Today is the 20th anniversary of the breaking down of the Berlin Wall.  It also marks my 20th year in Minnesota…and there is a connection.

Twenty years ago September, I stuffed all the worldly possessions I could fit into a poorly air-conditioned 1982 Ford Escort and drove from Rhode Island to Minneapolis.  My goal: go to graduate school, get a couple degrees from the School of Journalism and maybe become a professor (I didn’t become a professor, but that’s a story for another time).

People constantly asked me what I wanted to study, I had the germ of an idea.  It grew straight out of the Cold War and its aftermath, and was, essentially this: How was everything we’d ever learned about the world so completely wrong? And what was the media’s role?

You have to understand that growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, there was no doubt about how the world worked. The Russians were evil, inscrutable and powerful.  Half of Europe was in thrall to the Soviets, and always would be.  War was unthinkable and inevitable.  These were incontrovertible facts and always would be.  Until Mikhail Gorbachev started talking about glasnost and perestroika and the United States didn’t get in the way, and in a few years, the Wall came down.  And those incontrovertible facts…weren’t.

When people heard my thesis topic, they often assumed I had an interest in Russia and Russian history. I didn’t, not specifically anyway.  My interest was in how a society – and the media in particular – perpetuated this inflexible worldview…in the ways we get trapped by stereotypes and stories, and ignore what doesn’t fit so that nothing changes.

So when I think of how the Wall came down, I feel the joy of the people of Europe embracing freedom.  And I also think about change – about how the people of Europe began to believe that things could be different.  About the need to look past “what is” and toward “what could be” in my own life and work.  Because today, as individuals and as organizations, we are the media … we can help people see the world in new ways.  When the story should change — or simply could be better, or fresher, or more meaningful — it’s not just in our power to embrace change – it’s our responsibility.

Kadet Communications helps clients move people through communications strategy, brand positioning and storytelling.  It also is a one-man-show, which means that when I want to have an all-employee meeting on strategic communications, it helps to have a vivid imagination…

President: Alright, let’s call this meeting of the Kadet Communications team to order.  At the last meeting, we wanted to see how we’re doing, so we asked the Chief Strategist to get some feedback from clients and colleagues.  Tell me what you found.

Chief Strategist: Let’s step back for a minute.  What we agreed is that we should treat Kadet Communications like we would a client, review our positioning and make adjustments where necessary. If we’re going to talk about this, we need start with objectives.

President: Hmmph.  OK, the main objective is the same as that of our clients: “sell more stuff.” Or in our case, get more clients. I’d also add that we want more opportunities to earn in-depth projects and long-term relationships.

Happy now?

Chief Strategist: Quite! So, as you noted, I was sent off to get some feedback on how we’re doing. I talked to clients and colleagues because our Strategic Communications process always begins with reflection on the inside and input from the outside. You see, it’s only by…

President: Yes, yes, we understand. Get on with it.

Chief Strategist: Right then.  We talked to about a half dozen people. Let me put them up on the screen:

You’re always getting us to think differently…to consider more than just this one project.

When I think of you, I think of technology. You have big time technology experience that translates from big companies to small ones.

You’re strategy really comes from experience. Strategy comes easy because you’ve been there before, but you always considered not just what we should do, but what would work for our company.

You get to the heart of the story—understand clients’ needs and goals, and communicate them perfectly… the balance of classical marketing and PR to online social networks.

President: I love it.  That sounds great!

Chief Strategist: Well, yes, but there’s a gap.

President: A gap? What gap? I see no gaps…

Chief Strategist: Here’s the thing: When you ask people to describe you, and each one responds with a different answer, you may have a brand positioning problem.

President: Maybe you’re over-thinking it.  Each of these responses fits into our core message of Strategy. Positioning. Storytelling.

Chief Strategist: But ideally, we’d hear that back from people. Let’s ask the team…how do we describe ourselves?

PR Manager: Smart PR and marketing strategies that work!

Writer/Storyteller: Compelling writing that moves people!

President: I tell people that we do communications that moves people depending on what they want.

Chief Strategist: See?

President: Hmmph. Don’t we have work to do?

Chief Strategist: Of course. But positioning and storytelling are critical — this is what we tell our clients — everything starts with the story. What is our story?

President: You know, my favorite story since we set up shop two years ago is our client where we did the whole thing. When we started, they had two businesses — one in data storage, the other in business process optimization — and they could talk about one, or the other, but never together. No one knew what they did, they were losing cross sales opportunities right and left. The employees were all over the map.  Their prospects heard a lot about technology, but little about what it would do for them.

Chief Strategist: Right. So we interviewed their people… executives, sales… consultants.  And we interviewed and surveyed customers. We analyzed competitors’ positioning….

President: And we found gaps!

Chief Strategist: Indeed we did. So we showed them the responses. We found out that customers indeed didn’t know about the two sides of the business. And the customers viewed them as tech experts with deep knowledge of whatever our client did for them.

President: So if they wanted to be a strategic partner who could solve an array of problems, the customers didn’t see it. We  held a  workshop to get everyone together on this…

Writer: If I might move this along a bit…we repositioned them as making critical business processes like the stuff they do work better and smarter…so that their customers would have high performance solutions. We laid out a brand promise around delivering high performance solutions and the confidence that they’d be right for the customer.

Chief Strategist: And it worked — now their marketing and sales are coherent, their message is consistent, and they get more chances to cross-sell to existing customers.

President: Then we worked with them on a new website, new marketing materials, new whitepapers, and a communications strategy.  I love that story.

Chief Strategist: So what have we learned from this?

President: We’re pretty good at this stuff!  But…that was a long story.

Chief  Strategist: Right.  And what makes us the best?

President: Well, we have the experience to handle just about anything in public relations.

PR Manager: And we do smart strategy based on what works, not the media of the moment. And, our goals are the business goals, not PR goals.

Writer: And write good…heh…I mean, well. And we really shine when we bring deep client insight into our client stories.

Chief Strategist: So what we really need to do is bring all of this together…

President: Hmmm.

PR Manager: I’ll get the coffee.

Each work day for me starts with a skim of what’s been sucked into my Google Reader.  Here’s where I stopped skimming and started reading this morning. Enjoy!

Kevin Hillstrom’s “Glieber’s Dresses” Series. Iconoclastic direct marketing guru Kevin Hillstrom has sucked me in with his ongoing story of the tribulations of the executive team of a fictional old-line cataloger trying to make their way in a marketing and merchandising world that threatens to pass them by — if it hasn’t already. What I love about Hillstrom’s series is the way he’s able to gently (or not so gently) poke fun at executive foibles and the blinders we often wear based on our roles and experiences, and the line you have to walk as a consultant. But more that that, Hillstrom uses the dialog as a way to highlight just how challenging it is to change…and a path toward how to focus in on what’s most important.

This week: Gliebers Dresses’ other consultant makes fun of them at a big conference.

Saving Journalism from the Bottom Up, from The Same Rowdy Crowd. As the StarTribune newspaper of the Twin Cities emerges from bankruptcy, former journalist and current communications savant Bruce Benidt issues a call for ideas on saving the newspaper industry.  His point: Let’s get a bunch of smart, original thinkers together, create highly local communities of information and commerce around the civic life of our community, and re-build a model that will support the professional journalism we need from there.  Is there a community organizer out there who can help Bruce make this happen?

Augmented Reality — Early, But Worth Watching, by Jeremiah Owyang. I’m fascinated by the bright shiny toy of “augmented reality” — using video to add data to your real-world experience — walking down the street, reading a book or doing a video conference. Owyang, newly minted consultant with the Altimeter Group, offers three videos that illustrate some of the ways innovators are trying out the technology.  Too early to say on whether it will catch on, but worth watching…and pretty cool.

Jeff Jarvis at The Buzz Machine. I read Prof. Jeff Jarvis and I get pissed off.  His writing style echoes his title — it hums and stings and screeches like an industrial lathe. But I respect the heck out of what he’s doing — if poking smart people in news media prods them to create something new and sustainable, I’m all for it.  Today’s post discusses the difference between paying for information and paying for “content”…and says that news media publishers “flatter themselves” if they think they’re in the information business.  They have always been, he says, in the business of selling format over content. So what will the next winning format be?

“When you see something that’s taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn’t have before, you’re probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that’s merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you’re probably looking at a loser.”

My  deep, dark secret is that I like comic books.  I was hooked on super heroes the day my 5th grade teacher gave away his comic collection to his class, and though I stopped collecting years ago, I never stopped being a fan. I still follow the industry, and even pick up a title or two (or three) for escape or inspiration.

So with the planned acquisition of Marvel Comics by Disney making the news, I can’t resist the opportunity to combine my vocation with avocation.  And I’ve thought for a long time that corporate communications and marketing — especially B2B and technology marketing — has something to learn from an entertainment business like Marvel Comics.

The comics industry is fun to watch, and they do a number of things that translate into B2B and technology marketing.  To wit:

1. They remember that it’s about people. In comics, Marvel’s breakthrough was superheroes like Peter Parker and the Fantastic Four, who acted like real people with real problems.  It’s all about real people doing extraordinary things.

Beyond the product, your people vital are characters in the company story — from the visionary technologist to the insightful marketer (hopefully) to the customer service rep who goes above and beyond, businesses can grow awareness and loyalty by pulling back the veil and making the corporate more personal…and real.

2. They know that the customer owns the product. At a company like Marvel that has shared the soap opera of its character’s lives for nearly 50 years, the editors and creators clearly recognize that the characters and stories live in the hearts of the fans.  They are stewards of the story, responsible both to respect what came before, and to innovate in ways that keep the stories vital and break new ground.

There’s a parallel in B2B and technology — every purchase impacts the livelihood of the purchaser. It may be a part of their day to day business, or fuels productivity.  The customer, in other words, is invested in your success. So it’s only natural that they want to be respected and heard.  It’s why users groups and conferences are so important for many tech businesses, and why companies that are socially engaged in their markets tend to be more successful.

3. They know that being social gets results. Comic books are largely sold in specialty stores and online rather than through mass market retail.  Comic publishers like Marvel deal constantly with the push and pull of B2B channel marketing — their audience is store owners as much as the comics fan — often simultaneously.  Their channel to the audience is an often bewildering array of online and traditional magazines, national and regional cons, fan blogs, gossip columns, discussion forums, social networks and even a couple national newspapers.

The result is an industry where the channel, fans and media are incredibly close to the creators, editors and publishers. You get weekly interviews with the Marvel editor-in-chief, a teriffic ‘inside baseball’ blog by their executive editor, Q&A’s with writers on major storylines via podcasts and text, individual creator websites and forums, writers’ Twitter feeds…et cetera.  They produce news themselves, and participate in the hurly burly of the media market.

Of course, not every business generates the kind of passion that comics do.  The point is, they’re out there participating. And they are out there producing.  As a media business, they recognize that they have something to say every day, their customers have something to say every day, and they use all the tools available to say it.

Any other secret or not-so-secret comics fan/marketers out there?  What say you?

Two weeks ago, I drafted a social media policy for a client, and in the next week, two more clients were asking about establishing policies of their own. Something’s happening here.  A recent article in the StarTribune here in the Twin Cities put a spotlight on the issue, citing a survey that indicated that while few companies have social media policies, nearly all are concerned about the impact of employee use of social networks on corporate reputation.

My own experience shows two converging issues. On one hand, companies see opportunity. For my startup client, there’s no reason that every employee couldn’t tell their own networks about the work of this new online business … but the company has an interest in protecting its own reputation and employees have to decide for themselves.

On the other side is concern with reputation, as well as workplace productivity. Vince Giorgi posted a terrific summary of the concerns that lead many companies to filter out social networking sites and monitor employees’ online activity.  Giorgi cites analysis by Nucleus Research indicating that “Companies that let employees access Facebook during
work hours can expect to see total office productivity decline by an average of 1.5 percent.”

I guess it depends on what you mean by productivity.  My take is that the work of the company is not simply just the work of the company.  Employees are ambassadors of the business, and when they are happy and well treated at work, it shows in the way they do their jobs, the service they deliver, the kind of talent they attract, and yes, in productivity as well. When they’re treated as grown-ups, given guidelines and largely trusted to do their jobs and do them well, good employees will do so.  Giorgi followed up his earlier post to cite a survey of human resources executives, noting a recognition of these benefits, along with reasonable “angst”.

In my view, the goal of social media policy is to reconcile the reality of the new ways people communicate personally and professionally, the associated risks and the potential opportunities.  Policy guidelines should, a minimum:

• Remind employees to act professionally online, to protect their own reputations and that of the company.
• Provide reasonable restrictions to protect the company, such as not revealing confidential information, disparaging the company, employees or management, etc.
• Encourage participation in professional networks appropriate to their role in the business.
• Encourage authenticity and honesty in all online activity.
• Never coerce employees into participating in company promotions through personal networks.
• Guide employees toward better understanding, generally, of what these networks are and how people are using them personally and professionally, so that they can better interact in the online world.

What would you add?

For more information, check out:

Altimeter Group — Social Media Policy Links

Help a PR Agency Update their Social Media Policy

Bigger List of Social Media Policies from Social Media Governance