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By Angela Sinickas
June 3rd, 2008
Harvesting free outcomes research
Conducting research about the impact of communication on results doesn't have to cost you anything. You can actually spend less money by communicating only with a pilot group of locations and comparing the outcomes with "control groups", where no new communication has occurred. You spend less money communicating with fewer people than with your whole audience.
Pilot groups are perfect
Pilots are the perfect model to neutralize the impact of other potential variables that could affect outcomes. If your pilot includes enough mini-groups that are a mirror image of the other mini-groups in total, all those other variables are generally assumed by science to be the same everywhere. The only real variable, then, becomes communication. Of course, you have to be sure that none of those other pesky support functions are conducting pilots at the same time!
Sometimes you don't even have to plan pilots in advance. You just look at locations where the campaign you developed was not used as intended (not all newspaper markets pick up on a news release or not all managers conduct requested meetings) and see if the outcomes were different in the bucket of places using the communications versus the bucket of places not using the communication.
Communication can save money too
A friend who worked at a bank was not allowed to engage with the media when a story broke about a scandal in their investment banking arm. Later, a similar scandal broke out and again he was told to just wait because the story would eventually go away. This time he told management his research showed the last time a similar story was in the news, new account deposits in their retail banking arm had gone down $X million dollars a day every day the story was in the paper, and then returned to normal as soon as the story left the news.
My friend’s question to his management was, "Do you want to again lose that much money for as long, or do you want to let me do my job and get this story addressed and concluded quicker so we lose less money?" That put the decision into a much clearer context!
None of this research costs anything; it's already out there just waiting to be harvested.
Finally, I'll be in London on June 26th and 27th to present at Melcrum's Intranet 2.0 Forum and to run a workshop on "How to measure your communication programs – and the role online media play in their success". So, if you're based in London, or you're visiting for the conference, I'd love to see you there.
Until next time.
Angela Sinickas
President, Sinickas Communications, Inc.
angela@sinicom.com
Why Angela Sinickas won the IABC Fellow Award 2008
Angela Sinickas, The Melcrum Podcast, 28 May, 2008
On the latest Melcrum Podcast, Angela Sinickas of Sinickas Communications talks about why she’s been honored with this year’s IABC Fellow Award and offers tips on how you can propel yourself up the communications career ladder.
Creating a winning intranet strategy at AEP
William Amurgis, Strategic Communication Management, June/July, 2008
In 2007, the intranet at American Electric Power (AEP) was recognized by the Nielsen Norman Group as being one of the top 10 in the world. William Amurgis, AEP’s manager of intranet strategy, describes the journey that led to this accolade.
Did you just say strategy is overrated?
Mandy Thatcher, The Melcrum Blog, 29 May, 2008
In an article published in the latest issue of SCM, recently retired senior VP of corporate communications for Royal Bank of Canada, David Moorcroft, says we've put too much emphasis on strategy and not enough on implementation.
The value of an employee magazine
Liz Wilson, Melcrum's Communicators' Network, May, 2008
Can you guide this fellow communicator to research findings that demonstrate the value of the trusty printed employee magazine?
Microsoft: greatest place to work in Europe
Di Smith, the Internal Comms Hub, 2 June, 2008
The Financial Times (FT) newspaper recently published its special report ranking the 50 best workplaces in Europe – where Microsoft and Google once again dominate the European league.
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