KMUK PR: review of the year

KMUK's good friend Dan Ilett has just published his round up of the year's developments at Greenbang, and not being one to pass up the opportunity to rip off someone else's idea, I thought I'd take a brief look back at the past year at KMUK.

At the beginning of 2010, I'd just about got my feet on the ground after returning from maternity leave the previous September, and KMUK was heading for its best financial result ever, an achievement which was confirmed in April and celebrated with bonuses all round.

April saw another UK first with the opening of the Kyocera Technology Suite just off Regent Street in London. The opening ceremony was compered by Dan Ilett, performed by Consul General Sumio Kusaka of the Japanese Embassy, and ably supported by Sir John Madejski. The suite acts as a showcase for Kyocera Mita products and philosophy, and we also offer it free of charge to organisations holding events promoting sustainability. Its proximity to the nation's shopping heartland has also proved popular with those of us with more money than sense.

Product-wise the Kyocera range has continued to strengthen, with new devices launched in all segments from desktop to departmental. The hardware continues to bring in accolades from industry pundits, with BERTL and BLI both lavishing excellent product ratings on us. It's been the company awards that have meant the most, however, and we were more than thrilled to win the Microscope hardware vendor of the year award earlier this year, which we followed up with a Highly Commended in the Vendor of the Year category at the CRN awards in November. For a company that operates solely via the channel, these are the awards we want to be winning.

As well as being a channel-focused company we are, of course, an environmentally-focused company also. We were fortunate to receive significant industry recognition for our contribution this year, picking up the Green IT Magazine company of the year award, the BOSS industry Award for Environmental Manufacturer, and the Sustainable FM award for Sustainable supplier of the Year: Office Products.

July saw the entire company head off to Eynsham Hall in Oxfordshire for Kyocera Culture and Philosophy training. The two-day exercise, which was conducted in either 30+ degree heat or teeming rain, depending on which of the two sessions you attended, saw employees singing nursery rhymes to children in playgrounds, hacking through undergrowth, and creating "pavement art". We all learnt a great deal about our colleagues' strengths and weaknesses, and helped to define the kind of company that KMUK will become as we continue to grow.

In October we suffered a blow, as one of our environmental partners made an extraordinary and unprecendented error of judgement, which left us with a damage limitation exercise to conduct. We learned a lot about crisis management, the power of personal response, and the 24/7 nature of social media. We weren't at the centre of the crisis, but the lessons that we learned, both good and bad, will stand us in good stead as we move forward.

2010 has been another record-breaking year for KMUK. We celebrated with an almighty Christmas knees-up at the Ice Bar in London, which reaffirmed the genuine friendships that exist between most of the staff at KMUK. Many of us have worked together now for the best part of 10 years, with some closer to 20 years' service, and it's great to see that dedication and enthusiasm being shared with new staff members, along with the odd drink or two, of course!

As we head into 2011, we've got some very exciting projects on the go, not least of which is smashing our FY11 masterplan target, and setting the target for FY12 which will drive us towards our aim of doubling the size of the company by 2015. There's plenty of hard work still ahead of us, but we're confident that we can make it happen.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Peaceful and Prosperous New Year.

200 Kyocera/Reading FC footie shirts for South African children

One of our friends at Gartner is involved with the charity "Kits 4 Kids", which is collecting football shirts to give to vulnerable children in South Africa, and asked whether we had any footie shirts left over from our sponsorship of Reading FC. As luck would have it , the lovely Emma Pierce up at the club could lay her hands on 200 of them, and today I took part in a photoshoot with the Chairman (Sir John Madejski) and Royals midfielder Brian Howard to mark the donation of those shirts to Kits 4 Kids. It was freezing on the pitch, so huge thanks to Sir John and Brian for taking part, and to the intrepid photographer from the Reading Post who had already spent two hours in sub-zero temperatures waiting for a crown court judgement to be delivered.

Here's the full story:

Kyocera and Reading Football Club donate 200 shirts to Kits for Kids

Shirts will be given to vulnerable children in South Africa

Monday, 29th November 2010; Reading, UK: Kyocera Mita and Reading Football Club are pleased to announce the donation of 200 KYOCERA-branded football shirts to the charity “Kits for Kids”. The shirts, which are left over from Kyocera’s sponsorship of the club, will be shipped to the Katha Day Centre in Katlahong, Johannesburg, South Africa. Katha supports orphans and vulnerable children in the Township with day care for the pre-school children, after school care for the older ones and practical help for their carers.

Kits for Kids recognises the popularity of football with South African children, particularly in the light of this year’s World Cup tournament, and wants to bring some football-related Christmas cheer to underprivileged children. The organisation has been collecting shirts from around the country to send out to Johannesburg.

Jessica Bishop of Kits for Kids explains further: “Football is tremendously popular in South Africa, and in particular among the children in the Townships. They are keen followers of UK football too. On Fridays children are permitted to wear football shirts to school, and indeed this practice even extended to the workplace during the World Cup in June!”

Tracey Rawling Church, Director of Brand and Reputation at Kyocera Mita (UK) Ltd said: “We’re delighted that the shirts are going to a deserving home. Kyocera’s sponsorship of Reading FC was one of the most enjoyable and valuable things we’ve ever done, so it’s nice to see the spirit of the relationship continue with this donation.”

Royals midfielder Brian Howard added: “From what I saw, young people in South Africa really got behind football and all caught World Cup fever in the summer. So it’s great that we can play our part in helping the sport to develop over there by sending these shirts. Hopefully it will inspire them to kick a ball about themselves and enjoy playing football.”

Kits for Kids is inviting donations of new or used football shirts in sizes child’s age 2 up to adult XL, anybody who is interested in donating their own shirts or collecting at their office, school, church or club can find more details at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Kits-for-Kids/120253084700023

changes to CRC energy efficiency scheme sneaked out during spending review

The workings of the CRC Energy Efficiency scheme were quietly revised yesterday during the spending review. Now, instead of offering "cashback" to organisations that are leading the league tables in energy reduction, the scheme will effectively be a flat taxation system on carbon emissions. The revenue raised will contribute about £1bn to the enormous gaping hole in public finances, and there's no doubt it's needed, but it has changed a scheme designed to reward those prepared to go the extra mile with one where it's more likely that the minimum will be done.

Carbon emissions will simply become a cost of business, to be absorbed like other business costs. And what costs? PwC has calculated that for business with an energy bill of £1m. the loss of incentives will increase costs by around £76,000 per year, increasing to £114,000 per year by 2015.

Yet more SOBER-ing news. (How thrilled was Mervyn King to have come up with that one?)

Edited to add: Chris Huhne defends the change via Businessgreen.com

Awards galore!

On to happier and less controversial things!

We had a real purple patch last Thursday when we picked up not only the Document Manager Award for printer product of the year but also the BOSS federation award for Environmental manufacturer of the year. What a great result!

I was at the Document Manager awards and we were thoroughly entertained by comedian Adam Bloom, and almost as thoroughly entertained on the train back to Reading by an extraordinarily inebriated Australian from Ericsson who had been wildly celebrating the end of a major project at the Tate Modern with what sounded like the entire company.

I generally like awards ceremonies (especially when we win of course), but there's generally pretty good food, and at least a B-list comedian - think Mock the Week sort of standard. I don't tend to get quite as sozzled these days as I used to back in my heady youth, although I'm always up for a party. The Green IT magazine awards will take some topping though - we ended up at the barracks of the Grenadier Guards next to Buckingham Palace wielding dress swords at 2 a.m. Oddly enough I was wearing the same dress at the DM awards last Thursday, maybe it's a lucky dress...

We're shortlisted for CRN vendor of the Year and now also Thames Valley Business of the Year - both of which are on 18th November, so fingers crossed for another great double!

On the subject of viral videos

This blog has been quiet for a little while. One of the reasons for this is to do with an online video that was released by 10:10.

Regarding that I can only say the following at this time:

Kyocera Mita has supported the 10:10 campaign because we share its ambition to reduce carbon emissions. However, we don't support the "No Pressure" video and are dismayed by any suggestion that we might have been involved in its production; in fact we had no knowledge of its content until it appeared online. We consider that 10:10 made a serious error of judgement in tis choice of creative approach, which is totally at odds with the inclusive and positive attitude that has been the hallmark of its other activities. 10:10 has acknowledged its mistake, withdrawn the video and issued an apology. We have been meeting with 10:10 to seek assurances about its motivation and future creative approach and are evaluating our relationship with the organisation.

Presentation preferences

Today was the BIG DAY of the CRN Awards presentation. Preparing for the presentation was quite a challenge due to the extreme diary congestion of the two presenters. Basically, we made the CRN shortlist because of our great sales figures and status as a growing company with 100% channel model, but the side-effect of all this success is that the team is operating right at the edge of its resources. Getting Charlotte and Nigel in the same room for more than ten minutes proved tricky.

In order to make things as simple as possible given the limited time we had, I decided to draft a script for the presentation, covering the key areas. This gels very much with my preferred presenting approach. I like to know exactly what I'm going to say right down to the word, and then I tend to embellish and ad lib on the actual day, which I'm comfortable doing as I'm so familiar with the content. This is not the right approach for everyone.

Nigel, our director of channel marketing and product management, is an experienced and accomplished presenter, but he HATES to rehearse. Most of his presentations are drafted immediately before they are delivered, and are all the better for it. In this situation, however, he was doing a "double-act" with Charlotte, so rehearsal was necessary.

The first run-thorugh did not go smoothly. Charlotte had done quite a lot of preparation over the weekend and adapted the content into her own style. However, it was clear that Nigel was derailed by attempting to adapt my phraseology into his own presenting style. I was kicking myself, as it was clear that Nigel needed to do it his own way.

We decided to tear up the script, and Nigel came back an hour later with his notes in order, and suddenly the whole show began to come together. By the final run through, both Nigel and Charlotte were comfortably working their content and ready to perform.

It was a useful lesson for me. I'd have been better simply giving Nigel and Charlotte headlines that they needed to cover, and letting them get on with it. I'd thought it was helpful to have a scripted basis for the presentation, but it didn't work for them.

The actual presentation at the Mad Stad went well. The judges were sitting in a hospitality box that conveniently overlooked our stadium branding, and they commented on it before the presentation, so at least we know they noticed! The other shortlised companies' representatives were almost uniformly male, reflecting the bias of the industry, so at least we had sexual equality on our side! No one was giving anything away in the "green room" where I sat and guarded Charlotte's handbag while she and Nigel did their stuff behind closed doors.

All we can do now is wait until the awards ceremony on the 18th November to see whether we've managed to rise above some extremely stiff competition.

Work/life balance

Today has been one of those days where the only food you get is that which you can scavenge from your colleagues (one-and-a-half cheese scones, a clementine and some chocolates brought back from Switzerland -result!) and you've got so many major projects to get on with that you're paralysed by indecision over which to start first.

This week I'm grappling with "big" things, that can't be dashed off on a wing and a prayer:

Writing presentations
Changing our media database (potentially)
Embarking on a "proper" social media strategy
Drafting a bylined article

Plus the usual gamut of internal and external meetings - "the practical alternative to work".

That covers the day job, which incidentally I do four days per week. The other three days are taken up by my role as wife and mother, and it works pretty well most of the time. On those occasions, such as today, when appointments relating to my daughters occur during work time, I'm always very grateful for Kyocera's flexible approach to working parents, which enabled me to get to my daughter's year group meeting on time.

Shortlisted #2!

We've been shortlisted for the CRN awards Vendor of the Year category! To say we're pleased is a bit of an understatement! Up against Oracle, IBM, Citrix and Netapps, so it's a pretty tough shortlist. Now to focus on creating a killer presentation for the live judging phase at the Mad Stad in a couple of weeks.

The shortlist in full

Shortlisted!

Awards are great to win, and the whole company gets a buzz out of it, but drafting and submitting awards entries is a time-consuming process, so it's always really gratifying when you get to the shortlist stage. I've just heard that we've been shortlisted in the "Environment" category of the BOSS federation awards, which is great news.

Here's the shortlist

Of course another plus of being shortlisted is the opportunity to attend the glitzy awards ceremony and hopefully celebrate a win on the night.

I'm waiting to hear about the CRN awards shortlist today, and keeping everything crossed!

Monday morning amusement

Monday mornings can be a challenge at the best of times. But first-day-back-at-school-after-eight-and-a-half-weeks-off Monday monings...yuck! So how refreshing to find a couple of comic gems floating around my inbox.

The real genius of comedy is often apparent when it reflects the on the nature of reality, so Tim Phillips' tongue-in-cheek look at Conference Call Etiquette was bang on the money.

Less of a chortle but more of a wry recognition was engendered by Schwartz Communications Press Release Buzzword Bingo - must admit I'm guilty of a few of these. As mentioned in my previous post, it can be hard to think of new ways to say things, but it's true that PR is over-fond of the "corporate superlative".

Both of these gems came to me courtesy of the PR Daily Europe news feed, which has recently started landing in my in-box. So far I'm a fan.

We're waiting on two awards shortlist announcements this week - the BOSS federation awards and the industry Oscars - the CRN awards. Fingers crossed!

The language of environmentalism

I've just been reading a BBC article about Dame Ellen Macarthur's new education foundation focusing on sustainability. The thought process which has driven her to this venture is a compelling one, based on her experiences living with finite resources on her round-the-world record-breaking challenges. What struck me though, is her lack of enthusiasm for the "terminology of green", as it is something with which I can sympathise.

I generate a LOT of words on the "green" topic, and some of the words I can type the fastest are: sustainable; sustainbility; green; environmental; simply due to the frequency with with I have to use them. Yet I get the feeling that these words are an immediate turn-off for quite a lot of people. Sick of feeling bullied by the green lobbying group, you can almost see the eye-roll when consumers are confronted by green evangelism from corporations.
Indeed, the backlash against the profusion of environmental claims in marketing and advertising leads to accusations of greenwashing - which are in many cases well-founded - and the attendant cynicism does nothing to advance the environmental cause going forward.

Dame Ellen has hit upon something quite key, and demonstrated an innate understanding of the human condition, when she says:
"What does 'green' mean? It's not about 'green' or 'the environment'. you could argue its how we maintain a good quality of life. It's about how we're going to prosper in the future when we're so dependant on something that won't be around forever."

Like it or not, humans are selfish beings - it's probably been the key to our survival for much of our evolution - so appealing to this self-interest should be more fruitful than haranguing attempts to drive action through some sort of sense of mass guilt. Dame Ellen's "enlightened self-interest" approach seems to me to be more likely to succeed.

So perhaps we need to shift our focus? Start creating a positive dialogue built around the benefits for our own lives of managing our resources more effectively. It can work in business, where companies are focusing on reducing costs and saving jobs by cutting energy use and making their businesses leaner and more resource efficient. The 'green' benefits are a welcome side-effect...

Coming up with a whole new lexicon for this approach, however, is not something I'll get to this morning, so I'll be tagging this post "green", "environment", "sustainability".

La belle France

Just returned from a lovely week in a gite near Cognac. Much sampling of the local fare carried out, with the highlight being the discovery of a truly drinkable Rose costing just €1,29 per bottle - bargain. The joy of having our car with us meant I could literally fill my boot with it before we left. The Remy-Martin distillery made for an excellent visit, and the seaside at Fouras was marvellous.

We also took in the "pointless" but very cute donkeys at the local "asinerie" - the Baudet du Poitou. No good for riding or working apparently and kept purely to be bred with the local horse breed to make useful mules - except that no one uses mules any more. Fortunately for the Baudet du Poitou the French are very hot on preserving their cultural heritage, so this state-run farm is devoted to preserving the breed.

Back to earth with a bump this week. Sadly for KMUK we're saying goodbye to our events manager Cassie King today. She's departing for pastures new courtesy of Devere venues - we'll miss you Cassie!

Social ego-massaging

This post from the PC PRO newsletter has got me thinking this morning...

In short, Google's Eric Schmidt reckons today's teens will one day be so embarrassed or compromised by the TMI they've shared on facebook and twitter that they'll want to switch identities to prevent prospective employees from judging them on past indiscretions. This may be depressingly likely given the unguarded nature of many status updates, but it got me thinking about whether the opposite could also be true? With a little collusion from one's friends it might be possible to create a "perfect" alter ego on the web, highlighting skills and talents that could stand you in good stead for that plum role. Maybe we'll see a new age of personal marketing:

WALL
Amy: THNX for listening the other day, your incisive insight and constructive advice really helped me solve the problem...

or maybe not!

Then again, when you consider the corporate love-in that is LinkedIn, maybe we're already there.

Birthdays and new joiners

Today it's Steve's birthday. He announced the availability of the traditional office birthday cakes thusly:

If I was a tree
I'd have more rings than Saturn
I'll add another today
And Yep, my spirits are flattened
I've been shopping early
Saw a girl about pastries
She said she was a miss
I thought: "Right in both senses."
I've come back with cakes, biscuits and more.
Holy Sh*t, they're worth about a million on the weight watchers score
But what's the point of being healthy, of living by the rules?
....'cos healthy people get run over by crack heads in hot-rods
....or live long enough to lose their marbles and continence
....sorry, I seem to have forgotten to make those lines scan...


A truly Vogon effort by Steve - only the third worst poetry in the universe! Happy birthday old chum.

Also, today we're joined by Lucy, who will be taking on the events role from Cassie. So far we have discovered that Lucy lives in Finchampstead and likes Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. welcome to the team!

Tech haves and have nots...

My ITPRO daily newsletter has just arrived, and pointed me in the direction of this analysis piece on the haves and have nots of the technology world by the very insightful Eric Doyle.

Eric manages to compare the communication facilities available to parts of rural India with the dreaded connectivity blackspots that exist in rural UK without coming over as trite, which is an achievement in itself. He makes the very valid point that those in the UK who don't have access to broadband facilities or even mobile phone coverage are significantly digitally and societally disadvantaged compared with those of us living in more connected towns and cities. I'll leave you read the article to get the point that Eric makes far better than I, but it is certainly food for thought.

Having spent a week in North Yorkshire at the start of July, in an area with practically zero phone coverage, I felt the minor inconvenience of being unable to feed my web-addictions of facebook and twitter, but we were rarely truly troubled. We were fortunate in that no emergencies arose while we were in remote areas. But although I didn't get a mobile phone until I was 21, and didn't use a PC until I was 20, it's already hard for me to imagine life before I could access the benefits of the web at a decent speed. Not being able to do so would put my lifestyle back 12 years.

It's fair enough if you live in a remote rural area because you want to be disconnected, but we shouldn't be seeing the development of a two-speed society for those who happen to live beyond the reach of a broadband connection.

***
In other news, today the PR dept has mostly been drafting awards press releases thanks to the lovely people at www.bertl.com and www.buyerslab.com .

Plus, I'm thinking of changing our media database supplier...

And I've been reviewing some video content...

KMUK PR blog

I'm starting this blog to document the life and times of the PR/Marketing dept at KYOCERA MITA in Reading, UK. As it's my blog it'll be my personal take on what's going on and as such isn't an "official" statement from Kyocera. Maybe I should get a special hat to wear for when I am making official Kyocera statements...

So, to kick things off, today I have mostly been writing an entry for the Sustainable FM awards and loading stuff onto our corporate website.

Tomorrow the boss is taking part in a round table organised by the Carbon Trust on the topic of the switch to the low carbon economy. I'll be busy trying to sort things out in advance of my holiday to France next week.

Today my pedantry has been exercised by the use of the word "pre-prepared" in a draft press release which I was reviewing. Can something be "pre-prepared?" Surely prepared already implies that the thing is ready in advance? And on that truly tedious note I shall sign off for the evening!