'When are we getting fibre optic?!'

Every year the capability of technology is growing faster and so are our expectations of it. The gap between what we know to be possible and what we experience is only widening. Our children are growing up in a world where all screens are interactive and every service is cloud-connected, where any song or movie ever made is at their fingertips, yet our disappointment only grows. My children are always surprised when a surface isn't touch screen or when I can't quote the exact time that Mummy will be home!

Why is changing this hotel booking taking me two hours on a clunky website interface? Why is this film not available for streaming? Why am I using a printed ticket? How can this website be down? Surely this town should have 4G by now?

What can make this disillusionment even worse is the plethora of systems we are expected to use at work and at play. Some new, some old but all them with their own eccentricities. I have found in every place I have ever worked that the lack of integrated software systems can be very frustrating. Often I am met with companies owning many systems which either have very similar functionality (one place I used to work had 5 CRMs!), are so new that no-one is using them to their potential, or are so old that they require an 11 year old browser in order to run!

With this in mind Kier have been putting a lot of effort into a programme called 'BOOST' where we consolidate all systems into one supplier to help with software integration, less intensive training requirements, and ultimately, a reduced cost.

In our team we have also been working to bring all of our Marketing solutions for the business together in one place. For example, we have a digital asset library, a corporate presentation and various branded templates but simply listing them all on our intranet is not enough. This is because sometimes such assets need to be accessed by external design agencies or third party suppliers.

One essential feature of our new 'Marketing Hub'  is a homepage which is frequently updated with the latest videos, photos, brochures etc. we have produced with links to where the business can find them. This communication is key if the work we are doing is utilised fully in either winning work or attracting the best new staff. It goes without saying that we will carefully monitor the analytics of this interaction.

This internally integrated Marketing communication allows all new starters to familiarise themselves with the brand and our positioning. It also gives them ready access to all of the assets they may need in their day job.

Importantly, an online briefing form allows them to log any requests for new microsites, posters, banners etc. By only accepting briefs in this way it ensures that the end agency has all they need to complete the work and we can monitor all requests and intervene if required. We then have a 360 degree view of all submitted requests and can flag up any duplicate work or causes for concern with the originator. Most importantly it allows us to have oversight of the type of collateral the business requires and then write this into our future plans.

This Hub will become the primary channel for keeping the brand alive alongside our regular webinars, site visits, working groups and email updates. With 24,000 staff on the books having one go to place for all marketing related matters is essential.

Living the dream!

Of course, my main challenge is avoiding any user frustration with the interface and to make it work on all browsers and devices. Otherwise the aforementioned digital disappointment will kick in and users will become like those people with instant hot water taps in their kitchen who now get frustrated waiting for a kettle to boil!

Not bad for an old man!

The beginning of a new year is a time when people start afresh and make promises to themselves to finally improve on things which they have previously been putting off. These are commonly around fitness goals and I am bracing myself for my weekly kickboxing class to see the annual influx of new, younger and fitter recruits when I return on Wednesday. I fully intend to see out another year despite being the second oldest in the class but how many newbies will still be there come the year end?

One sure fire way to ensure that all intended goals are met both at home and professionally is to be fully accountable for the outcome. For me, one of the main motivators for going kickboxing every Wednesday is that I have paid a month in advance and as I only have one chance to go a week I know that I cannot put it off in the way I would a gym (i.e. 'I'm tired tonight and I'll go tomorrow'). I also have an 'accountability partner' meaning that if I don't go I'm letting him down and restricting his chances of development. Finally, I know from experience that I have never yet regretted a class or felt worse as a result - it really is a great remedy to work off those daily life stresses.

Being accountable and ensuring that workplace tasks are accomplished is also essential for both small and large businesses to flourish. The larger the business the more the employees become the face and reputation meaning that success relies on them. Therefore, the ultimate goals for the company as communicated by the senior management rely on a much more cascaded model in order to succeed (rather than just one person to be motivated to do something for themselves).

The first step in this is to ensure employees have responsibilities for which they are solely accountable. This is not so that there is someone to blame if things go wrong but is essential for projects to be completed and allows a sense of worth and achievement for the project owner to feel they have achieved something on completion. Without accountability businesses really struggle with issues such as who to go to in order to get tasks done (i.e. if no-one knows who owns the website how is it ever going to get updated?)

'Can someone please show me the
way to Meeting Room 1?!'

I always say that the person who you want to staff your social media accounts is the person who approaches lost looking visitors in reception and asks how they can help. By doing this they have taken personal responsibility for that person's welfare and as a result show that your company values the customer experience. Someone who ignores that person and leaves it to others to resolve is not someone who is happy taking accountability and this behaviour leads to a self-centred, confusing workplace where teamwork is non-existent.

When people begin their new year resolutions they have an end goal in mind and the work involved is a means to an end. It is about the outcome and not the task and communicating this to employees is essential. You want the person who adds the annual report to the website to take ownership for the website being up to date, not for the activity of updating it. If they find a better way to ensure the site is up to date – and do so in a way that improves engagement and client satisfaction – that’s the real prize. You want people to stop paying attention to the amount of time they spend doing things, and pay attention to the ultimate outcome desired.

When people are accountable, they stop watching the clock; they seek ways to make improvements and take initiative to change what doesn’t work. They ask for opportunities to do and learn more so they can be successful at fulfilling their purpose, which in the end gives a boost to yours.

Festive fun at CMA15

At this week's Annual Kier Marcomms conference I was asked to give an update on what we've been up to in the digital team. I believe that if you really want people to remember your presentation then you need to tell some stories. So, given the time of year, what better story to frame my presentation around than Dicken's Christmas Carol? With this is mind, I thought I'd do the very same with this blog post!

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Our big external campaign this year was #KierHeroes which comprised 22 individual minute long videos interviewing key personnel throughout the business. As I have mentioned before, this is something which Kier has not previously tried and we were delighted to be shortlisted at our first ever Construction Marketing awards event which took place on 9th December at the Radisson Blu in Portman Square.

The Kier Marketing Team (L to R),
Claire Savage, Me, Paul Humphrey,
Kristy Myrie

The team all headed down to London, after what had been a particularly busy week, to soak up the Christmas atmosphere, enjoy some good food and drink and network with like-minded individuals (I was particularly surprised to bump into my old boss!) Although we didn't win, we got a really good idea of how marketing in construction works as we were the only nominees who weren't with an agency. It was also a real privilege to get this far in an industry in which I am still relatively new. Roll on next year when we'll come back bigger and better!

The Ghost of Christmas Present

Our use of Trello continues apace and I have now trained the entire team which means we are up and running with it as a project management system. Even I am surprised with how well it is received and it's taken our productivity to a new level. Some of the advanced tools such as filtering (allowing us to see which of our own tasks are most urgent and real-time project progress) are really coming into their own and some team members have even started using it to plan their Christmas shopping!

Mock up of our new interactive map

We have also begun the complete rebuild of our new offices map. This is in unison with our offline brand audit and will contain dynamically updated and filterable content. The benefits of which cannot be underestimated seeing as our 105 office locations are the most searched for thing internally and externally. Watch this space for more details in the future...

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

As a central team one of our main responsibilities is to provide the business with tools to assist them to win work and to communicate the brand. Therefore, our first task for 2016 will be to build a central online 'hub' where all of our services can easily be accessed in one place. We have just begun the mapping stage and this will comprise of services which we manage such as graphic design, promotional goods and film and photography.

The two main interactive elements will be a briefing form whereby colleagues can request one of the above services for it to be piped through to the relevant supplier. The benefits of this being that we can automate the tracking of requests and ensure that when briefs are submitted they contain all of the required detail.

I have also been looking into digital solutions to assist with communicating our brand and have found an excellent service called Frontify. With this we can upload all of brand guidelines and allow them to be searchable, shareable and downloadable in all required formats.

As 2015 draws to a close I can truly say that it has been, professionally, one of the most exciting years yet. I still feel like I am always learning and I've really welcomed the many social events of this festive season to help reassure me that we have a fun and creative bunch of people working in our team. However, a combination of late nights out, a young family, and a busy job, definitely means I'm more than ready for the Christmas break to recharge my batteries for what is yet to come...

Our stand at Highways UK

'Tis the season to be busy! These last few weeks have seen a number of diverse activities being undertaken by the Kier Central Marketing team. In order for us to support a business of over 24,000 employees there is a constant need to not only oversee group-wide initiatives but also to ensure that the business is joined up, becomes manageable and is not operating in silos.

Nowhere can this be more evidenced than in our recent involvement in supporting events. These have included attendance at Highways UK, Scotland Build 2015 and our annual drinks reception at Lincolns Inn. With pre-event event communications, AV requirements, promotional goods and  marketing collateral all overseen by us we have been putting in a lot of overtime!

Tote bags from the North!

My main responsibility was overseeing the stand for the first ever Scotland Build 2015 conference at the SECC in Glasgow and to kill two birds with one stone I also used the opportunity to deliver some social media training to our Scottish colleagues. The ease of jumping on a plane from Luton airport meant I was door to door in less than two hours and satiated my desire for an airport visit (duty free is a great place for Christmas shopping!)

The Expo itself was extremely well attended with over 250 visitors to our stand on day one. This served to further highlight how well regarded Kier are in the industry with the large majority desperate to get onto our supply chain. I'm glad I'd managed to tuck away a full Scottish breakfast to sustain my energy levels throughout the day!

The Great Hall at Lincolns Inn

Another big event we've been involved in was the annual reception at Lincolns Inn in Holborn. This is a truly breathtaking building where Kier kick off the Christmas season by inviting clients past and present for drinks and an address from our Chief Executive. My team were tasked with ensuring our latest videos were on show and it was all hands on deck to hand out name badges, greet guests and network with our high profile guests. I lost count of how many times I was asked to take photos of people on the red carpet!

By managing all of these events centrally it really helps to add continuity to the experience of those who engage with Kier. All of our messaging can be made consistent and we especially gain comparable analytics from our pre/post event communications. By building in a robust model and program in our email sends at the beginning the data we collect is then key to following up any leads and providing a professional and customer focussed experience for all attendees.

As well as the importance of getting out and about, meeting colleagues, and getting an understanding of the different challenges of the regional businesses, I've been developing workflows to help us manage our channels more effectively. These focus on shared goals across the business and I feel that this is where digital can really add value to coordinate and monitor the great work being done nationwide. The whole ethos of digital is to test and learn and by creating an environment where employees are not blamed for failure we can improve with each activity.

Hello Trello!

There are some great tools available to marketers to draw content out from the business (such as Gather Content) and I have spoken before  about the benefits of Trello to manage projects and content flow. It is with this in mind that I have setup a group content strategy calendar that all of the regional businesses can add to. By having assigned people in each area this flags up who has accountability for adding content and where the gaps exist. I've also used Trello's labelling to colour code each region so that at a glance I can see in the calendar that all areas are represented with a full spectrum of assigned colours.

All of this work is essential to curb the silo mentality before it begins. By planning far in advance the danger of no lead time, time for collaboration, and mistrust is avoided. Trust is the most important part of any relationship and by having everything out in the open a healthy form of competition emerges with a greater transparency about the goals and motivations that drive each team.

Everyone who has worked in digital marketing must at some time or other failed at a task or campaign. The entire ethos for all good digital marketers is to test and learn and make evidence based decisions and therefore these failures, just like in real life, can teach you more than the successes.

With this in mind, the best thing we can do is mitigate the risk of failure by ensuring all of our activities are as planned and well executed as possible. For example, at Kier we run a company blog which has seen a fair amount of success and has definitely met our original objectives. Without these objectives (an integrated approach, increased organic reach and an improved amount of positive mentions against our competitors) we would have no idea if this task was worthy of our valuable time.

I have seen so many social media accounts simply die a death due to no clear strategy and whilst they are given a lot of focus early on (or as part of a campaign) they are then just left to rot and in the long run actually do more harm to the brand than they ever did good. A neglected social media account says a lot about a company - usually the date the person previously maintaining it handed in their notice!

My latest analogy (those who have worked with me will know I love an analogy!) is that all digital activities/websites are like gardens. Unless you are prepared to continue to build, weed, cultivate and monitor them then there is little point having one in the first place.

In filming one of our #KierHeroes videos with our Kier Living team I was interested that their philosophy is to not only build the houses but also to regularly check back to ensure there are no problems and oversee any maintenance. This can also be applied to setting up any new online channels - the continued maintenance is as important as the build.


It's easy to neglect a lot of very important tasks early on and no doubt we have all been guilty of some of these either through misguided leadership, time and budget constraints:

• A Google Analytics account with no goals/conversions
• Social Media accounts with no objectives, content strategy or monitoring
• Email campaigns that are not integrated into the marketing plan or followed up
• Google AdWords campaigns that are not regularly checked and don't link to a bespoke landing page
• Print adverts with no performance measurement or call to action

Google analytics flatline!

This could be a very long list and it is our job to ensure that nothing goes out the door that isn't part of a wider marketing plan. Sometimes it may mean asking some difficult questions but without some of the above our efforts will have little chance of the success being measured, being optimised to the maximum valuable insight being gained to prove we have not wasted our time and money.

I'm pleased to say that I have now reached a stage in my career where I am able to drive a campaign forward with a clear vision and objectives. Of course, some may not have the impact which was originally hoped for but if we can learn something from this the end result may be better than if it had worked. For example, we have learnt from trial and error that the best time to post our B2B social content is 3pm - 4pm (there's obviously a dip in workplace energy at that time) and for our B2C content a 7.30pm - 9pm slot works better (people are clearly multi-screening at home). Without some of our content falling on deaf ears this would not something we could have discerned.

The importance of learning from your mistakes cannot be underestimated as this is the best way ensure you constantly evolve and innovate.

'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently' - Henry Ford

Another day, another awards shortlist! However, for the first time ever this is in a completely different sector to what I'm used to! Previously we've either been recognised in education (in my previous role) or individually for this blog. Therefore, I'm very proud that the hard work has paid off and we've been nominated at the Construction Marketing Awards 2015 for Best Social Media Campaign and Best Use of Content Marketing for our #KierHeroes campaign.

Originally the main purpose of writing frequent awards entries was to primarily focus efforts when planning/analysing campaigns and to gain much needed internal buy-in for our efforts. However, recently I've noticed that I don't seem to need to do as much  internal hard sell on the importance of digital. An increasingly number of staff and executives seem to get it - and more often than not when I present it is to a room of nodding heads.

The challenge comes when, having been given executive support, this is not backed up by a strong strategic direction. There is simply just a vague vision stating that digital is vital to the company's success but this is not backed up by any real details, support or extra resources. Whilst the importance is acknowledged there is very little understanding to make recommendations.

Digital = approved!

These executives are no doubt very intelligent and this lack of a strategic outline is really not their fault. They have extremely high pressured roles and so they cannot (and should not) delve into the intricate details of everyday operations. They have set the agenda and it's down to the workforce to make it a reality. If this doesn't happen there is a real danger it will fall at the first hurdle for two reasons:

• It is just a vague mission statement that fades before it takes root
• It gets highjacked by people attaching their own agenda to an executive directive - Therefore it turns into an excuse to either acquire a new IT system or staff for the marketing team

It's down to us digital professionals to stop this occurring and to immediately take action as a team to use this as an opportunity to instigate company-wide changes. In order for this directive to change working practices it will mean concentrating on any barriers that may stop this happening and thinking about how to overcome them.

For example, at Kier we have a big emphasis on offering training to other employees to support the digital first vision. I've also spent a lot of time on our digital strategy which outlines the return on investment for these activities and covers which work is the most important with all key milestone clearly mapped. Chiefly it sets the digital agenda from the outset to ensure the business understands what digital first means in practice. It is then a matter of presenting this back to senior management and leaving it up them to decide if this is a solution which they are happy to support.

Share the knowledge!

Therefore, rather than being thrown when support and backing is offered it is up to us to drive this strategy forward. With both the continued internal buy-in (from ongoing training, one to ones and workshops) and analytics to support our constant testing learning from any campaigns, we as a team can take charge of the direction in which our digital efforts are headed.

It's with this is mind that I was delighted to discover this recent blog post analysing all of the big players in the construction industry and their social media strategies. We get a glowing mention (particularly for our company blog, LinkedIn and Integration) which shows the plans we have put into place are really starting to drive forward the external reputation of the company.

Being given this green light to move the company forward by executives is an opportunity that is too good to miss. It's up to us to grab it with both hands and to start shaping the solutions ourselves.

'Who needs customers when you have
friends, fans and followers?!'

It's been a week of imparting knowledge for me as I continue to tour the business to deliver our social media practitioner day course. Last week I had a great time presenting to the new students of our Highways Academy in Wyboston Lakes training centre. What's encouraging is that there is a real appetite from people to learn more and one common theme that is agreed on by all is that for business Social Media is a no-brainer - even if you're only just listening.

However, I have noticed an increasing number of people deciding that on a personal level it is something in which they no longer want to partake. I think that one reason for this may be that the popularity of Social Media grew so fast many people didn't realise the far reaching implications of what they had signed up for. This education of how the internet is still changing our world needs to be emphasised at a young age, and as a father myself, I feel it is my duty to really ensure that my children are discerning enough to correctly understand what Social Media (and the internet in general) is and how it can be used/abused.

Far from simply demonising Social Media education on the subject cannot be underestimated to ensure we are not ignorant of its evils. You would not expect someone to be able to drive a car without extensive training and a certain level of maturity so why should the use of the internet be any different? It is an increasingly large part of our modern world and simple avoidance is just not possible as anyone with a computer, mobile phone and internet connection is vulnerable, either at home or work.

In my training I begin by putting social media into context and stating that I believe we are currently in the biggest period of expressive human capability in history. There have been four significant periods of this in the last few centuries with the invention of:

1. The printing press
2. The telegraph/telephone
3. Recorded media - photography, audio and film
4. Radio and television 

This is the landscape every one of my generation grew up with and as soon as they were invented there were people using them for good and sadly, as is human nature, abusing them. As the technology increased so did the propensity for evil. What these all have in common are that there are limitations in that the ones that were good at creating conversations (i.e. telephone) were bad at creating groups, and the ones which are good at creating groups (i.e. television) could only address everyone with the same message. The invention of the internet was to take this to another level...

Suddenly this became the mode of carriage for every other media (e.g. eBooks, Skype, YouTube and iPlayer) meaning that all of the above existed right next door to each other. By this occurring the usage and possibilities were quadrupled and so were the dangers.

However, the real change is that each consumer who joins the internet is also a producer - they can write a blog, upload a video, even broadcast live to the world. This is where Social Media comes in as by having a WiFi connection in your home you're allowing ready access to anyone’s opinion to be piped directly in uncensored. It goes without saying that careful monitoring and effective blocks are essential.

It has taken a while for people to wise up to this but essentially the internet is more powerful and dangerous than any communication medium before it. The dangers are many, some of which have been well documented in the form of cyber-bullying, copyright infringement, impersonal communication and screen addiction. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are really just the tip of the iceberg with other channels such as Snapchat, Periscope and Ask.fm potentially being much more sinister propositions.

What I have taken from this is that I want to bring my children up in a way where they fully understand the implications of what they do online and can make intelligent choices on how they decide to engage with it and encourage an open and honest relationship where will can talk about it together. I am massively thankful that some of the immature and stupid things I did when I was young are not documented anywhere! As human beings one of the most powerful and hard ways to learn is through our own mistakes and despite its many uses the internet/social media is a perilous place when used ignorantly and casually.