Communicating core values and mission （六）

ACCA P3 考試：Communicating core values and mission （六）

Facebook – Tesco

Let’s say that a company wanted to communicate some of its core values to its customers. Mission and core values are fundamental, serious and relatively permanent features of organisations and it would be difficult to communicate these as statements appropriately via Facebook or Twitter where information tends to be more ephemeral, if not trivial. However, social media can be used successfully to communicate examples of mission or core values in action.

Amongst Tesco’s many recipes and competitions posted by them on their Facebook wall (and therefore appearing in the Facebook pages of Tesco’s ‘friends’) are postings such as the following:

TESCO’S GREAT SCHOOL RUN is looking for five to 11 year olds to slip on the trainers for a 2 km fun run. Ask your school to sign up

Exercise can be a fun part of everyday life and we hope to get one million children on the move. To be one in a million, find out more here and

Hi, …I work at Tesco Express in Eastbourne. I’m doing a parachute jump to support Tesco’s current Charity of the Year, the Alzheimer's Society, as part of their ‘Leap Year Challenge’! Follow my nervous build up to the big day HERE!

YOU can take a giant leap for people with dementia and sign up for a parachute jump or abseil! Find more details HERE

Both of these are illustrative of Tesco’s wish to be valued within the communities in which they operate and the messages will automatically appear on the Facebook pages of anyone who ‘Liked’ Tesco. This will be an effective, almost subliminal way of communicating a core value of Tesco to its customers.

Facebook – ACCA

ACCA uses Facebook to post many routine messages about exam results, studying and membership fees. However, amongst those it also has, for example, information about recording practical experience requirements (PER), which is an integral part of the ACCA Qualification. The huge variety of people who ‘write on ACCA’s wall’ is evidence of ACCA’s success at being a global organisation and of welcoming diversity. This, of itself promotes ACCA’s mission and core values and will encourage people from a very wide range of backgrounds to participate.

Of course, not every organisation uses social media. HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks and financial services organisations, makes practically no use of Facebook or Twitter.