I’ve been doing some on-line research for work. Nothing  special about that, I do it all the time. But this time is different. I’ve been researching at the site of a prominent monthly magazine in preparation for an in-house training with one of their journalists.

Here’s the background: We’ve noticed the need in our corporate publishing team to jazz up the interviews we do with customers, executives, and industry experts. We want sexy stories. But I feel we’ve gotten lazy and tend to read off the same list of questions (“What was the benefit to your business?”) and then print up the results after some slight editing. An interview might sound easy, but it is one of the hardest stories to write well. You need a rapport and trust with the interview partner – which is hard to do if the interview is conducted by phone, as they often are - because you want to draw interesting bits of detail and anecdotes from your guest. When you write up the interview, you want to begin with a startling question, not something that makes it look as if you haven’t done your homework (“Tell us about your business”). Although we scrub the answers and mix up the order of the questions and answers for best results, we felt that our interviews could be improved. And that was a sign to my boss to do something about it. He decided to hire a professional to train the team in interview techniques and in writing up interviews.

The  journalist who was recommended will join us for a full day’s training in October. He writes for a magazine, my boss assured the team, that is famous for its interviews.

That magazine is Playboy.

Playboy has got to be one of the few magazines that I don’t buy. And if I did, I bet the interviews wouldn’t get my full attention. Someone on Facebook recently referred to magazines as the “lemon sorbet of literature,”  but I think they were referring to the light and pretty home, fashion, and celebrity magazines that a lot of us are suckers for.

And that explains why I’ve been doing my online research at playboy.com. I read their 1980 interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.  I read the 1976 interview with Elton John. My further research revealed that 98% of their interviews are conducted with male celebrities, that the women they interview are TV starlets and talk show hosts, and that the photos of these ladies might well be placed in the centerfold. But what are my chances of getting an interview with someone who wants to talk about shows, shades, and shoes? My SAP playmates talk about software, services, and sales.

I have to admit Playboy’s hacks are good. Here’s an example of what I mean about beginning an interview with a startling question:

PLAYBOY: Judging by the title of your latest book—Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea—we know your liquor of choice. Why is vodka a superior form of alcohol?
CHELSEA HANDLER:Vodka is great because it doesn’t have an odor. If you drink rum or tequila, your breath will have a very distinct alcohol smell. I was looking for something a little more subtle because I don’t like to smell like a prostitute in the morning. Not that I’m worried about offending anybody. I’m usually alone when I wake up. You can’t fit two people into a bathtub. Yeah, that’s right, I’m a class act all the way. Klassy with a capital k.

PLAYBOY: You sound like our kind of girl.
CHELSEA HANDLER: I drink often and I drink frequently…

I hope that our trainer is creative because I don’t believe that we have ever mentioned alcohol or sex or nudity in our corporate publishing channels. And our interviewees are always fully clothed in the photos. But maybe I am being unfair. Maybe the interview techniques are the same. And who knows? Maybe this could be my chance to move into the world of entertainment journalism.

I was delighted to see David Braun comment on my last post, which sparked a discussion between us about the use of visuals in our newly relaunched employee magazine at SAP. David is a photographer based in Las Vegas who has worked frequently for SAP, tirelessly capturing events like the annual customer event (SAPPHIRE), often held in David’s hometown. He also shot the cover photo for the second issue of our relaunched mag, which features an American colleague. (We aspire to portray employees from all over the world; our next covergirl is from Argentina).

When I first began working on the SAP employee magazine four years ago, we had one photographer whom we called whenever we needed photos to illustrate a story or an interview. He always asked, “What do you want, a portrait?” At that point, I honestly didn’t know what the choices were. He cultivated a war correpondent look, military style vest with lots of pockets, and his heavy equipment over his shoulder. But gradually we phased out his involvement. The art director at our agency grumbled that he submitted a DVD with 200 washed out shots, including all the ones that were out of focus, or where people had their eyes closed.  And I had calls from executive assistants and secretaries, gently indicating that his behavior was not always top drawer.

So we cast our net a little wider. We knew we needed better photographs, fewer headshots, and more dramaturgy to the layout. “More drama, baby,” as a local American TV celebrity says. We cast our net as far as Bangalore and Beijing, and discovered a number of wonderful photographers, all of whom I can highly recommend. To be fair, I only want to recommend one per region, or one in the regions where we most often need a photo shoot. Here is my final cut:

David Braun has covers the Las Vegas – Bay Area for us. SAP has a development lab in Palo Alto, and David has done a lot of work for us there. He is very professional, delivers on time, even under hectic circumstances, and best of all – has a great sense of humor!

 Carina Kircher, is based in the Heidelberg area and covers a lot of the local work we have – executive interviews, team pictures etc. She took the photo in my previous post of our relaunch cover. Her first assignment for SAP World was to cover the company football (soccer) tournament. I was delighted with the results. 

 Finally, while in India, I had the pleasure of working closely with Mallik of ideogram, whose business in Bangalore caters primarily to customers who want visuals for advertising campaigns. Mallik has a fine arts background that informs his work with a refined aesthetic. The quality of his work was exceptional. Look for his corporate work – including shots of SAP folks – on his website.

In advertising and publishing, the mantra is that design follow copy. Copy comes first. I would love to hear the thoughts of others on this age-old, thorny topic.

Last year began as an exciting year for us folks in the Corporate Publishing team at SAP. Our goal: to relaunch our media, including the employee magazine that I am responsible for, SAP World. I had spoken to a number of  independent consultants and solicited their opinions of SAP World and one remark stuck like a burr. The magazine was Teutonic and square, said that expert. SAP World was full of amateur photos and head shots. The features and interviews were long and turgid. 

But there was much that we did well and that we wanted to retain: profiles of people who work at SAP and have had interesting careers, executive interviews, features on software strategies, new products, work-life balance. We had even done a series of country specials on the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), allowing two or even three editors (including myself) to travel from Bangalore to Beijing to witness firsthand SAP’s investment and involvement in the emerging markets.

Yet we were after better storytelling, better visuals, more digestible content. We identified agencies with credentials in the corporate publishing business, prepared a detailed brief, and opened the field to the pitch. The battle began. Our incumbent agency was among the companies invited to take part in the pitch, an agency that SAP had had on contract for its customer and employee magazines for 10 years. We saw brilliant work from these agencies, concepts for print publications and online platforms. In the end, our decision was based as much on these concepts as it was on a gut feeling, a feeling that we could imagine spending long periods of time with the agency’s team and could develop not only brilliant publications, but enjoy a close working relationship. We chose a small, Munich-based agency with a strong background in advertising, which almost spoiled their chances for some of the corporate publishing purists on the selection committee. Even their name is original: grasundsterne is a compound formed by joining syllables taken from the founders’ surnames. They gave me something I always wanted for SAP World: a cover concept that puts an individual SAP employee (or two or three) front and center. We had tried this before (see our India edition below) but their cover idea is repeatable, and never looks anything but simple, fresh, and startling. It captures the SAP demographic and expresses what we wanted the magazine to stand for: a youngish culture, techy but trendy.  This was our first cover after the relaunch:

This is SAP World before it got a makeover.  Our photographer in Bangalore captured the spirit of this young lady, a quality manager in the Enterprise Resource Planning team who also happens to sing classical Indian music in her spare time. I loved her on the cover, but when I see the old against the new, I can’t help but being mighty proud of our new magazine.

But this week I had an upskilled moment of my own. I received an e-mail from an American colleague in which she used the word “asks” as a noun: “Thanks to everyone for getting back to me on the asks of Bjorn for our upcoming event.” (All names have been changed to protect the innocent).

Only now, after several days, have I discovered that the writer didn’t even mean “needs” as I initially suspected. She means our requests of Bjorn’s time. Our “asks” of him. A friend of mine argues that American English is exciting because it is always alive and changing, is the open source of language – open to influences from music, politics, and now from new media. Of course, he is right. Although purists would reject such words out of hand, corporate-speak, as ugly as it can be, is always evolving and often exciting.