Category: Business

Corporate blog not the place for GM strike

One “downside” of having a corporate blog is that your customers/clients/readers etc may have gotten used to having a dialogue with your company and their expectations on your communications probably have increased. In a situation like the ongoing national strike against GM, many people would probably hope to find comments from the auto maker on one of its corporate blogs. Now, there are of course situations when it is difficult to be as open as you would wish and this appears to be one of them.

Christopher Barger, Director, GM Global Communications Technology, therefore made a short comment on the GM FastLane Blog:

“We’ve seen a number of comments coming in regarding this situation, and we appreciate the interest and opinions that you, our readers, have about this matter. But as I am sure that you can appreciate, these are sensitive times involving sensitive negotiations; a public blog is not the appropriate place for us to be commenting about them, nor do we think it’s constructive to entertain a discussion of labor issues here.

This afternoon, we issued a statement regarding the UAW’s decision; to this point, that is our only statement on the topic. Any future comments we have will be issued via press statement, and not here on FastLane. Thanks for understanding.”

Although one could always hope for more openness, at least this is a good way of managing expectations.

Via Shel Holtz.

Update: What GM does, however, is link to other blogs. For example, Trollhattan Saab is an independent blog that comments on the strike here.

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Fired via email? At least it’s not SMS

You may have read about the US consumer electronics retailer RadioShack that laid off 400 employees via email a year ago. “The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated,” the ominous message supposedly read.

And it seems that this practice is not uncommon in the US as a way to avoid face-to-face conflicts. According to a survey by the Marlin Company, 10 per cent of employees say their company has used email to fire or lay off employees.

In the UK however, they do it via text message. Chelsea owner Roman Abramovitj apparently fired coach José Mourinho via SMS. What’s next, getting fired via Facebook? Maybe you should think twice before accepting that social network invitation from your boss…

Via Shel Holtz.

Banverket is blogging about railways

Banverket, the authority responsible for rail traffic in Sweden, has launched a ‘corporate’ blog today. Lars Berggrund is a senior advisor at Banverket and will be sharing his thoughts about railways and their role in society. One strange ‘feature’ is that you need to email Berggrund and write the title of the blog post in the email header (!) in order to comment. Can we hope for an easier solution soon?

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Swedish companies the most trusted in the world

The last few days, Swedish media have been reporting about brand consultant Simon Anholt who talked at a seminar in Stockholm this week. Mr Anholt called Sweden “a Switzerland with sex appeal” already three months ago. And it turns out you can be both sexy and trustworthy. Edelman, one of the world’s largest PR agencies, have just published the 2007 Edelman Trust Barometer and it contains a number of interesting findings. The survey revealed that “companies headquartered in Sweden and Canada are the most trusted globally; Brazilian, Mexican and Russian companies are the least trusted.”

We can also see that for the third straight year, American brands operating in Europe continue to receive a trust discount. For example, McDonald’s is trusted by 60% of respondents in the United States and by only 26% across the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Furthermore, according to the survey “A person like me” is the most trusted spokesperson across the European Union, North America, and Latin America. In Asia, it is second to physicians. This underlines the importance for businesses to manage relations with channels where “persons like me” meet, like blogs and community sites. And with physicians…

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Eniro buys Swedish video community

Dagens Media yesterday revealed that Eniro, a leading Nordic search company, has bought 48.1% of the shares in Netclips AB, which owns the video community Bubblare.se.

Bubblare started on September 1, 2006 and was one of the first sites in Sweden with user-generated video content. Since then several other video sites have been launched by Aftonbladet, ZTV and TV4’s FejmTV. As a result of the increased competition and costs, Bubblare was probably in need of more capital to expand.

Eniro has an option to acquire the remaining 51.9 percent.

UPDATED: Dagens Industri reports that Eniro pays 1 million euro for the minority stake.

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Positive response to Cisco’s corporate blog

A quick follow up post to my last comment about Cisco’s lawsuit against Apple for the use of the trademark iPhone. On a forum like a corporate blog you are bound to have many supporters, but critics are also known to come running. So when I read through the 50+ first comments on Cisco’s blog I noticed that the supportive outnumbered the critics by about 5 to 1, which is very good. Here are a few good examples and especially note the ones calling out for a (blog) response from Steve Jobs:

“Excellent response. It’s amazing what wonders blogging can do.”

“This post reflects Cisco’s openness in their communication. Very well explained. I just wished Apple showed some respect to Cisco’s and its openhandedness.”

“I am impressed by Cisco’ transparency and willingness to communicate, especially so when these traits are exhibited by the senior management. Congratulations, Cisco. You’re doing very well indeed.”

“Excellent. Absolutely excellent, and that’s coming from as big an Apple fan as you’re likely to ever encounter. What Jobs and Company did was (and is) wrong.”

“Very well stated. Apple, where are you? Oh, that’s right, you guys don’t blog…”

“Hats off to Cisco for your candor on the subject and willingness to have a dialog with comments open to all-comers. Steve Jobs? Care to chime in here?”

“I am an Apple fan indeed, but I must say I fully understand and support your point of view. Thank you for the excellent answer, it is time for Apple to think that way, too.”

“I’ve never seen a suit explained as clearly as this before. Your openness is the reason that you will prevail in this suit. Thanks for posting this information for all of us to read! Great idea to blog it!”

The opinion battle is far from won for Cisco. The biggest criticism against the company is that they seem to want a piece of the action rather than just to sell or license the trademark. But they are off to a good start.

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