On 2 March 2010, we at The Loop, broadcast our first Webinar on “How to roll out a successful Global Campaign?”. Our presenters Kami Lamakan and Louise Parfrey talked about some of the common challenges faced by Internal Communication teams and gave some best practice tips for overcoming them.
We based our Webinar on three key issues our clients tell us they face when delivering global campaigns:

1. The variety and multiculturalism of audiences
2. Support from key stakeholders
3. The difficulty of keeping a consistent message throughout.

During the session we analysed each of these topics, looking at some common pitfalls and giving tips on how to overcome them using examples of global campaigns we’ve delivered for clients.
At the end of the session, we summarised the key elements we believe help to deliver a successful global campaign:

• Make sure that your campaign is a framework that can be adapted locally
• Involve your network throughout the development process not just at signoff
• Make sure it has the right support from both leaders and other stakeholders
• Back up communication tools with the right capabilities.

With over 30 people dialling in from different countries across Europe and even someone in America and Malaysia we were delighted at the feedback we received on this first session. Our delegates joined in by asking questions online and posting comments giving our presenters the opportunity to explore some areas in more depth.

We closed the 45 minute session by asking delegates to fill in a quick online poll to help us improve future sessions and tell us what they’d like us to cover in the next webinar. Delegate’s feedback indicated the next hot topic should be “Measurement” so we’ll be holding our next Loop Webinar in June on this very topic. To make sure you don’t miss out keep an eye on our website or sign up for our newsletter.
Until then if you’re interested in listening to our first Loop Webinar, it is available on our website.

Our client came to us wanting a simple, engaging, economical and educational, but also effective, way to raise awareness about a communication campaign across their global population– a ‘quick win’ that would offer maximum reward for relatively little effort, using the power of viral marketing.

Our response was to create three online games that were emailed as a link to three random sets of employees. The intention was that the ‘fun factor’ and the surprise of being chosen (or left out!) would get people talking -and furiously forwarding. The games were designed to be spread across the 50,000 strong population as the recipients challenged their colleagues to play.

The games had to overcome the challenge of a being accessible to people in over 70 countries world-wide, often with different systems. We ensured the games were very straightforward to play so that players could quickly ‘dip in and out’ of them whilst at work and that they consistently reinforced the messaging of the campaign they promoted.

Increasingly businesses operate from several locations spread all over the world.
This diversity of talent offers many benefits but also creates issues, not least how to communicate effectively on such a large scale.

So how do you bridge the potential barriers of language, distance and cultural differences to create a successful intercontinental communication campaign?

This is an area that the Loop has vast experience in, having done just that for renowned global companies such as BP, Rolls Royce, ABB, Orange and Alstom.

To be successful you will need to avoid common pitfalls:

• messages that feel irrelevant to the audience at ground level
• failure to get local leadership support – your messages might not get heard at all
• an inconsistent rollout where messages/your brand become diluted or unclear

Our approach will help you avoid these traps and to align your communication with your overall business strategy through:

• analysing the profile, spread and diversity of your audience in order to understand what will engage them
• coming up with simple clear effective messages
• creating dialogue and discussion
• careful planning so that your campaign has a long term impact
• ensuring your campaign is implemented in the right way through the involvement and training of leaders and critical stakeholders.

A good global campaign will be relevant to the audience wherever they are and whatever they do. It will contain consistent messages that clearly explain how they are affected by the subject you are communicating – why it is important to them as individuals and what they need to do. It will be backed up by the commitment of local leaders and it will be adaptable and flexible enough to reflect local issues and environments.

A successful campaign will reap many rewards – your messages are more likely to be acted upon quickly allowing your business to progress. A single campaign will be more powerful than several smaller communications and will help ensure employees across the world feel involved and included as part of one organisation. And ultimately it will be more cost effective, which can only be a good thing in the current economic climate.

‘The team at the Loop make our lives so much easier through their understanding
of our values and the way we work. It really helps us get clear messages out to
our world-wide audience’
Communications President, ABB

How do you retain, improve, grow and spread the knowledge kept in the minds of thousands of employees spread out across several continents?

The answer is it’s not that easy. But it’s a challenge that all global businesses have to tackle to ensure that they can survive, succeed and innovate in an unpredictable economic climate.

We all have knowledge and use it everyday, but within any large organisation it needs to be managed and nurtured carefully to make sure it is implemented to its fullest potential and not lost. It is important that employees understand the need to maintain and develop their knowledge, and how their contribution can support their business now and in the future.

We’ve been helping one of our clients, a global power company, to get to grips with the business issue of Knowledge Management. Their workforce includes many highly specialist experts who need to be able to easily pass their wisdom on to others in a way that can be accessed by colleagues anywhere in the world and kept for future employees.

We’re working with them on a strategy to engage their 50,000 employees, spread over 70 countries worldwide, in the concept of Knowledge Management through a sustained and measured communication plan. We’re also currently producing the campaign tools including a training package with a fully animated presentation to be used by key stakeholders to talk to their teams, and what we hope will be an extremely motivating awareness film.

The Knowledge Management techniques are relatively simple in themselves, but it is getting employees to understand the importance of them that is the issue. We believe that the answer lies in giving them a clear understanding of the benefits – which include fewer mistakes, less ‘reinventing the wheel’, faster processes and an obvious competitive advantage. After all when they all put their heads together who knows what they can achieve?