InFocus – Internal Communications

One of the key focuses for MLL so far in 2014 has been to develop and implement an Internal Communications Strategy. Here, MLL’s Head of Marketing and Communications, Michaela Burn explains further.

What are the objectives of MLL’s Internal Communications?

The aim of MLL’s Internal Communications strategy is two-fold; firstly to provide the MLL team and licensees with the tools and resources they need to be able to communicate about our program, mission, objectives, products and other useful information in a consistent manner. Secondly we want to ensure that employees of the Michelin Group receive regular, relevant and targeted information about our business with the aim of raising awareness of our activities, increasing advocacy for our products and seeking win/win synergies.

So who are MLL targeting with this internal communications approach?

We’ve actually identified 3 audiences;

• MLLs Licensees, of which we have over 60
• Over 110,000 Michelin employees
• And MLL employees.

How is MLL going to achieve its objectives and communicate with these three audiences?

In order to meet our objectives we are implementing two approaches:

• a toolkit of messages and assets which will be used by everyone when talking about our business to ensure a consistent and more impactful message is delivered to the target audience
• a content planning system which will ensure regular, informative and timely messages are delivered to the appropriate audience

Can you go into more detail about what these tools and assets are?

We are actually in the process of creating a set of tools which should be used as standard when communicating about MLL. For example, we’re building a set of ‘Modular’ presentations, tailored for different audiences, including a business overview, an explanation of the MLL business model, key fact sheets with official figures, competitor analysis, consumer relations, etc… This will enable people to communicate consistently, confidently and knowledgably about MLL.

For Michelin employees, we are providing MLL content for the Michelin country Internet and Intranet sites to ensure that licensed products are visible and links are made to the Michelin Lifestyle site.  We are also providing MLL related content and imagery for the Michelin Content Centre so that everyone will have easy access to approved tools and resources relating to the MLL business and licensed products.

One of the key focuses for MLL so far in 2014 has been to develop an Internal Communications Strategy

And the content planning?

With regards to the content planning – each year, during the annual planning process, MLL will build a top level plan of initiatives and/or activities to communicate around. This will be based on the Group’s core values and messages, MLL’s central orientations (for example; strategy updates, global news, priorities, etc…) and input from the Licensees based on their business plans (for example; promotional campaigns, product launches, innovations, events, etc…).

Then, on a monthly basis the MLL Marketing Communications team will work together to produce a detailed monthly calendar of activities for the coming month; what is the message, who are we communicating with, what is the best format for the communication and which is the best media to deliver it to our target. Once this process is tried and tested we intend to roll it out to our external communications too.

What’s next? When can everyone expect to receive these great tools?

We’ve already started to work on all of this, but as you can imagine there’s still lots of work to do before it’s completed! We’ll be creating and diffusing all of the tools and content in a phased approach starting now and going into mid-2015.