Turn employees' heads by turning them into cartoons

By Annie Waite, North American Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

Ad agency Nonsense has created an e-mail campaign idea for ActionAid UK, starring comedian Bill Bailey (dressed as banana, below) as a voiceover to an animated campaign that allows the charity's supporters to “digitally dress up” and make their own animation.

The campaign encourages people to get involved by uploading a photo of themselves, and “dressing up” as a banana, cashew nut or pear for a fight (in the style of their choice) with some supermarket trollies! You can personalise the video with a photo and a series of choices, before sending it to all your mates - or, in this blog's readers' interest - employees or customers. 

You can support the campaign and learn how make your own cartoon, and Rob Mosley at Nonsense created his own advert to show you how.

Nathaniel Ashford, eCommunications manager of Action Aid UK said about the style of the campaign “It’s nice to offer people something fun to interact with which can also make a real difference.”

Indeed, while this particular campaign is for charity, what's stopping your organisation adopting the idea and grabbing your audience's attention as part of an internal promotion (or an external campaign too)?
 
Your company might not have the resources or inclination to hire or persuade celebs to get involved but perhaps your existing comms employees could work on a similar idea to draw the company's attention to, for example, a new benefits programme, or, say, internal training courses?

 

Vote for your favorite blog for communicators

What's your favorite blog for communicators?

Vote for the blogs you recommend at the new reviews sections on the Communicators' Network.

We've taken the liberty of uploading over 30 of the most popular blogs we know of, including:

Top rated blogs:

PR Conversations:
A collaborative blog giving global opinions on public relations and its impact on society, from local perspectives.

Melcrum Blog
Thoughts and revelations on internal communication, social media and beyond from Melcrum

IABC Cafe
A gathering place for professional communicators.

A shel of my former self
Blogging at the intersection of communication and technology.

Neville Hobson
The place at the intersection of business, communication and technology. Sometimes, it's a collision. Written by Neville Hobson.

CommaKazi Speek
Communications within the profession, company and community. Written by Tom Keefe

Talking Internal Communication
Written by UK-based employee comms specialist, Lee Smith

Better Communication Results
Lee Hopkins blog helping you communicate better, for better business results.

BlogWriteForCEOs
Technorati Top 10,000 blog written by Debbie Weil that covers corporate and CEO blogging, social media and related topics.

Change Communication
A collection of thoughts and experiences related to communication and change from Nicholas Ranken

Black Belt Dojo
Tales, thoughts, findings and ramblings from the Internal Communication Black Belt Program from Sue Dewhurst and Liam Fitzpatrick

Collective Conversations
A blog page written by members of the Hill & Knowlton team.

Disruptive Conversations
Dan York on PR/communication and the "social media" of blogs, podcasts, wikis and virtual worlds - and the way our conversations are changing...

Common Sense PR
Business Communications for the real world.

Intelligent Measurement
Evaluation and measurement in communications and beyond.

Lasagna and chips - unexpected combinations for creativity and innovation
Communities of practice, knowledge and change management

Micro Persuasion
Steve Rubel on how social media is transforming marketing, media and public relations

Podcasting Consultant
Learn how to podcast and blog to to establish thought leadership, extend your brand and engage your target market.

Portals and KM
Discussion on the use of portals, blogs, and knowledge management from Bill Ives

Shades of Gray
A blog on corporate, political, and personal communication by David Murray from Ragan & MyRagan

SoSaidThe.Organization
Colin McKay on how Government organizations communicate and integrate Social Media.

Desirable Roasted Coffee
Allan Jenkins at the Intersection of Communication, Society and Technology

KDPaine's Measurement Blog
Katie Paine on how to measure public affairs, media relations, social media, internal communications or blogs

You can access all the reviews without signing in, but you'll need to register as a free member to write a review, submit a 1-5 star rating or add a new blog to the list.

And remember, your vote counts. We'll be publishing the results of this month's top rated blogs at the end of July. Vote for your favorite now.

Robin.

Show us your virtual VIP pass

I'm off to the Latitude festival this weekend and preparations for it reminded me that at the end of June a rather different kind of music festival took place, requiring no packing, no hulking of a great big rucksack a few hundred miles and no donning of enormous waterproof poncho. This other festival I mention wasn't in leafy Suffolk, but in the less rainy environs of Cyberspace. Yes, Secondfest has, inevitably, arrived. It came and went, complete with the Pet Shop Boys as headliners, a virtual VIP tent, showers and portaloos and even a car park.

Anyway, my point? Well, what with companies increasingly making more effort toward adopting greener practices (and if Live Earth last weekend was anything to go by), once lavish employee reward and entertainment events may soon have to become more humble affairs, like the relatively pollution-free Secondfest.

But what do you anticipate being employees' reactions to such moves? Joy that they're playing their part in saving the world - if they do so voluntarily, or otherwise - or disappointment that the treats/part of their incentive for working for their company has altered? It's a tricky one. 

(If you're interested in reading more about communicating your company's "green" initiatives, this month's Internal Comms Hub focuses on green comms issues.)

Soundtrack to the blog: Stone Roses - The Second Coming

Watching Tennis in Second Life: What’s the point?

There is some comfort for tennis fans wanting to watch this year’s Wimbledon but without the incessant rain: why not watch it in Second Life?

Apart from the guarantee of clear skies in a virtual world, why (on earth) would anyone want to?

The answer it seems is the introduction of Hawkeye technology to track the trajectory and impact point of each shot in three dimensions, making dubious line-calls and John McEnroe-esque rants, a thing of the past. On Second Life this means you can watch the game from any angle on your terms.

It seems to prove the point once again that just because something is technically possible, doesn’t necessarily make it worth doing.

Anyone really interested can watch the video:

Dutch businesses, virtual worlds and IC?

A new report by Dutch think tank EPN [apparently] suggests around a third of Dutch businesses are involved in virtual worlds, with around 60% of those citing improved internal communication as a benefit.

However, I say "apparently suggests" because the report has not been translated into English and there's no indication that it will be. Virtual Worlds News reports some of the stats but they don't entirely make sense. So, here's a challenge for anyone reading who is Dutch or can speak the language – what does this report really say?!

Alex

Dismissing forward thinking. Again.

A few years ago a similar story to the one I’m about to link to probably crossed the newswires and desks of people all around the world: two big technology companies adopt an existing but potentially massive idea for use in their own businesses, with the idea of improving organization-wide communication, both internally, and even eternally with clients, stakeholders etc.

The two companies involved were IBM and Sun Microsystems (yes, I’ve talked endlessly about them before on this blog, in our shiny new social media report and a lot of other places) and that story from a few years ago would have been talking about those two companies and their corporate blogging programs, which are now hugely successful and were years ahead of the rest of the world.

So, now the same story but with something new instead of blogging has again come up, and this time it's all about......virtual worlds.

Both IBM and Sun, who’ve tested out the increasingly criticised Second Life, have gone and built their own virtual worlds running on their own servers, without any of the nasty, unwashed general public darkening the purpose. A sort of "virtual world intranet" according to the discovering article over at GigaOm.

Here’s a few excerpts from the article, which I highly recommend reading in full.

……The idea is to bring remote workers in Sun’s worldwide offices together into a single embodied space, “where the spacial layout of the 3D world coupled with the immersive audio provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration.” In IBM’s case, it’s a rough-and-ready 3D environment created [in house] by their Innovate Quick team, using the Torque graphics engine from Garage Games….

…..“The project team is exploring ways to scale, and also applying different models of operation,” Ian Hughes of IBM’s UK branch tells me. “We are building a user base of interested users and developers as part of our CIO office technology adoption program.” ….

….“What we need is the ability to gather some people together and use the human aspects of the avatar interaction to be more effective in our communications.”…

…..While some Net pundits have quickly dismissed Fortune 500 interest in virtual worlds as mere marketing hype, it’s projects like these which suggest that high tech companies are serious about their potential to transform the Internet. If they privately come up with new protocols and technology that adds real value to the way they do business, the future of the broader Net as a 3D medium is all but insured….

….By the same token, they may just end up adding another level of aggravation to the conference call…..

So, we’ve all been playing catch up to the IBMs and the Suns with blogs, wikis etc, because  regardless of whether you're from Silicon Valley or Thames Valley, social media is big news for businesses, industries and sectors of every type these days (even politicians are using Twitter for example).

What’s the betting in a few years time people will be taking virtual worlds a bit more seriously and wishing they'd done something about them a bit sooner? Anyone care for a virtual fiver each way?

Alex

P.S. You'll see in the GigaOm story and Sun's own page about their virtual world that both companies use Macs quite a lot. Forward thinking indeed ;-)

The dark side to social media

Is it my imagination, or is there a groundswell of opinion that social media is a force of ultimate evil in the universe? OK. I may be exaggerating a teeny bit, but social media is suddenly mainstream news. From spoof profiles set up by Oxford University students cruelly claiming a professor was a member of the Hitler Youth, to inappropriate photos taken unawares (this link has been duly censored!) on MySpace, education professionals are being harassed the world over. Then there was every parents' nightmare, the teen party advertised on MySpace that drew hundreds of party-goers who promptly trashed the house, swinging from light fittings and baracading themselves in against worried neighbours. Add to that the numerous stories of identity theft reported on social networking sites like FaceBook like the one reported on Canuckflack.com and the frankly, weird and illegal activies of some Second Lifers.  Clearly social media is acquiring a big image problem. Whilst many sites are, to some extent, policed by their members, who alert administrators to inappropriate material, social networking sites are struggling to police the chaos. So what does this all mean for corporations rushing to embrace social media? Well, an employment contract makes a big difference to what people are prepared to do online. The threat of dismissal is enough to make most people think twice. And organizations have an established course of action to bring order to private networks. Lawmakers are beginning to catch up and set legal precedents which will make prosecuting the offenders easier and deter the chancers. But until then, social networks are in danger of being the whipping boys of the tabloid press and social media the poor relation of the more established media. So, here's drawing a line under all this neg-head bull. Anyone know any human interest stories from the corporate world that can be told about how long-lost colleagues were reunited on LinkedIn or how social media 'saved my life'? Robin Crumby

Will Parisians embrace Second Life?

During my lunch-hour reading I came across an interesting piece on the BBC site about how a Paris residents' association is using the virtual world of Second Life to get the town hall to move ahead with plans to redevelop a central area of the city.

Given the somewhat ethereal nature of Second Life, I'm always on the look-out for good examples that demonstrate the practical use or purpose of this technology. And I think this is one.

Residents are being urged to come up with ideas for a new garden for Les Halles in the centre of Paris, originally a wholesale market destroyed in the 70s to make way for a shopping centre.

The use of Second Life has been introduced by local residents' association Accomplir. They claim that residents haven't been consulted over the gardens, which they say are at the heart of local life. And they're enticing residents to partipate with the lure of a cash prize – 275,000 linden dollars to the contributor of the winning idea! (That's 785 euros or £530 to those of us unfamiliar with the conversion rate for Second Life currency).

I'll be interested to see if they achieve their ultimate objective: "To put pressure on officials to speed up the redevelopment process."

Put that way, the potential benefits of Second Life suddenly seem a bit more tangible...

Second What?

Here's a quick question that I've been mulling over for some time:

What's Second Life's biggest problem?

I mean this from the perspective of people scratching their heads over it and wondering what all the fuss is about.

There are many problems of course, but the main one for me is hinted at in Debbie Weil's recent post from Las Vegas, in Steve Crescenzo's post from a while back and countless other people who I've discussed it with.

But, I'm going to confuse your thinking by saying I'm very pro-Second Life, sort of.

So come on, before I give my answer, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Free virtual cup of coffee if you guess what I'm thinking.

It's life, but not as I know it

Have you noticed how most of the postings on this blog (and many blogs) are technology related? Why is that? Having said that, this posting is also technology related – I hate to buck a trend.

I made my debut in Second Life yesterday, where I'm now known as Thatcher Mathhilde. Pretty name, isn't it? The sign-up process was quite straightforward, although I wasn't too sure what to do with myself once I arrived. I shuffled about in the Welcome Park for a while, until Sky Smashcan (aka Josie) befriended me and kindly offered to teleport me to a large hall.

There didn't seem to be much going on, so I spent some time practising my gestures – clapping, blowing kisses, looking bored, shrugging, etc. – and tried unsuccessfully to sit on a chair. Then I accidentally logged out. So not the most eventful arrival, but I'm confident things will improve on future visits.

I see there's hope for bumbling Second Lifers such as me, in the form of a new book called Second Life: The Official Guide. Neville Hobson talks about it in the latest posting on his blog. It's available from Amazon from December 14.

While I figure out what to do with myself in my Second Life, I'm also keen to find out what the potential is for organizations and employees (Alex talked about this in an earlier posting to this blog). Neville is writing an article on the subject for the next issue of SCM. As he now operates a legitimate business in SL – Crayon – he should have some interesting insights.

Mandy Thatcher