MarCom Professional

My old friend and several-times colleague Dr David Michaelson has now joned Echo research as President of their US operations.

If you want the ultimate bluffer's guide to PR evaluation, check it out in the journal of Public Relations Society of America below:

Best Practice Guide to Evaluation

I have been clinging to this  core evaluation structure of: output, out-take and outcome as key comm's metrics for the last decade...and it may well have been David that put me on to that!  It's as bit of a Bursons/WPP thing. That doesn't mean it's wrong. Quite the reverse. More...

Corporate marketing is the process of aligning enterprise capabilities to stakeholder needs.

Practising it demands that we understand deep organisational competencies - and determine how best apply these to the benefit of stakeholders to drive sustainable growth.

In practice this can be an extremely difficult translation exercise, but one approach is emerging  as a valuable way of tackling the problem namely: 'Materiality'

Materiality is a concept emerging from within the CSR community (albeit borrowed from the accounting fraternity).  Materiality looks at the range of issues that may impact an organisation, and asks: More...

Glasshouse Partnership believes (we kind of have to) that corporate marketing will be one of the fastest areas of marketing growth over the next twenty years, taking on board emerging bleeding-edge thinking from business process design and business ecosystem management..

Corporate marketing is not some newfangled PR 2.0 though. It embraces very more traditional competencies (corporate communications, corporate branding and corporate social responsibility) and strives to make them useful.

I thought I'd kick off by planting a few seeds of thinking around the idea of corporate marketing - both as a philosophy and a set of linked disciplines... More...

Stanley Moss offers an account of a perfect stay some friends enjoyed recently at the four seasons hotel in Canary Wharf at his luxury marketing blog: 'endless road'

You wouldn't really think of Canary Wharf as a 'destination' - but throw in a concert at the O2 and it sounds pretty compelling - particularly if you're from 'out of town'.

Some might find the levels of attention he describes a bit 'icky', but you can't argue with a hotel that comes to knock on your door when you sleep through your wake-up call...

The beauty of his anecdote is that it is that perfect thing that PR folk dream of - spontaneous, public testimonial. More...

Google's collaborations with the Chinese government have brought predictable censure in the past, and its virtual desktop aspirations have raised justifiable concerns among data-geeks.

However, you'd never have suspected that the innocuous Google Maps would stir up a privacy row.

It looks like its incredibly granular 'StreetView' maps are going to fall foul of local legislation around the world, and certainly fall foul of public opinion.

There are 2.5 million CCTV cameras in the UK...engaged in real-time scrutiny and recording of our lives. But at least you have some idea they are there. More...

James Farrar, who leads SAP's social responsibility initiatives has just started a personal blog. It's early days, but 'Wisdom of Clouds' is going be an interesting one to watch (disclosure: SAP is a Glasshouse client).

Now, there are plenty of great blogs out there from environmental activists and CSR advocates...and even a couple of technology literate ones (! James Governor !) but very little of substance from the companies actually trying to live up to their efforts. It's going to provide a great window onto the realities of CSR. I really hope more corporate CSR and environmental officers will follow his lead and start to share their thinking. More...

James Farrar, who leads SAP's social responsibility initiatives has just started a personal blog. It's early days, but 'Wisdom of Clouds' is going be an interesting one to watch (disclosure: SAP is a Glasshouse client).

Now, there are plenty of great blogs out there from environmental activists and CSR advocates...and even a couple of technology literate ones (! James Governor !) but very little of substance from the companies actually trying to live up to their efforts. It's going to provide a great window onto the realities of CSR. I really hope more corporate CSR and environmental officers will follow his lead and start to share their thinking. More...

The logic of CSR says that companies must exercise social responsibility in order to be sustainable over the long haul...

But what about nation states? Is there a sustainability model for nations?

What does NSR - national social responsibility actually look like?

Is democracy a critical enabler of national sustainability?
What economic policies really affect sustainability?
Which policy instruments best enable long-term prosperity?
Is national sustainability even a meaningful concept in when the competitive threats to national competitivess?

The search is on for the answers to these questions. More...

Have followed the emergence of alternate reality games (ARG) since Dug first created one for James Bond back in the eary twenty-first century...

The latest highlighted by Karl Long is from avantgame and takes the form of imagining and exploring a future world without oil.

Check it out here at World Without Oil

Instead of a typical 'clue-hunting' format, following a prescribed script, this ARG is much more immersive, collaborative and unscripted...

The idea of bringing futures conversations into the here and now is a compelling idea... More...

Glasshouse Partnership's favourite client, Isaac Mostovicz can seem obscure, even to me (whom Dug Falby once referred to as 'black-holian' !), but there is always a deep truth at the root of what he's communicating.

His Philosophy of Luxury is the latest example. I think it does have a profound truth at the heart of it...

Isaac thinks we need to move beyond 'What-based luxury' making decisions based on the attributes of objects; to 'Why-based luxury' - consciously using luxury to define ourselves.

When you remove all the 'Whats' of luxury - exclusiveness, scarcity, superfluousness, quality etc. More...