For Your Approval

It's not the meat, it's the publicity

Sheesh. I was so good about posting at least a couple times a week for the first few months of this blog, and now I've gone nearly a month without writing.

It's the middle of barbecue season and with a new barbecue cookbook out, I'm caught in the whirlwind of a big publicity tour. Since the second week of May it's been incredibly busy, with media interviews, book launch events, cooking classes and workshops and on top of everything I'm gearing up for my big pre-conference session at the IABC international conference here in Vancouver next week. And, of course, I have lots of work to do on the communciations side with my consulting clients. It's all really fun, but I'm feeling a little worn out.

Did you know that the weeks leading up to Father's Day are second only to Christmas for the book industry in terms of sales volume? That's why I'm doing all the book publicity right now -- trying to get some momentum as we move toward June 18. My publisher's got me doing media and public appearances in the biggest market, Toronto, in the week before Father's Day. Excellent strategy...if it doesn't kill me.

There's a profound lesson for employee communicators to be learned from the world of publicity. A rule of thumb in advertising says that it takes at least seven exposures to any new idea or product before the public even starts to pay attention. I talked to one record company publicist who said in this digital age it's more like 20 to 40 exposures to make any kind of an impact in an overcrowded, cluttered information marketplace.

Last week I scored a bit of a coup by appearing on a Vancouver morning TV show five days in a row leading up to the big May long weekend here in Canada. The repeated exposure quadrupled the visits to my Web site and in the days that followed it seemed as if every person I knew had seen at least one segment of the TV appearances. Not surprisingly, the books are moving off the shelves.

How many times do we, as employee communicators, figure our job is done if we get one story out, just one time? Yes, we might publish it in several different vehicles -- a longer version in the print newsletter, a short blurb in the daily e-letter, a story and a few links on the Intranet site. But I think most of us don't think enough like publicists. If we really want to get an idea across to our audience, we should be thinking in terms of how many dozens of times we can get the information out there over a period of time. But for so many of us, myself included, it's on to the next story, the next program, the next deadline, without stopping to think about whether any of what we're doing is sinking in.

What do you do to repeat messages and sustain momentum in your communications? And, if you don't, why not?

Holy Grail, Inc.

We struggle. We try this strategy, and that tactic. And we flounder.

The challenge of engaging employees -- of truly making a difference by communicating effectively with people -- seems too much. True fulfilment hovers beyond our reach.

So we turn to a fishmonger. Or a pollster. Or a management guru. Someone who has figured it out. Someone we would follow into a fire. Someone to whom we can pay big bucks to help us make a better company, with happier people, who care about their customers, and their employer, and each other.

Why do we need gurus, and copyrighted slogans, and patented systems to help us solve our internal issues? It's as if we all crave some kind of a corporate Doctor Phil to tell us how to be happy -- someone who can reduce everything down to a few phrases we can all understand, and provide us with a Master Plan to hang our hopes on.

A long time ago a colleague asked me, "Do you know what a consultant is?"

"No," I said, playing along.

"A consultant is someone who charges you for the time of day...and asks to use your watch."

As a consultant, I now resemble that remark. My own clients turn to me because they crave an outside perspective to help them decide how to address internal issues. They get trapped in the day-to-day grind and they crave someone who they can trust who will help them see things in a new light. They also want someone who has the time and engery to focus on the longer term stuff because it seems all they do all day is deal with the latest crisis and put out the most recent fire.

How do you use consultants, and do they make your life easier? Are there some things they're better at solving than others? Are they a real help, or a threat to your position'?