In search of ROI

Lots of interest at a recent meeting we held on measuring the return on a corporate website. Not surprising given the imminent prospect of stern-eyed finance directors demanding that you justify yourself. Here’s the piece I wrote for our newsletter.

Posted on December 01, 2008 15:21 by David Bowen | 0 comments

And here's our version

This is the Bowen Craggs version of the ‘web 2.0’ piece that appeared in the FT – see previous post. We’ve published it in our newsletter.The main difference is that the graphic is not quite as pretty but possibly more useful – we’ve also added a pdf version to download.

Posted on October 30, 2008 10:57 by David Bowen | 0 comments

Pulling Web 2.0 to bits

There’s a piece by me in Financial Times Digital Business this week, trying to deconstruct (and make more sense of) the different concepts wrapped up in ‘Web 2.0’. I’m trying to do my bit to turn it from a bundle of ever-changing ideas to something your average business manager can understand and use, especially to control risk. I’ll be posting my own version soon, but the FT people have done some groovy things with the graphic so I hope it’s worth a look. I’ve written about it before but have been refining the ideas – see what you think.

Posted on October 24, 2008 09:03 by David Bowen | 0 comments

Seven things to tell the boss

I don’t know how many people who run corporate websites have been wondering recently about the future of their budgets, but I’d guess it would run into a few dozen per cent. They probably haven’t heard anything yet – and maybe they never will – but it seems sensible to jot down a few ideas in case the boss demands to know why this immeasurable, marginal medium should keep its share of the budget. Here are some thoughts to transfer to the back of your envelope.

1) The web is the ultimate low cost communication medium. You need to keep communicating during a slowdown – with customers, shareholders, journalists, even people looking for jobs if you’re still hiring. No other medium costs as little as the web. As you… continue reading

Posted on October 17, 2008 15:50 by David Bowen | 0 comments

Now we own the banks ...

They are going to have to get used to talking to us, and the web is the obvious way to do it. At least that’s a nice theory. I’ve been looking for our newsletter at central bank sites (which in theory we’ve always owned), and have found that the Americans at least are starting to use the web to talk to the public. It takes more than a change in website, of course, it takes a change in corporate mentality – so if openness really is breaking out, maybe that’s a tiny little bit of good news.

Posted on October 01, 2008 15:41 by David Bowen | 0 comments

The real use of the Olympics

The Olympics are a very handy way of seeing how the online world is moving along – check the rerun of the same events, every four years.

I’ve been looking back at the columns I wrote for Sydney (2000) and Athens (2004), and have compared them with Beijing in our latest newsletter.

On some things I was wildly optimistic (interactive television would be all the rage), and on other pessimistic (this wi-fi thing seems to have possibilities). But I did get one thing right, in the delicate area where commerce and technology collide. What, I wondered in 2004, would happen in 2008 if high quality broadband meant Americans could watch the games on… continue reading

Posted on September 09, 2008 10:29 by David Bowen | 0 comments

Bringing everyone together

Bram Koster, responsible for rolling out a new online brand for AkzoNobel, explains that people not technology are the biggest challenge. Aligning all the stakeholders by providing communication tools is essential for success, but it’s no replacement for face-to-face meetings to gain their buy-in, Bram says.

Read a transcript of this video.

Posted on August 14, 2008 13:04 by Dan Drury | 0 comments

Fad or innovation?

I’ve been looking at Google Earth ‘mash-ups’ – maps combined with satellite images. The ultra-respectable Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the UK, and the Swissly-solid pharmaceutical group Novartis, have both launched them on their sites. The FCO to show off what it is doing round the world, Novartis to point to its offices (you can even get a lovely view of office roofs). As these just fads? Quite possibly, but that does not mean they worthless – I’ve written a column about this in our latest newsletter.

Posted on August 08, 2008 16:55 by David Bowen | 0 comments

Be nice to students…

… if you want their money or their sweat. More and more of them want to feel cool about the social responsibility of companies they buy from, identify with and – by extension – devote their careers to, according to Alloy Media+Marketing’s eighth annual College Explorer study. The survey was conducted in the US by Harris Interactive, so it’s a fair bet the results would hold equally true if not more so in Europe.

Whether it’s the best students and most promising graduates (i.e the ones you most want to woo) who feel this way, the survey cannot say. But it has to be worth taking another look at your corporate responsibility section in light of the things the students take as indicators that a company is making “a positive impact… continue reading

Posted on August 06, 2008 12:53 by Keith Craggs | 0 comments

Do you feel undervalued?

Don’t worry – I’m not becoming a therapist. But I have been wondering about something that comes up over and over again at our network group meetings. How do you get your colleagues – especially your bosses – to understand that the web is no longer a marginal medium? My idea is to deprive the web of one of its main features: that it is almost infinitely accommodating of new content. Make your website a set size, and suddenly its space gets a value – it becomes, in the jargon, a rare resource. I can think of one or two problems (maybe three or four) but if you’d like to read more, see my column in our… continue reading

Posted on July 17, 2008 11:41 by David Bowen | 0 comments

Coke sees if it can make a corporate blog fizz

Outside the IT sector, corporate blogs are thin on the ground. So it’s intriguing to see that The Coca-Cola Company has started a blog by its company archivist, Phil Mooney. Mr Mooney is a godlike being for the serious Coca-Cola ephemera collectors of the world, and is also a thoroughly interesting person.

When we were in Atlanta recently we pointed a video camera at him and recorded his thoughts – which are very enlightening indeed. The most important point is that Coke regards this as a toe in the blogging water – if it works, it will see what else it can do to get ‘the conversation’ going – no coincidence that this blog is called Coca-Cola Conversations. The other thing that struck us is the sheer amount of time he and his assistant give to the blog; if you’re going to do it, you have to do it properly.

Read a transcript of this video.

Posted on July 03, 2008 16:10 by Dan Drury | 0 comments

All the time the future was waiting in the past

Just over five years ago I made the suggestion that was to launch 500 (so far) BC Tips. How about a twice-weekly e-mail pointing to one piece of good practice each time, I said, with some commentary about why we think it’s worth your pausing over on the way to the ‘trash’ button. The first one went out on 22 May 2003.

We’ve since expanded the brief to cover dumb practice as well – who wants to pass up the chance to learn from someone else’s mistakes, never mind that the odd turkey is more fun to write up.

Of course, there was marketing intent behind the idea – it’s a regular reminder that we’re smart and still open for business – but BC Tips... continue reading

Posted on June 19, 2008 15:16 by Keith Craggs | 0 comments

Conference fun

We held our first Web Effectiveness Conference in London last week. Lots of interesting people and contributions. Too much to describe in detail, but here are some of the things that made me sit up:

• Shell’s head of web, Simon Saville, went through the process that has led to the creation of a new corporate site. It’s quite startling because it throws many navigation conventions out of the window. One of our mantras is that when it comes to navigation, stick to convention – you’ll only confuse people if you don’t. But Simon’s line is that the navigation is necessary to make the site get the proper messages across. I need to look at it more carefully… continue reading

Posted on June 16, 2008 17:56 by David Bowen | 2 comments

What do journalists need?

What do journalists want from corporate websites? Médard Schoenmaeckers, head of media relations at Syngenta, thought it might be a good idea to find out. So he asked 40 of them, and got several surprises. Hear what he has to say about podcasts, RSS, corporate sites and blogs (the last bit should make you smile).

Read a transcript of this video.

Posted on June 04, 2008 08:10 by Dan Drury | 1 comment

Welcome to our blog

Welcome to the Bowen Craggs web effectiveness blog. Why are we so late jumping on the blog bandwagon? Well, we did have an experiment before and we pulled it for the same reason most people should avoid blogs: we didn’t have time to give it the attention it needed. There are few things sadder online than a blog that has been born, enthusiastically nurtured for a while, then ignored – it’s like a plant that has been planted, watered, fertilised, then allowed to go curly at the edges and eventually rot.

There are blogs that flourish without a huge amount of effort from their propagators – they have become discussion areas, living off the comments that flow in, in some ways more like a forum than a blog.

But actually… continue reading

Posted on June 03, 2008 06:09 by David Bowen | 1 comment