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An offer to help was fruitful

Published November 5, 2009 Government Communications , Social Media Leave a Comment
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I was tipped off by Douglas Bastien yesterday to some chatter about PWGSC on Twitter. This comment caught my eye.

Snapshot 2009-11-04 23-11-46

PWGSC is the Federal Department I work for.

I replied “@ruk Don’t know how much I can do about helping you find an interviewee, but if you tell me more, I’m willing to try to help.”

I was too late to actually help; Mr. Rukavina had gotten an interview and produced a great video profile of the Jean Canfield building in Charlottetown, PEI. The Jean Canfield building, as I just learned, is  a really cool ‘green’ building that was built by Public Works and Government Services Canada. The interview was not with a PWGSC representative but an architect from the design firm contracted by PWGSC. He does a fantastic job of explaining the many features of the building that reduce it’s environmental footprint. The Jean Canfield building is 60% more energy efficient than similar buildings in its class.

I can only imagine that time was the issue with not giving the interview to @ruk, since his video is really good press.

The video is very interesting.  I’m glad I messaged @ruk and learned about it. If nothing else, I know a little more about a project that happened outside Ontario Region where I work.

I used to monitor PWGSC on Twitter, but stopped because a) it was ‘tumbleweed’ quiet b) I switched twitter clients and forgot to set up the keyword for a live search. That’s how interesting the search had been. I’ve since resumed my monitoring.

Lesson in crisis communication

Published October 9, 2009 Communications Strategy , Government Communications 2 Comments
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I had an experience this Tuesday past that I won’t soon forget. Following a 10 a.m. meeting, my manager brought me into an urgent situation.

A tragic accident had occurred at a job site owned and maintained by another federal department and the contract for the work being done had been procured by the department I work for (PWGSC). One of the contractor’s employees had been seriously injured — possibly fatally, the media was on-site. That’s all we knew.

First hour:

The first step was getting the story straight. I learned as much as I could about the situation, as quickly as possible by talking with other stakeholders. I drafted a situation brief and background.

All the while, my understanding of the situation developed. Federal and provincial departments that investigate such accidents had dispatched investigation teams to the site.

I quickly established messages using a similar situation from several years ago as a reference. I learned that in situations like this, it’s extremely important to not jump to conclusions.

  • The situation was under investigation and commenting on it would be inappropriate.
  • What we could comment on, if asked, was the nature of the work the contract was for, and the relationship between PWGSC, Parks, the contractor and the job site.
  • We could emphasize how regrettable the tragedy is and that our thoughts are with the family and friends of the injured worker.

I shared developments with our Issues Management team who supply our Minister’s office with up-to-date information.

The following 5 hours:

Communication between myself and the other federal department’s communicator remained open as we pieced the situation together. It was decided that they would be the lead department on media inquiries, however questions regarding the nature of the work and the contract would fall to us.

We learned that the worker had in fact passed away. We paused to reflect on this tragic news. Planning was updated to include this information.

Day 2:

The first news reports had appeared the previous evening. The Ontario spokesperson for the investigation had been quoted in one and the attributed information was grossly inaccurate.

I found a phone number for the provincial ministry’s media contact; the same person who had been quoted. I meant to find out if the spokesperson had been wrong or misquoted.

I touched base with the provincial spokesperson and made sure our information jived. I learned that they were not yet in a position to release the name of the deceased, and that  a revision to the article would be published online later that day, and in print the following morning. The revision was more correct, but mentioned PWGSC as the owner of the work site.

Is this a big deal? Well sort of, but after discussing the matter with my manager we decided that contacting the news outlet for a 2nd revision was unwise for two reasons.

  1. With the situation still under investigation we would still have to refuse comment on most questions.
  2. It was obvious that the specifics of the work and contract weren’t of interest to the media outlet in question, and the general details were already provided by the Ministry of Labour spokesperson.

Ongoing:

My department has not been contacted by the media for comment. To my understanding the investigation into the accident has not concluded. I’m continuing to monitor the media for articles about the tragedy.

The support of my manager and co-workers was invaluable.

EA, when will you learn?

Published July 25, 2009 Communications Strategy , Social Media , video games 2 Comments
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I really don’t have a real problem with EA’s twitter contest at Comic-Con, titled “Sin to Win“. I don’t think it’s a good campaign, but I’m not offended. Booth Babes already allow themselves to be objectified in exchange for money. The social and ethical implications of this exchange are not what I write about here.

That said, I don’t see the appeal of taking my photo with a booth babe just to show my friends that a hottie touched my shoulder. What I’m saying is, I’m obviously not their core audience on this contest. (read: I’m not 14 years old).

EA has a lot of product lines, and some of them target kids and women as their core audiences. So why alienate one demographic while trying to draw on another?

Also, if you’re counting on your audiences’ parents to buy Dante’s Inferno for them, why are you encouraging them to sin? Even if it’s just a little bit of sin. Even if only 1 in 1000 parents are turned off by this contest, why do it? When I’m sure you could come up with something equally creative and engaging with better optics.

Rockstar Games could probably pull off a stunt like this. Maybe EA shouldn’t have tried.

On the other hand, the “Storm in a Teacup” might get them broader coverage than some other safe “politically correct” contest would have. Maybe that’s what they’re going for. What do you think?

Video Games and Corporate Communication

Published October 20, 2008 Communications Strategy , video games 2 Comments
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Following a fundraising event at my office last week, this is a subject I’ve been thinking about.

The fundraiser, as part of the Government of Canada’s Workplace Charitable Campaign, included Guitar Hero, Wii Tennis and Dance Dance Revolution, to be played for a donation.

Sadly, I didn’t see a lot of excitement surrounding the video game station. In fact, there wasn’t a lot of excitement surrounding the entire event. However, the paper airplane competition was a popular one.

When bringing video games into corporate communications, you need to consider your audience (as goes for any other tactics). I work in a fairly conservative office, where many employees, particularly managers, are over 45. When you’re trying to appeal mainly to baby boomers, video games might not be a great call.

Here’s one other issue I was considering: The younger employees who might be interested in video games report to managers who are likely in the boomer crowd; they may be worried that their managers or co-workers will frown on them taking part in video games at work.

If you’re considering working video games into a communications effort, be it for fundraising, awareness, or employee appreciation event, carefully consider how it fits.

  • Does it fit with the culture of your organization? Are people going to participate? Are you offering games that are going to appeal to your target audience?
  • Does it fit with the goal. In the case of a fundraiser, you want people to donate. If nobody’s interested in playing the games, they won’t donate. If your goal is awareness, does it match the message you’re trying to communicate. I.e. using Wii Fit or  DDR as part of a campaign to promote employee fitness makes sense. Using Rock Band to promote fitness doesn’t make as much sense.
  • If your budget allows for it, you may want to consider having a game developed that fits with your communication goals. 

You could consider offering a flash based game on your corporate intranet that educates and challenges employees. It may be surprisingly inexpensive to have a developer adapt one of their previous games to your needs with some changes in the characters, etc. Just make sure the game isn’t too addictive and replayable. Establish how long you want employees to spend playing and extracting the message or knowledge and tailor the game accordingly.

These are just some thoughts I had. As always, I invite your ideas and comments. Do you think games can be useful tools in the workplace?

Appreciation for the INTRAnets.

Published June 2, 2008 Communications Strategy , Technology 3 Comments
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I gained a new appreciation for intranets today. They’re complex beasts – especially when they’re in rough shape. Our intranet is far from bad, but it could be better.

I began thinking about the intranet more while compiling some statistics on how employees are accessing some particular information available through the ‘net.

My boss and I agreed that we could definitely improve the numbers. And, this got me thinking of the types of considerations that we could make while sprucing up our good friend ORION.

  1. Ease of use. If the information isn’t easy to access, you lose people along the way. The pathways need to be straightforward.
  2. Content needs to be useful. If 80% of the time, finding the content employees were looking for leads to disappointment, they’re going to be come less likely to look in the first place.
  3. Content needs to be up-to-date and relevant. It’s too easy to keep piling more and more content into the intranet, but when it stops being timely, relevant or useful, get rid of it!
  4. The internet is interactive, so should the intranet. If employees have the opportunity to engage in the intranet and maybe have some fun with it. This makes more people stakeholders in the site.

I’m pretty new to the intranet thing (in my 3rd week of work). I’m still learning more about the effective application of the thing.

I’d love to hear from people who have had experience working on intranets, and some of the successes you’ve had in getting usage up, making it more user-friendly, etc.

Internet security – a communications nightmare

Published April 14, 2008 Communications Strategy 1 Comment
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The vast majority of us are aware that the internet contains many threats to our security. What is it that stops people from protecting themselves?

I read an article in Yahoo! News about a recent report from the NCSA (National Cyber Security Alliance) investigated Americans’ awareness of the threats posed by cybercriminals in terms of their security and the security of others. They found that almost 80% of respondents were unaware of the term ‘botnet’, a network of infected computers working as ‘bots’ for the source of the malicious program, usually to send e-mail spam or perform DoS attacks on specific networks.

Almost 50% said they don’t know how to protect themselves from cybercriminals.

This is a huge communication challenge. How would an organization take on an awareness campaign of this scope?

Traditional advertising – We’ve become accustomed to ads for safe sex; how about safe computing? I know, not quite as exciting, but people need to be aware of concepts like ‘botnets’ and ‘zombie networks’. A provocative ad campaign could do this easily.

Media campaign – There are frequent news articles about internet security. I’ve been reading them for almost as long as I can remember. They talk about case studies, they review product packages designed to protect your computer, and propogate fear, but I’m not sure how much they educate people on what to do to protect themselves outside of buying anti-virus software. This media campaign should be focused on how to install a proper firewall, recognizing signs that your computer(s) might be affected, and what to do when your computer is part of a ‘botnet’.

Educational ‘advergame’ – Yes, I had to work in a video game reference somewhere. Lets say part of this campaign were a flash game where you had to prevent a virus from taking over a computer. Sorta like “Crimson Room” but instead of escaping from a room, you need to perform certain tasks to protect your computer.

Blogging and Social Media – Engaging duscussion between people who know about internet security in a productive way with people who do not. Techies tend to be impatient with the web-unenlightened so this may be the most challenging component. How-to forums, where people work together to trouble shoot. A lot of this already takes place online, but it’s not always accessible to those not already a little in the know.

What do you think? how do we help people become more web-savvy? By reducing the number of people who leave their computer open to attack and incorporation into ‘botnets’ we might be able to reduce the amount of spam we all get in our inboxes. Most of it is sent through zombie computers.

Easter Eggs & April Fools

Published April 6, 2008 Communications Strategy , video games 2 Comments
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Public relations is about increasing public awareness, generating discussion and altering the public perception of an organization through communication. What generates wide spread discussion as much as funny jokes and cleaver pranks?

Easter eggs are secret jems hidden in software. In Excel 2000 you could access a game similar to spyhunter by though a list of commands. It was the programers’ way of working the credits into the program in a fun way.

April fools have been a tradition for ages, and it follows that they would make an appearance on the internet; game developers and publishers have embraced the tradition.

Joystiq produced an entire guide to the ’08 April Fools pranks. Which is great because it just saved me a lot of work listing them! I can get to the business of talking about the discussion these generate.

Bloggers talk about April Fools and Easter Eggs because they’re entertaining, they show creativity on the part of companies and they’re done just for the consumer. There is no direct financial benefit to putting some time into a web prank (except attracting web traffic).

I think it’s great PR. It raises awareness and generates discussion; it shows good-will towards your audience and consumers in an entertaining way. Certainly, it’s not enough to JUST entertain your audience. If you’re providing a good product, quality support and being a responsible company, what better way to get in your audiences’ good books than to make them laugh?

Customer satisfaction counts as capital

Published March 5, 2008 Communications Strategy , video games 3 Comments
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I got this from a Joystiq blog post.

Valve, the game studio responsible for Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and various add-ons, has said that they will provide free downloadable content to customers who bought Team-Fortress 2 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

In a time when many publishers are charging for DLC to increase revenue, Doug Lombardi of Valve says they want to use it to “keep the customer happy” and playing Team-Fortress 2. He sees it as an investment into future projects.

Good move on Valve’s part. In the video game industry the first few weeks of sales figures determine whether your product will stay on store shelves. It’s a definite investment to have a fan base of loyal customers who are itching to pick up your next release title.

I really should go out and buy Valve’s Orange Box sometime soon. When I do, I’ll have a spare copy of Half-Life 2 to give to a friend.

Effective PR, viral marketing or just good for a laugh?

Published February 13, 2008 Communications Strategy , video games 1 Comment
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Capcom, a game developer with a historic tradition (well, historic for a young industry), is offering two Valentine’s e-cards based on their popular Devil May Cry franchise.

I’d argue that anything that makes people laugh and feel good is PR. But is it effective? I’d love to hear opinions on this type of public relations / viral marketing.

Happy Winter-een-mas!

Published January 29, 2008 Communications Strategy , video games 2 Comments
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For those of you who don’t know, Winter-een-mas is an annual “holiday” for gamers to celebrate their hobby. It occurs late January or early February and lasts for one week. The holiday was made up by Tim Buckley as part of the Ctrl-Alt-Del webcomic four years ago.

I’m surprised that Winter-een-mas hasn’t been used as a promotions avenue in PR. I’m also somewhat relieved that it’s still a “grassroots” phenomenon and hasn’t turned into a marketing clusterf… I’m going to stop there, and keep this professional, but you get the idea.

I think that a made up holiday like Winter-een-mas offers a lot of potential for PR pros who:

  • REALLY understand their target market, not pretend to.
  • Respect the origins of the holiday, don’t make it all about marketing and sales
  • Use it in a way to encourage gamers to play games they’ll love

Here’s an example:
lots of kids, teens and adults get new video games at Christmas time, play them until about a week into the new year, and then get bored of it.

If it’s a multi-player game, organize a tournament or some other opportunity for gamers to gather and play the games you represented into the Christmas sales season and keep them playing the games they bought. Keep your customers interested and talking about it and you’ll build brand loyalty and word of mouth reviews.

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