How to Conquer the World

with Great Communications

Tips from experie

nced

buyers, sellers and

producers of

communications

Your coaches: Senja and Jussi

Senja Larsen Jussi Tapio

Two decades experience of managing internal, external and crisis communciations at Finnair. Prior Communciations consultant and Head of Communications.

Marketing and management professional with broad experience in aspects of customer management and its systems, sales- and project management, IT-development and business intelligence, coaching and strategy implementation.

Agenda

• Some background and basic ideas• Buying communications• Reputation• Cases• Communicating is a skill• Building a winning concept

GLOBAL MESSAGE IS BUILT LOCALLY

Less is more

• What problem are you solving?• What are you best in the world at?• Are you able to do something no one else can?• How do you distinguish yourself from

competitors?• What is your target audience, who should listen?• Focus on your key messages!• Good interactive service may well be the best

way to get an excellent reputation. Show that you care!

• The future can be collective brand building, where those interested in the company are in continual public interaction.

Elements of success to any organisation

Success

Interaction

Transparency and

openness

Inspiring content

Using latest technologies

Know your audience

• Demographic data: gender, age, income

• Psychographic data: customs, habits, hobbies, influencers of purchase decisions

• Often there is more than one audience and they have different interests and needs.

Tell stories

• We are not rational. People do not remember facts or figures.

• Attention is gained only when feelings are awoken.

• Who speaks is important. Create story tellers out of persons or groups!

Conquering the world is a marathon, not a sprint

• Sprint run and you get a momentary result.

• Plan strategically for the long run - build stable comms processes and convincing key messages.

Visual Elements are Crucial

• Do not save time or effort in creating an excellent visual brand

• It is a mistake to create a visual brand, which functions domestically. The biggest mistake is to create a visual brand, which appeals to yourself.

• Make sure the visual brand is relevant to your target audience.

• An over-polished visual brand can ruin the message. A more rugged look can be friendlier and more approachable.

• Leave out clutter and everything unnecessary.• Social media requires a considerable amount of

good quality picture material.

Culture and tone of voice

• Your company culture and values have a direct impact on communications.

• Transparency is the first step to credibility.• We are moving into a time of ever

increasing openness. Your organisation cannot be different externally and internally. Pretenders are quickly revealed. Authenticity is convincing.

• Choose style and tone of voice carefully:– Relaxed and rakish vs. serious and trustworthy.

The world is varied

• Media use, habits and culture vary tremendously in different countries and continents.

• Each country is a new market, which you have to conquer from scratch. What is the competition, market structure, legislation, distribution channel?

• Time is often spent in internal games: reports, analyses, projects. The essential question is how to turn information into practical actions.

• Communications is tied to the local culture and traditions. For example in China it is challenging to get media attention without ”red envelopes”.

Winning communications is strategic

• Good communications has a strong and concrete connection to the strategic aims of the organisation.

• Communications and its results are instrumental and only earn their place if they serve a larger purpose, like growth or profitability.

• Measuring communications should be tied to the targets, especially in international surroundings, where you must organise a great amount of issues and operators.

• Expectations and beliefs are often unrealistic. Prioritising means tough choices in all matters: means, channels, themes expected to break through, target market and audience.

• Often too much is expected and not much gained…

Never navel gaze

• Good communications is like a cocktail party. If you speak only about yourself, people will disappear.

• Excellent communications does not speak about your organisation, site or solution but focuses on a larger theme, which has the spontaneous interest of your target audience.

• Effective communications is co-operation and includes many themes, products and companies. When you gain third party recommendations, facts, opinions and comments, they help to spread the message.

Let your customers speak for you!

Understanding the market and effective

communications

Markets,Customers,

Potential

Segmentation

Strategy

TargetGroup

Actionportfolio

Measurement

BUYING COMMUNICATIONS

Buying requires expertise

• No single agency covers all fields of communications: internal, external, marketing comms, internet sites, usability, visual planning, IR, presentations, press releases, pr (though many claim that they do!)

• In larger markets there are agencies specialised in different industries. In smaller countries like Finland the scale is wider.

It is your reputation!

• Different sectors of communications require extensive expertise and skills.

• These services are often sold by agencies whose experience is limited to narrow sectors.

• It is a huge risk to lay the management of your reputation into uncertain hands.

• For example, social media best practices change almost daily and so does the Facebook marketing bible.

PR agency

Adver-tising

agency

Media agency

Digital agency

Communications operators

• Digital agenciesInternet sites and social media.

• Advertising agenciesIdentity, slogans, visual look, logos, concepts

• Media buying agenciesBuying ad space for marketing comms: reaching customers

• PR agenciesEarned media

• Global companies gather all four around the same table to build the concept.

The concept and contactsare decisive

• It is possible to do great comms with a small budget.

• Resources do not improve an average message, but give velocity to a winning message.

• You can cross the global news treshold with a great concept and excellent contacts.

Compare and choose

• Request for Proposal (RFP) is a great way to find out a local price level, what is possible and what are the trends.

• Communications is a high skill manual work. Make sure you buy from a team of experienced professionals, but chemistry is also important.

• Call present clients and ask how co-operation works.

• Look for excellent comms and find out who is behind it.

• Beware of agencies, where a large amount of the work is done by interns. Do not let titles or cv’s fool you.

• The contract should include terms on what happens if a key person leaves the agency.

You will be sold a standard set

• All agencies are convincing sellers and send their best pitchman to charm you. The problem is that this amazing person may never work on your project once the sale has been made.

• It is expensive to customise a concept just for you.

• This is why most agencies duplicate what they are good at – which has its good and bad sides.

Mall or bazaar?

• If you do not have a huge budget, it may be the best alternative to choose a small,hungry and nimble agency instead of a big and clumsier one.

• This means making a choice between the easier and more costly ”mall” model, and the more challenging but efficient ”bazaar” model, where you buy from small, specialised agencies.

• Start in one or two countries and expand the network slowly.

Translating is expensive and difficult or cheap and easy

• Unefficient processes, version management, manual work and approval rounds make translating expensive.

• International translation agencies such as SDL or Lionbridge use translation memories and translate locally.

• Your translation agency should build a terminology bank, which is owned by your organisation.

• You should aim for a combination of machine and human made translation.

• If you are really clever, you can get a committed community to do the work for you….

• Nimble Finnish startup Transfluent translates directly into a wordpress site and social media profiles.

Just a translationis just not convincing

• The language used in your communications should be as excellent as your product.

• Do not use a PR agency to translate or a translation office for PR... Both have their own roles.

• Often not even a good translation is enough. Great content always requires localisation.

• Never just translate. You have to speak to them, in their language.

REPUTATION MUST BE EARNED

PR offices and earned media

• Most realistic, cost efficient and convincing way to get global visibility is to aim for earned media.

• PR and communications agencies sell these services.

Owned mediaInternet,

magazines, newsletters

EarnedOrganic visibility

BoughtAdvertising

What PR agencies do: part 1

• Localise centrally produced releases by adding expert citations or figures.

• Tip news story ideas to editorial staff.• Offer showroom space, where reporters and

bloggers explore new products.• ”Seeding” as in lending and pitching products to

thought leaders.• Suggest how the attention of target groups can

be gained by being useful to them in some way, eg. sponsoring and competitions.

What PR agencies do: part 2

• Act as a full service press office, first point of contact for reporters and bloggers in markets where the company has only a limited presence

• Research PR: media loves studies, reports, numbers and data. Can you create a barometer for your industry to measure the occurance of a phenomena and its change?

• Good news concerning a company, great product or big order is unfortunately no news. PR agencies know how to connect the news to a larger picture or to paint a threat where the company is the ”saviour”.

• Co-operation with one journalist, blogger or media often brings better results than huge delivery lists.

PR agency menu

• PR agencies sell knowledge of local media landscapes.

• Contacts to bloggers and reporters (all PR offices use databases such as Cision, Vocus, PRnewswire).

• Writing and sending press releases, contacting reporters. (In Finland the list price is around 1500 e/release – writing, delivering, contacting).

• Ideas and concepts such as campaigns and guerilla events. In Finland cost from 10 000 e.

• Press conferences. In Finland from 5000 e.• Brochures, reports, publications, presentations.

Retainer or raisins?

• Best results are gained through long term co-operation, where the agency knows its customer and vv.

• You can sign a monthly ”retainer” (1000-6000 e/month depending on country) or pick ”raisins from the bun” by buying individual campaigns (from 4000 e) in Finland.

• Alternatives for buying international PR:– Global PR agency chains. Pros: easy. Cons: extremely different

standards in countries. – Choose independent agencies in each country and sign

separate contracts. – If your organisation has limited resources, you can employ a

”lead PR office”, whose responsibility is to recruit and coordinate global agencies.

Control and measure

• Target-oriented and productive cooperation with an agency requires at minimum as much input as own staff: weekly reports, monthly meetings, annual planning.

• Dare to be demanding and require results.• Measure continuously. AEV (advertising equivalent value),

amount of blog and internet visibility or share of voice.• Create an internal discussion channel for the PR agencies

where you share guidelines and they experiences. Aim to create a competitive setting, where the agencies serve one another and see each other’s results.

• Make sure you own all the content. Create, for example, social media newsrooms in each country, where content is saved. This makes changing agency easier.

Silent reportage

• An alternative for PR is silent reportage and fact finding companies.

• Silent journalism can be used to compile facts about phenomena, reasons behind them, myths, prejudices, opinions and comparisons between different countries.

• The buyer chooses the extent and point of view, the content is fact checked and produced objectively by journalistic methods.

• The buyer is given a report, which they can use as they want, for example by giving it to a media.

• Media has less and less resources and is thus more likely to use expertly gathered information as background material, if the subject is of a greater interest.

• Cost in Finland, from 10 000 euro by Newsbrokers.

If you have a zero budget

• Find out who is the number one journalist following your industry.

• Prepare a carefully written short pitch, which contains your key messages: why, what significance, where, when.

• Call the journalist. Be very polite: ask if it is a good time to talk.

• Skip the background info. Go directly into the significance of your innovation, numbers are always great. How are you going to change the world?

• NEVER waste the journalists’ time. They are not interested in prospects, might-bes or speculations but ready, funcioning innovations that come with a great story – which you offer to them exclusively.

• At the end of the conversation they will ask you to send the same to them as a text. Send the SHORT pitch you have prepared.

• OR concentrate on creating great content, which attracts search engine traffic. OR work with bloggers.

EXAMPLES

Case Finnair

• Finnair's 'Visions of Future Flying‘ 2009.

• Received global attention with a budget of few thousand euros.

• Took ownership of the concept ”the future of flying”.

Case MySQL

• Aim: to become the best global expert in open source business models.

• The subject was relevant and interesting to all, whether they used databases or not, which is why the company got into Fortune magazine.

Sponsored communities

• Foot Locker created Sneakerpedia, where sneaker freaks save models, styles and brands.

Case Electrolux: PR agencies update local global newsrooms

Newsrooms amplifie reach

Search Engines

Influencer networks

Blogs and news

REA

CHSocial

media newsroom

Utilise technology

• Case Southwest Airlines: two PR professionals manage whole US media by targeting media with Vocus.

• It takes just a few search words, and you have eg ”aviation writers” in ”Dallas”.

WINNING COMMUNICATIONIS A SKILL

Modern communications landscape

Researchers

Scientists

Analysts

Government

Media

Stakeholders

Consumers

Potential customers

Lost customers

Returning members

Politicians

Consultants

Suppliers

OfficialsLocal government

NGO’s

Trade unions

Staff

Public

Customers Infl

uencers

Organisation

Businesses

Schools

Universities

Colleges

Winning communications is a combination

Social(offsite)

Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Youtube,

Slideshare, Facebook, Twitter

Own Internet pages

(onsite)

SearchSEOSEM

InternalFace-to-

faceNothing beats

personal contact

Contacts are everything

• Opinion leaders influence commentators, which catches the attention of the public.

• According to the 90-9-1 rule one percent is seen and heard.

• Target the 1 %.

The public

Commentators

Opinion leaders

1%

9%

90%

Make sure you are found!

Source: seomoz.org

Understand channel chaos

Lähde: Halvarsson&Halvarsson

Mobile rules

Source: Edelman

BUILDING A WINNING CONCEPT

• Build channel independent concepts

• 90 % of consumers use more than one screen every day.

Owned mediaInternet,

magazines, newsletters

EarnedOrganic visibility

BoughtAdvertising

Aim for the central goal

Convergent media

Sponsored customer

Ask to share!Promote brand

visibility

46 x attention

• A convergent advert acknowledges that great content is an advert.

• Sponsored content (Promoted Post) gets 46 x CTR (Click Through Rate) compared to right column paid advert.

friendsadvert

sponsored

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/03/sponsored-stories-ctr-cost-per-fa/

Building blocks

Inspiring content

Relevant

Visual

Tailored

Activating

Measure success

Amount of interactio

n

Tone

Promote effective content

Promote postings

Promote Tweets

Promote videos

OWNED EARNED BOUGHT

Difficult, but easy

• An excellent product is not enough.• You have to tell a good story.• And build an incredible concept to

convey it.• Deliver it channel independently.• Get influencers interested.• You have conquered the world!

Senja LarsenSenja.larsen@gmail.comTwitter.com/senjalarsenLinkedin.com/in/senjalarsen

Jussi Tapiojussi.tapio@lindstrom.fi