Charity begins at work

We've recently produced a great 24-page magazine that showcases all the work one of our clients has been doing to raise money for its corporate charity. The organisation, which is made up of 13 different companies, has 28,000 global colleagues who have all been united through a common goal of raising much-needed funds for their chosen charity.

We have been working with the company since the launch of the campaign in 2010 and provided regular communication to their employees around the world to update them on their progress. They are already ahead of target on the fundraising side of things – but the campaign has also had business benefits too.

As a relatively new group of companies the charity has given them a common purpose – one that transcends day-to-day business issues. Group-wide challenges have given colleagues in separate companies a reason to work together and any perceived barriers have been broken down to make way for a much greater cause.

I interviewed one of the company's active fundraisers last week who told me that supporting the charity had created a fantastic network of contacts across the group. The relationships that have been formed and the creativity that has been encouraged through events, regular communications and initiatives have not only helped the charity but also the business.

The feel-good factor that charity work can bring should not be ignored in the workplace. While helping those less fortunate should be a priority for us all – the additional business benefits are evident too.

John gets his skates on

As we have spent so much time interviewing colleagues, writing about the campaign and designing the publications, we felt compelled to get involved too. That's why Elliott House's John Liddle will be skating a marathon for UNICEF soon – that's 432 laps of the ice rink with no stops!

As an ice hockey player, his abilities on the ice are better than most but it could take well over two hours for him to complete the marathon so stamina and determination will be needed.

Coventry's Planet Ice have kindly offered John free ice time to practice. 

You can find out more and donate on John's fundraising page and we will post regular updates on his progress. 

Chocolate Vs the Internet

How did we survive without the internet? When I started my journalism training about 17 years ago, the world wide web was a very new concept – one that many of us sniffed at as a way of researching our stories due in the main to the lack of online content.

Google wasn't our life line then – we were still scouring library shelves for the facts.

I spent my summer breaks from University writing long letters – yes, handwriting letters with pen and paper – to friends who didn't live nearby. Stamps were cheaper then. Deliveries from the postman were exciting because they often included bulging envelopes with scribbled addresses as well as the printed bills and junk mail. Friends had taken time to write about their lives and deliver a mini parcel to me. I still have all of those letters stored away.

Facebook has changed the way we communicate. There's no need for letters and stamps when you can chat instantly. You don't have to wait a few days to find out your friend has seen a band, had a haircut or got a new job. You are informed immediately – a live feed into their lives, with pictures.

Social media is even making email communication defunct. I can remember sending my first email back in 1996 – I think it took the recipient about a week to reply. The letter got there quicker.

It's a different story in 2012 of course. A recent study from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) showed that consumers in various developed countries would happily sacrifice chocolate, alcohol and coffee in return for internet access. And I would be one of them.

Elliott House relies on the internet – without it, I can't access emails, check updates, work with our team effectively, research my stories (online content has somewhat improved!).. and the list goes on.

There's such a thing as Nomophobia now too. A recognised condition where people live in fear of being without their mobile phone! I don't think that's just down to the need for calling someone either – our mobiles, like the internet, have become increasingly smarter. Social media can be accessed on the move, emails can be read on route to your next meeting, you can do the weekly food shop, book a restaurant and even bag a holiday all by the tap of an app.

The internet has become our right arm. We rely on it to work, shop, research, eat, and keep in touch with people among its many other uses. It has made our lives easier in one respect – but harder in others. The faster we can work, the more we can do. We're always switched on.

Communication has never been so easy. But when things get easier, does our attention to detail slip? We often say things we regret later – now mistakes can be published for the world to see, making an embarrassing mark on your Facebook wall or Twitter feed. Foolish messages that were quickly mistyped in haste and sent. No time to reflect on your way to the postbox. Correspondence is free and instant.

Anyone can publish their musings these days. We're all 'citizen journalists'. Google is our life line now. Or is it?

Winning formula

Winning team: Elliott House with Kantar Operations at the IoIC awards. (l-r) John Liddle, Ian Feeney, Cheryl Liddle, and from Kantar Operations: Richard Coombe and Baljit Thandi

We don’t like to brag, but Elliott House Communications has just won two communication awards.

The Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC) held its Central Region Awards on Friday 24 February and we were named Class Winner in the best Electronic Newsletter category and also won an Award of Excellence in the Best Electronic Design category, for the newsletter we produce with Kantar Operations.

More than 100 of the region’s top internal communicators attended the glittering award ceremony at the Radisson Blu, East Midlands Airport.

The interactive monthly newsletter was developed in conjunction with the internal communications team at Kantar Operations, as a key tool for its Worldwide CEO, Sharon Potter, to communicate with staff based in the UK, North America and India about the direction of the business. The newsletter also goes out across the wider Kantar group of companies.

To be shortlisted alongside the region’s best communicators was already an achievement – but to win is an excellent result for us and the team at Kantar Operations.

Communicating consistently across three diverse regions is always a challenge but the innovative newsletter, which allows readers to interact with the content, has received much praise internally. We are thrilled that it has been recognised by its communication peers at the IoIC awards.

Like I say, we don’t like to brag. But we are rather proud. 

The Elliott House team with the trophy – John Liddle, Cheryl Liddle and Ian Feeney. 

Romantic communications

Love is in the air – well according to Hallmark and the 24hr supermarkets that were still selling flowers at midnight to last minute love makers.

In the rather chilly month of February, you can set your heart aglow with some commercial tat from the loved-up shops. Over-priced flowers (unless you made it to Tesco in time to buy the £5 dozen red roses it had on offer – who said romance was dead?), bumper boxes of chocolates and cuddly teddy bears that will spend the rest of the year gathering dust before you recycle them and that garish heart cushion in time for next year's haul. 

Don't worry, I am not going to cast misery over this rather marvellous love-drenched day. I am someone who is always happy to throw my full and sometimes quite frankly ridiculous support over all traditional events. (I am renowned for my annual Grand National party, not to mention Eurovision – although things haven't been the same since Tezzer's departure.) I just think it's amazing that we need a day to help us to communicate how much we love/like/fancy someone.  

Generally, words come easy for me as I spend my days tapping away at my computer at Elliott House Towers but for those that just can't confess their all, perhaps they need a nudge from Mr Valentine and his cohort of romantic retailers. 

Maybe we should celebrate that we have at least one day in the year when lovers, partners, husbands, wives, admirers and stalkers can actually say how they feel or at least get some help with expressing it. 

It's just a shame that we have to rely on the retailers to put those words in our mouths. Often the cheesy lines and forced innuendo mask any originality and personality. 

As silly as it sounds – it's a problem that often crops up in the corporate world. Now, I'm not suggesting that people should confess undying love in their company communications – but language is a powerful thing and should be used wisely. 

We often plump for words that we wouldn't normally use in every day talk. Using February 14th as an example, would you say: 

"I would like to utilise today to leverage my feelings for you so that I can yield a high return." 

Perhaps, we should just dump all the jargon and say, I love you. 

Much easier. More understood. And will probably get a much greater return on investment. 

So, on this day of loving and giving – here are my top words and phrases to 'dump' from your comms and some new, much better looking versions for you to fall in love with: 

DUMP                                  DATE

Utilise                                    Use 

At this point in time               Now 

Commence                            Start 

A large proportion of            Lots

Paradigm shift                       Major change 

Outside the box                     Creative

Blue-sky thinking                  Creative

Actionable items                    Things to do 

Buy in                                    Agree

Deliverables                           Tasks

Going forward                       In the future/from now on (if you need to use it at all)

Operationalise                        Do

Ramp up                                Increase

Strategic solutions                 A plan

Happy Valentine's Day from Elliott House Communications! 

Why readers matter most

We're a little bit excited at the moment because we've just been shortlisted for TWO awards at the Institute of Internal Communications awards for the central region. We're competing against the great and the good in the area and so it's fantastic to be recognised by our peers.

The publication that has been shortlisted is a monthly interactive newsletter we produce for employees of a global company. We ensure the content can be understood by a multi-lingual readership and make the newsletter easy and interesting to navigate.

We also have to think creatively for new ways to design and present the corporate information each month to keep it engaging for employees so they want to read about the future direction of the business.

Although awards are really nice (and fingers crossed for the 24 February everyone), even better news came recently when we were able to evaluate the monthly click-through rates on the newsletter. After two years, the numbers of people looking at the newsletter keeps on increasing and the new quarterly 'special' issues are attracting higher numbers too.

There's no denying, we're dreaming of that big awards trophy, but the truth is, the most important judges of our work will always be the readers.

What happens online when you die

This video made me chuckle (well may be more of a morbid cackle) as I was only wondering this very fact the other day: what happens to your online world, when your physical one comes to an end?

There's a whole lifetime's worth of you sitting on a virtual cloud. While your physical belongings might be carefully packaged up and perhaps sent to the charity shop, who packs away your Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin laundry – not to mention any other 'items' drifting around in cyberspace?   

I guess if you have time to get your affairs in order, you could spend a few days closing down your online self. That or leave the passwords behind to make it easier for others to disconnect you once you're gone. 

Or as this video suggests – maybe you let the online world re-create a virtual you in the future, turning all your information into a hologram. It could become a very different way of haunting people. Well, why bother doing it yourself, when you could get your cyber self to do it. 

  

Happy fourth Birthday Elliott House

It was a cold, wintry day in November, four years ago, when I left a full-time job to start Elliott House Communications. After years of fine-tuning my craft inside agencies and organisations, it was time to go it alone.

Anxious thoughts about abandoning a regular salary were soon drowned out by the sheer excitement of creating something of my own. I had a vision for my business that would focus on writing great content for companies that cut the corporate jargon and inspired readers.

I wanted to deliver outstanding service to my clients too – constantly outperforming the last piece of work we did for them – and build relationships that meant more than just contractual agreements. Business is about people after all. 

Four years on, and I can honestly say I've loved every minute of the journey so far. The recession has been tough but, in many ways, it has also been one of the best times to start up and run a business. Learning how to be lean, focusing on our offer, using our creativity and delivering quality have been key to our success.

We developed a cost-effective, interactive, online magazine model, which is perfect for internal newsletters as well as customer communications – and as well as high-quality printed magazines, we have created campaigns such as reward and recognition schemes, websites and internal branding for large and small organisations. 

   

We continue to learn and add to our skills as technology keeps on moving and social media opportunities change the way we consume information. 

We have been privileged to work with some fantastic businesses and people. From small companies and charities to universities and large global organisations that have entrusted us to create engaging communications for thousands of their employees and customers.

Our thanks to everyone we have worked and partnered with in the last four years. It has been our pleasure.   

Where will we be in the next four years? Still here, still innovating, still working hard.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net