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March 31, 2009
Maybe what you need is a giant Cheeto
It's a rainy Friday here, so it's easy to feel a little gloomy: another week at an end, another stock market rise and fall (and fall and rise), another rock pushed up the hill, only to fall down again.
But here's good news: Frito-Lay, knowing that we need something to make us smile, has introduced ping-pong ball-sized Cheetos.
According to USA Today, the oversized Cheetos are part of a trend toward playful food and other products. "People are looking for anything to break the negativity," says Ann Mukherjee, marketing guru at Frito-Lay. And Lynn Dornblaser, new products guru at researcher Mintel, explains that "people are looking for escape valves to take their minds off the economy."
And what better way to do that than jumbo Cheetos or straw-shaped Oreos that you can drink milk through or a giant calendar with bubble wrap you can pop as each day goes by?
The products, by the way, are mostly designed not for kids, but for adults—we're the ones who need cheering up, after all.
(You might ask: What does this have to do with communication? Absolutely nothing.) Happy Friday!
Posted by Alison Davis at 01:15 PM
March 24, 2009
Terrible town halls?
If you think I was being over-dramatic in my recent Conference Board Review article (the tale of the CEO and the town hall meeting), think again. Just last week a client visited our offices, asking for advice on a variety of issues, including the CEO town halls she was recently put in charge of.
The client opened a folder and pulled out a printout of a PowerPoint deck. “This is what the CEO has been doing,” she said, straining as she lifted the thick stack and plunked it on the desk.
It was a car-wreck moment for me: I didn’t want to look, but I had to. And the reality was worse than I feared: There were 55—count ‘em—slides. (And they weren’t visual; these slides were chock-full of charts, graphs and data.)
“How long are your town hall meetings?” I asked the client.
“An hour,” she replied.
“Any time for questions and answers?”
“Just a few minutes,” she said. “But nobody asks any questions, anyway.”
That wasn’t surprising. After 50 minutes of this dizzying array of information, employees were brain-dead. The problem wasn’t just the quantity of slides; it was the way the meeting was organized. Nine separate topics were covered. Large quantities of data were reported. There was no story, just thousands of facts.
Worst of all, none of it was directly relevant to employees. There was no way for them to get involved, no call to action, no opportunity to do anything but passively sitting in the audience, waiting for it to be over.
We gave our client lots of advice on how she could stop this madness. If you need some, too, you might consider signing up for two low-cost web workshops coming up: Making Meetings Matter on April 29 and Engage Employees with Virtual Town Halls on June 10.
Hope to see you there.
Posted by Alison Davis at 03:07 PM
March 20, 2009
How do the affected AIG employees feel?
So far, all the coverage about the AIG Financial Products $165 million bonuses has been about how the public, Congress and the media view the issue.
But how do affected employees feel? Washington Post reporter Brady Dennis wrote an article yesterday that tells the story from employees' point of view. Guess what? AIG-FP employees are not the evil-doers they're made to be; just people trying to do a job.
This is the first coverage I've read that provides employees' perspective. A must read.
Posted by Alison Davis at 08:37 AM | Comments (2)
March 15, 2009
Wondering about Facebook? Read this article
I've been talking to clients about social media a lot lately: For instance, I conducted two workshops on the topic during the past two weeks. And one of the key things on everyone's mind, as evidenced by the questions people ask, is Facebook.
That's because for Baby Boomers, Facebook seems so strange. It's uncomfortably public, like wearing your pajamas to work. And its definition of "friend" is unnervingly inclusive: If I met you once (or met someone you know once), you can be my friend.
If you've been thinking about Facebook, this New York Times article by Randall Stross is a must-read. It's Facebook explained; Facebook for Dummies. And Mr. Stross raises issues that pertain to social media as well, since social media is changing the boundaries that used to exist in communication between public and private, and between formal and informal.
Hope you find this helpful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/business/08digi.html
Posted by Alison Davis at 03:39 PM
March 11, 2009
Assume your older workers aren’t tech-savvy? Think again
More and more studies are showing that, although people over 50 have been slower to embrace new technologies, they’re catching up fast.
For example, according to a joint study by TNS Compete and the Consumer Electronics Association:
- Consumers in their 50s are as likely to own HDTVs as those under 50.
- Eighty percent of people over 60 used a cell phone during the past week—at nearly equal the usage rates of 18- to 34-year-olds.
- And 71 percent of people over 60 and 52 percent of those over 70 used a search engine during the past week—as compared to 77 percent of 18- to 34-year olds.
Where do older Americans differ from younger cohorts? Younger demographics are much more likely to play video games, use MP3 players and they use social networking twice as much as older Americans.
And people over 50 rely more on in-person information from sales associates when they purchase electronic products. In addition, they find too many features to be a negative: 60 percent of those aged 50 and older find complicated products frustrating, as compared to 39 percent of 18- to 34-year olds.
My point? Don’t assume that because a percentage of your workforce is over 50 that they’re not using technology to communicate. (On the flip side, don’t assume that because you built it, they will come.) Make sure you know how employees are engaging with communication tools, and adjust your program accordingly.
Posted by Alison Davis at 11:13 AM