Assignment 15 Reading

1. Why does Subway care about childhood obesity?

They believe that they hold a position where they can actually change how people think about being and eating healthy.

2. What communication techniques does Subway use to work on the

problem?

Subway uses TV spots, a TV morning-show, a three segment story package on the topic and they struck a deal with Nickelodeon.

3. Describe the various parts of Subway’s campaign.

Subway uses TV spots in their campaign. They mainly show the people instead of their food. They want to show that their food can be helping hand with people having difficulty at having a healthy lifestyle. It is mainly pointed at younger Americans, that is why they chose to use TV and Nickelodeon.

4. What could have happened to the company if Subway had not

embarked on this campaign?

Young American people would experience a lot of heart problems at younger age.

Assignment 13 Video articles

Video 1

The video is about new social media. There is a lot of discussion about what role it is playing in our society and what role it is going to play in the future. Some people say that spending time on social networks is replacing time spent on talking to people in person. Young people are often spending a lot of time speaking to people from foreign countries they will probably never meet. Some people even claim that social media is affecting the brain in a negative way. Social media are also blamed for people having an unhealthy lifestyle. However if you look a bit further you would conclude that there are a lot of other reason to be thought of which would be much more appropriate  to be a reason for people having an unhealthy lifestyle. Studies show that watching TV at a very young age definitely affects the performance of children at school. Social media are seen as the latest form of screen-media.

Video 2

Social media are a way of supporting internal communications. At June the 24^th Abi is having a workshop about social media. One of the subjects will be how twitter can be a good medium for internal communications within a company. She is going to share her experiences with using social media as an internal communication medium, but also the people attending are free to share their opinions and thoughts about this subject. They are even testing vlogging which is making a blog using video. She has experienced huge benefits by using social media for internal communications. Information reaches the people very quickly and by using the social media they are sharing a lot of knowledge with their people. Having this kind of internal communication is going to be a major return for her and her company.

Video 3

Toyota was looking for a right way to engage more with their costumers and their audience. They found social media the right way to accomplish that. Twitter came to their attention very quickly. Their colleagues in North-America already had a positive experience with the use of this social media. Twitter is mainly used by Toyota Europe to reach journalists and NGO’s. They could also approach these journalists and NGO’s by for example e-mail, still they chose to use twitter. Because of new channels coming up all the time they found it important to use a new approach. At twitter they still use a very strong corporate voice. The blogs are more about personal experiences by employees of Toyota. The blogs are not meant as pure marketing, they are meant to engage more with their audience.

Assignment 8

1. What is remarkable about the comments and the bloggers of the Federal Reserve

Bank?

They remain anonymous.

2. The Federal Reserve Bank opened a blog to create “buzz”. What is meant by this,

in other words, what was the purpose of opening a blog?

To make it more interesting and to make people check it more regularly  for news.

3. What was the female recruiting manager’s blog mainly about?

About being a full-time mom and having a full-time job at the same time.

4. What was the purpose of her blog?

To create a discussion on this matter.

5. Which words show that the FED does exercise a form of control on the blogs?

Regulated, moderated.

6. By what kind of people were the very first FED blogs written?

By the senior management.

7. Have the blogs changed the way that people who work for the FED think about

internal communications ?

They definitely changed the way people think about internal communications.

8. What is the latest development in the company as far as media are concerned?

The latest development in the company are flatscreen TV’s in elevator banks.

9. Catherine Cummings says that this medium to communicate with staff is better

than an older medium. Which more old-fashioned way of communicating with staff

does she mention?

-

10. What is the next big thing in social media at the FED?

A new intranet specially designed for the FED.

Assignment 14 Bikes, bikes & bikes!

Every day I take the bus to school. First I go by bike to the bus station which takes approximately 10 minutes for me to get there. Which means I have to leave my bike somewhere near that area. However the annoying thing is that there is almost no room for your bike! People now put their bikes outside where they are meant to be put, against walls and things like that. The commune is not happy about that and is planning to remove all the bikes which are placed wrong. They are planning on doing this unannounced. There now actually is a chance that I quikly have to leave my bike over there because I need to catch the bus, and when I return my bike could be gone. They should be thinking of expanding the area for bikes. Since the station is crowded with bikes everywhere. People don’t want to store their bikes in the wrong place, they simply have no choice. When you are in a hurry to catch a bus or train you are not going to search forever to find a good spot for your bike, it just does not work that way!

Assignment 7 Letter of enquiry

City College Manchester

5 Crescent Road

Crumpsall, Manchester M8 5UF

3 October, 2010

Dear Sir or Madam,

When I was looking at your website, the course of English as a Foreign Language for international students came to my attention.

I have finished High school two a year ago and I am now in my first year of corporate communications. I have always been interested in improving my English. I have written several articles in English for different websites. However some information is not totally clear to me. I read on your websites that the course is taking place during the summer but there is no actual date, could you tell me something more about when the course is taking place? Your websites also says the course takes two weeks, is this correct? Also I would like to know  what the required level of English for this course is. Is there an exam at the end of the course or are we graded by our overall performance during the course? Also I would like to if students are supposed to arrange a place to stay by them self or if there are any other options.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully

Jelle Dekker

Jelle Dekker Corporate Communications Student

Assignment 6 Starbucks

A.

Roasting plant:

The centre of the company.

HQ:

A Headquarter.

Accesible:

“its is accessible only to Nike employees” Only Nike employees can go there.

Spacious affair:

A big room.

Expanding:

Becoming bigger.

Nasdaq:

Nasdaq is a short reference for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations.

Beverage concessionaires:

Subsidiary:

“and a subsidiary of NS” A part of the NS.

Licensing agreement:

An agreement about future plans of the company.

Prime:

“prime railway stations” The biggest stations.

Retails stores:

A shop selling goods.

Forego:

“are said to forego the store” Stop buying at that store.

B.

1. “Technically, Starbucks has been in Holland for some time already.”

Why only ‘technically’? In other words, why are the first three Starbucks

stores in the Netherlands not seen as ‘real’ Starbucks stores?

They were only accessible to certain people, such as employees of Nike.

2. In what kind of locations have Starbucks stores been established since

2007?

Two Starbucks stores were opened at Schiphol Plaza.

3. What two adjectives are used in the Starbucks Press Release of August

14, 2008, to stress the uniqueness of the Starbucks Amsterdam store?

Significant and directly.

4. Imagine you are the Head of Corporate Communications of Starbucks.

Think of a way in which you could use the Starbucks fan Hyves to your

advantage.

It’s  a great way to keep your costumers up to date using the fan Hyves. Special discounts for members of the fan Hyves. It’s a good way to create a corporate identity.  The costumers will feel more connected with Starbucks.

5. In the USA, many Starbucks stores have been closed. Three reasons are

mentioned for this. Which of these three reasons is illustrated by the

cartoon above?

The overkill of Starbucks stores.

6. Starbucks executive Howard Schulz is going to ‘put a laser-like focus on

reinvigorating the Starbucks experience’. Please explain in your own words

what is meant by this.

He is going to try to change the image of Starbucks. People need to have a certain feeling when drinking coffee at Starbucks, ‘the Starbucks experience’.

Assignment 10 Prepare Business meeting

The Marketing Manager

The magazine being outdated:

I think that the magazine actually is a great effort but, it is not efficient enough. A lot of effort is put into creating this magazine however it is not accomplishing its goal. The magazine is meant to inform employees and bring them together. But in fact the employees are reading stories they already know about.  

No new information:

The magazine is generally not bringing any new information to its reader because when the magazine is published, the information has already reached these employees by different media sources. Furthermore because of the magazine being outdated from its release it is not contributing to creating a corporate identity.

Share more information:

The Layetana Beef Company would be better off with employees knowing what actually is going on within the company. We should be sharing more information with our employees about who does what and where. This could be accomplished by introducing an intranet website for our company.

Intranet:

Having such a websites has a lot of benefits for our company. The problem of information being outdated from its release would be solved. Every employee is able to visit this intranet from anywhere he would like to. Because of the information being new to them the employees would be much more interested into reading these articles. This will also contribute to creating a corporate identity.

Weekly Newsletter:

A weekly newsletter sent to all our employees by e-mail would also be a very appropriate option. This is a good way of sharing information with our employees which would contain subject that are important in that week. Weekly reading a newsletter about our company would create a connection between our employees and the company.

TV screens:

We could also introduce screens in the Company hall and the Staff restaurant using them to provide company news. This would be a very unforced way of sharing information with our employees and staff.  Employees and staff are free to pay attention to the screens or do not. In this way employees would not feel forced to read this information.