Tips Booklets and Northwest Airlines - My Reply

For Immediate Release

Contact: Paulette Ensign 858-481-0890

Avoiding Layoff Tips Booklet and Other Corporate Promotion Disasters

Quite recently Northwest Airlines created and distributed a booklet titled "101 Ways to Save Money” to 60 Northwest Airlines employees apparently designed to provide helpful advice to a group of employees facing layoffs.

However well intended the effort, the booklet contained several ideas that the recipients found patently offensive and personally demeaning

The release of the booklet caused such a furor among the employees that Northwest Airlines pulled the plug on the project and ceased distribution of the publication.

Long time tips booklet publishing expert Paulette Ensign says that the booklet fiasco serves as an excellent reminder of what not to do if you are creating and distributing a booklet.

Sure, the booklet was intended to help people and it might have actually had some excellent ideas in it.

But some of the ideas contained in this little gem antagonized and angered the very people it was intended to help. This could have been easily avoided.

A timely prepublication review and a little common sense would have quickly allowed managers to realize that people who are about to lose their jobs were not going to take kindly to advice like this:

“Don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash.”

“Borrow a dress for a big night out or go to a consignment shop.”

“Go to pawn shops to buy jewelry cheap.”

“Go to second hand clothing stores to buy hand-me-downs.”

“Dig through garbage for food.”

The booklet contained other equally demeaning and offensive tips.

Yes, a little common sense could lead one to conclude that some cost-cutting suggestions would not be well received by professional employees in otherwise good standing.

But that apparently didn’t happen.

There are some very useful lessons learned that can be derived from this experience.

Ensign recommends that the next time you design and prepare a booklet intended to help a certain group of people who are impacted by a management action:

1) Ask a group of the affected employees for their own ideas about how to help mitigate impacts.

2) Have these same employees review the ideas proposed for publication and agree by consensus on the ideas that will go in your booklet.

3) Once you have these ideas finalized, get the new booklet out immediately and promote it like crazy.

Getting people involved in efforts like this on tips booklets specially designed to share a core set of ideas can be a very good thing that will help morale and communications, especially if it becomes a regular process that achieves excellence.

If you involve the employees in developing solutions to the problems the company faces you will improve morale and your bottom line at the same time.

For more information visit www.tipsbooklets.com

Paulette Ensign is a long-time booklet consultant who has developed and overseen tips booklets creation for thousands of publishers and companies worldwide.

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Please feel free to use this tips article or contact me for interviews or if you have any questions.

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Until next time,
Paulette - who is rarely without an opinion to improve things
http://www.tipsbooklets.com