Tag Archives: CMMA

Selling Storytelling

03 Thursday Dec 2015

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Once upon a time, storytelling started “trending.” We now hear about it frequently from many perspectives. And with good reason: people love stories. We watch them, we listen to them, we read them, and we tell them. They work for us as entertainment and as a way to communicate information. And of course, this holds true in the business world. Facts are necessary in making a decision or building a case for change, but stories bring the facts to life.

McDonald’s is known for quantifying and measuring. When our department made the case for a single, global digital asset management system we had our research, numbers and facts ready. When we made our pitch, however, we told stories of teams of people searching for a single asset, of existing media being recreated and of the same image being stored in dozens of locations. Our leaders know how to scale. The truth of those stories combined with our data helped them understand the scope of the opportunity and the project was approved.

Selling the idea of using stories isn’t hard but, telling those stories can be. A story requires focus while clients often have volumes of material they want to include in the project. Too many facts and details get in the way of a good story but, clients often insist on what they want. How can we get clients to adopt an effective, storytelling approach?

I have found that one way to manage clients through this process is to give them what they want right at the start. Write a treatment or a synopsis or draw up a sketch that exactly reflects their wishes. Then work up the same thing for the version that you recommend. Sit with your clients and take them through their version. Don’t “pump” it or “sell” it, just tell it. Sometimes this step is enough to convince clients that their version is a poor idea. This experience can open the door to you presenting your second version.

Either way, then say that you’ve been thinking about their objectives and their audience, and you’ve come up with another version. “Would you like to hear it?” I’ve never had a client say “no.” Pitch your idea and make it come alive. Use the power of the story to do the work. The engagement, clarity, and focus of your version will be apparent and can be easily approved.

Frequently, your clients will then spend too much time thinking of ways to add back in most of their previous information, which creates another client management item for you to handle.

I look forward to hearing your story of how you succeeded with that.

Article contributed by Jeff Boarini, CMMA Board Member

Is It Time to Caption Everything?

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

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One of the “Fast Track Solutions” topics at the recent CMMA National Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico was titled “Captioning Conundrum”. Working in smaller groups provided an opportunity for the media managers in attendance to share how each of us is approaching (or avoiding) the issue of captioning the videos we produce.

The American with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunities for persons with disabilities in employment, government services and facilities access. But there’s still a lot of gray area surrounding the concept of “reasonable accommodation” for the hearing-impaired. However, technology is making it easier and faster to provide captions than in the past, which moves the needle on “reasonable accommodation” closer to the “always caption” side of the argument.

At Q Center, we recently contracted a vendor to provide CART services to a hearing-impaired guest during a two-day event. We sent audio from the sessions through a phone bridge, and a CART transcriber (presumably working from home in their pajamas) turned the audio into text in real time. Our guest was able to view the text on his smartphone or tablet, which allowed him to participate in the meeting in a more meaningful way. It was surprisingly easy to do, and could have easily been expanded to additional guests or even projected on the screen for everyone in the room.

Which highlights an often-overlooked benefit of captioning: it not only allows hearing-impaired people to participate, but it also is very helpful for those who are not native speakers of the language. Non-native speakers often can understand language much better when they see it written than when they hear it, particularly if the person speaking has an accent (doesn’t everyone?). Years ago, we were captioning English language videos in English for just this reason – it can be a useful tool for improving the language skills of the viewers, rather than simply providing the text in their native tongue.

But at the conference, I learned about a potential benefit of captioning that I’d never considered before — the value of captions as metadata. Since the caption files that accompany the video contain the full transcript of the video as well as time signatures, they give you the potential to make videos searchable by text without creating a complex taxonomy of keywords and search terms. In theory, a digital asset management system or your corporate website could allow users to enter specific phrases and quickly pull up not only the video files that contain those phrases but the exact location in each file as well. YouTube is already including the caption files in their search criteria, which helps with search engine optimization. My question is, is anyone using this data within your corporate intranet? If so, I’d love to hear your story.

Article contributed by Thomas Densmore, CMMA Board of Directors

A CMMA Leader Requirement: Rely on Your Rookie Smarts!

21 Friday Aug 2015

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While attending a recent leadership conference, I was peppered with numerous helpful and inspiring leadership messages. These were all good, and for the most part, satisfying. I love this stuff, and the more leadership ideas, the better! Thinking back on the two-day conference, I realized that I had heard versions of these subjects before; these were “refresher” lessons in leadership development. I saw some of the brightest minds on the leadership spectrum, and one message delivered by author and consultant, Liz Wiseman, stood out from the others: Apply the skills you came into your career with in everyday interactions, decisions, planning and thinking – apply your “Rookie Smarts”.

Rookie Smarts is a concept of going back to the basics that launched our careers and our passion for learning and leading. The idea is to capture that youthful energy and innovative spirit we all had when we began our careers. Use that energy again to foster a culture of learning and mentoring the workforce that’s creeping up behind us…the future leaders, and future members of CMMA.

Admit it. We’ve seen them; the rookies in our organization who think they know everything about anything, and they aren’t afraid to let you know. Sometimes these rookies fall flat and learn lessons the hard way. These rookies also move quickly through organizations with their new ideas, new energy and relevant skills for today’s workforce, and find success. I’m attracted to the concept of Rookie Smarts, and believe that as CMMA members, and leaders within our own organizations, we have an obligation to continually canvas the talent landscape for those rarest of rare jewels: future leaders with vast potential. Face it; many of us will be hanging up the business suit for a canoe paddle in the next ten years (more or less), and it should be incumbent upon each of us to chart a course for developing these new leaders in our organizations. We were the rookies at one point in our career, and if we look back to the traits we employed to bring us to where we are today, just think how we can inspire the rookies of this day. Why should we look back?

Wiseman says that in a rapidly changing world, experience can be a curse. Careers can stall, innovation pauses or stops and strategies grow tired and stale. The concept of being new, naïve and clueless as being an asset is a hard one to grasp; however, I see this as the perpetual learner. This is the experienced leader who is always looking for the new twist to solving an age-old problem (analog to digital, anyone?).

So, take this advice, and invest in your past success, and embrace being a rookie again. Love learning, and embrace mentoring. And by the way, “Rookie Smarts” is also Wiseman’s new book. Embrace the thinking and behavior of that young, energetic person you were, and ponder hanging up that canoe paddle for a few more years. You’re just getting started!

Article contributed by Warren Harmon, CMMA Board Member

Lead Yourself

10 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Communications, Leadership, Management, Media, Upcoming Events

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Where did the summer slowdown go? You know, that little ebb in the tide of work demands? It used to happen every July and August. Yeah, that one.

I just did my July metrics report and our business requests and output increased in July, and it started me thinking. Is my team getting the rest and recharge time that they need? They take their vacation time (when I give them the stink eye), but are they really doing anything else to manage the stress that comes with additional demands?

CMMA has a great conference coming up in Albuquerque, NM in October, and one of the many things we’re going to learn about and experience is how mindfulness and managing stress can boost morale, productivity and engagement in your team. Stay with me, I’m not going all “woo-woo” on you, I promise. If Ariana Huffington can take a nap every day in her office, surely you can take a few minutes in your office to close your eyes and let some things go.

At Wells Fargo, leaders are expected to “Lead Yourself, Lead the Team, Lead the Business”. Notice that “Lead Yourself” is first. That’s because leadership begins with you, whether you manage people or not. Part of that is managing your own thoughts, emotions and actions. Managing stress and your personal response to it in a mindful and deliberate way helps you build better relationships and strengthens your ability to influence outcomes and manage change in a positive manner. Ahhh yes; some real tools to help you manage the challenges of leadership. That’s what CMMA is all about.

For Communication Media Managers, we have an added budget stress reliever: if you attend the CMMA Fall Conference and love the experience, you get 50% off your membership fee if you join within 30 days of the conference.

Take a moment and just breathe…

This article is contributed by Patty Perkins, CMMA Board Member

Hanging with “My People”

06 Wednesday May 2015

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I just got back to the office after attending CMMA’s Spring Development Conference at Marriott’s World Headquarters outside of Washington D.C. It was my last conference as CMMA President, and in the couple days since then, I have been in a reflective mood about my tenure in that role – and about CMMA in general.

Bottom line, it’s been a great ride as President and with CMMA. But why exactly?

I’ve been an active member for over 9 years. For me, to put it simply, the essence of CMMA is to learn and share. Looking at the conferences we put on the last couple years, the themes were respectively, “The Innovation Conference,” “Communicating in a Digital World,” “From Hollywood to Topeka: Differentiating our Value through Story and Craft” and “Become a Center of Excellence.” My hope is that the events not only gave us an opportunity to stretch our thinking (maybe even disrupt our thinking) and deepen our knowledge, but also to share and learn from each other’s experiences so that we would be that much more savvy going back to the office.

At its heart, peer to peer learning is arguably the most compelling benefit of CMMA membership. In all the busyness of the D.C. event there were a couple of moments where I took a step back and thought about who I was in the room with, thinking to myself, “These are my people! I’m in a room hanging with my counterparts from Bank of America! Mayo Clinic! Kate Spade! Sandia National Laboratories!” Those guys handle nuclear weapons! What an eclectic bunch!” (Feel free to name any other combination of companies or organizations that attend our meetings).

It’s awesome knowing these folks, all of their experiences and know-how are accessible: across the table from me at breakfast, in the bus on the way to the President’s Dinner, just an email or phone call away. In D.C. I certainly took advantage and engaged with them on a number of topics.

What’s also awesome is that these relationships turn into lasting friendships and can blossom in a myriad of ways as we journey through our careers together. The challenges, the opportunities, the highs and lows. And the same dynamic happens with our Partners too.

I can’t think of any other organization that is so elegant in its simplicity. Professionals getting together, learning, sharing. That’s CMMA.

This article was contributed by Chris Barry, CMMA Board of Directors

Standards of Quality

06 Friday Mar 2015

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Is your team operating under a well-articulated vision, with an expectation that the quality of work will always be at a certain level – or are they simply responding to customer requests and doing what they think makes sense? A simple but succinct vision for the standard of quality is at the forefront of every project my team produces. This started years ago shortly after my introduction to the business.

My first job as a media manager was at a large pharma company.  After getting my new assignment I decided that in order for my team to support our customers I needed to know everything there was to know about big pharma. It didn’t take long to realize that the pharmaceutical industry was extremely complex and not something this director of Creative Services was going to have to learn in short order. As I looked at our various buckets of work – Training and Development, Marketing, Executive Communications, Public Relations, Research – I saw a consistency in the stakeholders in each of those areas. That thread was a highly educated, highly experienced, passionate workforce. And that’s where I found my answer. I realized, or rationalized perhaps, that I didn’t need to know their business at all. Rather, my team and I would commit to them that we would be as good at what we did as they were at what they did. After all, they own the content; we simply help them communicate it. This thought process has served me and my teams well over the years and through various assignments.

In my current role at Mayo Clinic, this philosophy means that my team doesn’t need to know how to perform open heart surgery in order to support a cardiac surgeon – thankfully. Rather, our commitment to each physician, administrator and public relations professional we support is that we will be as good at our jobs as they are at theirs. It’s really that simple.

Mayo Clinic was recently named the Best Hospital in the Nation for 2014-2015 by US News and World Report. If our hospital is the best, then it follows that our Media Support Services department has to be the best as well. Luckily, one of our guiding principles in Media Support Services in Florida is continuous improvement. Yes, our standards are very high at Mayo Clinic as I’m sure yours are where you work.

Bottom line, it’s critical to have a commitment to quality, regardless of your role or your clientele. If you don’t have an articulated standard of quality, I recommend you establish one, shout it at the top of your lungs and review your teams’ work on a regular basis to make sure it meets the high standards of your customers, the company you support and your personal brand as a leader.

Article contributed by Clifton D. Brewer, CMMA Board Member

When Videoconferencing Gets Personal

26 Monday Jan 2015

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It’s been a sheer pleasure to watch videoconferencing grow up and get personal all at the same time. In just a handful of years we’ve gone from fuzzy analog images over phone lines to razor-sharp content flying over the Internet. We’ve gone from viewing on dull oversized tube TV’s, to thin bright HD monitors in a conference room…and in my hand.

It’s a dream come true to be able to join a video-based conference using many different tools; a codec in a dedicated meeting room, my PC in the office, or my tablet or phone from anywhere. It allows me to tell my story with passion or collaborate with others valuable to my cause. That’s where it gets personal. It’s become a tool that allows individuals to reach into an organization or for the organization to reach out to the individual.

There are a number of excellent tools currently available. I love watching the healthy and burgeoning competition amongst providers. I eagerly await the creation of new providers and innovative software. I can’t imagine corporate life without a personal conferencing tool. But what will it take for companies to fully embrace this burgeoning technology?

Bandwidth: We must have multiple megabytes, both up and down, wired and wireless. It has to be available everywhere whether it’s work, home and between the two. Think ubiquity.

Security: We must have confidence-inspiring security solutions for IT departments. Executives have to know that their conversations are secure. No one wants to be responsible for the leak of key information.

IT Integration: We must have apps and software that will be accepted by IT and the many requirements they have. The tools must play well with various operating systems, hardware, and software that already exist inside the enterprise.

Perception: Key stakeholders in an organization need to acknowledge that personal conferencing is a serious tool for business. It isn’t simply a novelty used to allow geographically distant grandparents to see their grandkids.

Corporate Climate: People at all levels of the organization must WANT to be available. They need to actively promote their ability to connect with video, audio, and data sharing. They need to set boundaries and timeframes of availability. This could be a big shift of reality for some people and their businesses.

Evolution: Continued change and improvement in this communication segment for business is inevitable. Companies continue to tighten travel budgets. Reporting structures span continents. People need to be “present” more than ever. Personal conferencing will become a strategic advantage to those who chose to embrace it.

I think that CMMA members are uniquely positioned in their respective organizations to be leaders in this area. Who is going to investigate the options and facilitate the demos? Someone has to organize the effort and champion the cause. I suggest that you pick up the banner or throw down the gauntlet….sooner than later.

Article Contributed by Roger Hansen, CMMA Board of Directors