Mr. Paul Boag's starting point depicts Web Teams in large organizations as being depressed and miserable.

So true

So cuuuuute.

To be perceived as experts, we have to act as experts.

1. Nothing is free, not even your internal Web Team
   So far you are probably perceived as a cost. Establish values in the use of individuals by applying internal charging.
   Associate a price to your work – even if the price is not charged. That way the client (who, in Mr Boag's view, is the internal user) is held responsible for the work undertaken.
   If something you do is going to cost amount X then the clients should think about their return of investment. Use metrics, such as cost by visitor, to demonstrate the quality or the flaws of a requested project. 
    
2. Be enthusiastic and never say no
   Web-people are often grumpy. I know, I am one of them. The reason Mr. Boag gets work (and is a good speaker all the same) is because he sounds over-excited. There is always something exciting in every projects, even in the most boring ones.
   This is also why you should never say "No" to a client (again, clients are your internal users, people asking you to do something for them within your big organizations). Clients have to work with you. "No" doesn't allow a conversation. There is nothing left after a No.
   Say: Yes! No matter how ridiculous the proposal is.And then, take your clients to a journey where they reject their own idea and adopt your solution.
   And when attacked, always take a moment before defending yourself. Don’t respond immediately when you are bursting to do so. If you wait, most of the time someone will step and defend you.

I don't have the slightest idea how this photo happens to be here.

• The radical attitude. Explode the committee and consult everybody in the Universe, gather stats to support the decision. It can work but it’s a lot of work.
• The conqueror's approach
  Find and meet each member of the Committee for one hour. Have a real and good discussion with all of them. Then collate everything and you become the only one who knows it all. When you come back with your set of recommendations in the committee's meeting, you can select and target who you're talking to for each point so everyone feels he’s been consulted, listened and considered.

1. Policy for necessary content. A content template is a good help. It provides a set of questions like « Who is this page aimed at? », « What’s the main message people should get from this page if they only stay on it for five seconds?» « What should the user do after having seen the page? »
   This will structure the client thinking.
2. Legacy of content (how to remove it)
   Convincing your clients that some of their beloved content should be removed from a website is an almost impossible task. It rips out their soul or something. The recommended measure is to establish a clear policy stating conditions under which a content cease to be accessible on your website. Said policy might involve some regular action from your clients, such as checking (and ticking a box in your CMS to prove they did so) their content every six months to grant their interest.

Unfortunately, the EP doesn’t always support my taste for digital experimentation, therefore I had to use a week of personal holidays to review the iPad as a blogging tool. To be honest, since I was traveling alone, I wanted to impose to myself a discipline of writing, in order to structure my days and bring some purposes to my wanderings. Also, writing is what I like.

I did it for science

My trip was in Istanbul for a week, a city I’ve never been before. I didn’t want to carry my laptop as I’ve started to appreciate iPad’s light weight and versatility. However, I can’t type more than an e-mail or a tweet on the glass screen. I bought the bluetooth keyboard, which doesn’t weigh much. It stayed in my hotel room all week, being used only at night when my writing routine was taking place.

The keyboard is a real pleasure to use. It connects in a glance with the iPad, copy/paste is made easier, arrows allow you to navigate in your text and, of course, typing itself is quicker and more precise.

Selected apps

Depending on your workflow, your blog’s host and your own preferences, you may consider you don’t need any apps to blog from the iPad. I personally like the whole apps concept: there is always one which does exactly what you would like to perfom. The difficulty lays in finding it.

When blogging, my workflow is as follow.

Drafting

First, I take notes in an analog notebook with a pen. This old fashioned aspect will not be covered in this post.
Then, I write my draft in an offline software. I hate it when you’ve typed thousands of words in a blog’s CMS and your precious text disappears because of some interruption of Internet services you have no idea where it comes from. Also, a specific text editor allows me to start different drafts and to work on them at different stages. For this purpose, amongst all available editing apps, I chose Daedalus (€4.99) after having tried OmmWriter (€4.99) and Notebooks (€6.99). The chosen one won because it has a simple way of managing the different files (with a “pile” analogy) and absolutely no formatting possibilities (like bold, italics and so on). This ensure a cleaner text when copying/pasting into the blog’s CMS. OmmWriter has a larger typing area and Notebooks is just too sophisticated for my leisure use (although it might be great for more professional tasks). There are zillions of text editors, so pick yours.

Photographs

Because it was a travel blog, pictures were important. You need a specific adaptor (€29) to import you photos from your digital camera to the iPad. The built in photo app does its job properly : import is relatively quick. You can select the photo you want to import but you can’t create new albums in the iPad. You cannot edit the photo either. Finding the right photo editing app took me more time.

I used PS Express (free), Filterstorm (€2.99), Camera bag (€1,59) and Snapseed (€3,99). This last one is definetely the best: it has automatic improvement feature, manual tuning with very smart touch point of control and few but nice filters and effects which I came to appreciate. Camera bag is fun and will do if you just want a quick effect on your photos, based on various famous renditions of films (lomo photography, polaroid etc.). The two others are too expert for me – and the lack of automatic adjustment may fit better to experienced photographer while it proved too time consuming for me. I was in holidays, remember?

Publishing

My personal blog is on Tumblr but their application isn’t super user friendly on the iPad. Accessing Tumblr Dashboard via Safari just doesn’t work on iPad. The best app I could find to edit, format, add the photos in the text and publish my post is QuickTumblr (€2.39). It has only two flaws.

First, you can only work on one post at a time. No collection of drafts and so on – hence the smart idea of drafting your posts in a specific text app.

Second, because of some Tumblr’s limitations, you can’t just add your photo in the editor. You must either publish them on an ftp server (QuickTumblr manages it very well for you and once you’ve set up the ftp access, it really flows well) or add them as link in your text.

Quicktumblr is great for formatting and inserting photo links (or any type of links) but you need first to publish your photos somewhere on the web in order to be able to link to them. I didn’t have any of my various ftp servers’ codes when in Istanbul, so I used Picasa.

Generally speaking, the digital editing (adding photo, adding links, embedding video) part is the real flaw of using an iPad.

To publish the photos I wanted to use in my posts, I first uploaded them on a specific Picasa gallery using Web Album (€2.39). Then, I had to open each of them in Safari, copy the ready-to-insert link, switch to QuickTumblr, insert the link at the right place in the post and so on so forth.

This was hell. QuickTumblr has some bugs: it keeps a small text area when the bluetooth keyboard is connected and it doesn’t save your cursor’s position in the text when switching to Safari and back.

Generally speaking, the digital editing (adding photo, adding links, embedding video) part is the real flaw of using an iPad. There are no keyboards’ shortcuts to move quickly from an app to an other and I grew quickly tired of the process. I suspect publishing on other platforms than Tumblr, such as WordPress, would be easier and faster.

I also lacked a good correcting tool – I can’t stand the automatic correction proposed by the device. Antidote exists (for French) but is pricy (€ 19,99).

The whole process of posting once a day took me more or less three hours a day (not counting the analog part). This was taking place usually after dinner, in a quiet garden with decent Wi-Fi coverage.

If I were to consider moving to travel bloging as a source revenue (since some people seem to earn money from this activity – I have no idea how), I would perhaps be better equipped with the tiny MacBook Air (11″ screen).

However, the iPad has some great advantages. It’s so easy to carry it during the day, to start to edit your photos during a meal, for example. Also, because switching from an app to another is still a bit cumbersome when using a keyboard, you may tend to focus more on your writing task, with less distraction than on a laptop – but maybe I am just easy to distract.

PS: I wrote this post as described below – except our team’s blog is powered by WordPress. The WordPress allows you to insert photo in your post directly from your iPad (no need for third part hosting) but you can’t format anything in the text neither insert links (well, maybe if you know all the html stuff which I don’t). I couldn’t change the size of the photo, though, once I had chosen it. When opening WordPress back-office in Safari, you can format at will and insert links – it’s a bit cumbersome. You can’t however change the photo size once uploaded and you can’t add a new image. There must be a specific iPad’s app for blogging with WordPress, of course. There’s one for everything, they say…

PPS: my travel blog (well, only seven posts) can be found on http://tayebot.tumblr.com – it’s in French and proposes essentially posts about the bitter condition of being a new father.

The summary that will never get me a PhD

This four part case study looked at the different ways an institution – usually considered as an unattractive administrative body – could acquire the reputation of being cool, as in the combination of the feeling of liking it with the desire to belong to it. Why would an institution become cool is another question that will be left unanswered here.

No way we're talking about being cool without a reference to George.

In a hasty and totally subjective way, with no strong ground on which to build his argumentation, the case’s author identified five kind of institutions:

1. The ones that are just born cool because their « raison d’être » rocks and is supported by adequate actions and needs little communication – the given example being Unesco and the generic class being « cool by ontology ».
2. The ones that benefit from the charismatic essence of their leaders or, even better, of a series of charismatic leaders. What else than the White House could belong to the category is still a mystery to the readers but the generic class is still called « cool by capillarity ».
3. The ones that had absolutely no possible chance to even dream of being cool but which succeeded never the less thanks to huge spending in communication (and possibly other ethically debatable means) – the proposed example being the FBI and its army of influence provided by the Hollywood industry since the thirties and the proposed class being « cool by majoring in mass communication and minoring in blackmailing ».
4. The same kind as the previous one, only they fail in trying, even with good professional communication, the French Hadopi being one of them and the generic class being « most institutions ».
5. The ones that had only slightly better starting chances than the FBI and yet reached the tribe of the cool by making sure their activities fitted with their purposes even if they were founded by possible Dr Evils – only examples the author could come up with being two American foundations, the Gates’ and the Soros’. Generic class: « cool by action ».

Yeah, yeah. And…?

That will sound basic to most of readers in the field of communication, but the key to any success, when it comes to your branding, lies in the identification and definition of your brand’s core values. You only need a few of them, but they must be strong, clear and shared amongst your organization.

From those core values, and depending on the strategy you want to develop and conduct, you might find a benefit in becoming cool. If this becomes your goal, well, some leverage exists:

• Your leadership – but also any representative of your organization. It’s one thing of having one Obama or one Steve Jobs at the top of your pyramid, it’s another to be able to count on thousands well educated scouts, professional ambassadors, devoted evangelists. The organization’s staff, the users communities can do marvels in bringing some coolness to a brand. Charisma can be spread out within any organization if the people selected stick to the core values and make them theirs.
• Your actions – it’s not only what you say, it’s mostly what you do. It pays in the long term and one mishap can fully damage your brand reputation – but if you keep acting within the perimeter of your core values and of your raison d’être, you may acquire a cool reputation. In a few thousand years.
• Your communication – promoting what you do well in a fun, entertaining, interesting way can speed up the reputation building process. It will never be the sole factor – but you’ll hardly reach any cool status without some communication.

In some cases, communication might be your only chance. There is a reason most institutions are perceived as boring, dull, uninteresting – it’s because they serve the public, the community and it’s not always sexy. Yet, by assuming what defines you and by playing with it, rather than denying it, you can become cool.

There is almost nothing cool in a public library in the era of Internet – and yet:

If corporations are psychopaths, I’d say institutions are rather neurotics. What’s the difference?

In his 2003 documentary (and following book), The Corporation, Canadian Joel Bakan “establishes parallels between the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave and the DSM-IV’s symptoms of psychopathy, i.e. callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect for the law.”

If corporations are psychopaths, I’d say institutions are rather neurotics. What’s the difference? The former doesn’t know he’s has a mental condition and doesn’t differentiate his (affected) mental perception from reality, whereas the latter knows there is something wrong with his condition. In that aspect, institutions know communication (amongst other characteristics) is not their strongest asset and they are often reluctant to embrace what it takes to really communicate.

Of course, the lines are moving, especially in the US where staff moves more naturally from public administration to private sector and back. The influence of our over communicative world strikes European institutions as well – but for a public organization, there is still quite heavy reluctance to brand and market itself.

The cool factor is not an absolute necessity to reach – yet it does help to carry and spread any messages an organization might want to push. We’ve seen it’s possible for institutions to be perceived as cool – not to all of them and hardly without some effort, but it’s reachable.

However, the cool factor is only the cherry on the cake of a well planned and conceived communication strategy.

From this last example, one could assess any institution could become cool with enough money and with a good communication strategic plan. Let’s now see what happens when this beautiful plan doesn’t work, with the counter-example of an institution which tries hard to become cool with very little chance of success.

Hadopi – When XXI Century brings you 1984

The French Hadopi (Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des droits sur Internet – the High Authority for Transmission of Creative Works and Copyright Protection on the Internet, see Wikipedia) is a recent institution created in 2009 to fight Internet piracy.

Here how this works, as explained by Wikipedia

On receipt of a complaint from a copyright holder or representative, HADOPI may initiate a ‘three-strike’ procedure:

(1) An email message is sent to the offending internet access subscriber, derived from the IP address involved in the claim. The email specifies the time of the claim but neither the object of the claim nor the identity of the claimant.

The Internet Service Provider (ISP) is then required to monitor the subject internet connection. In addition, the internet access subscriber is invited to install a filter on his internet connection.

If, in the 6 months following the first step, a repeat offense is suspected by the copyright holder, their representative, the ISP or HADOPI, the second step of the procedure is invoked.

(2) A certified letter is sent to the offending internet access subscriber with similar content to the originating email message.

In the event that the offender fails to comply during the year following the reception of the certified letter, and upon accusation of repeated offenses by the copyright holder, a representative, the ISP or HADOPI, the third step of the procedure is invoked.

(3) The ISP is required to suspend internet access for the offending internet connection, that which is the subject of the claim, for a specified period of from two months to one year.

The internet access subscriber is blacklisted and other ISPs are prohibited from providing an internet connection to the blacklisted subscriber. The service suspension does not, however, interrupt billing, and the offending subscriber is liable to meet any charges or costs resulting from the service termination.

Appeal to a court is possible only during the third phase of the action (after the blocking of internet access) and an appeal can result in shortening but not cancellation of the blocking. The burden of proof is on the appellant.

Without entering a political debate about the mere existence of Hadopi, we can nevertheless state that being a kind of cyber-police of the use of the Internet is not exactly cool, especially if not focusing on, say child pornography, but rather on downloading files, an online practice so popular it became the Mother of battle for the whole entertainment industry – especially the music sector.

Without Hadopi, this wannabe movie director will not be able to direct his thriller in 2021. (c) Hadopi

From Hadopi’s side, the accent is always put on the pedagogical nature of its action. Because they do want to change existing behaviors, especially those of the young generation, Hadopi rightly came to the conclusion they should communicate as much as possible. And it’s clear their agency convinced them that becoming cool would help.

First, the logo.

Caveat: Hadopi’s logo is a story in itself, as the first version used a copyrighted font without proper authorization from the font’s creator – oh the irony when you think of it. Anyway, the final logo does benefit from being created in XXIst Century and is rather interesting and nice. There is an Helvetica kind of simplicity to it and it’s definitely better to my taste than most of institutions’.

What a friendly logo

Once you’ve got the logo, you’ve got to make it bigger – as they say in the business. Therefore Hadopi launched a three millions euros campaign mixing print, TV and radio spots. The message says: by not paying today’s copyright holders, you impair the creations of tomorrow, incarnated by kids and pre-teenagers who would never become the stars they should just because someone (you!) downloaded one’s favorite TV Show on Pirats’ Bay. The claim says: « Tomorrow’s creation must be defended today ». The campaign proposes with a new label, « PUR » (« pure » in English) which stand for « promoting responsible uses » and which is stamped on legal downloading platforms.
Campagne de pub de l’Hadopi par Nouvelobs

The campaign is well produced, I’d say. While the posters show future talented people when they’re just kids, the TV spots go further by offering a glance of their future work: a video clip for a pop song, an extract from a thriller movie or the trailer of a TV Show. The TV spots’ narratives are quite cool: high level of production, professional actors and directing, it teases you enough so you would actually like to watch the movie or the TV show. That’s well done. The conclusion final claim is: if you don’t protect today the artists of tomorrow, there will not be any creation in the future.

Once again, I don’t want to discuss this assertion. Just saying it’s a well expressed point of view in a cool way. As a communication exercise, it does change the perception of the institution and renders it less « bad cop » and more « concerned with our creative children’s future ».

Did it work?

I have no objective study to prove this point but my wet finger intuition tells me it didn’t. On the French Internet, Hadopi is, as far as I can tell, since considered as a bad and uncool governmental agency. Critics loathe the campaign’s cost. Haters, trolls and flamers are still active against the very existence of Hadopi in the various platforms surfed by Hadopi’s target audience.

As a bonus, Hadopi itself released a study about Internet uses, in an attempt to legitimize and demonstrate its efficiency. Alas, the study shows that people downloading illegally films and music are also the one purchasing the most (as every study on this subject always demonstrated).

Joe Karaganis, from SSRC, points us to the news that there’s been yet another such study… and this one is from HADOPI, itself. Yes, the French agency put together to kick people off the internet for file sharing did a study on the nature of unauthorized file sharing, too. Not surprisingly (and consistent with every other study we’ve seen on this topic), it found that those who spend a lot of money on content… were much, much, much more likely to also get content through unauthorized means. HADOPI released the results in a somewhat convoluted way (perhaps trying to downplay this result), but Karaganis reformatted the results to make this clear:

Nothing like a bar schema to bring some seriousness to a post (c) SSRC

Karaganis suggests, then, that HADOPI’s method of dealing with this — threatening people to stop their file sharing, won’t do very much to help the bottom lines of the entertainment industry.

(Source: TechDirt: Another Day, Another Study That Says ‘Pirates’ Are The Best Customers… This Time From HADOPI)

Getting cool or die trying

Honestly, I don’t know what Don Draper would do – except pouring himself another glass of brown to clear out his mind. If you don’t like what people say about you, change the conversation – well, Hadopi is essentially the subject of the conversation as it is closely linked to the eponymous French law ruling online intellectual property. Changing the name won’t help neither. Hadopi is the perfect anti-Unesco: it’s a natural born uncool institution, at least for its primary target which is the relatively young Internet users who download stuff. Communication alone might not save the branding. If J.E. Hoover got to run Hadopi, he’d force Hollywood to promote it and might get a result after a decade or two. There is another irony here, knowing some main actors of the entertaining industry support Hadopi and yet don’t help turn it into anything cool.

Does that mean that institutions perceived as evil will never reach a cool status if they don’t have a whole entertainment industry behind them? Two opposite examples jump into my mind, even if there are not « institutions » but « foundations ».

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the George Soros Open Society Foundation were both created by two famous personalities not exactly perceived as being the coolest people on Earth. While Bill Gates was the world’s richest man, he arguably suffered from being Mr. Microsoft, largest Operating System Monopoly of the computer world. George Soros was famous for his speculating talent but not necessarily in a cool way:

He became known as “the Man Who Broke the Bank of England” after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises. Soros correctly speculated that the British government would have to devalue the pound sterling.

(Source: Wikipedia)

To make the story short: two famous but not universally liked rich men created their foundations, one because « All lives have equal value », the other in view of « building vibrant and tolerant democracies ». Both aims are pleasant but they don’t generate the happiness included factor of Unesco. Yet, both foundations became cool, not because of huge investments in communication (even if communication played a part, for example in the notable improvement of Bill Gates’ public speaking skills) but rather because of their actions. Soros foundation played a significant role in Eastern and Central Europe’s transition to democracy and Gates’ has acquired a serious reputation in solving development issues. Their actions are promoted via adequate communication, acknowledged by their audience and their peers.

As a result, both foundations can be considered cool even if such a result was neither easy nor obvious from the start. There’s almost a karma wheel at work here.

On a side note, check out their website. Very good job here.

The leverage to the coolness, in their case, is to be found in the proof by samples or in the action theory. Judging an institution on the quality of its achievements, in how they fit with its general objectives and philosophy might be the easiest way to access the nirvana of cool.

Kindergarden philosophy wins again: not everybody can be cool, some have to stay lawyers or accountants. Kidding apart, before investing an institution’s budget on branding, a quick reality check might prove useful. We’ll detail this in the next and last post on this case study.

Related material

Hadopi

La Quadrature du Net (opposing to Hadopi) (in English)

Numerama.com « Découvrez la campagne de pub Hadopi à 3 millions d’euros » (in French)

SSRC: HADOPI Says: Let’s Try Cutting off Nose to Spite Face

Best example I could come up with is: « This is FBI, open the door! »

The Federal Bureau of Investigation

You never have really time to look at it in the movies

If you look at it with a bit of political mindset, there is nothing ontologically cool in the FBI. While there is nothing wrong with their current mission statement:

Our mission is to help protect you, your children, your communities, and your businesses from the most dangerous threats facing our nation—from international and domestic terrorists to spies on U.S. soil…from cyber villains to corrupt government officials…from mobsters to violent street gangs…from child predators to serial killers. Along the way, we help defend and uphold our nation’s economy, physical and electronic infrastructure, and democracy.

this institution has quite an amount of stains on its reputation. From the beginning, the FBI had to deal with dirty businesses, under the assumption that it takes what it takes to fight crime. Black lists, manipulations, blackmail, illegal wiretappings… One of the darkest but notable period lasted during the emergence of civil rights leaders (1960-1970):

In March 1971, a Media, Pennsylvania FBI resident office was robbed; the thieves took secret files and distributed them to a range of newspapers including the Harvard Crimson. The files detailed the FBI’s extensive COINTELPRO program, which included investigations into lives of ordinary citizens—including a black student group at a Pennsylvania military college and the daughter of Congressman Henry Reuss of Wisconsin. The country was “jolted” by the revelations, and the actions were denounced by members of Congress including House Majority Leader Hale Boggs. The phones of some members of Congress, including Boggs, had allegedly been tapped.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Amongst the debatable actions of the FBI, the harassment of actress Jean Seberg leaves a sour taste to all aficionados of the French movie « Breathless »:

An FBI victim we'd all like to hug and console.

The FBI used illegally obtained information about Jean Seberg to concoct an article it planted in Newsweek magazine that defamed the actress, who was then seven months pregnant with her second child. The FBI’s goal was to “cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the public”. Accordingly to some authors and researchers, the FBI’s actions against Jean Seberg resulted in her suicide.

(Source: Wikipedia)

More, after 9/11, the FBI was partially to blame for not preventing the attack:

The 9/11 Commission’s final report on July 22, 2004 stated that the FBI and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were both partially to blame for not pursuing intelligence reports which could have prevented the September 11, 2001 attacks. In its most damning assessment, the report concluded that the country had “not been well served” by either agency and listed numerous recommendations for changes within the FBI. While the FBI has acceded to most of the recommendations, including oversight by the new Director of National Intelligence, some former members of the 9/11 Commission publicly criticized the FBI in October 2005, claiming it was resisting any meaningful changes.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Yet, the FBI is cool.

Choosing well your profile picture on facebook is vital

Its facebook page only counts 127,985 fans (August 2011) while the facebook’s group “FBI, Open the door !” “No… it’s cool when you break in” totalizes 495,380 fans (possibly because of their profile picture). But the demonstration of coolness is not to be found in their social media popularity. It’s rather in the impregnation of pop culture with FBI and its special agents that counts. Movies, thrillers, TV shows, comic books, the Simpsons… The FBI reaches the status of being a myth by itself which populates, inspires, gives birth to myriads of works pieces of fiction. Why is that? Because there’s nothing better than a story with Special Agents fighting crime.

Actually, there is almost a branding schizophrenia between FBI’s reality and its perception. It doesn’t come from its nature nor from a specific charismatic leader – the most famous being J.H. Hoover who might be quite responsible for the sulfuric reputation of the Agency during the 48 years he ran it. The source of FBI being cool is to be found by external branding management or, to rephrase, by outsourcing the cool factor to the entertainment industry. The FBI knows well the value of good communication, as one of their Special Agent, Mr Cris Hoover, clearly explains in his paper « The Strategic Communication Plan ».

Strategic communication entails packaging a core message that reflects an agency’s overall strategy, values, purpose, and mission to persuade key stakeholders and enhance positioning. Active, not reactive, it establishes organizational clarity and dissuades freelance endeavors that may serve a few well, but detract from the organization’s overall direction and purpose. To this end, one important tool, a solid strategic communication plan (SCP), should synchronize organizational units and align resources to deliver a common core message.

The source of the FBI being cool is to be found by external branding management or, to rephrase, by outsourcing the cool factor to the entertainment industry.

The current mix of the Agency is quite good to look at: website, jobs’ posting, most wanted list (my favorite) and even a fun and games site for kids (check the « Tools of the trade » section, it rocks.) It’s state of the art of institutional agency, with, I suspect, quite some money behind it, and serves as the main channel of their communication to demonstrate the reality of their work, by opposition with the image given by the entertainment industry.

You know you're cool when you appear in The Simpsons

The power of cool comes from the pop culture’s endless use of the FBI. From the start, J.E. Hoover  « was also quite eager to use his new authority to bring Hollywood into line with what Hoover thought was their proper role in society (propaganda organ for the government) and while Senator McArthy grabbed the headlines, Hoover was busy behind the scenes recruiting various people to inform on each other and factionalizing the Hollywood community so that it could not resist him. » (Source: COINTELPRO: FBI Activities in Hollywood).

Important word here is: « propaganda ».

As Yves Chenal tells, « Hoover understood he needed to win the public opinion and tried hard to have media providing a positive image of its agency. He harassed Hollywood producers to obtain his agents would be pictured under a favorable light in the movies. That’s how James Cagney incarnated an agent with all best qualities in « G-Man » in 1935, sparking off many vocations. Since then, the FBI is a media star. »

(Source: Herodote.net, FBI – La construction d’un mythe hollywoodien)

There was a will from the start to sell the FBI, its special agents and its activities to the audience, a will that obtained incredible results by combining threat and influence over the producers with Hollywood dramaturgic know-how. There is everything in the FBI you need for many good stories. Use it properly and constantly and, voilà, you’ve become cool even though some of your daily activities are questionable.

This is hard work which pays off on the long term. It requires a lot of resources, some of them not being directly the institution’s. Not every institution can subtract their branding management to Hollywood. Yet, almost of them could rely more on communication with a good « strategic communication plan » to build themselves as cool.

It’s not an easy way, though, as we will see in the next post of this case study.

Coolness by capillarity: the Executive Office of the President of the United States

This famous institution is better known as the White House, thanks to the use of a metonym which designates the President and its administration by using the name of the building they are closely associated with. Now, is the White House cool? With 1,113,379 fans on its Facebook page at the time of writing (August 2011), the usual ambition of American kids to become President of the United States when they grow up, the regular use of the White House as a sacrificial element of pop culture (like in the movie Independence day) I would consider it as a cool institution.

They do have a nice logo

Because the White House is the power centre of the USA – and therefore quite an important power over the world as a whole – its coolness varies amongst people benefiting of or suffering from the American politics conducted at any time. Nevertheless, White House’s cool factor is like the American Way of Life – it knows some fluctuations in people of the world’s appreciation but remains a gold value on the long term.

It's either the White House or the Eiffel tower that are destroyed first.

Is it intentional?

Sometimes, you just cannot find something on the Internet, such as the communication budget of the White House. Reason is the massive coverage of the current negotiation between the White House and the Congress over the US budget. See all those crossing over keywords? That’s how you should hide important information on the Net.

The White House, no doubt, has a communication department and even a Social Media Team (we met them!). They’re active in promoting the President’s political views and activities, with notably, those White House White Boards videos which explain technical subjects in understandable ways.

It started a long, long time ago

There is an intention to be perceived as cool, even if it is not the primary aim of White House’s communication – as it never will be for an institution. I would however hypothesize that the coolness of the White House is not to be solely credited to the current communication team. I believe the White House became a cool institution long time ago and that it had everything to do with its tenants rather than with the house itself.

Because most of the US Presidents had strong influence over the world affairs, a lot of them are famous outside the USA. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama… Not all of them were cool people, and it’s clear the White House’s perception from outside is hugely dependent on the personality and political leadership of its tenant. It affects deeply the elasticity of the cool factor. In other words, it’s not sure the Bush years were the best for the White House to appear cool, even if there were some efforts in this direction for a certain audience as the photo below demonstrates.

For some people, those boots are cool. Go figure...

Rather than being cool by essence, I would say the White House benefits from the summing up cool factors of a long list of presidents. With the halo effect brought by history, most of American presidents are favorably perceived. The sum of their personal charm pays off for the institution. Of course, some mandates are worse than others, which fits with the volatility and subjectivity of coolness.

What can we learn from this?

One strategy for an institution wishing to improve its branding perception could be to bet on the capillarity effect and to chose a charismatic, cool leader. This is well known by private corporations when they select a famous personality to lead whatever non-profit causes they suddenly decide to defend.

Unesco plays this card too with its Goodwill Ambassadors:

The UNESCO Goodwill Ambassadors are an outstanding group of celebrity advocates who spread the ideals of UNESCO through their name and fame. They extend and amplify UNESCO’s work and mission and have generously accepted to use their talent and status to help focus the world’s attention on the work of UNESCO.

If you check the list of current Goodwill Ambassadors, you may notice some cool people amongst them.

Opposite effect works too: choosing a non-charismatic character, a controversial personality or a grey leader, even if the person is competent for the job, might impair the whole organization’s reputation, whatever its purpose and legitimacy might be. The metonym effect works in both ways.

So far, we’ve seen institutions that are ontologically cool and others that inherit this quality from their past and present leaders. In the third post devoted to this case study, we’ll have a look at a the ones for which, just like for us, simple human beings when compared to Clint, it requires a hell of an effort to become cool.

Cool factor brought to you by the gang of the former US Presidents

This the XXIst Century but it did start ages ago: if you work in the communication area, you know that branding your organization, your product or just yourself has become an important part of any of your strategy. Even military operations are branded nowadays so don’t tell me this is not an important part of your marketing-mix. Branding doesn’t necessarily include the « cool » (quite volatile and subjective) factor but it usually doesn’t hurt.

Don’t tell me what’s cool, dude

Before we go further, I shall define « cool ». Not an easy task, as this adjective is, by essence, subjective, and volatile. What’s cool to me might not appeal to you, and vice-versa. What’s cool today may not be tomorrow but might well return in three days. For the sake of this case study, let’s agree that the cool factor mixes likability and the will to belong. It’s not enough that you like, say, navy leather jackets, but you like them so much you would buy one and wear it even under your shower – this is not recommended for any leather outfit even if it would be über cool.

Fonzy is cool - no discussion about that.

When it comes to branding, the cool factor combines the likability for the brand and the will to be part of it, either by joining, by buying products, by being friends with this cool person in the office next to yours. For public institutions, whether they are national or international, the branding question still arises. Should an institution be branded? I’d like to further: could an institution be actually « cool »?

I’ll try to call few examples of cool institutions and hint at how they achieved this branding status. I’ll also look at a perfect counter example. By respect to my « devoir de réserve », no European institution shall be considered in this case study.

Cool institution #01: UNESCO

Unesco does a lot of things and their website lists eight main priorities (see the footer) and nine « popular topics ». I am sure all of them are worth the yearly $653 000 000 budget of the institution but I’d like to focus on the activity that renders Unesco cool: the natural and cultural world heritage. As I am sure you know, this program aims at listing the natural and cultural wonders of our world, which can be locations, human constructions or even intangible work (like, recently, French gastronomy) under the label « World heritage » in order to raise attention to those and to support their protection, transmission and preservation.

The World Heritage List includes 936 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value. These include 725 cultural , 183 natural  and 28 mixed  properties in 153 States Parties. As of June 2010, 187 States Parties have ratified the World Heritage Convention. (Source: Unesco).

I am not sure the actual job consists in traveling around the world seeking beautiful stuff, deciding they should belong to humanity as a kind, adding them to the list and moving on to the next wonderful place – although if it does, hire me.

I am not sure the actual job consists in traveling around the world seeking beautiful stuff, deciding they should belong to humanity as a kind, adding them to the list and moving on to the next wonderful place – although if it does, hire me. I suspect the process is far more complicated and involves enough meetings, discussions and compromises to drive regular human beings crazy. Nevertheless, ain’t this cool? Not only the World heritage label makes concerned people (eg national or local ones) happy and proud, it does also release some dopamine drops in all of us every time we hear about it. This conveys the nice idea that there is still some beauty in our world, that we can visit or access to it (and it proved to be a real boost for tourism) and it plays the famous « It’s a Beautiful World » song in our mind.

Was there an intention to create the cool factor?

If I judge by the Unesco logo or by the World Heritage’s one, I’d say no.

A logo.

The 309 pages long Approved Program and Budget for 2010-2011 doesn’t detail the institutional communication strategy, although the Division for Public Information (DPI) seems to get $13 671 800 for 2011 for its activities.

Caveat: I didn’t have time to dig in the document so maybe they get more for Unesco own communication, since that’s DPI mandate:

Another logo.

The Division of Public Information (DPI) brings together the different information and communication departments of the Organization. Its activities aim at making UNESCO’s ideals, projects and achievements known to different audiences. It thus contributes to spreading the knowledge generated by UNESCO’s programmes, raising its profile and encouraging partnerships with public and private groups. (Source: Unesco)

But unless contradicted, I’d state that Unesco’s DPI receives quite a tidy yearly budget.

As far as I can tell, the World heritage promotion comes mainly from the countries who are lucky enough to host one or more items on the list, from third parties writing books about them (even if Unesco publishes books about the list itself), and from the media reporting new addition or destruction of an existing item. You may remember the fuss caused by the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, in March 2001, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar (source:).

Their own communication may feed the cool factor, but I would not identify it as the main source of coolness. In the case of this institution, the source of cool is to be found in the very own nature of its work, the creation and updating of the World Heritage list.

Of course, Unesco, again, does a lot of different and super important other things. But nothing beats, yet, this World heritage list. In this case, the cool factor is, therefore, brought by the raison d’être (as perceived by the audience) of the institution. Unesco is an ontologically cool institution. Somehow, this institution is cool just because it exists – the fact they actually work and deliver their list helps and maintains, if not extends, the cool factor. But one could almost live with the idea of such an institution and be happy with it. Unesco, just like Fonzie in Happy Days or Clint Eastwood, is a natural born cool being.

Clint - natural born cool guy.

The Nobel Prize (although not an institution stricto sensu but a series of awards granted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, the Nobel Assembly, the Swedish Academy and the Norwegian Nobel Committee) belongs to the happy natural born: they celebrate outstanding skills or achievements, providing all of is with the pleasant feeling our human kind is moving on the positive side.

Congrats to them – we’ll see in the next post that for some other kind of institutions, there is a way to inherit the cool factor.