CorpComms Magazine

A return to fundamental thinking will not only return the profession of communications to its rightful place, but may grab the world by its emerging mentality and bring it along, too.

Earlier this year, Unilever's former communications chief described a 'lost generation' of communicators who did not understand the opportunities of social media. In my mind, his comment encapsulates a rising tide of manic questioning, Do you Twitter? Is your company using Web 2.0? Does your chief executive blog?

I suspect that many early adopters of corporate social media may have been enjoying a fragile sense of comfort from having grabbed an early seat on a new train but with little idea of its destination, and little more expectation than a sense of 'it might get packed later'.

I am not condemning anyone. Morphing into new media channels, to any extent, is almost always a good thing. Some of the most memorable campaigns of the last 30 years made the most of emerging thinking or new technology - or they created them.

But before you leap with enthusiasm into YouTube, let me invite you to look at things another way. Perhaps the bigger problem is that we have an emerging generation of communicators who understand social media, but don't understand the basics of communication.

Is that so hard to accept? Did the rise of desktop publishing produce a new generation of top quality typographers? Hardly.

Instead, let me argue that the rise of social media has given us a new audience - one that we do not talk to, but talk with. This is not an audience with which we will engage simply by signing up for a Yammer account.

The wars in the Middle East, the recession, and many of the other events of the last 15 years happened against a backdrop of 'brand noise' that became louder and more colourful. Alongside it, the cry for environmental consciousness gathered volume and our audiences began to look for something new. Something had to break. A friend from Novartis remarked: People are drowning in information but thirsting for meaning. I think she's right. The great pendulum of corporate messaging has started to swing the other way.

The rise of social media has empowered the public like never before. In the beginning, they were invited to respond, and then they became authors. In a very short space of time, companies and organisations were bereft of the ability to preach about their products as the global marketplace became united and their customers started to compare notes and scrutinise the world among their peers.

Terms like 'credibility gap' and 'greenwash' emerged. Companies and governments were swept up and bundled into the dock of the High Court of credibility. There is no summons to a trial by media - it simply happens. As Alastair Campbell said In the last four years, the audience has changed far more than the technology.

Interacting with an audience of authors is a new challenge. It requires us, as communicators, to be ourselves more than ever before. Good communicators are built as much from personality type as experience - we have an ability to empathise and to create thought, expectation, feelings and reactions in both individuals and crowds. This is no time to bend our largely unquantifiable profession into boardroom accountability. If ever success demanded good, fundamental communication strategies to lead the way, this is it.

Let's return to basics - and these are going to sound very basic.

1. Know your target audience. I don't mean a demographic bar-graph of age versus coffee consumption, I mean really know them. Try the Stanislavski principles - the seven rules that method actors use to get into character. Know your audience's aspirations, their hopes, their hurdles and their worries.

2. Know what you want them to be left thinking, feeling and doing. Is it really the purpose of your website to convey every fact you have to give, or is it simply to make someone feel enough affinity with you that they pick up the phone? This decision is the one that will get you back on your feet if your campaign fails.

3. When (1) and (2) are complete (and only then) let creativity flow, choose your channels, and decide how you're going to measure them.

Two months ago, I recited these three rules to an unsurprised audience of fellow communication directors. Then I asked how many of them had ever suffered a scenario in which someone had said: We need a campaign, let's do a brochure and a logo, I think it should be green! There was a good show of raised hands - mine included. It's amazing how quickly simplicity gets forgotten.

The Communications Executive Council recently surveyed 2,000 employees. It found 33 per cent had positive feelings towards their company but, of these, 89 per cent were 'passive supporters', meaning that, while positive, they did not express it. The remaining 11 per cent voluntarily promoted their company. Every one of those 'active supporters' cited their inspiration as being an emotional connection to the company. This reason was chosen over others such as environmental credentials and business performance.

When dealing with our new, empowered, global audience of authors, creating active supporters is our goal. They are our advocates - the ones who will spread positive equity for our message. This will shout far more loudly than any advert, neon sign or well-crafted press campaign.

Creating these advocates requires more than simply squeezing the same old message into Wikipedia or pasting our chief executive onto Facebook. After all, social media channels are channels, not strategies. Surviving the scrutiny of the most powerful audiences we have ever seen requires us to create solid emotional connections based upon integrity and instinct.

Success still demands the fundamentals of communication in every aspect of our work. Whether we are found in human resources projects, political lobbying, marketing or corporate messaging, good communicators are defined by a unique ability to inspire people to think, feel and do things - and what organisation wouldn't want that?

This is our era. Of that, I have no doubt.

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