Know F all about Gen Y? Get the IQ PDQ

#downwiththekids

PWC estimate that the millennial generation, or Gen Y ( born roughly between 1980 and 2000) will make up half of the global workforce by 2020. They are a generation like none other, with expectations and demands of their own that will reshape the world of work.

I’ve been in a couple of meetings recently with clients of a certain seniority and of a certain age whose lack of knowledge about them was startlingly evident. OK so they knew they had some 25 year olds milling about their office, but they didn’t know just how different they are from generations gone before them or how to even begin to engage them in the workplace.

Tech firms and TV, music and media bods and the like have it sussed, as it’s Gen Y central there; all hipster beards, BYOD, dogs in the office, gin flavoured popcorn and knowing whose Spotify playlists to follow. It’s the more established traditional, dare I say it old school employers, who make up the majority of global businesses in terms of number of employees who need to play serious catch up.

Woodreed’s been thinking about the Millennial generation at work and have written a report which helps senior leaders and internal communicators gain insight into this unique generation. We think it’s an essential read. If you’d like a look, grab yourself an organic fair trade soy latte with a shot of caramel and click here to read the report in full.

The battle for talent is well and truly on. Reputation and recommendation’s not enough

As the economic recovery continues, organisations are competing for talent on an unprecedented scale. KPMG’s recent survey of HR professionals revealed that more than 80% of respondents say that addressing skills shortages is a higher priority now than it was two years ago – and will become critical in the next two years.

Personnel Today, July 2014

So how are you approaching your talent attraction right now? Are you limbering up in the red corner preparing to knock out the competition or twiddling your thumbs in the blue corner wondering what to do next?

How can you package up your offer in the most compelling way? How do you make sure you and your recruitment partners are telling the same story? How do you make sure the experience promised in the ads and on your website matches that within the walls of your organisation?

This is how

Treat your potential employees like you’d treat your customers with engaging, relevant communication based on insight.

Use your brand values to make sure the promise in your recruitment comms is aligned with your culture. Get it right first time by employing people who demonstrate they’ll fit with your culture; recruit for attitude as much as skills.

You don’t need to be Mars, Unilever or Coca Cola to get this right. We’ve recently done just this for two clients in professional services. A strategic planning led research programme, including key messaging workshops defined a compelling and competitive value proposition for our clients as the potential employer of choice. From this we developed distinctive visual identities to act as blueprints for all talent attraction communications, whatever the channel, and striking creative campaigns to put them both firmly on the talent map.

It's worth adding a postscript that you don't need a mega media budget to raise the recruitment bar. The key is in uncovering your value proposition then developing a platform of consistent content to use wherever, whenever and however you want to get your message out there.   

Release your inner voice

I ran a little workshop at Woodreed recently where we were having a bit of think about the importance of tone of voice by playing around with the copy of some ads.

We looked at the original copy and identified the tone of voice. We then debated the ‘anti-voice’ and rewrote the ads in the new voice.

We looked at a whole bunch, but I’ll share just the one for hair care brand Aussie. Here’s the original copy for its ‘Miracle Recharge Frizz Remedy’ where the tone of voice, so we thought, was ‘quirky, witty, exciting and optimistic…’

"Car parks locker rooms rooftops the moon.  Now there is nowhere you can't give your hair a quickie between-wash boost (Okay maybe not the moon).

Behold Aussie’s new miracle recharge collection

A gaggle of eight lightweight leave in conditioning sprays packed with luscious extracts of Aussie exotica.

Need a fix of defrizz? A spritz of shine dashing straight out from work?

A dash of miracle recharge on wet or dry hair and suddenly you're re-jzhoojzhed (technical term)

It's just the thing for girls who are always on the move even if the cupboard is stationary"

Here’s how it might sound in its anti-voice (Lacklustre, vanilla, dull, pessimistic).

"Like all the other shampoo companies, our staff in Sheerness have mixed a bunch of chemicals together to produce a spray shampoo to get rid of smelly grease and grime.

It’s like all other hair care products and comes off a production line in a bottle, which you can carry anywhere in your bag – if it’s big enough and you want the extra hassle of having to rummage through the phone, keys, tissues and lipsticks. 

We have eight different coloured bottles, which do the same thing and smell a bit like flowers.

Of course it will cost you more and probably take up more of your time as you’ll still have to wash your hair properly.

But if you are too lazy to wash your hair in the morning, you could give it a quick spray before you get to the office to fool people for a couple of hours"

Ok so it was just a bit of fun, but it really helped remind us that it’s not just what you say, it’s the way that you say it that makes all the difference to how you want your audience to feel.

After years of devoting my life’s work to putting the brand at the heart of internal as well as external comms, it still makes me raise at least one eyebrow, perhaps sometimes two (and that takes some doing I can tell you) at how many organisations are still forgetting the importance of using the right tone of voice inside to their people as well as to customers.  It’s well documented that emotional engagement is four times more powerful than rational in rallying the troops, but people still insist on dishing out the same old cold rational communication to their own people saving their deliciously on brand engaging voice as the exclusive preserve of their customers.

Keeping your corporate voice on track doesn’t have to leave you hoarse, but it does take a bit of effort up front. Woodreed often work with clients to help put their corporate voices through their paces, especially those who have multiple departments creating comms inside as well as outside their organisations.  The emphasis is on the practical application of tone of voice and sessions are run with copywriters on hand providing clients with a set of tools to enable them to deliver tone of voice inside and out with ease.

If you would like to know more or just generally shoot the breeze on all things tone of voice, please do get in touch cdahl@woodreed.com  

Internal marketing - make your brand work for you

Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2, has been saying some things* about brand lately. What's a CEO doing talking about brand? Isn't that the role of a marketing agency or team?

Source - Marketing Magazine

No, of course not and with increasing debate about how to get marketing taken seriously at the top table this is valuable endorsement of just how important brand is to an organisation's success.

Dunne's mantra, "Your brand should lead your company, rather than your company leading the brand" is music to the ears of those of us who believe that brands are as important inside a company as outside, that brands are a powerful catalyst for driving employee engagement.

Coming up with strong and effective internal communication ideas

Maybe it's no surprise that Dunne's 02 is a sponsor of Engage for Success, the national movement of leading plcs, public sector, government and trade bodies committed to overturning the UK's £26bn GDP deficit caused, they claim, by poor levels of employee engagement.

Successful organisations need strong and authentic values to engage their people and what better tool for this than brand? When brand values and employee behaviours are aligned, creating what we at Woodreed call a 'cultural framework', then the brand's power is unleashed to create engaged employees - who in turn deliver improved bottom line profit, or, in the case of not-for-profits, an increased surplus.

Employee engagement and brand

Dunne goes on to say, "Failure to invest in your brand values is a false economy" and cites O2's investment in 30,000 work-skills opportunities for young people. A clear example of HR and marketing working together, breaking down the silos that exist in so many companies where brand is the prerequisite of marketing and people are HR's responsibility.

The result of this is that often whilst external communications are carefully crafted with rigour and expertise and grounded in the brand values, internal communication ideas are often cold, process-driven, tick-box exercises devoid of the emotional values and capacity for audience engagement which the brand can deliver.

Putting the power of brand at the heart of all external and internal communication ideas is the answer.

* Marketing Magazine
This blog first appeared at FindGood's marketing blog

Whose responsibility is it anyway?

A particular topic which has really galvanised readers of our Brand Inside Report was the question of who has responsibility for employee engagement inside an organisation.  One reader observed that the answer lies with the CMO in that if we can "unleash the power of the brand inside then mountains can be moved."


Another agreed that best practice must be led by the Board with "HR and Marketing working much more collegiately, dispensing with the conflicting agendas and silo approach to ensure employee engagement is a shared responsibility."



So a challenge to all brand marketers out there - are you prepared to make the necessary changes in skills, priorities and budgets to unlock the immense power your brand has to engage not only with your external audience but your internal one too?


If you're not - why not? The topic is increasingly coming to the top of the CEO/boardroom agenda and they will be looking to you as the guardian of their brand to answer for your stewardship.  With rising demands for better value returns all the time, diverting just a small part of your brand investment this way makes good, good sense. 


Let us know what you think and if you're an HRD or marketeer tell us what help you need to drive this change in your business and really create a brand-hearted culture inside. 


Of course if what's holding you back is knowing how to go about it, then the team at Woodreed would be delighted to lend you a helping hand.