Messaging Document 101

This great post and this one are what have been referencing while creating my collateral for our Client Project for class.  I have no real idea what a Messaging Document is, and I am kind of making it up as I go along.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from the articles:

“A good messaging document is the go to place to understand the essence of what should be communicated about a product, service, brand or company that is written with a specific audience in mind.”

“You will also benefit from having consistent messaging across all of your communications−regardless of how many different writers produce the pieces.”

“When done right, everyone in the company should be singing from the same hymnal on who the company is, what they do, and most importantly how their clients/customers benefit from using them.”

“[A messaging] document…guides everything you do from a marketing perspective, and serve as the platform for all of your messaging.  Everything you do moving forward will be anchored to this, so you want to make sure you take the proper approach.”

But what content should a great messaging document have?  Here’s a list I’ve brainstormed:

-Mission statement

-Vision statement

-Key clients / key publics

-Elevator pitch

-Biolerplate

 

What else would you add to a Messaging Document?  Am I overlooking anything? 

 

Logan

 

Killing it.

I was reading through some really great blogs recently when I came across this one about Twitter.  I’ve been meaning to write a post about all this “professional Twitter” stuff but haven’t gotten around to it.  I’m going to try and formulate my thoughts here in one coherent post.  

I am the Twitter generation

It is my generation that has catapulted Twitter into the limelight over the past few years.  It is my generation that started live-Tweeting, RTing and DM-ing like nobodies business.  It is my generation that actually created and developed Twitter.  The strange / sad reality is that the generation that raised us- our Aunts and Mothers and Fathers- who are working in the “real world” currently are what will kill Twitter.  Mark my words.

If there is one thing my generation doesn’t like, it’s being bombarded with advertisements and promotions.  We don’t want to be marketed to.  We have DVR and subscriptions to NetFlix just to avoid commercials.  As a generation we’ve gone from sporting Hollister and Abercrombie graphic shirts (walking billboards!) to opting for neutral, natural clothes with little to no branding on them. 

You just don’t get it

One of my favorite sayings is “thinking outside the box assumes there is a box.”  This is SO true, and I apply it to my life in many ways.  The problem is that instead of thinking forward and trying to find what the future of marketing / advertising is, advertisers flock to the social media where we already are and guess what happens?  We leave.

It hasn’t happened yet, but advertisements were what killed MySpace.  We were sick of being marketed to and there was this (relatively) new and exciting thing called Facebook that New York based advertising big wigs hadn’t latched onto yet.  We escaped for a more serene space.

We did it with Twitter, too.  Advertisements got creepy and now we’ve branched to Twitter, and although we’re still strung together by the idea of seeing friends and family members updates, we use Twitter for the fast paced social media outlet that goes along with our lives.  It’s what we’re drawn to.

So why?

Well, we’re already there.  We have Twitter accounts and you can now promote your Tweets, just proving that whatever amount of money you have can buy you some time on my computer screen.  But I don’t like it.  I don’t want it.

I’ve added these professional networking connections to my Twitter family specifically for class, but I firmly believe that the “professional” crowd are discounting Twitter.  It is not the board room of a fortune 500 company, it’s supposed to be like sitting around your best friends living room drinking a beer.  No one gets it.

 

The takeaway: Twitter and Facebook will be killed by advertisements (and old people) if we’re not very, very careful.  We don’t want it and we won’t put up with it.  As a generation we’re already looking for our next outlet. 

 

PS- Not everyone agrees with me.

Where do you keep your to-do list?

I tend to keep my to-do lists in some very strange places.  Recently my evening to-do list was stuck to my favorite black-and-white polka dot coffee cup.  The reason?  Each time I picked it up to take a sip of steaming hot cocoa I was reminded that I should actually be working on conquering my list.  This tactic did actually help since I knocked everything off of the list before bed.

Also seen here are some of my favorite things:

-a small black elephant I bought from Target with a dear friend ages ago

-gumballs leftover from my Mom’s birthday celebration

-the new Taylor Swift album my friend Taylor burnt for me (SO good!)

-my GRE study supplement (which has been barely used)

 

I believe that all spaces should be filled with things you love.  If it’s not practical or it’s not something you love then it has no room in your life.  I use this philosophy when pairing down things I own and donating.  Those pants that don’t fit just right?  Gone.  That sweater that sags a little when I wear it? Gone.

I only have room in my life for the things (and people) I love the most.  The rest of it will have to find somewhere else to be.

Logan

A post on postings

 

I’m part of the real world now, friends.  I’ve started applying for jobs.  Yes, it has happened.  I’ve been to career fairs and Graduate school expos, interviewing professional connections to get some insight into the industry and much, much more.  It’s a delicate balancing act of working on school work, RA stuff, studying for the GRE and applying for jobs.  I’ve dropped the ball a few times, but I’m starting to get better.

I’m really interested in working for a company who creates a “lifestyle brand” and fill a niche in a market, and this company has a really great opening on their ‘Careers’ page:

Gifted with extraordinary attention to detail and a creative knack, the people who make up BRAND — our store associates, designers, merchandisers, art directors and production teams — truly love what they do.

At our home office, there are battleships, historic buildings and groundbreaking modern architectural design. There is open space, lots of trees and one big river. There are bicycles. There are dogs — at our desks, in the grass, at our feet. There is color, texture and limitless personal style. (Meaning, we wear what we like.)

In our stores, there are beautiful, ever-changing vignettes and surprises hiding in every corner. There are spoons and skirts and sofas. There are award-winning window and product displays. There are passionate and devoted customers. There are plants, parties and personal shoppers.

But most importantly, at our office and in our stores, there are people. The most creative, inspiring, dedicated people you’ll ever meet. Care to join them?

What brand do you think this (lovely) introduction is for?  I’m curious to see if anyone can guess it.  Let me know your guess in a comment below.

I’ll be applying for this position soon, and I’m loving the way they word the requirements:

Communications Responsibilities:

• Support, and develop all internal and external communication strategies for BRAND stores.
• Act as BRAND primary point-of-contact to support daily operations needs for stores.
• Anticipate and plan for communication needs and find creative, timely and quality solutions to meet needs.
• Plan, coordinate, execute and edit store and district communication materials.
• Manage store workload and calendar to ensure deadlines are met and projects are completed in a timely manner..
• Field questions concerning policies and procedures on a day-to-day basis.

Store Operations Responsibilities:

• Interact and partner with Home Office Departments to contribute to store-related projects.
• Partner with Product Information team to develop incentive contests and manage reward distributions.
• Identify challenges and opportunities in current processes in an effort to improve via communication/future initiatives.

Employee Relations Responsibilities:

• Provide guidance in the handling of performance management issues to ensure that requirements are met.
• Act as a non-biased representative for fielding comments, concerns and anonymous complaints
• Liaison with the company’s Employment & Benefits department to provide support to store management

Customer Service Responsibilities:

• Serve as a point person for the Ecommerce Operations team to handle escalated customer service communication.
• Act as a liaison between District Management and General Counsel for all stores General Liability issues.
• Work with the field and Home Office partners on customer service initiatives and customer service survey

You can see how they’re getting the point across, but the language used here is really positive and upbeat.  It sounds like a company I want to work for.  I know my peers have come across these same type of job postings and some that are not so outstanding.

The big takeaway: I want to work for a company who does their work in recruiting the best people possible.  A job posting like this gives me a glimpse into the corporate culture of the organization, and I can tell I would be respected, nurtured and appreciated if I worked with this company.

10 items that make a good Crisis Communication plan

 

In my search through Crisis Communication blogs I must thank Melissa Agnes for her user-friendly blog that has linked me to so many other wonderful Crisis blogs and professionals.  This post is a summary of a post I read on CKSyme.org recently and wanted to share with my colleagues and peers.
Oftentimes the idea of a Crisis Communication plan is a little daunting, unless you hire some outside consultant it’s hard for the general public (even someone who’s familiar with the organization) to delve into the deep end of Crisis planning.  I think that by nature we try to avoid the idea of Crisis at all costs- in planning for it the superstitious amongst us may think it will then happen.  This 10 item list is the bare bones of what makes a good Crisis Communication plan for any business, company or organization:

1. Current SWOT or risk analysis
2. General organizational communications crisis plan. Social media is only one part of your communications plan. Be sure you have a general strategy document that covers all communication channels, online and offline. This document houses your main message points.
3. Current staff and organizational flow chart that shows chain of command in a crisis.
4. Key stakeholder groups prioritized and segmented for content. Who will you communicate with, what will you share, in what order, and when?
5. Command center logistics/operations for onsite and offsite.
6. Designated on-site and off-site spokespeople for communications and operations. Include a media training component.
7. Social media policy that includes triage response. We will delve into the specifics of this component in the next post.
8. Guidelines and schedules for training, table top exercises, and post-crisis evaluation.
9. Inventory of all communication channels and how they will be used including signage, website, internal communications, and any other touch points the organization has including social media channels. This sections may include “holding messages” for different channels.
10. Appendix of all forms, logs, and templates.

Really a Crisis Communication plan is about organizing all of the important information into one place so it is easily accessible.  The plan needs to be organized in a functional user-friendly way so everyone from an Administrative Assistant to the CEO knows what procedure is next.
Do you think there is anything missing from this Crisis Communication list?

Coke is “Flawsome”

 

This quick video is a great glimpse into the higher level masterminds behind Coca-Cola. It’s rare to get this sort of glimpse into the industry.  I’m not entirely sold on the phrase “flawsome”, but I like the idea of having authentic interactions with people on social media.

…someone will be wearing the stupid hat today.

Recently I was delving through some of the posts on that my professional connections post on Twitter, I’ve starting following many Crisis Communication professionals and experts, and I have learned SO much.  I am heavily interested in the field, so I’ve decided that this blog will focus mostly on crisis communication.  I came across this great article and wanted to share it with my personal network.

The idea is simple: we messed up, we’re really sorry, here’s what we’re doing to fix it.  You can follow the link to read the entire post, but the previous sentence essentially sums up the email that went out to Pingdom’s clients.  What I really love about the message is the tone of it.  It’s hard to get a casual-yet-professional tone across in an email.  I struggle with that on almost a daily basis, I have been on the receiving end of some not so professional emails that made me cringe, and I’ve been the sender of an overly professional email.  It’s all in the balance, word choice and the writers ability to craft the message.

These two sentences are extremely powerful at expressing the companies sincerity:

“Even if the issue affected monitoring for less than 90 minutes for a limited number of customers, it’s of course frustrating if you were one of them. We take a lot of pride in delivering a reliable service and this doesn’t represent what Pingdom stands for.”

After this they go on to list the three effects the shut down may have had on their clients:

“After a thorough investigation we’ve already initiated actions to minimize the effect this may have had, including:”

I’ll echo the words of my friends from Bernstein Crisis: major kudos to the Pingdom team.

Insight into the industry

 

I sat down with Stacey Renker, the Assistant Director of Risk and Emergency Management, under the Department of Student Life at The Ohio State University in late September, just days after the dust had settled on a large scale crisis that hit the University community.  Stacey opened up with me and gave me some tremendous insight into the industry- although not directly a consultant of Crisis Communication her role within the University overlaps quiet a bit.

Stacey has been working with OSU for 13 years, and has been in her current position for 4.5 years.  I know her because she is what we refer to as the “fire panel” lady.  Stacey comes to our building to train the RA’s about the state-of-the-art fire panel and emergency management system we have and give us information on safety procedures.  My favorite part about Stacey’s visits?  She always brings candy.  Actually, she always brings chocolate, and not those little fun sized bars that are popping up all over store shelves as we dive into the Halloween season; Stacey brings full sized chocolate candy bars to pass out to those of us who can answer her (sometimes tricky) questions.

Although my 30 minute conversation with Stacey was fantastic, she did give me a few pieces of takeaway information I want to share here.  Stacey talked about the recent event on South Campus, when a water line broke and flooded the basement of a brand new residence hall called Park-Stradley.  Stacey was one of the first on the scene of the incident, and she “was the person who pulled the mother of all pull stations to evacuate the building.”  Since water and electricity don’t mix it was important to get all of the residents of the building out and away from the building.

Stacey detailed the events that happened over the next few hours including flying her supervisor back from a business trip because she was to be the face of the media coverage, conference calls with “too many” important people on them that she needed to thin the heard, so to speak, and much more.  Stacey says she blew through her iPhone battery in just a few hours, but she also explained that it is invaluable part of how the reaction to the crisis went so well: everything she needed was right there.  She could send pictures of the damages, she had every phone number of every person she may need to contact stored away, she could check breaking news stories to make sure coverage was accurate.  We all love our technology, but I have met very few people who are as big of a fan of their iPhone as Stacey is.

Stacey says that her colleagues “all kind of know the hallmarks of good crisis communication: being visible, being composed, being vocal and being resilient.”  This is important because even though there was one person who was the face for the media, many people were involved and talking with external publics.  Stacey says that it was important to cover all groups involved, especially parents and family members.  Stacey isn’t one to mix words, and she put it all out on the table: “if you don’t communicate with the parents, keep parents in the loop you spend all your time dealing with them.”

My lunchtime interview with Stacey was great, and I want to thank her for being so open and honest with me and for taking the time to sit down with me.

Communicating in unique ways

My position as a Resident Advisor (RA) on campus challenges me to communicate with multiple people on a  daily basis- my role as an RA is at it’s very basic to just be a good communicator.  I really enjoy listening to people and talking to them about their day-to-day as well as conversations that may delve a little deeper.  I aim for these deeper level conversations with residents, but they don’t always come when convenient.

One way I make sure residents know they can come to me if they just need someone to talk to is establishing rapport with them in small ways.  I have a few residents this semester who I haven’t really connected with, so recently I made these small “study kits” as surprises for 4 special residents I would like to build a stronger relationship with.  The kits included an apple and a cup of peanut butter (apple slices and peanut butter is my new addiction) as well as some trail mix and some Pixie Sticks.  I wrote short notes to each resident wishing them luck on studying for their upcoming exams and then left the little bags outside of their doors.  I hope they were excited this morning to wake up to a special surprise.

As a student of Communication I understand the value and importance of communicating with people on many different levels.  This may seem like common sense to some, but communication is not always innate in us, sometimes we need to be taught how we should communicate.

Blog Comments

____________________________

Sam Duff

Great blog!  I did an interview style post like this as well and it was a lot of fun.  I like the content you gave us here and how you kind of took a lecture and made it your own.

Comment #10

____________________________

Sarah Marshall

I like how this post is deeply personal but still content driven.
Good work!

Comment #9

____________________________

Tony Benedetti

Tony.
I hate to publicly shame you, but your blog is full of clouds and balloons.  Really?
You kind-of-sort-of know me so I don’t think you’ll take this the wrong way, but really?
This blog post has great content and is exactly what Mary is looking for.  Good work.

Next time I miss the blue skies I’ll just come back and visit your blog.  ;D

Comment #8

____________________________

Regina Hariston

I hate brochures.  I’ve left a comment about this on someone else’s blog, too.  I made this joke about how I have this soapbox made up of old brochures and it’s relly sturdy because of all of the folds.
I think brochures are a prime example of people not looking forward/ahead into trends and the possibilities.  It’s 2012.  We can do so much.  Why pour any time into a brochure?
#rantover
PS- Cute blog.  Good work.

Comment #7

____________________________

Patrick Cooley

Patrick,
Good post!  I like the design of your blog, but I personally have a thing against reading white text on a black background.  If you’re going to keep up with this blog I’d put your copy on a white background and make it black.  This would make your white-on-black headlines pop!  Just a thought.
You’ve obviously spent more time on your blog than I have, so good work!

Comment #6

____________________________

Killyn Dorsio

I hadn’t seen any of these, but they do bring back memories.
I will apparently die without having tried a Twinkie.  I never thought much about it until now.
Great post.  Love how you’re meeting class criteria while still making things fun and entertaining!

Comment #5

____________________________

Lisa Steffes

I hate brochures.  I love this post, but I hate brochures.
I think they’re archaic and I think people (generally) just roll their eyes anymore when you even mention the word brochure.  I have a soapbox I made up of old brochures that I glued together.  It’s sturdy because of all the folds.
Great post.  I still hate brochures.

Comment #4

____________________________

Daniel Kieffer

Love this post.  It seems like this is what we go to in the Communications world these days: fear appeals.  What people don’t look for when using these are the possibilities of consumer backlash.  Love the video and links you provided us.  Good work!

Comment #3

____________________________

Abby Dobras

This is a great post, Abby! I love that you took an assignment and put your own spin on it, because I think that applies greatly to the world of PR- we’re given a task and then need to make it our own. Thanks for the tips near the end it gave your post good content. (:

Comment #2

____________________________

 

Chaz’s “Comm on!” blog

Great post, Chaz! I think it would be awesome if you could share some of your graphic design work here so we could get a feel for your design aesthetic. I like the style of your blog and your writing style, so keep up the good work!
Logan Oates

Comment #1