CRA Inc

Beyond Bullets

Don’t know how we’ve managed to miss this site: Beyond Bullets, a weblog devoted entirely to the effective use of PowerPoint (with a good dose of new media theory tossed in as well).

Companies That Cry For Blogs

MarketingProfs writes about Ten Companies That Missed Great Blog Opportunities. On the list: Newman’s Own, Teva, and DaimlerChrysler, which gets this critique from the profs:

Dan Barry reports in the New York Times that DaimlerChrysler has created what it called the “first ever” living window display when it challenged a family of three to live for five days in a 2004 Dodge Durango SUV parked in Times Square.

Just a silly PR stunt? Maybe. But it got a full column in About New York on the cover of the New York Times Metro section.

That’s no small feat, certainly. But they’ve missed a great opportunity for multimedia promotion. A blog of the family’s experience would have been interesting. Although streaming media from the site (or even a Web cam) would have been perfect for this stunt, there was not a word about it on the Dodge Durango site or the Chrysler site.

Service with a Smile

Scottish Gas is trying to improve the service provided to their customers by sending call center employees jokes throughout the day.

Even on the other end of a phone, the effect of a smile is contagious. There is no doubt that it assists with sales and resolving customers’ inquiries.

The Saturn screens in the office mean that we can turn on hi-tech ‘laughing gas’ in the form of jokes and light-hearted messages for employees – as well as the daily business information – which help to create a positive atmosphere.

Read the entire article here from The Herald…

‘No, communication is terrible!’

Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos shares one of his more iconoclastic moments:

If Bezos’s personality is decidedly noncorporate, so are some of his ideas about how to run a large organization. One of Bezos’s more memorable behind-the-scenes moments came during an off-site retreat, says Risher. “People were saying that groups needed to communicate more. Jeff got up and said, ‘No, communication is terrible!’” The pronouncement shocked his managers. But Bezos pursued his idea of a decentralized, disentangled company where small groups can innovate and test their visions independently of everyone else. He came up with the notion of the ‘two-pizza team’: If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large. That limits a task force to five to seven people, depending on their appetites.

Of course, this “communication is terrible” message was coming from the head of a company with a very strong culture and a clear mission, trying to innovate at all costs.

The Power of Color

MarketingProfs has posted an interesting article on the use of color in branding. While the article is primarily focused on external communications, we believe internal communication professionals can learn much from branding experts about effectively creating internal symbols and internal branding, and the piece is worth the read.

From the article: “To make the most of your color, ensure that it…

# Supports your brand attributes
# Is relevant to your target audience
# Is always the same shade and hue
# Is visible to all members of your brand community, inside and outside the company
# Is understood and appropriately used by all employees
# Is featured on all your communications materials and sales tools
# Is different from your competitors’ colors
# Works in all parts of the world where you plan to do business
# Is applied to more than just your logo
# Comes with guidelines on its use for partners and affiliates”