The Great Marketing Circus – PR’s magic, revealed!
The marketing arena can easily be compared to a three-ring circus. A few clowns, a few death-defying leaps and the ring leader is expected to single-handedly bring it all together. Of course, we can’t forget the one person everyone expects to see – the great magician: shrouded in mystery, quite dramatic and never without ability to manifest greatness from thin air at the drop of a hat.
So, in a recent RFP, when the company asked what PR ‘tricks’ our agency had up our sleeves, I came to the stunning realization that there really are people out there who believe that the practice of public relations is truly magical.
Believe me, if this were possible, all PR practitioners would operate from the beach. You know – a check in at the smoothie stand every so often and a wave of their wands a couple times a day for good measure.
[wcm_restrict]Don’t get me wrong, that sounds much more attractive than fighting winter rush-hour traffic in Cincinnati, but if you want to know the real juicy secret about PR that everybody on the inside wants you to know, here it is: journalistic perspective. A good agency practitioner is able to objectively look at a company and see which messages will best strike a chord and motivate prospects to action, and how these ideas can be applied to trends in media or pop culture.
The problem is, companies have the tendency to become so wrapped up in their own mission statements and ethereal ideals that they fail to see how they could be using their strengths to capitalize on current trends. This is why we so often see epically long releases about a business offering the triumvirate of the obvious: quality, service and value.
These same companies also wonder why they aren’t achieving the desired results. The difference must be that wand.
And for my Next Trick: Getting that story in the paper!
Even some of our most well intentioned clients sometimes forget that we can’t get every story placed every time. It’s been said that if placements were that easy to attain, all you’d read about would be PR firms. And it’s true – you’ll never find an industry of companies more enraptured with declaring their love of themselves. If there really were a magic PR ‘trick’, you can bet you’d be hearing about it everywhere.
Magic implies illusion and deception, and at the end of the day, wouldn’t your company rather be recognized for something you know a lot about over something that was concocted just to get you in the paper? No magic wand. No smoke and mirrors. And absolutely no tricks. Just a good eye, a little tenacity and a passion for news.
You see, there is no ‘trick’ to good public relations. It takes consistency, hard work and a little flair.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
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About the Author
Allison Brinkman
PR Manager, Eisen Marketing Group
allison@eisenmarketinggroup.com
Alli found herself saying the same thing Greeks have been saying for centuries when she provided an opportunity to work with EMG clientele: Opa! (Hooray!) An adventurer at heart, she constantly seeks new challenges and celebrates unconventional solutions. No need to cross the Mediterannean and absolutely no Trojan Horse – she is what she is, and that fresh, candid honesty makes for one serious professional.
A diehard Ohio State Buckeye football fan, she knows the value of a little friendly competition – and even has a trivia-loving alter ego ‘BMoney’ to honor that streak. When it comes to clients, however, she isn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves, put her game face on and ensure nothing less than the best. Scarlet. Grey. All colors. All colours – she integrates impossible to absolutely.
Having lived abroad twice in both France and Luxembourg, Allison takes advantage of her global perspective in everyday life, and applies that knowledge when discussing global and cultural differences. Her ‘let’s go!’ attitude will gladly take her to the ends of the earth in search of answers, inspiration or just out of curiosity. Give her a minute (or 10), and she’ll gladly tell you all about winter in Stockholm or the music scene in Prague. Go Ask Alli…
Is it the or is it THEE.
Allison is a graduate from The Ohio State University, and has worked in marketing, public relations and event planning for Paramount’s Kings Island, The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium and UWeekly Newspaper.
Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag 2 – Crediting Good Intentions
“The road to ruin is paved with good intentions.”
German Proverb
Communicating assessment conclusions can be a difficult task, particularly in the case of improvement opportunities being presented to those directly managing or performing the function. Delivering the message is all the more difficult if those receiving it are organizationally senior to the self assessment lead or are influential favorites of the organization’s leaders. In these cases, business performance assessment leaders seeking a tactful way of communicating the ‘bad news’ often fall into the trap of crediting the good intentions and/or self identification of the issue by those responsible in order to put a positive spin on an otherwise negative message. Doing so, however, avoids the real issues at hand and can rob the organization of the opportunity to realize substantive performance improvements.[wcm_restrict plans=”47805, 25542, 25653″]
Crediting good intentions or self realization of an issue (often occurring just prior to the assessment) as the business performance assessment conclusion should be avoided. While such positives can and should be recognized within the self assessment report, they must not be allowed to interfere or detract from the real message that performance improvement opportunities do exist and that they should be pursued.
Whether recognized or not, organization leaders accepting assessment report conclusions founded on intention and/or issue self identification diminish their organization’s ability to improve; subsequently slowing its response to internal needs and market demands. While not all inclusive, the four lists below, Process-Based Warning Flags, Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors, Potential, Observable Results, and Potential Causes, are designed to help organization leaders to recognize whether their self assessments gloss over the real issues in favor of more positive messages. Only after a problem is recognized and its causes identified can the needed actions be taken to move the organization toward improved performance.
Process-Based Warning Flags
- Guidelines do not exist for the performance of causal analysis
- Business performance assessment program frameworks do not provide for executive or senior management sponsorship each assessment
- Assessment protocols allow for excessive participation by members of the organization being evaluated
- Performance evaluations, merit pay increases, and bonus are overly tied to achievement of high assessment grades/results
- Reward systems do not recognize those performing thorough, value-adding business performance assessments
Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors
- Leaders of the evaluated organization interject themselves into the business performance assessment process prior to more senior leaders receiving the report
- Organization leaders have a propensity to ‘shoot the messenger’ in response to unfavorable news
- Organization leaders do not value constructive criticism and in severe cases may treat delivery of such messages as a career limiting event for the assessment team
- Organization leaders actively reward those who routinely present ‘good news’ and/or the ‘desired message’
- Organization leaders do not openly challenge assessment conclusions based on intentions and/or recently self identified issues
- Organization leaders do not routinely probe for additional information regarding the lower level causes to business performance assessment identified issues and opportunities
- Business performance assessment leaders and team members identifying true improvement opportunities are rebuked by other members of the workforce
Potential, Observable Results
- The organization is slow to react to market changes
- Organization change occurs over long periods of time, typically when a new leader assumes control
- Competitors routinely outperform the organization
- Poor performing employees (delivering softer or the desired messages) advance ahead of stronger performing employees (delivering more accurate but harder messages)
- Poor performing employees (delivering softer or the desired messages) tend to be at least equally compensated and receive similar or greater merit increases and bonuses to stronger performing employees (delivering more accurate but harder messages)
- Better performing employees leave the organization because of its lack of value for strong and improved performance
- Better performing employees admonished for competent performance leading or on a self assessment team leave the organization
Potential Causes
- Executives and managers lack or avoid accountability
- Executives and managers are uncomfortable holding peers and subordinates accountable
- Business performance assessment team leaders and members fear for their job security and so deliver the reports they feel executives and managers will accept without adverse consequences being realized
- The organization’s culture does not value constructive feedback as a tool for continuous improvement
- The organization values tenure over performance
- Executives, managers, and the workforce unduly fear the change that comes with organizational improvements
Final Thoughts…
Business performance assessments crediting good intentions or self identification of issues rarely occur in organizations with a culture that embraces these introspective assessments as a learning opportunity, not a witch hunt. While delivery of the self assessment’s findings should always be done with respect and tact, no one is served when the message is diluted or hidden.
In addition to avoiding placing a positive spin on one’s own business performance assessments, organizations should watch for similar messaging coming from outsiders such as regulatory organizations and industry groups. If such spin is conveyed in these group’s reports, an effort should be made to probe for the underlying issues so to be able to identify the unreported issues.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”47805, 25542, 25653″]
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Additional Resources
Lack of organizational accountability plays a significant role in the crediting of good intentions and recently self identified issues as assessment report conclusions. Principle, best practice, and warning flag articles on organizational accountability helping leaders enhance their company’s performance in this area can be found within the StrategyDriven topic: Organizational Accountability.
Other StrategyDriven recommended practices helping assessment teams avoid good intention and recently self identified issue conclusions can be found in:
- Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
- Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 2 – Multidiscipline Teams
- Strategic Analysis Best Practice 3 – Identify the Hidden Drivers
- Strategic Analysis Best Practice 3 – Identify the Hidden Drivers (continued)
- StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 20 – Identify the Hidden Drivers, part 1 of 3
- StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 21 – Identify the Hidden Drivers, part 2 of 3
- StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 22 – Identify the Hidden Drivers, part 3 of 3
- Strategic Analysis Best Practice 4 – Independent Assessors
- StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 15 – Independent Assessors
Seven Secrets of Driving Customer Loyalty – and Profits
In these rough and recessionary times, it’s important to escape the commodity pricing wars and to find ways to strengthen the marketing backbone of your company. The most reliable and affordable way to achieve both these goals is by building a strong personal bond with your customers. Loyal customers see you as more valuable than a mere commodity purveyor, and can serve you as a powerful marketing arm, going out of their way promote and defend your company online and off – for free. Here are seven ways to get process started of building customer loyalty.
- Did you shine that doorknob? Research shows that customers remember the first and last minutes of a service encounter much more vividly – and for much longer – than all the rest of it. Make sure that the first and final elements of your customer interactions are particularly well engineered, because they are going to stick in the customer’s memory.
- Set your clocks forward: Modern customers expect speedier service than did any generation before them. (Not only speedier than their parents expected, but even than their older sisters and brothers expected.) In this age of Blackberrys and iPhones, of Amazon.com and Zappos, you may as well not deliver your product or service if you’re going to deliver it late.
- Customers want to connect with a real person – online or off. For example, instead of a web-based chat window that blandly announces “you are now chatting with Jane,” try “you are now chatting with Jane Yang-Katzenberg.” The customers will treat your “Jane” better, they’ll take her advice more seriously – and they’ll be more likely to want a committed customer relationship with her company.
- Remember each returning customer. Whatever your business – and no matter how large, work to achieve the computer-assisted effectiveness of a beloved bartender, doorman, or hairstylist – the kind who would know Bob’s preferences, the name of Bob’s pet, when Bob was there last… Superb client tracking systems can create that same “at home” feeling in your customers – regardless of the size and price point of your business, and whether it exists online or off.
- Anticipate a customer’s wishes. When a customer’s wish is met before the wish has been expressed, it sends the message that you care about the customer as an individual. That cared-for feeling is where you generate the fiercest loyalty.
- Don’t leave the language your team uses up to chance. Develop and rehearse a list of vocabulary words and expressions that fit your business brand perfectly. For example, the expression “no worries” sounds fine if a clerk at a Portland Bose® Audio Store says it, but would be exceedingly off-brand for the concierge at The Four Seasons in Milan. Equally important, search and destroy any vocabulary words that could hurt customer feelings. For example, your service team should never tell a customer “you owe us.” (Try instead: “our records seem to show a balance…”)
- Be patient when filling positions. In a superb service organization, a single disagreeable or unresponsive team member can erode customer loyalty and team morale. That is why it can be better to leave a position unfilled rather than rushing to hire someone unsuitable. More generally speaking, customer excellence is most fully achieved once you become expert at recruiting, selecting, training, evaluating and reinforcing the efforts of service personnel.
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About the Author
Micah Solomon is the co-author with Leonardo Inghilleri of Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization
Leadership Inspirations – Continual Fear
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915)
American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher, most famous for his essay A Message to Garcia
The New Thinking on KPIs, part 3 of 4
The four types of performance measures
I have come to the conclusion that there are four types of performance measures, as shown in Figure 3. This conclusion has come from: the research I have conducted; workshop feedback across diverse industries; and as a by-product of writing my book “Key Performance Indicators – developing, implementing and using winning KPIs”.
Figure 3: A scorecard with six perspectives
- key result indicators (KRIs) – give an overview on past performance and are ideal for the Board as they communicate how management have done in a critical success factor or balanced scorecard perspective
- performance indicators (PIs) – tell staff and management what to do
- result indicators (RIs) – tell staff what they have done
- key performance indicators (KPIs) – tell staff and management what to do to increase performance dramatically.
[wcm_restrict]I use an onion analogy to describe the relationship of these four measures. The outside skin describes the overall condition of the onion, how much sun, water and nutrients it has received, how it has been handled from harvest to supermarket shelf. The outside skin is thus a key result indicator. The layers represent the various performance and result indicators and the core is where you find the key performance indicators.
Another way to look at it is to say there are two groups of measures, result indicators that summarize activities and performance indicators that are tied to a precise activity.
The 10/80/10 rule
Kaplan and Norton recommend no more than 20 KPIs, and Jeremy Hope (of beyond budgeting fame) suggest less than 10. To aid those involve in performance measurement I have developed the 10/80/10 rule. This means an organisation should have about 10 KRIs, up to 80 PIs and RIs and 10 KPIs. Very seldom is there a need for more measures than these numbers, and in many cases, less measures can be used.
Key Result Indicators (KRIs)
The common characteristic of KRIs is that they are the result of many actions. They give a clear picture of whether you are travelling in the right direction, and of the progress made towards achieving desired outcomes and strategies. They are ideal for governance reporting as key result indicators show overall performance and help the Board focus on strategic rather that management issues.
KRIs do not, however, tell management and staff what they need to do to achieve desired outcomes. Only performance indicators and KPIs can do this.
KRIs are measures that have often been mistaken for KPIs include:
- Customer satisfaction
- Net profit before tax
- Profitability of customers
- Employee satisfaction
- Return on capital employed
Separating out KRIs from other measures has a profound impact the way performance is reported. There is now a separation of performance measures into those impacting governance (up to ten KRIs in a Board dashboard) and those RIs, PIs and KPIs impacting management.
A one page dashboard with the KRIs going in the right direction, will give confidence to the Board that the management know what they are doing and the “ship” is being steered in the right direction. The Board can then concentrate on what they do best, coaching the CEO, as required; focusing on the horizon for icebergs or looking for new ports to call. This is instead of parking themselves on the “bridge” and thus getting in the way of the captain who is trying to perform important day-to-day duties.
Performance and Result Indicators (PIs and RIs)
The 80 or so performance measures that lie between the KRIs and the KPIs are the performance and result indicators (PIs). The performance indicators while important are not “Key to the business”. The PIs help teams to align themselves with their organization’s strategy. PIs complement the KPIs and are shown with them on the organization’s, divisions’, departments’ and teams’ scorecards.
PIs could include:
- % increase in sales to the top 10% of customers
- # of employees’ suggestions implemented in last 30 days
- Customer complaints from key customers
- Sales calls organized for the next week, fortnight
- Late deliveries to key customers
RIs could include:
- Net profit on key product lines
- Sales made yesterday
- Weeks sales to key customers
- Debtor collections in week
- Bed utilization in week
Looking at the differences between KRIs vs KPIs and RIs vs PIs
Often in workshops one question emerges time and time again. “Please explain again the difference between KRIs and KPIs, and RIs and PIs.” Figures 4 and 5 will hopefully clarify the differences.
| KRIs | KPIs |
| Can be financial and non financial, e.g. Return on capital employed, and customer satisfaction percentage | Non financial measures (not expressed in $s, Yen, Pds, Euro, etc) |
| Measures mainly monthly and some times quarterly | Measured frequently e.g. daily or 24 by 7 |
| As a summarize of progress in an organization’s critical success factor it is ideal to a Board. | Acted upon by the CEO and senior management team |
| It does not help staff or management as no where does it tell what you need to fix | All staff understand the measure and what corrective action is required |
| Commonly, the only person responsible for a KRI is the CEO. | Responsibility can be tied down to the individual or team |
| A KRI is designed to summarize activity within one CSF | Significant impact e.g. it impacts on more than one of top CSFs and more than one balanced scorecard perspective |
| A KRI is a result of many activities managed through a variety of performance measures | Has a positive impact e.g. affects all other performance measures in a positive way |
| Normally reported by way of a trend graph covering at least the last fifteen moths of activity | Normally reported by way of an intranet screen indicating activity, person responsible, track record etc so a phone call can be made. |
Figure 4: The difference between KRIs and KPIs
A car’s speedometer provides a useful analogy to show the difference between a result indicator and a performance indicator. The speed the car is traveling is a result indicator since the cars speed is a combination of what gear the car is in and what revolutions the engine is doing. Performance indicators might be how economically the car is being driven e.g. a gauge showing how many kilometers per liter, or how hot the engine is running e.g. a temperature gauge.
| RIs | PIs |
| Can be financial and non financial | Non financial measures (not expressed in $s) |
| Measured weekly, fortnightly, monthly, some times quarterly | Same |
| Cannot be tied to a team or a discrete activity | Tied to a discrete activity, and thus to a team |
| Does not tell you what you need to do more or less of | All staff understand what action is required to improve PI |
| Designed to summarize some activity within a CSFs/SFs | Specific activity impacts on one of the CSFs /SFs |
| A result of more than one activity | Focuses on a specific activity |
| Normally reported in a team scorecard | Same |
Figure 5: The difference between RIs and PIs[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
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About the Author
David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs
David’s work on KPIs has received international recognition with clients in Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Perth, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Tehran, Prague, Dublin, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh. David is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and has worked for Ernst & Young, BP Oil Ltd, Arthur Andersen, and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
David’s recent thinking is accessible from www.davidparmenter.com. He can be contacted at parmenter@waymark.co.nz or telephone +64 4 499 0007.
This articles is an extract from his “Implementing winning KPIs” whitepaper which can be downloaded from http://davidparmenter.com/how-to-guides)