EACH year companies spend millions of dollars on communications, marketing and advertising programmes in order to bring their products front and centre in our minds. The main aim is that when we, the customers, dig deep into our pockets, it is their goods that the cashiers ring up on our tab. An easy way to find out if your business communications plans are working is of course to check the bottom line.

It is no secret that most accountants think that any money spent on what they consider to be the frivolity and fluff of public relations and marketing communications projects could be better spent anywhere else. I know I will not win over any of my accountant friends here but their first thought is to budget instead for new garbage disposal systems or the latest accounting software (which will become obsolete and unused in a few months). They believe that the money thrown at marketing communications programmes and such delights usually ends up in that deep, dark hole in the budget. Much like one of Star Trek’s black hole in deep space where no man has gone before.

Can I tell you though, that many times the number crunchers are correct. It seems to me that there is not much being accounted for when the company’s money is being spent on marketing communications programmes. When we put on those huge, ego-stroking, lavish events where the only visibility we get is from the ‘same ole, same ole’ faces on the society pages, do we measure if it was worth the spend? Let’s face it, sometimes paying for a full-page advertisement might work out cheaper for us because we are singing to and with the same choir, year in, year out. How many new faces are we including for attendance at our shin-dig? Since, no one else is going to call it, I will. Can we see some fresh new faces at these events puleeze? It’s not that we don’t like the old, the tried and the true but amaze us once in a while with your innovativeness.

Or if we opt to participate in the expo or conference and erect the most spectacular booth ever seen this side of Mars, do we measure how many persons come to visit? Do we follow up on the leads created by this marketing tactic? As a matter of fact, is the booth properly manned by persons who know your product inside out? Or do you just allow the least productive members of your team to go to the event as they are a ‘waste of time’ anyway? I am always curious as to whether the persons representing the companies who participate in these exhibition know why they are there. Note to managers: Most of us think you have given us a day off from work. Tell us what is the strategy and the game plan so that when we come back in to office we will be able to unveil the list of strong sales lead that will put us in line for an even fatter bonus, come year-end.

Then there are those elaborate publications, adverts, flyers and other collateral material that end up in the ubiquitous file thirteen in everyone’s home, office or car. How carefully do we plan the content; target market; expenditure and strategy? Is it that we just go wild with the thought of creative freedom and the fact that “it is not our cash?” Note to self: it is ‘your cash’, especially if the project tanks and you are canned. The days of free-wheeling spending are gone, never to return for now.

Then there is the mad rush to utilise social media in our marketing communications projects. Who is measuring and what is being measured? Do we understand the medium and is the message being shaped to capture the minds of the on-line communities we are building? I am constantly amazed at the inane posts placed by well-established and reputable companies who choose to establish their on-line presence through in social media networks. How are our mangers measuring how the companies time and resources being used? Or is it just a passing whim and fancy that is being used by our competitors so we just have to be in on it as well, whether or not it suits us?

Before embarking on any expenditure care should be taken to ensure that at the front end of the project, objective, target and out-put are carefully honed so that the end product is only just so much paper and plastic to add to the already dangerous land-fill.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.