Shiny Green Button

In those first few days of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, many in the communications industry criticized BP for its lack of a cohesive crisis communications plan. First they said it wasn’t their fault. Then, they accepted responsibility. And how much oil is gushing out? The numbers have been fuzzy.

But lately, critics have eased up, thanks in part to what many are calling BP’s effective use of online tools and social media. The company is getting the word out about cleanup efforts via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and a dedicated website, www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com. It’s also front and center on the main BP website.

Of course, no matter how effective the company is with these venues, the pitfalls of social media still apply. Social media, by its nature, puts a brand in the people’s hands, and that includes disgruntled consumers and activists.

When I did a Google search for “BP Facebook,” the first item was a link to a “Boycott BP” Facebook page. A fake Twitter account mocking the company, @BPGlobalPR, launched May 19 and already has twice as many followers as BP’s official account. Despite some obviously snarky tweets, some readers have confused the fake account for BP’s official voice.

The actual crisis BP is communicating about is obviously much larger and graver than the recent palm-oil problem Nestle faced, or yesterday’s Intel Facebook snafu, both of which have been held up as examples of what not to do with social media. Rather than getting defensive or trying to stop the vitriol, BP seems to be moving forward with its own message while letting the critics move forward with theirs.

This seems like the right approach for now, but unfortunately, the environmental crisis and the communications crisis that goes with it are both far from over.

Photo credit: adactio on Flickr

Panera Bread Co., a franchise bakery based in my home state of Missouri, just opened a store in Clayton, Mo., that looks and feels like any other Panera restaurant, but with a twist: customers decide how much they pay.

A sign at the entrance instructs, “Take what you need, leave your fair share,” and cashiers give customers a receipt indicating normal prices, and then point them to a donation box, where the honor system takes it from there.

The store is run by the company’s nonprofit foundation and former CEO, Ron Shaich, who told reporters, “I’m trying to find out what human nature is all about.” If the pay-what-you-want model can keep the business afloat, Panera says it will open similar stores in other communities.

Clayton is a pretty well-to-do area, so the experiment isn’t quite as financially risky as it might be in a poorer community. But still, it’s an interesting business move. Even more interesting to me is that, although I’ve seen multiple stories in the press, and the company is promoting the store on its Facebook page, Panera’s own website doesn’t say a thing about it.

But with all the favorable press and positive social media mentions, does it even need to? Is this newsworthy action its own communications strategy?

Photo credit: Daniel*1977 on Flickr

Over at GreenBiz.com, Tim Mohin, director of corporate responsibility at AMD, offers insights from this month’s Ceres conference in Boston and poses an interesting question:

“If so many companies are producing data on environmental, social and governance issues, who is reading all these reports? And, what are the data being used for?”

Mohin describes a scene at the Ceres awards ceremony, when a representative of Seventh Generation accepted the award for best sustainability report in the small and medium business category and asked the audience how many people had actually read the winning report.

The response? Chirping crickets and a few hands.

But, when he asked how many people had read their own company’s report, almost all hands were in the air.

Mohin goes on to say that CSR reporting can offer more than a window into a company’s programs; it can be useful as a mirror, to engage employees and inform improvements in a company’s CSR strategy moving forward. An excellent point, but I can’t get past that first question: why should anyone read a company’s CSR report?

Mohin identifies a gap that we communicators need to fill. The data companies collect for CSR reporting is a goldmine for stories with relevance beyond employees and investors and industry analysts.

For example, we can take the data out of the report and into the real world,  putting one company’s accomplishments in the larger context of its industry and global efforts. We can connect the dots between corporate sustainability efforts and the products consumers see on the shelf. We can add texture to data about employee volunteerism by highlighting who benefits from it and how others can pitch in.

When we use corporate responsibility as a frame for a company’s larger brand story, we can encourage external audiences—consumers, suppliers, peers and even competitors— to not only read about its sustainability efforts, but support them and also consider their own.

Here’s an example from our own portfolio. We helped HP develop its comprehensive global citizenship report, but we also used the data to create a business-magazine style companion piece for a consumer audience. Would you read this?

Photo credit: Nick Hobgood on Flickr

Those three words are music to a marketer’s ears. If a client came to me with a project and said they wanted something “swift, radical and creative,” I’d clear my calendar to meet with them that day. I’d drop whatever was on my desk and turn my focus. I’d expect the assignment to be hard, meaningful, high-stakes and worth the effort.

What’s more, every person I know in my circle of creative services agency types would do the same.

Beyond that, most of the smart, creative people I know in whatever field—from engineering to law, from medicine to education—would relish that kind of assignment. It’s the stuff our work stories of triumph and celebration come from.

Well, friends, our assignment may have just been issued. Read this piece from CNN about the U.N.’s third Global Biodiversity Outlook report. Not only does it call for dramatic action, it lays out the cost in oh-so-human terms: $121 trillion of lost economic opportunity if we don’t do something now.

So, how about it? What “swift, radical and creative” idea can we come up with? I’d love nothing more than to cancel this afternoon’s dentist appointment.

Photo credit: Just chaos on Flickr

(Did you miss Part 1 of the series? Read it here.)

Apparently, it’s common with new green teams: they have so much energy and passion that they think they can save the world in a month.

We were no different at AHA!. We were given guidance to set our sights on making improvements in three areas—environment, community and employee well-being—and a list of suggested quick wins collected at an all-staff meeting. List in hand, our brand-spanking-new green team planned projects in 10 distinct areas, including commuting, office energy use, paper use, volunteering, our employee retirement plan and an in-house green speaker series.

Our first month of planning meetings were heady—and lengthy—events. We had ideas! Commitment! We sketched out a month-by-month project list that left us feeling giddy with the anticipated results. It was going to be HUGE!

And then we attended a one-day training workshop on The Natural Step framework. We heard about the importance of measuring our baseline, backcasting and setting a vision for what sustainability meant to our company. All of which sounded really hard, and none of which we had planned to do.

Then our workshop leader said something that rang around in my head all afternoon: the only thing some companies do their first year is measure their baseline.

It was at that point that our green team hit the wall. We had our original plan, which was mostly a list of tactics, and now we needed to do all this strategic Natural Step stuff too. We were overwhelmed, unsure which direction to go. Paralyzed. It took us a while to get our bearings.

Our ambitious plan challenged us on many fronts. We didn’t have the time it would require to accomplish everything; after all, our green team work was on top of our other job responsibilities. And it took time to coordinate and build consensus, even for things we initially pegged as easy. Just making a switch from bottled water and canned soda to less-packaging-intensive alternatives took time to plan, research and put into place.

Plus, we realized some things would benefit from a methodical, carefully considered approach. Starting with an estimate of our company’s current impact would help us make better decisions about how to proceed.

In the end, some of the items from our initial plan came off our list. And we didn’t get very far with some others. But it’s amazing how much we did accomplish. For the first time, AHA! knows about how much energy our office consumes a year, what the carbon footprint of our commute looks like and how many of our employees find time to volunteer.

Lesson learned? Becoming a sustainable business is a long-term process. Nothing happens fast, and that can be frustrating. But I’d encourage green teams who are struggling with this issue to look at the benefits of working slowly and carefully. Going too fast can endanger the long-term success of the mission, because change can be hard, even for those who want it. When you go too fast, you risk alienating folks who aren’t quite as pumped up as you are. And there’s a greater chance you’ll make decisions without considering all the obstacles. Taking your time gives you the opportunity to determine the best path forward for your organization.

Next up: Numbers are powerful!

This Microsoft Bing ad cracks me up every time I see it. And, it gets my attention—not the consumer in me so much, but the writer.

We’ve all had the experience of searching for one thing, one answer to a specific question. We click “Search,” and we get a deluge of information, much of it irrelevant or unreliable or even ridiculous.

The developers of Bing’s “decision engine,” Google’s search refinements and Facebook’s ever-spreading “Like” button, keep looking for better ways to index all that content so people can pinpoint what they need. But as writers, we’re in a unique position to help create better content to begin with. To understand the language of search, and use it to craft better, more relevant stories.

I have to admit, it’s hard not to deflate a little when I hear the words “search engine optimization.” Of course I understand its importance. But too often, it sounds like “lard your prose with keywords” and “write robotic headlines and subheads.” It makes Web writing sound like something precise and calculable. Like a job for a robot.

But then, when I sit back and look at the work we do here at AHA!, I feel much better. Like any good story, effective online content can and should be human and compelling.

Maybe a robot could optimize information better for an audience of other robots. But most of us are trying to reach human beings. Living, thinking people with real needs. Connecting with them requires relating to them, understanding their lives and what they might be looking for when they click “Search.”

That means using the language of search as another tool—along with cohesive narratives and relatable characters and an approachable voice—to tell stories on the Web. It doesn’t mean replacing those stories with a jumble of keywords.