Vol.32 – 7 Requirements to Deliver Consistent Message Online & Offline

The previous article Vol.31: 10 Dos and Don'ts to Deliver Consistent Message Online & Offline was about integrating contents developed with advertising to deliver consistent message by integrating each media while maximizing effectiveness of each media for online and offline synergy.

This article presents requirements to deliver consistent message online and offline, i.e. achieving what have been discussed in the last 7 articles from Vol.25 through Vol.31. They are, in essence, the same as developing and executing any kind of strategy; however, there are a few points that are specific to this topic.

1. Big picture including clear objective/vision/goal and strategy

Needless to say, objective, vision and goal are required, and then comprehensive strategy of online and offline synergy, filling the gap between the vision/goal and current circumstance, needs to be developed.

Objective needs to be clear and vision needs to be something that can be visualized and make members feel “wow” and energized. Goal needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and tangible.

Current circumstance including external and internal environment, past performance and feedback from the market (customer, audience) and all other stakeholders needs to be analyzed (quantitative and qualitative) to identify the problems, together with risk analysis. Then prioritize focuses (problems to tackle/solve), which means strategy. This will be made into action plan in execution.

Benchmarking and learning from best practices of other companies/industries are often helpful for breakthrough, out-of-the box thinking.

Some people may say that vision and strategy comes first and others may say that people (core team) comes first. As the concept of “getting the right people to get on the bus then decide where to go” from the book Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t (Collins, 2001), it is usually better to have the core team first and let them develop strategy led by an individual responsible and accountable for the task. This is because it means fair process and team building, to foster commitment and ownership of the core team members. It is only in an emergency when strategy development and implementation needs to be done 1oo% top down that people comes after.

2. Buy-in from the top and senior management

Buy-in from the top and senior management is required for successful implementation of the strategy. Without buy-in. strong leadership and commitment from top and senior management will not be available, meaning organization (employees/members) cannot be navigated to achieve the goal/mission. Also, necessary resources cannot be obtained.

3. An appropriate individual responsible/accountable for the assignment

Leadership and management skills/competencies, and background covering the overall realm (assignment) are the requirements of the individual responsible and accountable for the assignment. He/she does not necessarily have knowledge and expertise in all detailed aspects of the assignment (or rather, people with such knowledge and expertise are usually difficult to find).

If there is a particular issue that needs to be strengthened (e.g. web marketing needs to be focused, building organization is the weakest, processes needs to be reviewed and simplified, building networks with external stakeholder is vital), an individual who is strong in that particular issue is highly desired.

4. No traditional barriers of functions etc.

Delivering consistent message by integrating online and offline media in web 2.0 world cannot be fulfilled in the traditional framework. PR/communication and marketing needs to be converged as mentioned in Vol.7: The New Rules of Marketing, PR and IR in Web 2.0 Online World. Marketing/communication of corporate and product also needs to be converged and integrated. Moreover, external and internal communication needs to be integrated and aligned.

If all mentioned are converged and integrated, all media and communication tools, whether online or offline, would naturally be integrated with optimization.

This is usually more difficult to achieve in a big organization where division of labour needs to be adopted. Possible solutions include cross-function committee, with defined processes and systems in which all related functions are involved.

5. Resources including acquisition/allocation/management with optimization

Resources include budget, manpower (people and organization), infrastructure (hard such as equipment and soft such as software and systems) and information. These resources can be obtained internally and externally; the latter can be acquisition (e.g. external hiring, purchasing infrastructure) and/or lease and alliance.

Resources needs to be allocated with optimization, and appropriately managed with regular monitoring. This is a big challenge when traditional functional barriers are abolished and the individual appointed for the task needs to be political savvy to overcome this. Resource allocation needs to be flexibility changed based on regular monitoring and changes in environment/circumstances.

It is highly desired that people are diverse in terms of skill, competencies and expertise because the task encompasses wide a range of scope meaning diverse skill set and competencies in total are required to accomplish the task. This has much overlap with the next requirement.

6. Knowledge and knowhow necessary to leverage characteristics of each media

Needless to say, knowledge and knowhow of each online and offline media/communication channel are vital as a team/committee. Therefore, necessary skills and competencies, both soft and hard, first needs to be defined, from which requirements of team/committee members are identified, to be assigned.

Knowledge and knowhow often comes from external sources, such as consultants and agencies, online and offline training/education including lectures and seminars, and information in all possible channels and format (publications and online article to name a few).

Having said that, it is through experience that organization and individuals acquire knowledge and knowhow the most. For this reason, assigning team/committee members needs to be done from people development perspective as well as based on their current skills and competencies. This often means succession planning for key roles and positions, which requires defining skills and competencies that becomes necessary in the future although they may not be necessary today.

System that enables continuous obtaining of new knowledge and knowhow is inevitable to keep up with the changing environment and evolution of each media. This is prominent for web/Internet hence the word “dog year”.

7. Change management for right mindset of all individuals

All points mentioned above can only be achieved only with change in mindset and behaviours of all individuals of all levels in the organization. This often means cultural change which requires change management.

This is usually time consuming but needs to be fulfilled with persistence by consistent delivery of message especially to internal stakeholders, actions and behaviours of the management, and celebrating quick wins to gain momentum, all aligned.