Brick by Brick - Nice!

On route to a meeting with our new sports apparel client last week i decided to take a look through the on board magazine and came across an article about a forthcoming Manchester exhibition involving an amazing artist who's main medium is Lego.

A man who quit his job as corporate lawyer to produce artwork with Lego has become a success, with some of his pieces valued at over £10,000. Nathan Sawaya, 35, has spent the last 10 years creating his Lego art which includes stunning life-size sculptures, models and 'flat' portraits.His works have been shown in a number of prestigious galleries and can use up to 150,000 tiny bricks in each one - he recently toured an exhibition 'The Art of the Brick' around the world.

Nathan says he has over 1.5 million spare Lego bricks in his New York studio and he spends around ten hours each day building with the toy.You can bet that after hearing how much the Lego are can be worth, parents around the world will suddenly have more interest in what their children are doing next time they get the Lego out.

See his amazing works at the Brick Artist site.

Heineken Italy - Random acts of Kindness.

I love this recent campaign by Heineken Italy, I'm not a huge fan of football and have often wondered why people become so obsessed with the game to the point that they fit their lives around their football teams.

This campaign is aimed at such football crazed individuals and puts them in the position of choosing the game or their partner, job or friends... with a surprising outcome.

Nice campaign.

Heineken İtaly Activation from Kreatif360 on Vimeo.

RPM Corporate launch Advisory Council to offer a fully integrated employee engagement solutio

RPM is very pleased to announce the launch of its Advisory Council – a team of experts in the fields of internal communication, employee engagement, digital communication, research and measurement & evaluation. The team has been built to offer companies a fully integrated and coherent employee engagement solution that starts with analysis and solution planning, develops engagement strategies, deploys communication activity and evaluates effectiveness.

“The Advisory Council is an intelligence network that brings together experts in each of the fields needed by a company to fully engage its employees. This initiative will ensure that RPM Corporate is involved from development through to evaluation to help companies turn employees into fans - what we term “the road to fandom”. We will be at the heart of the communications strategy and ensure that clients are using the right tools to engage their audiences and are getting longevity and ROI from their internal communications".

“We will be advocating how the plethora of communication channels and social media can be pulled together into a powerful and continually evolving organism that can engage, inspire and empower people and their organisations to be the best they can be.”

The specialists have worked at the top end of the business world for many of the country’s leading brands and organisations. They are recognised as leaders in strategic thinking and best practise in corporate communications.

The Advisory Council team consists of:
· Peter Agertoft – thought leader in employee engagement
· Stewart Atkins - communications technology and change process management expert
· Maurice Flynn - social media and digital communications innovator
· Ian Irving – live and digital communication and employee engagement specialist
· Richard Tolley – branding and marketing expert
· Ellie Wallace MSc MA Hons Dip M - internal comms strategy and implementation specialist
· Max Willey – research and evaluation specialist (Continental Research)

Full information on each of the specialists is available upon request:

Digital and experiential

There are many advocates of the use of digital to enhance and amplify a consumer focused experiential campaign. We recently carried out a very successful Christmas campaign for a well known drinks brand which was supported by a digital campaign. The campaign used Augmented reality and ChannelFlip and created a huge amount of online buzz with a genuine call to action and point of discussion. The campaign created real seasonal standout over the Christmas period and recorded some incredible results in terms of web site traffic and content passed on from consumer to consumer. In fact our research showed that approximately 44 percent of all visits to the drink’s online presence (dotcom and Facebook) throughout 2009 occurred during the 7 weeks of our Christmas campaign and 660,000 E-cards were sent.

But just as experiential techniques can be used in a corporate environment to engage internal audiences, social media platforms should also be used to enhance internal events by engaging delegates pre and post event and on-site.

The use of social media can be used to create exposure and increase attendance pre event, engender engagement whilst on-site and then gather feedback and reinforce the event’s impact long after delegates return to the workplace.

Twitter is a good place to start – it is a very powerful tool in terms of pre event promotion and, as my team has proven in past experience with projects for clients such as Carphone Warehouse, Twitter is an incredible tool for engaging with audiences during an event. It appears that using channels such as Twitter in the corporate event environment actually liberates people to speak out when they would normally shy away from asking questions or offering commentary. After all – it is an effective communication tool - it enhances word of mouth and offers the opportunity to capture truthful commentary. In addition, it’s an easy way to share and gather information before the event, during the event and between attendees.

Social media has now become an accepted mechanic in the corporate communications arsenal. Portals such as Linkedin have opened up a whole new world of shared information and networking in the business world. Its influence has now led to some incredible new forms of networking technology that allow corporate event organisers to engage their audiences like never before. I am very proud to say that my division, RPM Corporate, is about to sign a deal with a technology supplier that has built one of the most interesting and technically advanced registration and networking tools to hit our sector for some time.

‘RPM Connect’ will allow an incredible range of audience interaction and networking as well as profiling, feedback, delegate management, content sharing and microblogging. This is just another step in our division recognising the value of social and digital media to content share and network.

I have used social media on many occasions and to great effect with past clients such as innocent (around its village fete), but the use of social media to support consumer experiences is nothing new and all good agencies utilise the various platforms at every opportunity. However in the corporate space its use is a little less common and this offers up a debate in terms of how can you, and how should you, use social media in the corporate environment?

I spoke at a conference last year and an audience member challenged my suggestion that social media opens a new opportunity in internal communications and employee engagement. She even suggested that it was dangerous to allow freedom of speech and it could open up a can of worms, and heaven forbid - what if the commentary was negative?

Well, in my opinion you cannot make change and improve if you do not know all of the facts and you do not know how your staff feel. But if you have the negatives you can turn them into positives. A client of RPM Corporate has embraced a proposition we made recently to resolve an internal communications issue. We opened a Twitter channel for internal communication, posed the question and thus opened the debate. Answers can only be a maximum of 140 characters so this ensured that employees think about what they say and how they say it. This mechanic also allows Direct Messaging for an immediate response and commentary is archived. The business has a massive network of out of office staff but they are all on blackberry so access to twitter is an easy communication and content sharing option.

Avoid the use of social media and the online community at your peril!

It is also clear from our experience that increasingly more and more brands are bringing digital techniques into the physical retail environment to add value to the shopping experience. I read recently about RFID Radio Frequency Identity being used on shopping trolleys so that location based advertising can be streamed to the screen on a trolley. This opens up a whole new world of marketing opportunity and it won’t be long before the event and exhibition industry will harness this technology.

Augmented reality in the corporate environment is also giving the challenge of engaging staff an interesting twist. I am currently proposing the use of augmented reality hotspots around the office of a major client, these unobtrusive hotspots will offer the opportunity for staff to engage with corporate message in dwell areas by simply pointing supplied interactive tablets or indeed their own mobile phones.

So all of the above proves that you cannot and should not ignore the opportunity to support live experiences with digital and interactive media.

Start at the very beginning…

All corporate companies need to harness and focus the full potential of employees as individuals and as groups, towards the objectives of the company or organisation they work for. I know I have said this before, but a company should be focused on turning its employees into fans. Most organisations are not set up to create or maintain fandom among employees. HR is focused on managing employee satisfaction and dealing with pay and rations, the marketing department is trying to build the brand and drive sales, the finance department is measuring and monitoring the money and the CEO is often trying to define the vision for the future in terms that many people find difficult to relate to. But fandom in the world of sport is an old concept. In the corporate arena there is an increasing awareness and understanding among modern leaders that the traits of a fan – employee fandom - can be a phenomenal driver of employee and customer behaviour and ultimately financial performance.

We have seen many of today’s innovations being put to great effect when engaging consumers and I have been saying for a long time that these types of engagement methods are not just for consumers. It is high time that corporate clients started treating their internal and business audiences as consumers and building more immersive and engaging experiences. In these recessionary times of staff disillusionment and uncertainty a company has to engage and motivate its staff. To do this you have to understand your audience, how they communicate, what makes them tick and how they would like to be engaged.

If you have something to communicate, do not start with a pre-diagnosed solution. Do not hold an event simply because you have always held one at this time of year, or in a particular situation. Take a step back and take a long hard look at exactly what you are trying to achieve.

Start by working out what fandom means in your organisation, why it is important and what financial improvement you expect as a result of increasing levels of employee fandom. Look at working with a partner, or indeed partners that can help you get to grips and define exactly what you are trying to achieve. This process should start with analysis and solution planning.

With that step done look for real life examples from within your organisation that can be used to demonstrate what you mean by fandom, what the traits and behaviours you will reward and the financial benefits derived from behaving as a fan. Develop an engagement strategy - there is a plethora of communication channels that should be pulled together into a powerful and continually evolving organism that can engage, inspire and empower people and organisations to be the best they can be.

Establish a baseline measure of fandom in your organisation that will measure both the outcomes and the drivers of fandom. Consider working with a research specialist - initially to ensure that you identify exactly what you are trying to achieve and then to define exactly how you are going to measure and evaluate it.

Live events are an extremely powerful communication tool - especially when used in unison with other communication channels. Today’s conference and B2B meeting organisers are utilising the latest wireless and HD technology. When audience interaction, education and content sharing is required, we are seeing an increase in the use of interactive and touch screen technology as well as brands embracing the use of social media and digital platforms to share, measure, and amplify their events. There are so many new and innovative ways to inspire and engage the corporate audience and developments in areas such as digital theatre and content sharing are creating a revolution in the corporate communications and event arena. In this day and age there is no excuse for “death by PowerPoint” and I am certainly not referring to virtual events.

The recessionary budgets coupled with the challenging business environment of 2009 forced many internal events to shed their frills and focus on getting the message right. This confirmed to many, including organisers and clients alike that the most important part of any event is just how powerful face-to-face communication is, and how it is still the best method for delivering business content - not the 'whizz bangs' that can surround it. This education over the past 12 months will have a positive impact on conferences and exhibitions in 2010.

Experiential techniques, once the exclusive property of the marketing department are now transcending into the corporate world and being used to engage their staff. Never before have we seen so much distrust in big companies, but business leaders across the world agree that an engaged and motivated work force is the first step for corporates to take to reconnect with their customers and claw back this trust. We are all consumers, so treating staff as such and ensuring that all methods of internal communication are as engaging and relevant as the external marketing messages is key.

RPM TAKE TO THE MOUNTAINS

This is it ladies and gentlemen this is what we have set ourselves up for!!

I will soon be blogging updates through one of the UK's leading event publications.