Vodafone : Disconnecting contacts

The devil is in a lack of cues for detail

The Site

Vodafone, the UK-based mobile communications company, has an extensive directory of local contacts but gives the opposite impression.

Vodafone lists Media Contacts in the core navigation of the Media Relations section of it corporate website. The Contacts page lists only two telephone numbers (for general and media enquiries respectively), a link to a ready-addressed e-mail form and a third telephone number, for UK media relations.

News, within the same section, has a Local Releases archive with a choice of 17 countries from a dropdown menu and the left-hand navigation. Clicking through opens the first page of a date-ordered list of releases; in the page’s right-hand column is a set of named media contacts with job title/area of responsibility, mobile phone number and personalised ready-addressed e-mail.

The Takeaway

Vodafone’s country media contact details are everything a journalist could want: names, an indication of the areas in which they specialise and personalised e-mail and telephone details. But how many coming to the corporate site – which as the .com URL is what many will try first in their search engine – will ever find them?

Many corporate media sections have no local content or contacts – so journalists may simply assume Vodafone is no different. The fact that it has gone to the trouble of putting country content as well as contacts on the group site suggests it realises the potential value of such a service to its worldwide media audience. A simple pointer or link on the Contacts page to the resource is all that’s needed to release that potential.

First published on 21 May, 2009