New Year, New Blog

Art courtesy George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. 
Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e4-8261-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Starting January 4, 2016, we invite all Blogger.com and Blogspot.com readers -- and everyone interested in corporate history and business anniversaries -- to follow us at our blog's new home, http://www.corporatehistory.net/blog/

The CorporateHistory.net team sends best wishes for a superb New Year's weekend!

150 Years at Shaw University

Kudos to Shaw University, the US's first historically black college, on its upcoming 150th anniversary. Shaw has obviously put time and thought into a far-reaching campaign. Business anniversary tip: These key elements, highlighted on a dedicated section of Shaw's  website, are worth emulating:

• Timeline with good photos and visuals
• Invitation to alums and friends to Share Your Story
• Events such as a 150 Voices concert, Bear Witness gathering, Founders' Convocation, and gala dinner dance  
• Blount Street Mural Project in the surrounding community
• Invitation to donate--straightforward, well-written--a must for nonprofits

The only thing that may be missing is a print component. Is there a book or publication to mark this momentous landmark? I'm especially curious because Shaw has been open to all races, creeds, and genders from Day One, a most unusual attribute for a college founded in 1865. (The photo below shows the class of 1907. My own alma mater, Rutgers College, was founded in 1766 but did not admit women until 1972.) Shaw alums include New York State's first black legislator, Edward A. Johnson (class of 1891), pioneering pilot and flight instructor Ida Van Smith (class of 1939), and Angie Brooks, president of the UN General Assembly (class of 1950). 

 

Stay Tooned for King Features' 100th Anniversary Gift

On Sunday, November 15, King Features Syndicate will celebrate its company anniversary with a fun freebie for US newspaper readers: a 16-page insert featuring KFS strips from Krazy Kat and Popeye to Flash Gordon, Beetle Bailey, Blondie and Dagwood (my personal favorite), Prince Valiant, and dozens more. Business anniversary tip: Could your organization do the equivalent, using its own legacy images and distribution system? 

Better yet, King Features also commissioned a substantial anniversary book, shown above. 

Mainstream cartoons in newspapers have gotten a bit soft in the past decade, but great stuff can still be found in the monthly Funny Times and elsewhere. And, of course, artists/writers such as Alison Bechdel have transformed the genre. Cartoonists with a bite are among the undersung heroes of American culture.

50 Years of Space History in 20 Pages

While space travel isn't my favorite subject, I'm nonetheless impressed with this 20-page publication covering 50 years of what's now known as the Neil Armstrong Flight Center. It came to our attention as a fellow winner of an 2015 APEX Award. The cover is a bit busy and hard to read, but the interior is organized magazine-style. Business anniversary tip: Test your cover for readability at small sizes.
 
Per the APEX Awards judges' review: "This special issue, focused entirely on the 50 year history of the Neil Armstrong Flight Research Center, carries a lot of appeal. Interesting spreads, dramatic, well-chosen photos, in-depth captions — and writers and editors who know how to convey often complex technical and engineering subject matter in a very interesting and engaging way — make it a keeper." 

See the whole publication here: Flight Loads Lab at 50. Congrats to creators Jay Levine, X-Press Editor and Christian Gelzer, NASA Armstrong Historian, Jacobs Technology/NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA

CorporateHistory.net now mobile-friendly

We're celebrating our own 10th business anniversary with a fresh new website. Check out http://corporatehistory.net on smartphone, tablet, or good old desktop and tell us what you think. Kudos to our intrepid web designers at cdeVision in Holyoke, MA -- Bill and Antonio, you're the best.

How to Write a Great Website Timeline (Part 1)

Like a well-written corporate history, a well-written website timeline can be a great marketing tool: it can set your organization apart from its competitors, let you brag a little, and tell your story in a way that makes your company memorable. In decades of writing corporate histories, we’ve created dozens of timelines and looked at hundreds more. (For some examples, see our blog posts tagged with “web timelines.”) In the next two weeks, we’ll look at the website timelines for two corporations that have more than enough resources to make wonderfully effective timelines ... But did they?

Here’s CorporateHistory.net’s series of questions and guidelines for writing a great website timeline.

1. Consider your audience(s). Will your readers be your clients or possible investors? In other words: will they be more interested in your products, or in your mergers and acquisitions history? Consider separate timelines, if appropriate.

2. Use major events as centerpieces. Given your target audience, what are the six to eight major events in your company history? Make sure these don’t get lost in a barrage of less important data.

3. Build story into the structure. Given that website visitors have notoriously short attention spans, can you make your timeline a connected story? A series of problems and solutions? A brief history of a niche subject, with your company in a starring role? A humorous escapade, like Kentucky Fried Chicken’s timeline narrated by Colonel Sanders?

4. Layer in larger timelines—maybe. Do you want to keep readers laser-focused on your company, or will you set your company’s achievements in the wider framework of science, business, politics, or pop culture? Will your framework be your company, your community or industry, the United States, or the world?

5. Add images and captions. What will you use for visuals: current or archival photos, logos, advertisements? Any item with an image will get more attention than an item with only text. Captions will get more attention than text. Choose your visuals and captions accordingly.

6. Strategize the structure. Will you have one long timeline, or split it into or sections? If sections, what are the best divisions? Decades are easy and obvious, but if your major achievements came in 1932, 1939, 1955, and 1959, consider breaking the timeline in a way that gives those dates get more attention. Don’t forget to mark business anniversaries!

7. Make navigation easy. Is the layout easy to understand? (In July, we commented on Boeing’s bafflingly complex timeline.) If you’re using tabs for sections of the timeline, can readers see that option on both laptop and mobile screens?

Next week, we’ll analyze how one major corporation handled its website timeline.

Easiest Marketing Tip Ever

For marketing purposes, the end of one month equals the next month. Today is September 30, and in the past three days I've received five marketing e-newsletters dated "September." "Yikes," I think to myself, "these folks do run late and are desperately playing catch-up." But if they'd changed the date on the masthead to October, I'd think, "Congrats, these folks are on top of things by issuing their newsletter a few days early." 

So what if changing the date means skipping a month? Get out in front of your marketing instead of falling far behind it.

This advice applies in spades to corporate history. History doesn't happen overnight and it can't be reconstructed overnight. Business anniversary books, websites, timelines, and campaigns take time to develop. When your organization has a milestone coming up in a year or two or three, allow plenty of lead time. Your project will go more smoothly and it will cost less.

Graphic Design USA Award for CorporateHistory.net's BAYADA Book

BAYADA history book at company's annual Awards Weekend. Clients extraordinaire!
Left to right: BAYADA manager Janice Lovequist, author Chris McLaughlin,
editor/publisher Marian Calabro, and BAYADA senior associate Stephanie Smith.

Thrilled to report that BAYADA: 40 Years of Compassion, Excellence, and Reliability, created and published by CorporateHistory.net, is a winner in the Graphic Design USA Health + Wellness Awards competition. Honors went to just 125 of the 1,000+ entries. Kudos to art director and production manager Chris Reynolds, who embodied excellence and reliability through many long nights and right up to the press run; the pros at Penmor Litho and Riverside Bindery, who fussed over every detail down to the curves of the debossed dove’s wings under the book jacket; author Chris McLaughlin, a model of dedication; and our phenomenal clients, including the awesome Baiada family and ace in-house project runners Janice Lovequist and Stephanie Smith. Thank you for letting us tell your story!

Writing Well for Business Success Q&A

Published Sept. 2015 by St. Martin's Press

Writing Well for Business Success by Sandra E. Lamb fills a big gap in how-to books for the workplace. Sandra is an award-winning author, journalist, lecturer, and business consultant. She and I are members of the Authors Guild and American Society of Journalists and Authors.

I can vouch for this book’s value because I’ve taught Basic Business Writing and Email Etiquette to Columbia University staff for years. Finding smart, up-to-date resources for those classes is always a challenge. When I read praise for this book by the straight-talking Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I, I was sold: "Lamb can tell you how to deliver that bad-news memo, how to write email like a grown-up, how to take blame without groveling, and how to be grammatically correct without being stiff. She knows!"

Marian Calabro: Why was it time for a new business writing book?

Sandra E. Lamb: The #1 problem employers have today is that their employees are challenged when it comes to effectively communicating. Recent figures suggest that employers spend well over $3 billion a year on efforts to improve their employees' communication skills. And now that business is conducted by email, the problems have been exacerbated. 

MC: What’s your #1, “if you only remember one thing” piece of advice for workplace writers (meaning people whose primary job is not as a writer)?

SL: You mean besides buy my book, read it, keep it on your desktop, and use it? The top  complaint I get from senior executives is that employees don't determine before starting to communicate by email that it is the proper vehicle for their message. If your message needs negotiation, for example, email is the wrong vehicle.

MC: How about emails – what are your key do’s and don’ts there?

SL: All the rules of good writing apply to email, plus. Using email requires special understanding of what it is and what it is not good for in communicating electronically. Here are a few examples: Don't email if your message contains personal or personnel information; if you need to negotiate; or if your message has elevated emotional content.

One senior vice president, who has teams of employees around the world, complained that too often his employees email as a way of not making a decision, but instead just passing a problem on. He said this defers or prolongs the decision-making process. In his business, he added, it's a huge cost factor because it wastes a lot of employees' time, and impedes progress.

Do email when you want to pass on information. But more importantly, email only after you've employed the best principles of effective communication. That includes starting by thinking your message through and making a few notes, organizing, writing, and editing, editing, editing. 

Many executives I interviewed complained about email content--too long, unedited, and disorganized.  

MC: What’s your personal pet peeve about business writing?

SL: Verbosity. 

MC: Mine is snark, which has crept in via the supposed anonymity of the Internet. I was delighted to read your cautionary advice about that: “Before you fire off a flip response or join in the ‘innocent’ sport of ‘poking fun,’ take a few minutes to reflect.”

SL: Absolutely. What you write or post in private can easily come back to bite you in a very public way, like during a job interview, a performance review, or a disciplinary-action meeting.

MC: My readers are often involved in business history or company anniversary campaigns. They may be on a committee or team preparing for, say, the business’s 30-year anniversary. Any special advice for them?

SL: Having a very-well-thought-out-and-written plan before starting is essential in getting the task done most optimally.  It can make all the difference in achieving the best execution.

MC: Thanks, Sandra, for taking the time for this Q&A over Labor Day weekend.

Writing Well for Business Success by Sandra E. Lamb
St. Martin's Press, paperback, US $16.99, Canada $19.50
ISBN-10: 1250065511
ISBN-13: 978-1250064516
www.SandraLamb.com

Happy 100th, National Park Service

For its 100th anniversary, the U.S. National Park Service has erected a handsome if glitchy centennial web portal. Readers can delve into: 

• Stories of individual parks (Find Your Park)
• Future plans (Building on Success) 
• Visionary Leaders (such as environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, shown above with a feline friend; Douglas's book, The Everglades: River of Grass, published in 1947, describes "the natural treasure she fought so hard to protect").
• and a call to action (Get Involved); this is always a good idea, especially for a perennially underfunded institution such as NPS

Unfortunately the centennial page's back button seems to lead to dead-end error messages. And NPS would benefit from a clear link to a separate batch of wonderful organizational stories. Last but not least, why no Timeline? Maybe it's in there, but we couldn't find it. Business anniversary tip: Honor Commandment 7 of our 10 Commandments of About Us pages, namely Keep Navigation Easy.

Strand Bookstore Timeline Display

Displaying your timeline is one of the most powerful ways to showcase your company history. Here's a good example from Strand Bookstore in New York City, a handsome mix of business history photos and infographics. 
  
> The historical timeline enlivens what could be dead space in the stairwell.  

> It's a reminder that Strand is the sole surviving bookstore on Book Row in Manhattan. It never hurts to make your customers feel good about where they're shopping. When I buy books at the Strand, I'm helping to keep alive independent bookselling, the publishing business, New York history . . . . 

> Creating an organizational timeline compels you to gather your big-picture history. It's how most corporate historians initially organize their research. 

I'd love see another panel that updates the timeline to 2015!

Happy 75th, Col. Sanders

Colonel Sanders is out of retirement after 21 years. KFC has given him a cool new 75th anniversary website of his own, in which the Colonel (at six stages of his life) talks about Cuban donkeys, strums a mandolin, and of course fries up some chicken. The animatronics are cute, with SNL alum Daryl Hammond playing the Colonel. Business anniversary tips:
1) It's refreshing when the Founder as Great Man is presented with a sense of humor.
2) It's fun to have a person or character narrating the corporate timeline.
Great work by agency Wieden+Kennedy.

L.L. Bean: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

L.L. Bean was founded in 1912 in Freeport, Maine, by Leon Leonwood Bean, to sell a single product – the “Maine Hunting Shoe.” The company now has about 5,000 employees, and annual sales of $1.61 billion. Its headquarters is still in Freeport, Maine, and it is still privately owned. The main About Us page is Company Information.

OVERALL GRADE: A

Products/Services: A minus

The Company Information page looks at first like a raging bore: long, dense, and with headings that are less than enticing (“Current Corporate Information,” “Products,” “Manufacturing,” etc.). In fact, however, the page is great corporate storytelling. It explains what the company does, and where and why and how. As a series of bullet points this sort of information would be unreadable. It’s fascinating here because we’re given a backstory (for example, the reason behind each expansion) and provided with several engaging quotes from past and present leaders of the company.

One quibble: many people read on their phones, where it’s easy to be interrupted and to lose one’s place on a very long page. A simple solution would be to split this page into separate pages for Products, Manufacturing, etc. – with copious links between pages, so that visitors would still be guided to read them in a certain sequence. Our Commandment 6 of About Us pages is, “Honor thy visuals.” Shorter pages on a specific topics could be made even more interesting by including photos from L.L. Bean’s century-long history.

There are numerous, excellent photos on the timeline, 100 Years and Counting. It’s cleverly compiled so that reading the blurb on each decade gives a visitor a short company history. The focus is on L.L. Bean, Inc. – as it should be - but enough national events are listed to set the context. There’s even an option for customers to share their own L.L. Bean stories – a great idea. Unfortunately, during our four visits to the site, the interactive aspect wasn’t working, so we’re not sure we’ve seen all of it.

High marks to the Newsroom page, which puts company press releases front and center, but has a sidebar, “As Seen In,” with links to products featured in sources as diverse as Redbook, Elle, and Field & Stream.

A downgrade: Yes, the company commissioned a centennial anniversary book, entitled Guaranteed to Last: L.L.Bean's Century of Outfitting America, by Jim Gorman. (CorporateHistory.net was not involved with it in any way.) Alas, there’s no reference to it on the history pages. To find it, we had to enter “book” in the product search box. If you’re still selling your corporate history book, why not make it easy to find?

Personality: A

The Company History page is also long, dense, and excellent. It begins as the story of an outdoorsman with wet feet, and tells how he solved the problem with the original “Maine Hunting Shoe.” Bean’s early trials and tribulations – 90 of his original 100 pairs were returned – establish the company’s dedication to quality and customer satisfaction. This is business history at its best.

Quotes from the founder and from later leaders liven up the text, as do occasional fascinating factoids. We learn, for example, that by the 1930s, L.L. Bean’s mail-order business comprised more than 70% of the volume of the Freeport post office, and that the flagship store has no locks, because it’s open for business 24/7.

The list of awards at the end of the Company History page would get more attention if it were on a separate page, with logos, but it’s great to see so many confirmations of L.L. Bean’s status collected in one place.

In a lovely change from celebrating one’s centennial and then forgetting about company anniversaries for 10 or 25 years, the Company History page ends with highlights of L.L. Bean’s centennial year. Here you’ll find quick bullet-point references to the aforementioned centennial book, as well as the timeline—but these should be hyperlinked.

The Leadership page is top-notch. Why? Because the bio of the founder and his three successors all focus on the values that drive them as leaders of L.L. Bean, and on the results they achieved there. Even the philanthropic activities and hobbies mentioned reflect the values of the company: for example, membership in the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy. Our Commandment 3 of About Us pages is, “Reveal thy personality.” We’ve seldom seen that done better than on L.L. Bean’s site.

Accessibility: A

How many times have you flinched from phoning a company’s Customer Service line because you were worried that the representative wouldn’t be able to speak English? L.L. Bean’s Customer Service page begins with a characteristically forthright note: no matter how you communicate with the company (there are options for Phone, Call Me, Chat, Email, and more), you’ll be speaking with a person in Maine: “because Maine is more than just an address – it’s part of who we are. It’s tough winters, Yankee ingenuity and a unique character you just won’t find elsewhere.”

TAKEAWAY

Your company may not have the size or the hundred-hear history of L.L. Bean, but it’s unique in who founded it, where it’s been, and where it’s heading. Make your About Us page reflect that uniqueness with great content, well told.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company, although we have been satisfied customers for years.

Healing History

Belated kudos to Communication Design Inc., which produced the marketing materials for the Healing History conference hosted by Initiatives of Change USA in Richmond, VA. In CDI's words, "The theme of building bridges became the basis of a cohesive brand identity centered around an iconic illustration of diverse figures working together to support a common cause--crossing a great divide." 

The conference coincided with key anniversaries of landmark civil rights events: the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of the Civil War, the Selma to Montgomery March, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Given the truly momentous events that have happened since the conference -- the tragedy of Charleston and the removal of the Confederate flag by South Carolina and other states -- the importance of the Healing History effort takes on added urgency.

3 Lessons Learned from a Painful Public Speaker

1. Match the speaker to the occasion. A rat-a-tat military man may not be the right choice for a roomful of benign trustees at the annual meeting of a co-operative organization.
2. If the bad match is a fait accompli, build a bridge. The speaker made no effort to localize, customize, or otherwise bridge his (supposedly) motivational presentation. No corporate storytelling. No mention of the org's 100+ years of company history and community support. I suspect this fellow didn't make even the most basic inquiries. 
3. Never, ever phone it in. Public speakers are actors, performers, professionals. When we step to the podium, it's show time, every time. A loud voice and speed do not equal energy. If we don't project true energy and interest, we shouldn't be speaking. Barreling through a PowerPoint doesn't cut it.

I won't name names because the evening was presented in good faith. But I felt pain as I watched fellow audience members wincing, feigning interest, or snoozing. Best I can say is that Mr. X provided a wake-up call for my next presentation and, I hope, for yours.

CorporateHistory.net book wins top-tier APEX Award

Superior Linen Service at 60: Stories of Teamwork, Technology, and Trust, written and published by CorporateHistory.net, won a 2015 APEX Grand Award in the Special Publications category. This is the eighth consecutive year that our business history books and history websites have won APEX Awards. Only 82 of this year's 1,900 entrants earned top-tier Grand Awards honors. Kudos to author Bernie Libster and book designer Ashley Tosh, Superior Linen’s marketing director and resident art maven.

We wrote Superior Linen’s history as a series of stories rather than a straight chronological narrative for a few reasons. First and foremost, it let us meet the client’s tight deadline. The format also showcases Superior Linen’s family-oriented culture, as well as the tech innovations that have twice placed it on Inc. Magazine's list of Top 5000 fastest growing privately held companies. We’re especially proud that our client agreed to run two spreads  both in English and Spanish, the first language of many of Superior’s employees. APEX regarded that as an good example of corporate storytelling for the 21st century.

Sponsored by Communications Concepts in Springfield, VA, the APEX Awards is a program designed to recognize excellence in publishing by communications professionals. The APEX Awards for Excellence are given in various categories based on outstanding quality in both graphic design and editorial content of print and online publications. 

Books-a-Million: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

In Florence, Alabama, in 1917, Clyde W. Anderson set up a newsstand. With the profits from it, he bought a bookstore. His sons built more stores, incorporating them under the name “Bookland” in 1964. Bookland survives as a subsidiary of Books-a-Million, which since 1988 has become a chain of over 200 superstores, mostly in the southeastern United States. The company went public in 1992. It is the second largest book retailer in the country. The closest thing to an About Us page is Corporate Profile.

OVERALL GRADE: D

Products/Services: D

The Corporate Profile page provides a good summary of the current size and scope of Books-a-Million, along with its operating divisions. But the page consists entirely of small type and a few headers. Our Commandment 6 of About Us pages is, “Honor thy visuals.” Archival photos of early locations, early signage, or previous logos would liven up this page. More importantly, the page seems to be aimed at possible investors rather than customers. It conveys no sense of excitement about the products and services the company provides, nor its essential business history. Book people, especially, have an obligation to be corporate storytellers.

Personality: E

Completely missing from the Corporate Profile page is the story of the company’s century-long development. Who founded it? What was their driving purpose? What did they do right, and where and when, that helped make the company last so long?

At the foot of the page is a list of directors and corporate officers. Each is listed with name, title, and nothing else: no capsule bios, no contact info, no hint of their goals for Books-a-Million. According to Wikipedia, the company was founded by Clyde W. Anderson. On the Corporate Profile page, the first two names under Board of Directors are Clyde B. Anderson and Terry C. Anderson. Hey, bet there’s a family connection there! Why not tell us about it?

Accessibility: B

The contact page is available via a link on the top navigation bar. It offers a list of mailing addresses, emails, and (sometimes) telephone numbers for questions about retail stores, the website, the company, complaints, employment, and media relations.

TAKEAWAY

Your corporate history is a powerful tool for setting your company apart from the crowd. Use it!

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Kaye Scholer LLP: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

The law firm founded by Benjamin Kay and Jacob Scholer in New York City in 1917 now has more than 450 attorneys in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Washington, D.C., West Palm Beach, Frankfurt, London, and Shanghai. With an international reputation as a litigation firm, it specializes in product liability, antitrust, and intellectual property. The About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: B

Products/Services: B

Kaye Scholer’s main About Us page is packed with information, beginning with a summary of the company history (100 years in 2017) and moving on to cover which industries it works with extensively, how it functions as a strategic business partner, and why it is uniquely qualified to deal with complex issues in a cost-effective way. As a testimonial, the page mentions that 83 clients have been working with Kaye Scholer for more than 20 years.

Additional links within the text would be helpful. For example, when mentioning in-depth knowledge of core industries, why not link to the Practice Groups page? When mentioning introductions between the firm’s clients, why not link to a page that gives examples?

Although the About Us page looks dense, the material is broken into four separate headings and numerous paragraphs, so it’s easy to get through. Still, it’s great to see a prominent link to the Breakthroughs brochure (a PDF), which highlights recent victories by the firm in a variety of industries and includes excellent summaries, illustrations, and testimonials.

Kaye Scholer is frequently mentioned in the media. Bravo for having a Newsroom page that gathers links to such stories. Logos of the publications quoted would add visual interest to the page.

Personality & Accessibility: B

Our Commandment 8 of About Us pages is, “Remember to make yourself and your organization easily accessible.” Kaye Scholer does that for both offices and personnel. The page listing Kaye Scholer offices worldwide offers the address and phone of each office, with a Google map of the location. (We actually prefer the arrangement as it stood a  month or so ago, which used a columnar format to show an iconic photo of the city, a phone and address, and a link to Google maps for the location.) Clicking on any city leads to a page with a blurb about the specialties of that office, the name of the managing partner, and related press releases.

Kaye Scholer personnel can be searched by name, position, practice area, office, or school attended. For each person there’s a page with a bio, photo, email, phone, and notes on his specialties and education, plus the option to download a vCard for easy importation into one’s email contacts. Well done.

In the big-picture, long-term view: why is there no information about the founders of the firm? Its 100-year organizational history is mentioned several times, but without any reference to the lawyers who started it. Business anniversary tip: Use the story of your founders to convey the continuation of core values. 

TAKEAWAY

Approaching any milestone – a decade, a quarter century, a century – gives you bragging rights. Take advantage of your corporate history to show clients where you’ve come from and what to expect in the future.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Smart 150th Anniv Campaign by The Nation

As you'd expect from a serious magazine, The Nation is celebrating its 150th anniversary in intelligent style. Its organizational history campaign has covered all the bases:

• A history book, pictured above, is subtitled "A Biography" -- a smart approach to corporate histories, in our experience.
• A commemorative magazine issue is being offered throughout the year as a subscription premium; it can also be downloaded as a PDF at no cost. It contains a strong mix of past, present, and future. As publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel says on the anniversary website: "In a rich series of archival excerpts, we reprint some of the best that was thought and said in our pages—much of it inspiring and eerily prescient, some of it shocking . . . . Interspersed with the archival excerpts are three sections of new material." 
• The Nation doesn't gloss over the rough spots. Per vanden Heuvel: "We have also included a few selections that turned out to be less than prophetic." (The bigger lesson here, as CorporateHistory.net advocates to clients: All organizations have sensitive issues. Write an honest history, with tough situations described factually and placed in the context of lessons learned.)
• Numerous live events and discussions are taking place nationwide in public libraries, museums, and theaters -- it's a robust calendar.
• There's even an anniversary cruise in December. Given the amount of thought and research that has gone into this 150th-year campaign, I imagine that The Nation knows its demographics well enough to make a profit on this.
• Although The Nation is best known for coverage of political and social issues, it generously includes poetry from the archives in its anniversary issue. It's not always easy to secure reproduction rights, so special kudos on that. What a list of poets! It ranges from Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams to Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, and many more. 
• A related documentary by Barbara Kopple, "Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation," is playing at art houses. 

Bottom line: The Nation knows its audience, meets them where they live, and positions itself for the next 150 years. And it has spaced its anniversary publications and events across a full year, instead of relying on a single hit. Many good lessons here!

Boeing: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

In the era when airplanes were still built of wood, William Boeing's work in the timber industry near Seattle gave him the experience to break into aviation. In 1916 he incorporated "Pacific Aero Products Co.," which later became Boeing. The company has a century-long string of firsts and mosts in aviation. Today Boeing is one of the world's largest airplane manufacturers, the second-largest defense contractor in the world, and the largest exporter in the United States (by dollar value). Its stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The main About Us page might be either History or Our Company: see next section.

OVERALL GRADE: D

The top navigation menu on Boeing’s home page offers History, with tabs for Overview, Products, Strategic Airpower, Pioneers, and Founders Video. Several slots to the right on the Home page navigation menu is Our Company. On the History page, there’s no reference to the company’s current size and preeminent status in the aerospace industry. On Our Company, there’s no reference to Boeing’s distinguished, near-100-year history. At the very least, there should be multiple links between these sets of pages. As they stand, they suggest that the company’s history has little to do with its current state.

Products/Services: C

Our Commandment 7 of About Us pages is, “Remember to keep the navigation easy.” We’re not sure who designed the navigation on this site: we hope they don’t do maps for pilots.

The General Information tab is called “Boeing in Brief” on the page and “Overview” on one of the nav menus. It offers a solid summary of the company’s size and worldwide reach, as well as the company’s divisions: commercial airplanes, defense, engineering / operations / technology, etc. But it needs links to pages dealing with those sections (e.g., the list of Products for the commercial airplanes heading), so the visitor doesn’t have to stumble around the site if he’s interested in a particular topic. The Boeing site has great information, but it’s not easy to access.

There’s also an uneasy balance (which we are seeing more and more often) between web design for desktops and for smartphones. The History page, for example, opens with a huge photo that occupies most of the screen on a desktop. (On a smartphone held portrait-wise, it takes up barely a quarter of the screen.) Clicking on a submenu such as Products takes you further down the same page. To get to the actual list of products, you have to click another link, to a page with yet another huge above-the-fold photo, and then scroll through a two-column list of airplanes, with, alas, no images to help you along. But once you get to the page for the DC-9 (for example), there’s an interesting, informative write-up, including the airplane’s specs and the history of its manufacture and use. On this page, which concerns one particular airplane, the huge photo at the top of the page makes sense.

The timeline that appears under History / Strategic Airpower offers great images and intriguing facts. But its navigation is bafflingly complex. One arrow directs us to scroll down. At the left is a timeline with clickable years. At the upper right is an arrow that brings up informative text and photos, with a row of clickable airplane silhouettes. At the lower left is an arrow that makes headlines pop up. Clicking on this and that and the other graphic made my head spin like a propeller. I moved on without knowing how much of it I’d actually seen.

Personality: C

Kudos to Boeing for including a long list of Pioneers, not only for Boeing for but for McDonnell Douglas and other companies that have become part of Boeing. Too often, the history of a company that was taken over fades into oblivion.

But here, too, there are navigation problems. On the Pioneers subpage of the Our Company menu is a good short bio of William E. Boeing, with a link to a longer version in PDF. But why, oh why, is there no link to the excellent video of him that’s available under History? Business anniversary tip: That video is a terrific example of how to use archival footage to make your corporate history come alive. Assuming Boeing celebrates its centennial next year, the video deserves a place of honor.

The pages on Boeing’s current leaders are, unfortunately, not so impressive. The page for the CEO, W. James McNerney, Jr., gives scads of details about his experience at other companies, but says absolutely nothing about his vision for Boeing. A bio on the Boeing page needs Boeing-oriented information.

Accessibility: E

The Contact Us page (buried in the footer under Popular Links) seems to be aimed only at people who might want to make suggestions for the web page, rather than contact the company for business purposes. “We do welcome your comments about our site, as they help us in identifying new areas of interest for future content. ... If you still need help, contact the Boeing Webmaster using the below form.” The Media are given a link to a separate page.

This is a major lapse. Clients and investors should at least be given a link to a page with contact information for them.

TAKEAWAY

Use your company history, but also tell people about the company’s current goals. And always be sure potential clients can reach you.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.