The EuroComm Blog 2008

by Carlos Ramil

Corporate Training is a department of the University La Salle focused to sell courses to professionals, organize events, and train the employees of many corporations into different subjects.

Any event celebrated in La Salle is managed by Corporate Training, organizes and takes care of any detail and tries to get our customer’s satisfaction.

When an event/conference is being prepared, La Salle always develops an informative website, promotional brochures and accreditations for all assistants. All these design projects are developed in the Corporate Training IT Support’s Area formed by Adrià López and myself. We have taken part in some important national conferences supporting all digital implementation requirements.

We also manage Corporate Training’s website www.salle.url.edu/ctraining (where the in-companies, professional development programs and events are presented) helping with the high-quality services this department offers and increasing its sales year by year too.

The success of web design starts with the usability of its pages and the “visualization process” where as the design-webmasters, we try to give users fresh visual effects and provide a good innovation design in order to provide users’ pleasure. All the websites include an internal security data protection for the users and its data contact.

For EuroComm, the design was a very important part in the website and blog development. The design was focused on Gaudi’s architecture , the modernism and the main monuments in Barcelona, where the conference will be takingplace. We hope to inspire visitors to the website and blog with a sense of the city of Barcelona even before they come to the conference itself.

If you would like to contact the webmasters with any question, suggestion or requirement you can do it writing an email to cramil@salle.url.edu or adrial@salle.url.edu

Photo: La Salle School of Engineering - thanks to salle.url.edu

Following on from Martin Crocker’s post last week announcing the Excel Award winners, one of the Excel team involved in considering the nominations and giving the award is Rauf Hameed and he adds his comment here on why he became involved with the Award scheme.

Rauf Hameed has been the Communication and Environment Manager at Tetra Pak Arabia since January 2007. His last appointment was with Tetra Pak Pakistan since August 2002 as Communication and Environment Manager. Having waded through the communication waters for the last 15 years, sometimes as a journalist and sometimes as a public relations practitioner, Rauf feels the passion to communicate hasn’t shrunk with the passage of time. He is an accomplished corporate communicator and has a passion to share the information with colleagues round the clock. Pakistani expatriate Rauf Hameed is a green dreamer and a passionate poet. Last year, he relocated over 3,500 kilometres from his hometown of Lahore, Pakistan to exotic Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to become the Communication and Environment Manager of the new Tetra Pak Arabia team.

“I consider the EXCEL awards remarkably useful as they acknowledge non-communicators for their communications excellence and for their overwhelming desire to connect and get themselves across. I think it is very important that we continue to do it as by doing so we will be contributing to the profession of communications by offering best practices.”

by Silvia Cambie

I wrote a while ago in my blog about my attempts to explain the virtues of communication to a US immigration officer. Our profession tends to be misunderstood.

But it’s not always that bad.

Actually, to quote Austin Powers (I know it’s childish, but I love him…), these are very groovy times to be in communications.

Top management is finally waking up to the idea that corporate communication is important. They know that what they need from us is strategic advice, not colourful brochures… And the reasons why they are waking up are

* Intangible assets (customer loyalty, brand equity, reputation, etc.) are becoming more and more important. They are difficult to imitate by competitors and investors look at them before deciding whether or not to put money into a company. Communicators are the masterminds behind reputation and brand recognition.

* Publics are becoming increasingly difficult to convince. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer , 44% of the people interviewed in nine EU countries trust conversations with friends and peers while only 33% (!) trust articles in newspapers.

* Gen Y. Seventy-five million young people born between 1977 and 1998 are slowly appearing on the corporate radar screen. They might be working as interns at the moment, but they are definitely the board faces of 2020. They have grown up on participatory sites like YouTube and MySpace. They are not as loyal to a company as their parents used to be. They will not accept sanitized corporate speak. In order to recruit and retain them, corporations will need top-notch internal communications

* New channels of global communications are being opened up by social media tools, bringing different cultures across the world together instantaneously. Culture is no longer about the culture of nations, it is created by networks of people coming together in new groupings and tribes. In this new environment, it is essential to pay attention to communication.

At EuroComm 2008 we will be discussing these topics and more.

I look forward to seeing you in Barcelona!

Silvia Cambié is the Chair of EuroComm 2008 and the director of Chanda Communications, a London-based consultancy specialised in reputation management and social media. She also serves as director on IABC’s International Executive Board.

Photo: thanks to Silvia Cambie

Ridley Scott is just about to turn 70, yet he’s got 3 movies on the go in Hollywood. In a recent interview for the Guardian newspaper he said:

“People have no idea how physically tough making a film is. I do pretty big movies and you have to drive the bus - that’s the job. A lot of people cannot deal with all the personnel. My crews average anywhere between 400 and 500 people, but I never even think about it. It’s like walking into an army camp every morning. You have to go right [he claps his hands] and everybody moves. You have got to embrace the manpower and embrace your Department Heads.”

“If I’m excited it tends to leak out. I think that’s what I’m good at - I’m good at pushing the pace.”

Leadership - the hardest part of business.

by Martin Crocker

This week, we announced the winners of the 2008 IABC Europe/Middle East Excel Award for Communication Leadership.

As a reminder, the Excel awards recognize senior people (for example CEOs, Managing Directors and Presidents) who are not communications professionals but who actively exhibit outstanding commitment to and skills in communication for the benefit of their organizations.

Applications were assessed against four criteria:

o Communication Leadership: the extent to which they support innovative and dynamic strategies which contribute to the success of their organization

o Commitment to communication: the extent to which they actively participate in his/her organization’s communication programmes – internal and external at local, national, and international levels.

o Personal communication skills: the extent to which they are skilful and effective communicators with diverse audiences

o Ethics and professionalism: the extent to which they show commitment to the highest ethical and professional standards

This year we received 6 nominations – twice as many as last year – of which five were of a very high standard. The committee comprised IABC members from five different countries throughout the Europe/ME region, so we had a good spread of opinions and perceptions.

The assessment process – going through two rounds of detailed analysis, and basing ourselves as far as possible an objective criteria – provides a fascinating insight into the work of some of our region’s outstanding business leaders.

Although the competition was close, there was finally one clear winner: he is John Mullen, CEO and Board Member, DHL Express.

John has clearly made a remarkable impact on the success of his organization through his commitment to communication; has shown examples of communication at its best both internally and externally, speaking honestly in the face of problems and using the personal touch with colleagues; and has clearly put communication at the heart of his leadership style, devoting time, energy and enthusiasm to dealing openly, directly and credibly and with his many different stakeholders.

John Mullen will be presented with his award at the IABC’s Eurocomm conference in Barcelona on 4th-5th February 2008, where he will present the keynote address.

Four other nominees receive Excel Merit awards:

Franjo Bobinac, President of the Management Board and CEO Gorenje, Slovenia; who is noteworthy for his personal communication skills, and the value this has brought to his company.

Ditlev Engel, CEO Vestas, Denmark, who impressed with his commitment to communication both internal and external, leading his company through a cultural change towards greater visibility and success.

Mr. Monther Al Harthi, General Manager, AlRabie Saudi Foods Company, Saudi Arabia, who is impressive for his personal communications skills and communication leadership, especially in a sensitive cultural environment.

Jean Stéphenne, President GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Belgium, for whom communication is central to realizing his vision for his company. This particularly shows itself in his commitment to a wide-ranging external communications program not just in the media, but also with NGOs and other communities, and includes active listening as well as presenting.

Previous Excel Award winners have been: David Radcliffe, CEO of Hogg Robinson (2004); John O’Neill, CEO of AXA Ireland (2005); and John Leggate, CIO of BP (2006).

Martin Crocker is Chairman of the IABC Europe/Middle East Excel Awards 2008 and Marketing Communications Managare at Gemalto in France.

Photo: thanks to Martin Crocker

by Velin Velkov

Lately I have been thinking about how our profession will look like 5 to 10 years from now. If we look back within the same time horizon we will see how many things have changed. We now have so many new communications channels – wikis, blogs, podcasts and so on. They have profoundly influenced the way we communicate. Who can predict how communicators will work in 10 years? Your guess is as good as mine. One thing, however, will remain the same – communication is all about human beings.

From my experience working in the software business, I can testify to the power of the innovative technology to revolutionalize the way companies operate and communicate. This is important to us, because we professional communicators have to innovate too. The reason is that should we not do it, we will be hardly pressed to get our message across. Take employee communication for example. Unlike in the past, our employees have the opportunity to plug in to alternative communication channels, which may or may not support the official company line. For this reason we start blogs, wikis and all those social-media platforms. Again, the key word is social, meaning being interactive with other humans.

In my practice I often see communication for communication’s sake. Well, the results are far from sterling. If you get your strategic basics wrong, the coolest technology will not help your professional reputation. The challenge, therefore, is not to get carried away by the possibilities offered by innovation, but to harness this innovation in the achievement of your communication goals.

The role of professional bodies like the IABC is to drive forward innovative thinking in our profession. I see the upcoming EuroComm conference as one of the venues for this. One of the good things at these conferences is the possibility of getting together with like-minded professionals from throughout the region and even from other continents. As a volunteer leader of IABC this lets me stay in touch to the association’s members and reminds me of the importance of the human element in communication.

I hope to see you all in Barcelona.

Velin Velkov is the IABC Europe & Middle East Chairman and the Communications Manager in SAP Research, Heidelberg, Germany.

by Marc Wright

Preparing for Barcelona my thoughts return to the last EuroComm which was held in Dublin November 2006. I looked at my notes from that trip:

Ramon Ollé is former CEO of Epson Europe and the Executive President of the Business Engineering School at Ramon Lull University, and he addressed us on the issue of ethics. He made some key points.

“Behind every language is a culture - just because you can speak their language, it does not mean that you speak their culture……For years we have been sending Xmas Cards to our Japanese colleagues without realising that for them 25th December is just a normal working day.”

Ramon had just a couple of slides - and this was the main one. It’s the Chinese ideogram for ‘Ethics’. The image 2nd down on the right a a human eye and the cross above denotes the number 10. The curvy image bottom left denotes ‘heart’ while the No 1 on the left means ‘work’.

As with all ideograms the meaning is multi-layered. On the surface it means ‘communicate as though 10 eyes are observing you.’ It’s the equivalent of the old PR advice “never say anything you would not be happy reading on the front page of The Times. But then Ramon peeled away another layer. It can mean ‘look with 10 eyes before you communicate’, i.e. truly understand all your audiences before you open your mouth. I prefer this advice particularly when you include that heart, which adds the instruction to communicate with and from your emotions.

Not bad - it would make a good logo for any communication agency.

John Simmons of The Writer and author of Dark Angels told the Guinness Story – appropriate as the brewery is round the corner and most of the delegates had visited the splendid Guinness Storehouse – all of them had tasted some of the black stuff on the pub crawl up and down the Liffey the night before.
One of the great ideas he described was the propagation of the 1759 emails. That’s the date the Guinness Brewery was established by Arthur Guinness (who rather presciently signed a 9000 year lease on the premises for £45 a year). But in the 24 hour clock 17:59 is also the time on a Friday when employees prepare to head off for the weekend. Hence the 17:59 emails that are sent out with a pithy story about an event from the last week to grab the imagination.

From these simple stories whole marketing campaigns have been inspired, including this brilliant ad from Guinness South Africa. (Click on the image to read the copy).

John is currently writer-in-residence at Kings Cross Underground Station. Look out for him next time you switch trains on the Northern Line.

by Yang-May Ooi

This is a team blog by volunteer team of communicators from across Europe and the Middle East, all with different areas of expertise and interests. We hope to bring you a range of interesting and topical blog posts on the theme of Innovation through Communication over the next few months as we come up to the EuroComm Conference in February 2008.

Blogging Team

We have a core group bloggers (bios in the About this Blog page):

Yang-May Ooi, communications & social media consultant, ZenGuide (UK)
Giles Colbourne, web usability expert, cxpartners (UK)
Marc Wright, internal communications expert, simply-communicate.com (UK)
Kevin Keohane, brands expert, SAS (UK)
Angie Macdonald, web writer & blog management specialist, ZenGuide (UK)

Guest Bloggers

We’ll also be posting articles by guest bloggers, including posts by some of speakers who will be giving presentations at the EuroComm Conference. So far, our guest blogger line-up looks like this:

Ian Andersen, Head of the Communication and Information Unit, European Commission (Belgium)
Phylidda Bar, Independent Public Relations and Communications Professional (UK)
Sam Berrisford, Senior Consultant, Change and Internal Communications, Hill & Knowlton (UK)
Ulrike Bleistein, Head of Pharma Informatics Communications, Hoffman La Roche (Switzerland)
Silvia Cambie, business communications expert, Chanda Communications and President, EuroComm Organising Board (UK)
Martin Crocker, Marketing Communications Manager, Gemalto (France)
Ulrich Gartner, Vice-President of Communications Europe, AB Electrolux (Sweden)
Rauf Hameed, Communication and Environment Manager, Tetra Pak Arabia (Saudi Arabia)
Hanna Kalla, Senior Consultant, Change and Internal Communications, Hill & Knowlton (UK)
Andrew Riley, assurance reporting and communications specialist, Harrison Riley and President, IABC UK (UK)
Velin Velkov, President of IABC Europe and Middle East Region (Bulgaria)

I’ll be updating this list from time to time as our guest list grows.

We’d like to hear from you if you have an issue you’d like to discuss with fellow communicators and business professionals along the theme of Innovation and Communication. To submit an article, please contact us via the Submit an Article page.

We welcome article submissions from business communicators on the theme of innovation and communication, to reflect the theme of the EuroComm Conference 2008, Innovation through Communication. You do not need to be a member of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). For more information about this blog and the conference, please go to the “About this Blog” page.

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