This was actually just a reflection of the course. As I might have mentioned in the beginning i really liked the course. We were like 10 students only which did not really make it feel like having class but going to some family meeting or “hobby group” meeting. i wish there were more courses like that!
Lesson 5
Today(26.11.2009) we went to Pohjoisranta, a management consultancy that specialises in reputation management. Riikka Rantakari (manager) held a lecture and it was so intertesting! At the beginning we just started talking about what we thought of reputation and which companies would have a good/bad reputation. We came up with quite a few examples of companies that have good reputation in one country but a bad one in another.(Nokia:Germany-
Finland).
But also Nokia in Finland dropped from its peak position in the reputation survey. It is not seen as that dynamic anymore. After the change of the CEO the internal culture is not perceived as that good anymore. The employees don’t feel that good about the new leadership either.
What was very new and surprising to me are the results of a research, which calculated the value of companies if they had the reputation of their competitor.
For example if Coca Cola had the reputation of Pepsi, their stock would go up by 3% and boost the market with $4 billion.How crazy is that? The value of perception is unbelievable!
Generally one can say that reputation management consists of X stages.
Stage 1:
The company knows what reputition they have and take it very serious. However, Riikka told us that most companies don’t really take their reputition serious. A lot of them don’t even know how important it is.
Stage 2:
Compared to the previous stage,this one is a lot more systematic and stakeholder driven
Stage 3:
Here the reputation is reflected in every strategy and plan. The personnell (etc.) knows what the reputation of the company is. Additionally a lot of training is done in the field of reputation management so their ability to manage it is very high.
Reputition management has 3 basic principles:
1. Reputation ALWAYS begins WITHIN the organization. The personnel should always be put first!
2.Reputation is built around contacts/encounters and its management means taking good care of those encounters with all interest groups which is a lot of effort and costs a lot of time.
3.Reputation is created with stories and its management is the management of those stories. The stories are things you’ve heard from other people about a certain company and you forward them to yor own friends/family. The stories are very powerful especially when they go to big media. These days, it is very easy to spread news and stories especially through means like Facebook and Twitter. Those means can hardly be controlled.
Another interesting aspect is the measurement of reputation.
There are reputation profile comparisons between the competitors of peers. This might look like a little radar:
It gives a good overview where the competition is and which areas you need to focs on better in your company.
Following online discussions and monitoring the reputation online like in Forums,blogs and discussion boards for example. There are really people who read all of that and do graphs so the companis can see where they stand in the market according to their stakeholders.
Actually there is a lot of work behind the campaigns and projects that are supposed to manage your reputation. The user usually only sees the product and does not know how many hours were spent on the material production and intensive planning so that the project runs well and a good reputation is built.
Finally,I think it is very crucial to add that reputation is not perceived the same in each country. It is not seen and understood as important everywhere. If you go international you should be aware of that and adapt your actions according to the “guidelines” of the target country.
Lesson 4
On Nov. 19th Prof. Elisa Juholin came gave a lecture about the assessment of corporate communication with ComBar. She explained how important it is to measure communication and that you cannot manage communication without a systematic assessment.
Of course it is important to measure and assess communicationas the operational environment, work and the employees have changed during the time and for that reasn Elisa made a research/project about Communication in Workplace Communities in the 21st Century. This project lasted 4 years and the targets were to define communication in present-day workplace communities and to develop practical tools for developing, leading and evaluation of communication on based on the new definition.
Elisa talked about the Delphi technique, which was completely new to me at that point. The Delphi technique is not as informal as a focus group but rather a qualitative and controlled feedback procedure. The idea of the process is simple though. First, insights on topics are gathered from the panellists. Then they are resent back to the same panellists for evaluation and comment.New rounds are completed until a common insight is found.
There are 6 factors that emerged with the help of the survey she developed with her research team (ComBaro):
1. Strategic communication
2. Collaboration with the immediate superior
3. Personal participation and responsibility
4. Workplace spirit and mutual cooperation
5. Importance of knowing
6. Vocational communications
These results show that most people are concerned with the strategic communication at their workplace. This mostly involves big companies.
Nowadays, employees want to be involved in decision making. They want to be taken serious and contribute and for this reason they feel it is important to get the chance to directly collaborate with their superior and be heard. They appreciate their own participation and responsibility and are very interested in what’s happening in their own organization. Based on these results organizations can do something to motivate their employees again and get the best out of their personnel because only happy employees are productive employees.
Lesson 3
Unfortunately I missed that one as i was on a study trip in Russia with my marketing course. But during the time I was there I noticed that the Russians have different way of communicating.
Much more emphasis is placed upon the spoken than the written word. People believe things when they have heard them from someone with whom they have a trusting relationship. Therefore, it is often much more efficient to hold face-to-face meetings at which issues can be fully explained, rather than sending information in a written format only.
Lesson 2
Ok today Miia Fohlin(Marketing Manager of Fonecta) who talked about planning and assessing marketing communication campaigns with us. This was so interesting. We actually had to do stuff ourselves like creating a brief. I have never done that before and therefor this was very exciting. A brief is a detailed written assignment that enables the advertising/media agencies to actually plan a marketing campaign with which the marketing objectives can be reached. It was also very interesting to hear that 70% nof the budget you spend on planning communication goes actually to media only. I always thought it would be way less. But now when I think about it, it seems very reasonable because the media is everything that is seen(by other parties) so a lot of money actually should flow on there.
Phase 2 of communication campaigns is all about the production plan(which is clear to me) and also Pre-testing. Ok, to be honest I kinda expected something like that. Of course u have to test it if you ‘re using a new concept and things like that but I did not know that it can take up to 2 weeks. This is a long time and for that reason it is not very surprising that a lot of advertising agencies don’t like the idea of pre-testing.(or actually it was surprising or I expected something like that but still very informative to find out!)
It was very intersting to listen to Miia explaining phase 2. Never thought how many details you have to keep in mind when you are actually producing the TV spot or something like that. A lot of spots are shot in South Africa for example and when you are shooting a Finnish commercial you actually have to make sure that everything…from the pavement on the streets to the clothes and hairstyles the people/models are wearing are looking Finnish enough so the viewer will believe the message of the spot.
The last thing that was intersing is phase 4…the follow up. Never even thought of the fact that you actually have to somehow measure how succesful your campaign actually was. This is actually very clever because when asking the consumers directly you will get the best feedback on how and what to improve for next time so yor campaigns are successful!
Phase 3 is all about campaigning. Here it was very intersting to hear how important internal commnication is in a company. It is very important to launch the campaign internally first before you launch it and it appears in the media so the people inside the company know what is going on. This also keeps the people very motivated!
Lesson 1
Ok after a looooong time I finally got to write down the first thoughts of the course.
I have to admit I already like it even though it has just started. During the first lesson we have actually just introduced ourselves and talked about how much experience in commnication we already have . I havent taken that many communication courses so far because my study field LiBBa (International business) does not offer that many communicaiton courses. I just took a “corporate communications” course last semester and a few branding courses which were very interesting and I hope I will get a better understanding of the entire commnication concept with that new course. Stay tuned 
Intro
Being part of the final assessment, I’m gonna write down some thoughts and impressions I gain from my communications course in the following weeks. I will try to reflect things and topics that appear interesting and new to me and try to criticize existing theory if needed 
. Maybe I’ll even come up with completely new stuff and ideas and take over world domination
