2 posts tagged “scott+karp”

Whatever size company you work for, it’s frustrating knowing that there's information worth sharing out there, but either you just can’t get to it or it can’t get to you.

What to do is to open up both paths so that there's nothing in the way of two-way information flow. Companies traditionally set up editorial panels to meet and discuss story ideas. An alternative now might be to turn as many employees into journalists. I like Scott Karp's swing at defining what a journalist is for Web2.0, as I think it opens opportunities within corporations:

"Being a journalist and practicing journalism is no longer strictly a function of where you work - it’s a function of what you do — and how well you do it. Not everyone who publishes on the web is acting journalistically - VERY far from it. But we need to embrace the reality that not all the people practicing journalism, for better or worse, are working for traditional news organizations."

Businesses should equip as many of their employees as possible with the right tools - a mobile phone with a camera would be a minimum - and let them send the information to you. Then, the editorial panel can act in a more value-adding role. Scott summarises discussions on the role of the trusted human editor by, among other things, leveraging a "fabric of trusted individuals / people who are trusted and credible."

This might be slightly counter to Rob Paterson's take on why organisations can't collaborate - insofar as I do not believe that they break "up work and people naturally into separate and competing parts." 

Can Web2.0 help ensure corporate communications is relevant and real, and not off the radar for employees? Well, if the evidence presented by Scott Karp on Publicis and Digitas' move into all-digital advertising is a leading indicator of the degree of personalisation to come (think hyper-personal ads in Philip Dick's The Minority Report), then communicators rejoice!

Communicators frequently try to work out how to make a single publication relevant to different parts of the same business. I'm hearing increasing anecdotal eviodenc of businesses again questioning the point of an all-employee printed publication. Been there with Web1.0, and maybe this time there is some real momentum behind the argument.

Karp highlights that the New York Times profile of the Publicis/Digitas strategy is predicated on "greater production capacity...to make enough clips to be able to move away from mass advertising to personalized ads." Some US companies already run multiple versions of an ad for one brand.

Communicators still get one all-staff publication, a newsletter and an intranet site. As with ad agencies, maybe the number of iterations will grow as technology improves. How will depend von a similar accpetance that print is finally dead, even for those parts of the business that cannot yet access digital media. So that's no access to a kiosk, mobile phone or computer outside of work (ah the digital divide). Really?!

As in the ad world, imagine a verically integrated corporate communication function: the digital platforms are there, providing they are wrestled away from IT and the bean counters. And it's possible to get enough content to personalise even the most corporate of corporate messages, as "the personal media revolution and its inexpensive tools are enabling people to cover what's important to them for themselves," says Digital Journalist Terry Heaton (props Shel Isreal for the link and encouragement to take 15mins out to read the post).

So what would the corprate communicton future look like? Personalised digital news for each individual employee, accessible whereever, whenever, however.