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.

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?

How important is an internal brand in supporting your business objectives? What does a strong internal brand really add to the everyday working life of your employees? And what are dangers /pitfalls that you need to avoid?

These questions and more have been buzzing around the minds of Loopers these last few months, as we have been supporting the development of a suitably robust internal brand strategy for the power sector of a global engineering company, which has recently gone through a restructure.

We have been helping to map out a process for developing the internal brand, including developing brand models to fit the needs of the organisation, conducting desk research to understand the key brand aspirations and developing materials to engage not only other communications professionals in the articulation of the brand, but also senior leaders.

IC professionals from Alstom Power met us for ‘aperos’ at the Paparazzi bar in Baden, Switzerland this month. The event attracted around 30 people and gave some of us more office bound Loopers a chance to meet a selection of our ‘star’ clients in person over a drink and quality snacks. We even got them to compete against each other in a modified version of a flash game we’d recently made for them – modified to star our very own MD Kami Lamakan. It is always good to put a face to a voice and everyone enjoyed themselves, chatting until late evening!