Taking Communications to the Next Level

September 24, 2007

ORAprès Kate, Le Deluge

More than you ever wanted to know about a couple things from

the tool kit.

Agenda

• Research for the Rest of Us

• Communications Audits

• Brand Stewardship

Research for the Rest of Us

• Research can be expensive and complicated.

• But you shouldn’t have to have a PhD to apply some basic tactics to your communications planning.

Know What You Need

• Objectives (business and research)

• Hypotheses

• Action standards

• Predetermined feedback loop

(Source: Brand Aid, Brad VanAuken)

One-on-one Interviews

• Members and Non-members

• Ask about needs, desires, fears and concerns in running a business

• Ask about what the Chamber does well

• Ask who they think the competitive set includes

Focus Groups

• Rank information you gather in one-on-one interviews

• React to communications materials

• Rank the competitive set

• Associate with other brands

Qualitative Methods

• Word association

• Ranking

• Mapping

Statistical Surveys

• Web-based alternatives to phone surveys:

www.surveymonkey.com

www.surveygizmo.com

www.zoomerang.com

www.surveyshare.com

Your Own Website

• 24/7 opportunity for interaction

• “Real Time” feedback

• Online community:– Directories– Bulletin boards, chat, blogs– Guest books, cave drawings– RSS– CRM

The Audit

• “A brand is…the product of a thousand small gestures.”

-- Michael Eisner, Disney

Communications Audits

• “A strategic communications audit is a systematic assessment, either formal or informal, of an organization’s capacity for, or performance of, essential communications practices.”

(SOURCE: Strategic Communications Audits, Julia Coffman, 2004)

Audit Components

• Organizational Review

• Materials Review

• Audience Assessments

Organizational Review

• One-on-one interviews

• “Appreciative Inquiry” methodology

• Roles and responsibilities

• Looking for gaps

• Efficiency

Materials Review

• The brand promise as litmus test

• Key messages

• Tone and personality

• Duplication, overlap, gaps, opportunities

• Effectiveness

Audience Surveys

• Time-specific incident surveys

• Group observation

• Written surveys

• Delphi Technique

Communications Audit Matrix

• Strategy – what we set out to do and why

• Implementation – delivery mechanisms

• Integration – messaging and overall “lift”

(SOURCE: Strategic Communications Audits, Julia Coffman, 2004)

Brand Stewardship

• “Effective communication is 20 percent what you know and 80 percent how you feel about what you know.”

-- Jim Rohn, author and motivational speaker

Brand Stewardship

• Who is your brand leader?

• Do you have written standards?

• How often do you train board and staff?

• How formal is your assessment and feedback process?

• How careful/strategic are you with associations?

Final Thought

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that is has

taken place.”

-- George Bernard Shaw

Consensus, LLC is a facilitation and communications consultancy headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, contact Dale Erquiaga at (602) 705-3532 or by email at dale@getconsensus.com.