Corporate communications teams this week face a thorny issue: do they commit their corporation to continued membership of the EU or not? Should they try to stand above the debate? Or should they, like the Ford Motor Company, commit early? A corporation faces the accusation that, if it delays its announcement of its views until Read More
Category: Business
Don’t change your name, Thomson holidays: TUI has no pull in the market
What’s in a corporate name? Nothing but reputation and a connection to customers. Rumour has it that Thomson, the holiday company, is about to change its name to TUI. That’s the name of the holding company. A mistake to change What a mistake it if does. It will lose the goodwill of all the millions Read More
Mercedes second-hand car salesman shows great corporate communications
Who do you trust least for truthful corporate communications: estate agents or used-car salesmen? Used-car salesmen have just dropped out of my list as a result of a great job of sales and corporate communications by Jason Leporte at the Mercedes dealership in New Maldon, London, just off the A3. There are lessons for all Read More
Top Tip: get the bad news out soonest and make it personal
Tesco CEO Dave Lewis made the right choice today: admit publically bad things have gone on and talk about them. The lesson is: do not hide from the bad news in corporate communications and respond quickly and personally from the top. That’s your pension going down The profits may have been overstated by £250 million. Read More
3 for and 3 against centralised content generation
Centralised content generation – or creating a hub for many publications to generate content – is on top of the agenda for many content generators. It’s been in operation for many years in some publishers for other functions and it’s time to take hard look at why it works and does not work. Functional or Read More
RBS: poor policy poorly communicated to axe bank managers
Royal Bank of Scotland has decided to axe its bank managers in its branches. A poor decision when more people want to see the person in charge and not be told “the computer says no”. Poor communications And to compound the error it communicates it badly: or not at all directly. The Times carries the Read More
Majestic customer communications from Majestic Wines
Majestic Wines has launched a marketing offensive with a majestic piece of corporate communications to its customers. Capture customer adresses and use them Majestic captures the addresses of its customers at the point of sale. It has used this information to mail them a 12-page brochure on its “Easter Pick ‘N’ Mix” offer with 33% Read More
King at Sainsbury’s: communications is the king
Justin King leaves Sainsbury’s in a hail of praise: but probably for the wrong things. His real strength was corporate communications: a simple message clearly delivered from the top. He has been praised for reinvigorating Sainsbury’s after 10 years of transformation. Sainsbury’s is now challenging Tesco for the top slot in retailing. Five reasons for Read More
Good news for shareholders is bad news for the business at Reed Elsevier
Good and bad news from Reed Elsevier. The good news is that it intends to buy back from shareholders £50 million worth of shares in the next 3 months. This will take its 12-month buy back of shares to £600 million. Stock markets happy The stock markets and analysts are, therefore, happy, generally. Many analysts Read More
So, how many hours in your working day?
Every day, in business, someone will say to me “I just don’t/didn’t have the time”. Of course, what I actually hear is “It just wasn’t important enough for me to complete”. We all have to work with the same amount of time. Our heroes in business, whoever they may be, have the same 24 hours Read More