Communications: getting the message over

Objective

At any point in time, your organisation will have messages it will want to convey to its stakeholders, and this will need careful thought and planning. As importantly you will need to think through who the stakeholders are whom you want to address, and what impact it is that you want your messages to have. In this process you will have a number of clear objectives.

• what the messages are you want to convey and why;
• when and to whom you want to convey them;
• what the relationship is between internal and external messaging;
• what the means and media are which you want to use for the messaging;
• what the frequency is for each instance of messaging;
• monitoring feedback so you can assess impacts.

You will also assess who is doing the messaging and communications and you will likely be managing a balance between professional communications experts (who will understand the art of messaging) and colleagues likely to be in the firing line of delivering key messages.

Put aside any thought that this all about occasional press releases and ensuring your organisation has a social media presence. It is about communicating in a world of real-time commentary where social media (notably Twitter) is empowering influential communication and response faster and to a wider audience than ever. As such it is changing the rules of the comms game.

Communications is more than ever at the heart of organisations’ lives and its management can have a significant effect on shareholder value.

Context

Communications was once an inside-out process where organisations had complete control over media, timing and audience, but now:

• social media has made communicators of us all;
• news has become instant rather than daily;
• internet search has created billboards for everything;
• mobile media has made news and information accessible and shareable instantly;
• social media has eroded control and pluralised the ability to set the news agenda;
• mobile video has enabled instant sharing of powerful images which were once controllable;
• accessibility is creating new, fast-evolving and fast-changing and fluid communities of interest not defined by traditional stakeholder groups.

The key challenge is to manage communications within a complexity where controlling the agenda is increasingly hard and where timeliness is at an absolute premium.

Challenge

There are a number of clear challenges an organisation faces in developing a thought-through and consistent communications strategy and programme.

• Resource/expertise – communications needs dedicated professionals, without which – as a part-time or amateur exercise – it is likely to be a second-league activity with little focus.
• Time – communications needs time, especially for planning and not least because (especially in a large organisation) there will be many parts which have to be brought together for communications to be successfully interlocked across many functions.
• Understanding the consumer perspective – while of course any communications programme must represent what the organisation wishes to say, early anticipation of how consumers/external stakeholders will react should play a key role in communications planning. The risk otherwise is that overly introspective messaging may lack authenticity with stakeholders (take for example the 2012/2013 Coca Cola advertisements, which appeared to suggest Coke drinkers aren’t obese!).
• Consistency – this isn’t about ‘spin’ but ensuring that where messages are being repeated they are being done so in a consistent manner – inconsistency will rapidly undermine core messages.
• Managing the agenda – however much communications is planned, external unplanned events often shape the communications agenda – systems need to be in place to enable rapid reactions.

In short this is an area which is as complex as it is dynamic, and where complete control is an illusion.

Success

Developing a successful approach to communications takes a concerted effort over an extended period. It demands clear identification of the ‘narrative’ which you want to use to describe the values, strategies and actions of your organisation and a sustained approach to conveying them authentically and consistently. This will entail, at the very least:

• dedicated staff – resourced and empowered to focus on communications;
• a clear plan – based on the organisation’s strategy and expressed as a narrative with a series of calls to action;
• types of engagement – a plan which sets out the various ways in which you will engage with stakeholders, both internal and external, and in which parts of the narrative;
• use of media – a sophisticated use of media which not only utilises the power of social media but employs its feedback and mobilisation potential;
• consistency – a frankly ruthless approach to consistency so that carefully laid plans are not derailed by off-message activities;
• coverage – a monitoring process to gauge the impact and effectiveness of communications planning and operations;
• media training – ensuring that staff who have to engage with media are trained to do so;
• integration into business planning – making communications an integral part of strategy rather than an afterthought;
• integration into business operations – and similarly embedding communications into the daily flow of activities.

These simple guidelines – which belie a great deal of complex detail – can ensure that communications takes its strategic place in a digital and pluralised environment.

Pitfalls

The primary risk to communication arises when it isn’t strategic and lapses into the wholly reactive. In this case communications is likely to be:

• lacking in any planfulness, driven by events rather than any planned narrative;
• divorced from strategic or any kind of planning, and therefore treated as incidental;
• inconsistent and therefore prone to error, and quite likely to undermine core business strategies;
• undertaken by a range of poorly trained and poorly coordinated individuals.

Businesses ignore strategic communications at their peril. We are engulfed now in a wave of communications democratisation which leaves organisations and governments few places to hide. More organisations than ever are discovering that social media-based communications tools are allowing organisations to be driven by events and waves of popular content/discontent.

Leaders’ checklist

• Start from the perspective that communications cannot achieve control given the pluralisation of media.
• Be sure that your organisation (where relevant) has dedicated colleagues.
• Create a core narrative which describes your organisation’s ‘story’.
• Aim for a communications plan to exist on a rolling basis but for resource to be dedicated to reactivity.
• Ensure communications strategy and operations incorporate a healthy view of the outsider’s perspective.
• Work hard to achieve consistency – attention to detail here pays off.