market.

Who’s to argue, they’ve already achieved Marketing Gold for this year’s Olympics according to this article here. I love this OP Index and look forward to the results after the Games.

While its easy to argue that Coke could have done more, i think a brand of its stature doesn’t really have to do much. Once again, I’m in awe of Coke and the simple message that its brand brings across this Olympics.

Panasonic and the Olympics

Moving down the list of TOP Olympics marketing efforts, we’re moving on to Panasonic!

Under the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd, Panasonic is the exclusive TV/audio/video TOP and started being a TOP since 1987.

Before we look at some of their marketing efforts, I found this insightful article whereby the use of social media for the various brands have been highlighted. It’s a good read, do take a look.

So what’re some of their marketing efforts?

1) Having a theme of “Sharing the passion”, they have a nice flash page on their website which showcases their involvement in the Olympics for the past 20 years.

What’s interesting is that they have thrown in what they call ‘digital journalists’ in the ‘Beijing Diary’, where these journalists use their products to experience and capture the Olympics. There’re various video reports which you can check out in the site as well.

Also with a tinge of social media, these journalists have blogs as well! Nothing much written in them but interesting to read nevertheless.

Panasonic is also promoting the country’s various top day and night tourists spots, which is a really great way to go, following Visa’s example.

Lastly, part of the site has a short 60 sec movie clip which you can watch here.

2) Within China, where brands have already spent 6 billion dollars maxing out their sponsorship to increase their brand reach in the most sought after country this year, Panasonic also has a small micro site which allows users to display photos of users on it. It’s in Chinese so I wouldn’t really attempt to explain more. You can check it out here.

3) Like all brands, they have a huge booth set up near the “Bird’s Nest”. Impressively, Panasonic TVs are being used by other brands as well in these booths. You can read more about the mishaps of organizing the logistics on site, man i hate it when those hic-cups happen.

So there you have it, Panasonic’s efforts have been above what i’ve expected. 2 more TOPs to go!!

Omega and the Olympics

Moving down the list of TOP Olympics, we have Omega of The Swatch Group Ltd. Omega is the official Time piece (for example, watches, clocks and official countdown clocks), timing systems/services, and electronic timing, scoring and scoreboard systems and services for the games.

So as the offical timekeeper for the games, what are some of their marketing efforts?

1) From online mediums, they have this flash animation scroll thingy which traces the history of Omega and China. Further, it also traces bits and pieces of the Olympic history.

While slightly cliche, it does bring some interesting facts from the past to today’s generation who are too engrossed with Michael Phelp’s 8th gold medal. Things like the “Flying Housewife” and the “Czech Locomotive” are great stuff to know from the past century.

You’ll probably see some of these in the shops selling Omega watches as well being displayed…

Sadly, this site is solely one-sided with little interaction or use of social media…. Would be great if they could have included other great moments in the Games voted by the ppl, which Omega was there to capture the winning timings…

2) What’s a brand without an ambassador? You can check out the list of ambassadors they have here, heck, they’ve been sponsoring Phelp’s since 2004, good shot at that one considering how his market value is going up.

Even James Bond is one of ‘em, lol….

3) Lastly, like most brands in the Olympic Green, they have a pavilion built which showcases their watches and other neat stuff. Read more about it here.

It’s a pretty normal marketing campaign considering the amount pumped in but i guess they should know what they’re doing since they’ve been doing it since 1932.

Would like to see a heavier usage of social media considering the history they have with the games and how they could connect with the people then.

Another thing I would like to share is how Olympics can help a country as a brand and you can read more about that from this article here. What’s most important i think in an Olympic sponsorship is that it not only helps a brand being a TOP, the brand must also help the country. This would allow the brand to have a stronger association wit that particular year’s games and build its brand presence in the host country.

Atos Origin and the Olympics

Moving down the list of TOP Olympics marketing efforts, we have Atos Origin.

Atos Origin manages and integrates the contributions of all technology partners and suppliers to deliver seamless and secure technology operations and services that provide instant communications to athletes, spectators, organizers, officials, media, television viewers and Internet users worldwide. The company became a Worldwide Olympic Partner when it joined the TOP Programme as SchlumbergerSema in 2001.

So as an IT service provider, their marketing efforts are really pretty limited.

1) It’s mostly business to business deals and their main point of joining the games was to showcase how they can work with potential partners.

I quote from this article what the Olympics can do for a B2B marketing:

“The Games are very useful in raising the broader awareness of our firm through the recognition power of the Olympic rings. You are also more credible as a business if you are associated with the Olympic rings.

“The visibility of the rings has also been used internally; it is very reassuring for our staff to know the firm is associated with the Games.”

2) They’ve also helped the IOC achieve its aim of zero carbon emission games this Summer to make it “the green games”

I’m sure Jacky Tai would have more to say, I wonder if more efforts could be done for a B2B marketing. Think about it, I mean building credibility is one important factor of B2B marketing, but isn’t there anything else that can be done?Going green reenforces that image. But what else could be done? I just realzied I’m pretty clueless when it comes to B2B marketing… lol…

I’m thinking if social media would work here. A corporate blog? A twitter like Dell service?

So how else do you think Atos Origin can leverage their Olympic Sponsorship? What else can they do to achieve a more credible image?

ManuLife and the Olympics

Today’s TOP Olympics really doesn’t interest me, but I thought I’ll just take a look. Yup, today I’ll be looking at Manulife, the official life insurance partner of the Olympics. See how interesting this sounds already? I really don’t have much interest for financial companies’ marketing, but let’s just take a look shall we?

So what’re some of their marketing efforts for this game?

1) They’ve started a campaign called “Bringing dreams to life”, with a concept of “real people, real dreams”. Here’s the core message of the campaign as abstracted from a press release.

Its core message is that, just as the Olympic Games can make the dreams of nations, sports fans and athletes come true, so the insurer, with its wide range of products designed to bring financial security and peace of mind, can help ordinary people achieve what they most wish for in life.

Hey, real interesting huh? Whichever boring uncreative agency tot up of this must have really been in a rush or having a really anal client, this is soooo boring…

Right, since this was the core message selected, wouldn’t the best medium used be social media rather than traditional print ads and TVCs?

Its all about the people right, their dreams being achieved with a peace of mind? Why not do it the way one of the airline companies did it by mashing up a bunch of short video clips on how good the airline was. But in this case, just what ppl’s dreams are and how which financial plan helped them. Now there’s a medium to consider when doing your media plan.

Look at this ad below, the core message is so week in it really annoys me…

2) Of course there’re other efforts, the norm of sponsoring outstanding athletes. ( The Malaysian branch sponsored a fencing athlete, who’s the son of a Manulife employee….)

3) Lastly, you can check out their Olympic website then… Too corporate with little interaction…

While I understand that financial institutions need to maintain a professional image (i prefer to call it stuffy necktie image) and that there’s a fine balance in any marketing campaign for them not to go overboard and ruin that image. However, when it comes to sports sponsorship, cant they just let down their hair?

Maybe have that “Bringing dreams to Life” campaign with 2 phases. The early part which utilizes social media, making it more relaxed, fun and not so uptight. The 2nd phase can be where you break down how your products can help your clients.

I just feel so much more can be done with this 55-60 million dollar sponsorship. Does any1 else feel their efforts are insufficient? Or as a financial institution, this is the best they have done?

Kodak and the Olympics

Next of on the list (marketing efforts) for the TOP Olympics is Kodak!

Kodak is the offical film and imaging sponsor for the Olympics and has been so for the past 20 odd years. The company announced last year that they were pulling the plug for the Olympics sponsorship.

Some of their efforts this year has been very web2.0, rather than showing the medal tally count and the stats, they will be showcasing the fans experience in words and in pictures!

1) They have a blog which will showcase Jenny Cisney, chief blogger, experience at the Olympics. In addition, it will also cover Richard Mackson, a former sports illustrator photographer who will share photo tips and tricks

2) Picture of the day

3) More can be read here

While the company has been facing a decline due to the digital age, and facing heavy costings to move from film to digital, it got me wondering if such a move was a wise one. To pull out sponsoring an event that would reach an estimated audience of 4 billion.

Then i came across this article, stating that the Beijing Olympics was unlike the rest of the Olympics. And i begin to see why it might be a good move to stop the sponsorship after the this year’s Olympics when compared to the 2012 London Olympics.

1) China has an immature consumer market

2) Pride of China hosting the games makes brand leveraging with the event easier

3) Strict government laws (for once it might be good) on ambush marketing which might not have been possible in other countries

4) ta hao guan xi ( building good relationships) with the government officials being an integral part of doing business

5) Shift in consumer behavior (and i quote from that article)

Instead, marketers will have to weigh whether there are more cost-effective ways to reach consumers and leverage Olympic enthusiasm without having to pay the high price. Frank Vial, strategy director of branding agency Landor Associates, argues that in a world that’s moving toward targeted marketing, “maybe the Olympics will have to reinvent itself as something other than a global, monolithic brand.”

So while some might doubt the wisdom of Lenovo and Kodak pulling the plug, i can begin to see why the ROI for such a sponsorship in the winter 2010 and summer 2012 games might not be as effective as this year’s Beijing Olympics.

Its gonna be hard to measure the ROI for such a sponsorship which is highly costly, but now i ask myself, “Are the brands pulling out because of a change in consumer behavior towards sponsorships?”

or like the article abstract i mentioned,

“Does the Olympics have to reinvent its brand to appeal to a new generation?”

What are your thoughts? Please do share!