It’s generally recognised that great quality corporate videos can do more to enhance a brand than most other media put together. The mix of moving picture, fat beats, smart dialogue and the inevitable voice over by Alexander Armstrong can move the most stubbornly cynical colleague to positive action.

But it’s a wee bit expensive. I first commissioned a 30 minute training video when I worked as an Environmental Manager in a large engineering company back in the 1990’s, I was told the rule of thumb was a grand a minute. Extensive research today (okay so I rang a few pals still doing that kind of work) suggests that’s not far off true today.

But in that time two fundamental things have changed: smartphones popped up and bandwidth increased. So most of us now carry in our pockets a device with a many mega pixel movie camera and a connection that means video can be popped online in a matter of seconds.

That doesn’t of course mean we’ve all just become Martin Scorsese, if your lighting is poor, your hands as wobbly as a 1970’s TV celebrity when there’s a knock at the door and your thumbs over the mic – you will not be winning any awards any time soon.

However with the right kit and a tiny bit of training the costs for corporates to get video in and out of their teams is incredibly cheap. So it was with great pleasure that we’re launching a new way of collecting and distributing UGV content at the IoIC Bristol Conference – where, on the opening evening, I get to share with a willing audience (I will be providing the most free drinks by the way!) our experiences as official suppliers at the London2012 Games where we supplied 50 athletes with apps that allowed them to record little video vignettes of their ‘behind the scenes’ experiences at the greatest show on earth. 700 videos and 500,000 views later we reckoned we’d cracked it!

What’s special about the IoIC event is that we will be launching our new IOS apps specifically tailored to Internal Communicators – which allows you to collect audio, phone casts, video, photos and even submit articles on pads, pods, phablets, tablets, phones and pretty much anything with a keyboard.

I’m also bringing a full on studio with lights and backdrop to capture those precious behind the scenes conference moments.

I will of course be doing that whilst dressed as a genie

Mark
Dr Mark K. Smith, CEO ipadio.com
Founder, owner and free drink provider from ipadio.com – who help people reach their hard to reach.

More details of the programme are here but a bulleted overview is also below – anything take your fancy?!

Wednesday 22 May (evening)

• Masterclasses: three ‘speed’ sessions to bring you up to date with the future outlook
• Panel debate: how do we futureproof IC? Hear from Directors for Change and Transformation, and HR directors and colleagues from Marketing and Brand about the skills they expect from their IC partners in the future and how they see our, and their, roles being mutually beneficial.

Thursday 23 May

• Brooke Kinsella, MBE, talking about engaging an audience in the dangers of knife crime. How she targeted this audience on a subject that is both personal and on the agenda of the Government
• How the FT is adapting internal communications for a digital age. I cannot wait to hear about this as I have already some information about what they did and I already want to do it in my organisation
• Engaging the London 2012 Games makers with Linda Moir. Hear about engaging a volunteer workforce with probably more messages than we could dream of!
• Digital a la carte. Hear from three people who implemented different digital solutions into their organisations; Jive in Deutsche Bank, Yammer for UK Trade and Invesment, Sharepoint at Coca-Cola
• Framing the future with Deborah Hume who will be exploring the strategic role internal communications needs to play in business
• The psychology of gamification. As a key trend for 2013 we all need to find out a bit more about this ‘buzz word’ and what it can really mean for our businesses
• Cisco engaging with Gen Y – as a millenial I am always fascinated by what we are ‘branded’ and how we will lead our organisations in the future
• A bit of learning: how to use the voice to influence. We are all very good at commenting on other people’s communication style so any opportunity to learn and develop ourselves is something I will be grabbing with both hands

Friday 24 May

• Ethics and Severn Trent Water. Andrew Gardner, Head of Employee Engagement, will be joined by Isabel Collins from Radley
  Yeldar to talk about how Severn Trent faced up to the contravention and the steps they took to make things better
• How AstraZeneca developed and empowered its people managers to thrive in a world of unprecedented change
• Engaging through low-cost digital solutions. With budgets always being squeezed and costs of digital solutions sounding high facing the challenge of new tools with no money is always tough
• Leading a disparate workforce – NHS Employers. As an internal communicator with an audience of offline teams this is an area of industry we always seem to forget at conferences
• Information sharing in a connected world with Euan Semple – having heard him speak a #thefuturestory yesterday I am already looking forward to hearing from him again

The conference closes at 1330 on the Friday and is being held in Bristol. If this is enough to make you sign up, find out more here

• Personalisation and customisation

Hyper personalisation is not only applicable to the digital space. More and more companies are looking at ways to personalise your experience and your product. Examples from Heinz about creating your own soup label and fashion label Trikoton making clothing linked to voice patterns. The one thing to make sure is that the personalisation is not creepy and doesn’t go too far.

• Transparency

Companies should have nothing to find. With the increasing desire to bring CSR to the table we need to make sure that our house is in order before we talk about it publicly. CSR allows you to align purpose and profit and be honest about what you’re fixing and managing. Some great examples about how brands engage in the online space being honest and transparent (O2 and Patagonia were some examples)

• Privacy

Surveillance and privacy go hand in hand. Some interesting insight into some of those big games companies and how they wanted to use their tech that allows you to be in the game, for bringing you into the adverts. Creepy.

• Automation

Talk of bots, software that can take data heavy information and turn it into copy, and how we can no longer tell the difference between reality and automation. Make sure you’re adding value beyond what a computer can do but also take note of how some of this stuff can really help our jobs.

There were three sessions in the afternoon and I went along to Euan Semple’s session on relationships in a connected world. Euan chose to run his whole 90 minute session through each person introducing themselves and talking about how they use social tools in business and in their personal lives. What we were part of, was an organic discussion about social that was aided by a facilitator who could add more insight than anyone I know….

• We are in danger of turning social media into an initiative – we are professionalising it which we shouldn’t be doing
• There were a lot of people in the room who ‘lurk’ on Twitter – Lurking is a long and honorable tradition!
• Organisations are lunging at social media. It is like watching your dad dancing; you’re proud of him for trying but wish he would stop
• Social media is one person at a time and it is for their reasons, not yours
• As comms professionals we are still very focused on our leaders blogging – does it really matter? Why are we clinging onto the guy at the top that knows everything. He doesn’t exist and hasn’t for a long time
• We lack patience for these tools to deliver
• Transparency of the organisation has to link to transparency of the individual
• BYOD: If your organisation wants to get on my phone as an internal comms tool it needs to behave itself
• Measuring social media? How do you measure good conversations with interesting people?
• The internet is like talking to yourself but better. It is like walking side by side with someone rather than across a boardroom table
• Be visible, accountable and trustworthy
• We have stopped being curious. The web is about learning and we need to remember that there is so much out there for us to find out
• Social media works through a basic desire to be part of something. Through the need to be liked
• Adoption is not about age or gender. It is about outlook.
• The internet is just a thing. If you don’t like what you do with it that is more of a reflection on you as a person than the internet

While I didn’t take away any practical stuff for the day job, the event gave me time to think and reflect on some of those challenges we face every day. It gave me the chance to meet some people I have only ever met on Twitter and for once, I feel like I attended an event that really looked into the future!

#thefuturestory

We were joined by Juliet Earp who talked us through her case study with HSBC and Tom Crawford from The Brain Miner who discussed engaging with brands and also the importance of our own personal brands in business.

I have really struggled to keep up with the reading this time. I think as work gets busier you use any downtime you get to just relax and and get some head space, using that time to read and learn just hasn’t been feasible. Still, this is why I chose the face to face course. After 4 hours in class the bug is back and I’m really starting to get excited about my paper now.

Planning

We started the day looking at planning and discussed the CIPR Inside Measurement Matrix and the RADAR model designed by Kevin Ruck: Research, Assess, Decide, Act, Review. A simple but effective model that demonstrates what we should be doing as we work through our comms challenges. Measurement is high on my agenda for next year so this is really relevant for me at the moment. As I start to explore what to measure and how to map this to stakeholders the tools we are talking about throughout the diploma are really helping.

Employee Voice

Employee Voice is a real buzzword at the moment. For me, it should be part of the conversation and dialogue that internal comms facilitates so it was great to hear how HSBC are integrating it into the business.  Once a quarter they have asked managers to swap a normal team meeting for an ‘exchange’. This is where the manager or team leader says nothing, there is no agenda and the people are allowed to talk about issues, challenges or give feedback on everything. I love this idea and will be looking at how we can use a similar method in our business.

Branding

From channel champs to brand builders was the topic before and after lunch. Tom used to work at EON so he took us through his challenge and how he overcame it. It was great to hear from someone talking about communicating with people who are are offline and hard to reach – there were some great ideas:

• Using audio and video for team briefs and senior leader profiling
• Sending magic tree car air fresheners to the guys in the vans with the phone number to listen to the audio cascades
• Using a more intelligent conference call system where everyone can dial in and ask the CEO or the board a question. Managed through a moderator and with people being able to speak managed throughout the call this seemed so simple yet so effective
• Use of storytelling to engage people with the strategy
• A strong team of one internal comms person per thousand employees – something I think every department struggles with
• Changing meeting rooms to be customer spaces. For EON this was different rooms in a house, with products in use throughout the room

As the role of the internal communicator changes our personal brand in the business needs to be considered. I’m often guilty of letting frustrations air in public and being impatient with the speed at which we can affect change.

“A brand is what people say about you after you’ve left the room” – Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon

So it is time to think about my own brand and what I stand for. Not just what my career says about me but what is important in my life – something we probably don’t share enough. Tom also gave an example of where the internal comms team should have their own ambition/mission to give them a sense of branding:

“Through sustaining pride and belief in this organisation we will ensure colleagues feel inspired to do their best work and advocate for our brand, right when we need it most.”

As we start to look at what our personal brand says, and the brand of the department we also need to consider the roles that we play in our businesses:

• The court jester – telling the truth and being a bit different to the norm
• The Gok Wan – offering advice on what clothes, appearance etc. are appropriate and when a suit just isn’t ok
• The Mystic Meg – looking outside the business and determining the effect that will have on our business and our people
• The spin doctor – the role that will never go away but is not our main focus
• The psychologist – understanding people

Internal social media and persuasion

We ended the day with a quick look at internal social media, persuasion and ethics. We looked at the four types of digital culture: Closet communicators, co-creators, controlled communicators and constrained communicators. Great to start looking at some theory around such a hot topic.

So as persuasion and ethics ended the day it became clear that being a credible communicator is the way forward. Showing expertise, trustworthiness and goodwill are all traits we should be demonstrating, everyday.

So as day three closed, the plans for the project start to take shape even more and it’s time to seriously hit the books and write this literature review!

1. Perception is reality

Every time he addresses the people, his team or any stakeholder in his business he makes sure he has the right face on. He makes sure that the team are inspired to do their jobs and he does this by putting a brave face on it, or by sticking to the party line. This doesn’t mean that I think our leaders should lie their way through communications but it does mean that I think people look to leaders for guidance and stability – they need to demonstrate a sense of control and reassurance. There is a consistency to his approach that is comforting.

2. Everything that needs to be said can be done in 15 minutes

In the episode where Mr Selfridge was out of action his team couldn’t understand how he had so many meetings in a day. His view? You can say everything that needs to be said in 15 minutes and everything else is just hot air. I love this statement as we spend more and more time in meetings (91% of people admit to day dreaming in meetings and 39% admit to falling asleep) and can often achieve very little. Quick, to the point huddles or briefings can deliver much more in terms of engagement.

3. We decide on the what and the why and you decide on the how

This is the key to engagement, and actually links to some work by John Smythe that we covered on day two of my CIPR Diploma. Mr Selfridge demonstrates just how this theory can work. They decide to do a sale to compete with a new store and encourage everyone to come in and shop – what is included in the sale is down to the heads of department – the how is up to them. This is real employee engagement and empowerment and demonstrates what can be achieved if you use the power of the teams and the experts to deliver results.

4. Get to know your people

There are several examples throughout some of the earlier episodes where he goes out on a limb for people. People he thinks have credibility and are the right cultural fit for his business. Culture if the most important thing if you want to compete in today’s market and knowing your team is the key to achieving this. It’s also a lesson for IC Pros to make sure that we are credible in our roles – if we are, our leaders will go out on a limb for us and support what we are trying to achieve.

5. Network and use external events to your advantage

Mr Selfridge is all about his network. He is meeting people all the time and using external events that interest the press to his advantage. I was surprised, upon visiting the store at the weekend, that they aren’t replicating windows from the show in real time – I thought this would be a great idea to capitalise on the programme. Use external events to hook your internal audience and always make time for networking inside and outside the organisation – you never know when you need to make a deal!

I am sure there are many more things to take from the show, and there are probably many of you that haven’t even seen it, but for me it has shown the importance of inspirational leadership and how you can create a culture of engagement through short, sharp communications and real empowerment.

For those who have missed it and now want to check it out, visit ITV player.

I’m really enjoying the reading as I’m starting to plan my strategy for 2014 and some of the themes we are reading about are very relevant to my organisation.

On day two, 23 February, we moved on to explore change communication, problem solving and our projects. We were joined by management consultant and author John Smythe, who took time out of his Saturday to talk to us about his theories and ideas on the role of communications and how things are changing.

One of the great things about the course is the face-to-face element. We are all in different places in our careers and all from different industries so it is great to spend time working things through together. We discuss, in depth, some of the models used for internal communication and on Saturday this was no exception. We spent time looking at Kotter’s model for change and explored how this differs to Wheatley’s and Herrero’s views, all underpinned by the fact that how we communicate is changing and the top-down model is no longer valid.

There were some great stats and thought provoking statements made during the day that really provided some food for thought:

• 60% of management problems are due to faulty comms and 75% of change projects fail
• Communication and engagement can be different roles in organisations. Engagement is not a role, it is a way of leading and managing
• When looking at change we need to consider how we communicate it – not just the models that explore the steps to manage it but let’s explore the channels and message management
• Authoritarian regimes, whether in countries or in organisations, are coming to an end
• God Vs Guide. Our leaders should be on the dance floor with everyone else
• Our communications strategy should support the what and the why coming from the top, but the how coming from the bottom

An afternoon of creative problem identification and problem solving was amazing. I have never done anything like this and it was a great technique I’ll be taking back to the office. In small groups we each stated our problem. One was chosen to explore. Through exploring the problem the group ask the problem owner a serious of questions about it and the responses can only be factual. After 5-10 minutes the group then re-write the problem based on their findings – it makes you understand what the problem really is before you start looking at solutions. I will definitely be using this when people come to me and ask for a poster or a leaflet to understand more about what they are looking for.

The day flew by and I now have about four ideas for my project! As this is the first time I have done anything like this I genuinely think I have caught the bug as I’m already thinking about what is next for my own development. Before I started this I would have budgeted to attend various conferences throughout the year and some of them are over £1,000 to attend for just two days. Next year I think I’ll spend this money on my own development. I am learning more from doing this over six months than attending any conference – something to think about when you come to setting your budgets next year?

Getting the books for the course was a real bonus for me as these have been on my list to buy for some time. I have already started reading one of them as I have to read about 10 chapters before our next lesson on 23 February.

Our first session was looking at the evolution of internal communication. This was a great discussion and took themes from the CIPR Inside video issued earlier this year. One of the main things that came up was whether we had really moved on since the 1980s – any thoughts? We were joined by Paul Roberts from Ibis Communication who talked about measurement. It was great to see some insights into how measurement should be undertaken and has made me realise that this needs to be a focus in 2013/14.

There were 5 rules Paul shared with us:

1. Only measure what you can influence
2. Build quantitative and qualitative research into your measurement programme
3. Measure at intervals that allow you enough time to change course
4. With quantitative data, focus on top and bottom box scores when analysing results
5. Approach your programme from the perspective of your audience

I don’t plan to share too much from the course as that wouldn’t be fair, but as the day went on and we each reviewed our own internal comms function measurement came out as the weakest part of our role.

We reviewed several different communications models, some I remember from my degree which was refreshing! It got my mind thinking about how we can apply some of these more traditional models to the role social media now plays on how we communicate.

Organisational behaviours and leadership also came into focus as we reviewed the role leaders play in culture and engagement. Kevin shared a great video that asked the question, who needs leaders?

Leaders have a huge role to play to make communication successful and we reviewed how informed employees felt much more engaged in the business. I did challenge some of the research as being informed doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Are you informed about news that is relevant to you? And how do you know how much has been shared to warrant feeling informed?

The reading has already got my brain buzzing and it was great to take some time to sit back and think theoretically about the work we do and how it is so intrinsically linked to culture and the organisation. Although it has only been one day it has given me a fresh perspective on my work and provided some great ideas to shape my strategy for the next year – roll on 23 February!

As the rise of social continues (you can see my thoughts that the future is not social here) we are constantly looking at ways to engage people with shiny new tools.

We can invest all the money in the budget on the tool but if you don’t invest in the launch it will never really work. I have this conversation about every initiative the business does, please put budget aside to tell people why you’re doing what you’re doing!

But back to social and a key trend of 2013 which is gamification. In a world of budget cuts and organisational change adding a bit of gaming to a tool should be great right? Almost. Whilst most people play games and with the rise of the smart phone more people are playing games than ever before it doesn’t necessarily mean the principles can be applied across social tools:

Badges for activity

But what activity? You can get a badge for your first comment online, but what if that comment is offensive? Or you get one for adding a profile picture and that too is something inappropriate. Basic gamification like this does not necessarily engage the right behaviours so whilst it is a key trend I do think we need to consider how it is applied.

It’s fun, but will people use it?

As the Olympics came to town we explored an online game to track sales throughout the period. It was a great concept of an avatar athlete that got stronger the more sales he/she made. We could have spent a fair amount on the project but I pulled it before we got it off the ground. Why? Because the business couldn’t forecast the impact of the Olympics and with such an unknown I couldn’t justify the spend nor the time when I had teams that didn’t even know if they would be open!

I’d still like to do something one day but  it needs to be right for the business, support the strategy and enhance the culture. Would love to hear examples where this has landed well that we could all learn from to embrace the trend for 2013.

Our objectives were to:

• Stimulate professionalism amongst practitioners
• Help internal communications practitioners plot a career path to their ultimate career goal
• Closer alignment to other professions – such as law, engineering, HR, marketing
• Link to a CIPR-wide professional development project to create an online career planning model.

This set the scene for some conversations around competencies and skills, exploring what we do and how we do it. We explored how qualifications fit into the industry and had some debate around whether you can map the career model for internal comms in isolation.

What is interesting is that many people came into the profession through various roles. Some worked in journalism, others in the industry or the business and ‘fell’ into internal comms and some of us have been in comms since leaving university/college. But where does a qualification come into the career? And where is our industry? Is it even a profession yet?

I noted some key points made during the 90 minute conversation:

There are different levels of IC everywhere

Every company and industry is different. I heard once that for every 1,000 people in the organisation there should be 1 person in the internal comms team; by that logic I should have a team of 10! My biggest challenge in the industry is that it seems anyone can be given the task of internal comms. It can be someone who is experienced, with qualifications and internal comms knowledge or it can be an add-on role for a PA or HR professional. How can you map a career pathway when there is no fixed understanding of where and what internal comms really is. There are so many varying degrees of what the function does; some produce magazines or company wide emails and others are strategic partners to the business – the scales is huge.

We did agree that the business needs to take ownership of internal comms and at the same time we need to do what is expected, but also surprise our CEOs and stakeholders. We shouldn’t be asking what do you need, we should be finding out what their challenges are and then we can find the solution. I have said this before and will continue to say it; we need to be the experts in our field and own the communications.

Being the glue

We need to understand the business and how people are connected across it. We need to be able to speak in the language of our business, knowing what is important to different people and different departments. I was told just last week; “I need you to be the glue” and this is something we also discussed. It is our role to bring people together and make connections across the business. This became quite a passionate debate and something some felt should be a key focus for the career model of internal comms.

GP Vs Consultant

We referenced the T model during the presentation and had a great medical analogy from one of the delegates. He described the internal communicator as a GP and that sometimes the problem needs to be referred to a consultant or an expert. I loved this. The GP role seemed very close to reality and certainly in my role there is always a need to bring in the experts for projects that involve video or design work. So what would make up the skills of the consultants? And should every ‘GP’ have some understanding of these?

What we do and how we do it

We showed the chart below to the delegates and after some debate around what those skills and competencies are we also agreed that this list explains quite nicely what internal comms is all about:

As always, a few statement takeaways

• You cannot take IC expertise and apply it across all industries and business – it is not text book
• Hybrid roles are needed more in current climate
• Specialist roles are needed to manage change and transformation programmes at the moment
• Leaders are not always where they are because they are good communicators
• Balance between learning and application – you don’t always get the chance to manage a crisis even though you learn the text book approach

The debate and discussion continues so please take part!

I have a degree in Marketing so I have been keen to learn a bit more about the theory behind internal communications for a while. It’s a hard thing to choose as there is a lot on offer from various bodies covering so many topics.

I wanted something that wasn’t going to go on for months, that was recognised and that allowed me the freedom to manage my time with some classroom learning as well. I was also keen to make sure that I was mentally prepared for the time needed to do the course – it’s a big commitment after all!

When I joined the CIPR Inside committee I was torn between their course and another one – why did I choose this one? Honestly it was down to timing – a 6 months course that wasn’t going to break the bank. The other factor was the tutor. I have been working with Kevin Ruck for the past 8 months and his theoretical knowledge of the internal comms world has impressed me during that time. It was probably the deciding factor for me to do the course as I was totally out of my depth in a conversation where models and theorists were mentioned – I needed to get my head around all this!

I’m expecting to learn about models and theories that I can apply to my work. Theories that allow me to think more strategically and look at things away from the tunnel vision working inside an organisation can do. It’s been a long time since I was at uni so I’m quite looking forward to hitting the books again!

So I start on 2 February with the first lesson in London all day – I’m excited and almost itching to get started – I just need to make sure I keep myself disciplined and do the 8 hours a week I need to do!

I am studying the CIPR Internal Communications Diploma which is taught at PR Academy.