Is marketing or learning leading the way to educate the masses? It's important for the two to work together.
As I look at United's United CleanPlus℠ initiative and their partnership with Clorox and the Cleveland Clinic, it makes me wonder -- whereas marketing departments are used to working with other company's marketing departments and agencies, is it as common for corporate Learning departments to do so? That is, are the Learning departments of Unite, Clorox and the Cleveland Clinic working together on training content?
Amidst the discussions of curation, is there much in place or practice about working with partner organizations on learning content and experiences?
Learning has the nicest, most supportive people across the board. Personally, they will bend over backwards to help someone else in the field. Professionally, though, are there processes for approvals and reviews for multi-brand efforts?
I'm also curious when I look at this initiative from United, as to who takes responsibility for educating the public? Is it Learning or is it Marketing? Will this content remain on the website, expecting people to search it out, or will there be social media and email drip campaigns to slowly build familiarity and reinforcement? Will travelers be trained to foster a culture in the airport and on the planes so that there is a peer-promoted adoption, rather than enforcement by airline staff? Will the public be educated about the differences among different airlines' practices? Will these customer responsibilities impact loyalty, that is, will they think, "I've gotten used to working with how X airline does it, so I'll stick with that?"
This last question could be a huge opportunity for Learning to tie back to business impact and revenue. Learning and marketing partnering together is really important as companies, like airlines, invite the public back. Internal education isn't enough. Posting a webpage is not enough. The two departments blending their expertise to educate the public could help get us all flying again soon.
What do you think?
c.f., https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/united-cleanplus.html
