On video at Best Buy
You may remember I spoke at MarcusEvans’ big 5th Annual Internal Branding & Employee Engagement Conference in February in Miami. After my talk fellow attendee and SmartBlog writer Robert Jones said he wanted to do a quick follow up interview on the videos I showed to learn about Best Buy’s overall use of moving pictures in employee communications.
We talked, he wrote, and here’s the finished product: How videos sell values at Best Buy.
I’m not our resident video expert – far, far, farrrrr from it, in fact – but we were able to chat about some specific ways Best Buy has successfully used video to reach its employees and create a level of esprit de corps.
Be sure to check out the comments.
Best Buy goes to the Super Bowl!
The 2011 Super Bowl game between the champion Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers marked our favorite yellow tag retailer’s first-ever appearance among iconic, big-name brands on the world’s biggest advertising stage.
Feedback from viewers and reviewers has been generally positive. TiVo’s Top 10 Ad List rates the Best Buy spot the second most engaging (think: rewatched) among this year’s commercials, but it didn’t score so well with the USAToday Admeter.
Check out the 30-second Super Bowl spot, the 60-second Internet ad and treat yourself to Ozzy’s outtakes. Then leave a comment -- what do you think?
30-second spot
60-second spot
Outtakes
Bonus spot -- What made Ozzy and the Beebs such a good matchup? Take a look (and don’t get all offended) …
Mashup!
Updated March 12. We were shooting to Mashup this week, but we’ve postponed the big event until April 26-29.
What’s a mashup? It’s when two or more works or ideas come together to form something new and dynamic.
- Like this! (only better)
- Or this! (better still).
A Best Buy Mashup … well, that’s something a little bit different based on the same general concept of bringing things (hint: people) together.
Stay tuned.
Excuse me … Did you just Google me?
10/1 UPDATE: Both open positions have now closed. We’ll be contacting candidates for interviews soon. In case you’re interested, there are two open Best Buy communications jobs posted on the company’s careers page and on IABC’s Job Centre. I know of a few people who have tracked me down via LinkedIn or by “Googling” me – and that led them here to learn more about the jobs and/or the hiring manager (c’est moi), so I figured maybe I should offer my visitors (presumably, you) a little help when they show up.
First, the job listings. I should mention that unfortunately, we are not offering relocation with either position. However, the salaries are pretty darn good, and the cost of living in these parts can be quite manageable, so come to Minnesota!
Read on …
Employee communications heirarchy
A few of us here at the old Best Buy put our heads together a while back and came up with an employee communications heirarchy along the lines of what Abraham Maslow did in his 1943 Theory of Human Motivation. You know Maslow’s Hierarchy, which plots people’s needs on a continuum beginning with food, water and air at the bottom, and moving up through safety, belonging and self-esteem to self-actualization (vitality, creativity and meaningfulness) at the very top. When one need is fulfilled, it no longer motivates and the next need takes its place.
We applied the concept behind Maslow’s work to organizational communications, and what employees need from the companies for which they work. The bulk of our effort was aimed at answering the question, “What do our employees need from us (as a corporate communications function)?” and evaluating our work to see how well (or not) we align – structurally and strategically – to our audiences’ needs and wants. Secondarily, it was instructive to really see that responsibility for the most foundational aspects of our employees’ communication needs fall outside our purview.
Here’s what we came up with:
If not today, when … ?
Ask anyone. I’m a broken record for aligning our corporate brand and strategy messaging at Best Buy – for trying to get communications, HR, marketing and everyone else who communicates brand and/or strategic intent to align around a single message (and while I’ve proposed messages, I’m not married to mine; I’m married to the notion that we need to have one and only one).
While some folks are no doubt sick of listening to me …
- Everyone I talk to agrees we’re misaligned and have many inconsistent, competing messages.
- Everyone I talk to agrees there’s incredible value in alignment.
- Everyone I talk to says it’s work we need to do.
- Everyone I talk to acknowledges we’re not very good at it.
BUT …
- Everyone I talk to says it’s difficult, counter-cultural work here at Best Buy. That said, we all nod knowingly, go back to our cubes and do the same old things – because while alignment on a single, clear compelling message is a good idea, it’s too tough to tackle. The people doing the messaging are going to protect their turf and won’t “play ball” because they don’t have to. So why bother?
Last year, we launched a “brand coalition” and invited various owners of brand-related communicators to come together to hash out issues, draft a single story and align our efforts. Passive aggressive. Disinterest. Fizzle. Crash. Burn. This company has always rewarded those who “do.” Doing thoughtfully hasn’t been a necessary piece of the equation.
The thing is, message misalignment makes it difficult to achieve our strategic goals; wastes the money spent to support competing, overlapping initiatives (in an environment where we’re constantly challenged to reduce SG&A expenses); and frustrates the heck out of customers and employees who haven’t already tuned us out.
So my questions are these:
- If we agree it’s a good idea, why not just do it?
- If we agree that we should do it, why not start now?
- If not now, when?
Let’s Connect!
timpconnelly 2011 | Rochester and Richfield, Minn. | webmaster@timpconnelly.com
