Once upon a session at IABC World

Put 1,000 business communicators in a room and what do you get? No, not one hell of a press release—the outcome is a highly successful IABC World Conference. Between the interesting conference sessions and keynotes, the Gold Quill Awards and various social events, the conference proved to be educational, engaging and unique.

From among the sessions I attended, the keynotes that were presented and the intense intellectual debates I indulged in with colleagues after hours at the hotel pub, I was able to make three observations about the conference and the general state of business communications.

Engaging Employees
Now, what came as somewhat of a shock was to hear someone like Brad Whitworth speak to me of internal communications at Cisco Systems with employees in the tens of thousands. Coming from a company like zu with a staff of just under 60, be it large for a web agency, I realized I had to widen my scope of communication in order to realize the vastness of issues, policies and communication channels that multinational corporations must manage on a daily basis.

I took this into consideration and thought, “How do they do it? Better yet, how do they do it well?” Then I walked into a session called “Inside GM: Communicating Through the Crises” by Katie McBride, Executive Director for GM Global Product Operations/Environment and Energy Communications. I was blown away with how GM and Katie’s team of high-level communicators orchestrated their plan for communicating through their bankruptcy in 2009.

What struck me was the fact that she spent almost the entire presentation speaking about the importance of engaging GM employees to ensure their confidence in GM decision-making and its effect on the future. They developed Q&A forums, webcasts, podcasts, and eventually a program to have employees attend GM events and write press releases and blog articles for their peers to view. They gave the company back to the people who would now lead its recovery. They realized the power in having employees love the company and brand they worked to ensure.

Building Culture
One thing we preach here at zu is the quality of great company culture. It became apparent to me that in large corporations, a strong company culture is a huge undertaking that comes with a huge price tag. But there are many cost-effective ways to allow your employees to enjoy coming to work every day. Many sessions at this conference were on intranets and their utility.

Now, think of your company’s intranet as the easiest way to engage employees. How about putting the time and effort into making it an enjoyable user experience so that every morning when employees sign in they don’t feel like they’re plugging into the Matrix. Allow for status updates and a news feed, and work to create a social aspect to the intranet so that employees can see what their CEO or executives are up to as well as network internally with colleagues.

Remembering the Role of Social Media
So much was said about the power of social media. Social media is a great marketing and communication tool—in a supplementary role. You can have the coolest Facebook and Twitter pages, but without a usable interactive website, what’s the point? Before you dive into the social media world it’s important to have a strong foundation in a well built interactive website. You want to make the website a great personification of your brand and company outlook so that when people are pulled to it through your social media accounts it can educate, stimulate and ‘wow’. If there was one thing that I feel the conference lacked, besides Wi-Fi, it was emphasizing the importance of a good website to engage stakeholders. All too often, zu has clients wanting the bells and whistles when in fact we need to convince them of the utility in a well-designed, interactive website.

Overall the conference was great. I met an awesome group of people from all over Canada and the United States. I even met a group from Slovenia, but it shows that the issues we discussed at the conference are global communications issues. I am looking forward to IABC 2011 in San Diego, and with that I put an end to my experience at IABC 2010.

Good night Toronto!