What Abba Can Teach About Social Media

In the social media course I teach each year at the IAE Aix Graduate School of Management I am pretty sure that I have never once mentioned Abba, the iconic Swedish pop group that peaked in the 1970s before my students were born. But this year I will be adding a case study about the interesting way that their new museum in Stockholm connects interactive exhibits so that visitors can save and share to social media their experiences.

I visited Abba The Museum and interviewed CEO Mattias Hansson in early April, researching an article for Eye for Travel -- Mamma Mia: Look What Happens When a Museum Harnesses Social Media. At the time the museum was still in construction but already it was clear that this is going to be a cutting edge development and an inspiration for other museums and attractions.

Inside the museum there are many interactive exhibits. You can record your own version of an Abba hit, singing along with a backing track in a replica of the original Polar Studios in Stockholm, long since closed and now a gym. You also remix Abba songs using digital copies of the original 24 track tapes, though you will probably find it hard to outdo the classic version by producer/engineer Michael B Tretow. You can also dance on a stage with life-size animated images of the group thanks to a Musion Eyeliner stage illusion, the same famously used to resurrect rapper Tupac Shakur at the 2012 Coachella Music Festival. There are many more interactive exhibits, some digital, some physical.

Where Abba The Museum is different is that the audio and video clips of these performances are saved to a temporary personal page on the museum website. Later you can access that page using your ticket ID and either save or share them to social media using conventional sharing buttons. This simple, effective approach means that the museum gives you access to your media clips without requiring any connection to social media site APIs and without any need for authentication to access visitor social media accounts. After a short time -- different sources have given me different numbers -- the temporary pages are automatically deleted so if you just want to try the exhibits and don't want to save or share you don't need to think about it.

This approach to saving and sharing is popular with visitors who are old enough to share their lives to social media and young enough to want to do it. But it also benefits the museum because every share is another free advertisement -- much better than a banner and better than any paid "native" advertising. Since it is also possible to retrofit this technology to existing exhibits -- many of the Abba exhibits have been shown in the past without this feature -- it's likely that the idea will soon be adopted by other museums, exhibits, attractions and much more.

On a roller coaster, for example, you could equip the ride with video cameras so that when you board you present a bar-coded ticket to a scanner then a short video showing your reactions can be saved to a temporary web page for sharing later. Multiple rides could also be connected together to add a new dimension of gamification, allowing users to win a "badge" for sampling many attractions and then share this badge to Facebook. A gym could add bar code scanners to equipment and allow customers to share what they have achieved, golf courses could allow players to share their scores and much more.

Abba The Museum is going to be one of the case studies in my social media course this year and in the months before the 2013 course starts I will be watching for new examples to mention, so if you implement any scheme like this please get in touch. Meantime if you'd like to see Abba The Museum yourself you can book a slot on the museum website -- everyone books a slot time so that there are no lines.


Lectures, Workshops, Coaching, Writing

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Why You Need to Suspend Scheduled Tweets When Disaster or Tragedy Strikes

Last year I argued in this post about social media crisis management that when a PR crisis strikes your business you should suspend all scheduled tweets. This reflection was prompted by a case where Eurostar trains were blocked in the Eurotunnel for hours but the company was still tweeting invitations to take the train to Paris for Christmas. Later in this guest post I also wrote that you can be entangled in a crisis that is nothing to do with your actions, so you need to be prepared for that, too.

This week we have seen that even this is not enough. One thing that the Boston Marathon bombing has highlighted is that you should also suspend all of your scheduled tweets when there is any sort of disaster or tragedy that could make your tweets appear at tone deaf, insensitive or even inappropriate -- even when the incident is completely unrelated to your business.

Looking at some of the reactions on Twitter explains why. As soon as the news broke in Boston the focus of my twitter stream shifted to news about the tragedy, messages of support and offers of help. Mingled in with these were the usual scheduled promotional tweets plus many others complaining about them. Rachel Miller (@AllthingsIC) in London tweeted "Scheduled tweets really jar when something like the #bostonmarathon happens."

Some were also tweeting suggestions, like I did. Casey Waltz (@CaseyWaltz) in Princeton NJ tweeted "It's essential that companies/brands have a plan when an emergency/tragedy happens like this. It's crass to have promotions."  Even if they weren't in poor taste, your promotional tweets are simply out of place and nobody is interested in seeing them at that time.

And as Christine Perkett()@missusP) in Boston noted on Twitter "It's funny how perspective works. Yesterday's Boston tragedy so close to literally our home just makes everything else seem so trivial".

In the light of this any business or organization that uses scheduled tweets should make sure that they have in place a plan to suspend their scheduled tweets when a tragedy occurs. Concretely there has to be someone monitoring news to watch out for events like the Boston bombing, this person has to inform someone who has the authority to suspend tweets -- maybe they are the same person. This person with authority then needs to have the means to shut down scheduled tweets. Using some tools you will need to do this manually, but there are some social media tools that include an emergency stop feature. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to do this from a smartphone anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter how you do it but just make sure you do.

Planning for social media actions like this has to be part of your routine crisis PR planning. Being prepared for events that are not directly related to your business is also part of this planning. Disaster and tragedy can strike anywhere at any time, so making sure you are prepared is a very good idea.

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For lectures, workshops, one-to-one coaching and writing on this and other communication topics visit http://andrewhennigan.com, email conseil@andrewhennigan.com or call 0033 6 79 61 42 81 in France and 0046 730 894 475 in Sweden.


Related Posts on Crisis Management

Why You Probably Need Social Media Crisis Management More Than You Think
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What the Shortmail Tweetstorm Teaches About Social Media Monitoring

PR Essentials for Early-Stage Startups

If your startup is still at an early stage you probably can't even afford a PR consultant and an agency is out of reach. Maybe you also don't have any PR expertise yourself. But there are five simple things you can do yourself that don't take much time or expertise yet can make it much more likely people will talk about you. I learnt these things working on both sides of the business: I have worked both in PR and as a freelance journalist, writing often about startups.

BUILD A SOLID ONLINE PRESENCE. When someone googles your company name they should find at least several pages you control on the first page of search results. This is much easier than most people think. First of all make sure that your own website URL has been submitted to the top search engines. For example, you can submit a URL to Google using this Webmaster Tools page. When that's done create profiles in the name of your company on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. These will rank highly in Google searches and give a satisfyingly solid presence. (For more about this see How to Get Impressive Search Results for your Startup). If your company name is ungoogleable then think again about that name. You might think it is funny to have a name that consists of strange characters but if Google can't find you nobody can. (For more about this see Branding in the Age of Search Engines).

MAKE SURE CONTACT INFO IS EASY TO FIND. You are much more likely to get coverage in blogs and media if journalists can contact you. It is extremely rare that someone has to write about a specific company. When I write about startups usually I am writing about a theme and I contact many companies in that space; if one is hard to contact I just look somewhere else.  You should have at least an email address and a phone number; a form is not acceptable. Don't worry about spam -- that can be easily filtered -- and don't worry about too many people calling your phone number. You wish! It's much more likely that nobody calls. To be especially media friendly it is better to have a separate "media" or "press" contact even if it is just redirected to your other account. And if you really want to make media happy put a real human name on the contact. I'd feel much more inclined to talk to "Abigail Grundy, Founder" than "info@startupthingy.com"

ANSWER MEDIA ENQUIRIES PROMPTLY. When you do get an enquiry from a journalist or blogger you should send a quick reply as soon as possible to show that you received the message and that you plan to reply. If you want to look even more professional ask when the deadline is and then respect it. Journalists typically work to inflexible deadlines and if you are late you simply won't be mentioned. Very often companies get into articles simply by providing an answer in time. Failing to confirm that you received the query can also mean that you are left out. If I reach out and there is no response I just move to the next one in my list.

USE YOUR NETWORK. Forget press releases, media alerts and press kits at the very beginning. Your time is much better spent working your network to get the word out. Make sure that everyone in your network knows what you are doing and make sure that they know what you are looking for. At the same time grow your network all the time, adding friends, family, mentors, bloggers, journalists and anyone else in the business. Build trust with these people, too, by being helpful, both reacting to their questions and reaching out proactively. (For more about this see: Three Keys to Networking). You can also push updates to your social media using tools like Hootsuite, but I would not recommend any more automation than that (for reasons why see When Bot Talks to Bot).

MONITOR SOCIAL MEDIA. Like many people I always talk about the articles I am writing on Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus and LinkedIn. In many cases I even ask explicitly if anyone has anything to say about the subject. Some savvy companies monitor social media -- especially Twitter -- for keywords related to their business then reach out to me if they feel that they have something that might be  good fit. Sometimes it is and this proactive effort gets them a mention. This takes very little effort because you can do it with preset searches and alerts. (For more about this see Three Social Media Hacks to Find Media Opportunities).

You can do all of this even while you are at the kitchen table stage and all the way up to the point where you need professional help. And when you do need that help you should start first with a freelancer who has worked with other founders you know. Later when your startup has reached a critical size you will probably want to move to a PR agency but by the time you get to that stage you will have a full-time communication director and he or she will know enough to take care of that choice.


Lectures, Workshops, Coaching & Writing

For lectures, workshops, one-to-one coaching and writing on this and other communication topics visit http://andrewhennigan.com, email conseil@andrewhennigan.com or call 0033 6 79 61 42 81 in France and 0046 730 894 475 in Sweden.

How Encouraging Networking Makes Your Workplace More Effective

There are still some companies and managers who have mixed feelings about employees who use networking sites like LinkedIn. They fear either a loss of productivity or perhaps even losing the employee to a competitor. Neither risk should be a serious problem. You can easily avoid time wasting by better training and easier recruiting benefits your company, too.  But the upside of networking far outweighs the downside risk, so companies that encourage their employees to network internally and externally have an advantage over the others. There are many reasons for this, but here are the top three:

NETWORKING IMPROVES PERFORMANCE. Nobody can do their job entirely alone, so that an employee with average ability but a rich network can actually outperform a genius with a weak network. The reason for this is not hard to find. Whatever you do for a living you are going to get stuck from time to time and need help. A well connected employee needing help just asks and they get help quickly. Others maybe send messages and leave voice mails but nobody gets back to them or they get back too late. This was one of the key lessons of thestudy How Bell Labs Creates Star Performers by Robert Kelley and Janet Caplan, published in Harvard Business Review in July 1993.

NETWORKING FOSTERS A COLLABORATIVE CULTURE. If you are doing the networking correctly  people invest part of their time to help others, on request, proactively and without any expectation of an immediate payback. This payforward approach means that when you need help you are more likely to obtain it, but it also means that you operate in a less competitive environment where people share rather than obstruct. You can read more about the basics of networking in this way in  Three Keys to Networking

NETWORKING DECREASES CONFLICTS. Perhaps the least intuitive of the three is that networking reduces conflicts.This happens because when communities are connected by multiple links you are more likely to get less polarized opinion. In contrast when you have two communities linked only by a single "gatekeeper" then you are much more likely to get polarized opinions and conflicts. This was confirmed by research by Renaud Lambiotte and others at the University of Liege in 2006. You can read more in their paper Majority Model on a network with communities.

For managers the lesson is that if you are not already actively encouraging a networking mentality now is the time to start. Make sure that you set a good example, make sure that your employees know that you expect them to network and make sure they know how to do it effectively.

And for everyone else? Many companies already recognize the importance of networking so having a demonstrated ability to build and maintain an effective network is going to carry more weight when you are looking for a new job or a promotion. Faced with two identical candidates recruiters are much more likely to choose the one who is able to call on the support of an extended network. Now you know why.


Lectures, Workshops, Coaching and Writing
For lectures, workshops, coaching and writing about networking and other communication topics visit http://andrewhennigan.com, email conseil@andrewhennigan.com or call 0033 6 79 62 41 81 in France, 0046 730 894 475 in Sweden.

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Reputation: Why Ford's Indian Ad Affair Hurts Their Brand Even If They Had Nothing To Do With It

Images from a controversial Ford advertising campaign in India went viral on 22 March 2013, followed by a furious backlash against the company. Many people took issue with the image of people bound and gagged in the back of the car; others were upset by the image of Berlusconi during a period of difficult diplomatic relations between Italy and India.

Except that Ford didn't really have anything to do with it. The ads were created by employees at the JWT agency in India entirely on their own initiative without any input or approval from the agency or the client. The same individuals then uploaded them to adsoftheworld.com a site where people in the advertising business post their work to be seen primarily by their peers. The ad was never requested, seen or approved by Ford or even their agency. [Update: there are different versions of the story. Some say Ford knew more than they say in the official version. See Ford Mess: Ford, JWT and WPP Have Overeacted. ]

Most people agree that the fault lies with the individuals who created and uploaded the images and JWT for a lack of supervision. Perhaps a small part of the blame could be attributed to Ford because their oversight of the agency was imperfect, but this is surely a minor sin of omission. Yet in the court of public opinion Ford gets the blame because their logo is on the ads. Even though the full story has been widely reported, like in this Campaign article, most people only see the images on Facebook and never read the articles. Very few people outside of the advertising business have any idea anyway of the role of JWT in this affair or the practice of bored creatives making artwork for ideas that they would never dare to propose to clients.

If there is a key learning from this affair it is that if your name is on the ad you will get blamed for it even if you had nothing to do with it. There are still many websites that show the Southern Comfort "Liquid Panty Remover" ad (here's an example) and the BMW "You know that you're not the first" used car ad (example) -- both widely debunked as fakes. Ironically Ford contributed to the confusion when they apologized for the Indian ads. Normally I encourage people to apologize when they upset people but this is one of those cases where it has the unintended effect of making people assume they have done something wrong. Perhaps Ford would be been better advised to insist that JWT apologize, since their role in the failure of oversight was apparently greater.

In all of these cases the original image was widely shared on social media but any explanation was mostly ignored and seen only by people in the business. The inevitable conclusion is that the only way to protect against this kind of reputation crisis is just to be extremely strict about what employees of the agencies do with your branding. Companies need to make it clear that they will not work with any agency that does not have a zero tolerance policy. In the pre-Internet days creatives could have fun with fake ads and share them with their friends, but this is simply not possible today when images can spread worldwide in hours. In this situation allowing people to put your branding on potentially controversial fake materials is about as sensible as keeping the rat poison on the shelf right next to the sugar. It's a pointless risk not worth taking.


Lectures, Workshops Coaching & Writing

For lectures, workshops, coaching and writing on this and other communication topics visit http://andrewhennigan.com, email conseil@andrewhennigan.com or call 0033 6 79 61 42 81 in France and 0046 730 894 475 in Sweden. 

What to do When Someone Asks You to Create Their Presentation

Earlier I wrote what you should do when someone asks you to deliver the presentation they have created (Seven and a Half Things to Do When Someone Asks You to Deliver Their Presentation). Now I hear more people asking what to do in the equally common situation where someone asks you to create a presentation that they will deliver. In most cases it is your boss who makes this request so assuming that this is the case what can you do? Here are three basic concepts you should focus on:

KNOW THEIR STYLE. Before you start you need to know something about their presentation style. It will not help to make a textbook perfect presentation if the boss feels uncomfortable presenting it or cannot deliver it in the way you expected. Personally I like to emphasize visuals and memorize what I need to say, but not everyone has the time or performing skills needed to do this so you might need to embed more of the content in the slides than is ideal.  Maybe you like to use "builds", where elements of a slide are added one at a time, but this will not work if your boss does not remember the sequence (it is also bad technique as I explained in Presentation Techniques; Pointing Without Pointing). Perhaps you like fast-moving dynamic presentations made with Prezi where elements rotate and zoom rapidly but your boss feels more comfortable with static bullet points.  In any case you need to understand their style. Try to watch them deliver a presentation, look at slide decks they have made and ask others to describe how they present so that you get a feel for what they will be able to deliver convincingly. To test your drafts imagine your boss delivering them and ask yourself if it sounds like them.

BE DEPENDABLE. Having to rely on someone else to do things is essential for very busy people but it is also very stressful. You can minimize this stress and make yourself very popular by being utterly dependable. This means meeting all deadlines on time, always making sure the file is in the right format and testing every presentation to make sure everything works. It also means accurate proofreading  and fact checking. It is hugely embarrassing for your boss to present a slide with a hilarious typo or a fact that is challenged. Many of the stories and "facts" that you hear in presentations are actually false. Mention that Henry Ford once said that if he had asked customers what they wanted they would have said "a faster horse" and someone in the audience will point out that this story is false. Try repeating the old myth that we only use 10% of our brains and people might not point out the error but will mistrust everything else you say. (For more about these myths see The Creation of Levi's: Why Writers and Speakers Should Always Check Facts). Today everyone has a search engine in their phone so any claims like this can be checked and challenged. You can check, too, and make sure that you do.

ADD VALUE.  Simply delivering a minimum viable presentation might get you off the hook but career-wise it is much better to add value. Stick closely to the brief you were given but try also to add some new facts, data, examples or stories that you have researched. Add these in such a way that they can be dropped without redesigning the whole presentation. Adding value makes you a valued member of the team; just creating the minimal viable slide deck makes you the guy who types the slides.

Know their style, be dependable and add value. Get these three key concepts right and your boss is more likely to be happy with what you did. It's also more likely that that they ask you to do it again and this is actually a good thing because it guarantees you more time with the boss and gives you a window into their thoughts, ideas and plans. You're also more likely to get invited to meetings if you explain that you'd like to see how they present so that you can do it better next time. You will also know about stuff before anyone else and get a chance to show that you are dependable and can add value -- two things that bosses especially like.

In addition to these three basic concepts make sure you know enough about presentation skills to do the job well. If you get chosen to make a presentation for the boss you can use this opportunity to get some advanced training or coaching so that you can do it even better -- a plus value for both of you.

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For lectures, workshops, one-to-one coaching and writing on this and other communication topics visit http://andrewhennigan.com, email conseil@andrewhennigan.com or call 0033 6 79 61 42 81 (France) or 0046 730 894 475 (Sweden).

Engineer Culture and the Transition to Management

When people talk about culture they usually mean national or regional cultures, but there are also important cultural differences between professional groups -- doctors, lawyers, pilots, managers and engineers -- and these cultures have an impact that is often underestimated.

Most people from a certain region will have similar values, beliefs and practices as the others from the same region, but within each professional subculture there are additional shared values and practices that are perhaps not shared by people in other professions from the same region.

One of the practical impacts of this difference in professional culture is the difficult transition from engineering to management.  In technology companies this is a problem familiar to managers and human resources professionals, and is also the subject of some training programs.  There are many factors involved but central to the engineering value system is the shared understanding that their world is strictly Cartesian, following logical laws and where everything has an objectively right answer.  Engineers are trained with the mindset that everything can and should be calculated or judged objectively, and this is essential to their work.  But moving to management means dealing with people issues, and this requires a completely new approach where there is rarely a single right answer and where the world is not black and white but many shades of gray.

One way to grasp this concept is to look at dilemmas like the credit for the discovery of the cure for Tuberculosis.  Streptomycin, the antibiotic that effectively eliminated tuberculosis in the 1950s, was discovered by a young scientist called Albert Schatz but initially the credit -- including a Nobel prize and a TIME magazine cover -- went to his professor, the microbiologist Selman Waksman.  Ask any group of people who should have been credited and at first most say Schatz, but if you dig deeper then you begin to have doubts.  It was an insight of Waksman that a suitable antibiotic could be found by testing thousands of cultures found in soil samples, he built the laboratory to do this and hired Schatz to do the practical work.  So it was Schatz who was actually doing the work when Streptomycin was discovered but intellectually it was the fruit of work by Waksman, even if he never visited the lab.  Perhaps the best solution would have been to share the credit, but fifty years ago when universities were more hierarchical this was unthinkable.  Today, though, the story helps people to see that answers are not always so black and white. 

You see the difference between engineer and non-engineer culture manifested in many other ways.  One is in the management of people – a difficult but learnable skill – and also in the way people present their ideas, something I have seen many times while I have been giving advanced speaking coaching to managers.  To anyone from an engineering background it is logical that you present the facts and the technically best solution will be chosen.  In reality it is rarely that simple because there are also human issues involved and some influencing skills will be needed.  Some look down on this as “politics” or worse, but it is in fact an essential core skill for managers, though also useful for engineers who wish to influence management.

Fortunately there are solutions to this problem and you will usually find them in management training programs, but the best starting point is recognition that there are different professional cultures.  They are there for a good reason and they are important for the success of the professionals in that field.  An engineer with no feel for engineering culture will find the work much harder, and a manager without the human skills will find their task very difficult, but someone who has both can move easily from one to the other, outperforming the less culturally literate.

Lectures, Workshops, Coaching and Writing

For lectures, workshops, one-to-one coaching and writing on this and other communication topics visit http://andrewhennigan.com, email conseil@andrewhennigan.com or call 0033 6 79 61 42 81 in France or 0046 730 894 475 in Sweden.

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