The Return to Communication Innocence

We now live in an era where communications are crowded, over populated even. Brands and advertising can be seen anywhere and anytime, from the time we wake up until we go to sleep. Marketing campaigns are happening all the time and everywhere, from public spaces like stores to personal spaces such as personal phones and email. Public Relations (PR) campaigns and methods are being used frequently to ensure that the intended messages would be interesting enough to be quoted in news articles. The over population of promises and messages in today’s era has made companies or institutions to step up their search for a clutter breaking communication, which implies innovation of methods and what many called out-of-the-box ways in communicating.

Like knights in shining armors come the communication professionals or experts or agencies to the rescue. In the midst of increasing competition and institutions’ necessity to acquire stakeholders undivided attention, these knights swoop institutions off their feet with big, and supposedly original, ideas. Good results lead to more and bigger business while bad ones lead to more search of other knights who would be capable of solving an institution’s communication problem.

The alluring financial rewards of providing communication services brought more and more players to this consulting industry. Number of agencies or individual communication consultants, either in advertising, marketing, PR, or digital, continues to grow. Armed with proposals and original ideas, they pitch for business from institutions or individuals, trying to convince their prospects that they have the ultimate communication solution, better than the others. But with growth of players in an industry, comes increase competition. Communication consultants are now facing the same problem as their clients, they need that extra edge to be able to beat their competitors and grab accounts. As there is no such thing as ‘consultant for consultant’, these experts have to solve their differentiation problem by themselves. Some revert to personal connections, some by showing their portfolio of past and current clients, but most put forward what they dubbed their own innovative method in communication to achieve differentiation in the minds of prospects.

What comes next is a wave of ‘new’ methods of communication. Go to the book store and you will find published works using the name of the agency coupled with the word “Way”. There is “The X Way of PR”, “The Y Way of Advertising”, and a lot of other “Way”-s. Such way of using “Way” in titles implies a distinct and unique method of innovative communication. One can guess that the main objective of those “Way” is to say “You should choose us to hold the account as we are better than the others” in a very subtle, industrially correct manner. It is only natural as these experts are businesses who need to gain profit and not academics who pursue science improvement. The irony is this wave of so-called innovative communication methods has resulted in a clutter of communication that originally experts or consultants wish to solve for their clients.

Nowadays communication managers, even CEOs, are accustomed to sort through several pitching proposals from communication agencies, all carrying the promise of solving their communication problems. Now institutions must face two fronts of communication clutter. First is the clutter against competitors. Second is the clutter of proposals from these knights in shining armors.

Sometimes the solution is a simple one, which is “going back to basic” or what this piece calls “return to communication innocence”. For communication practitioners this mean knowing your target audience or your target market, as the core of every communication activities is what the target audience/market would understand or do after receiving your message. Many theories on how to achieve such accomplishment, such as via demographic and psychographic segmentation techniques. However, often such techniques are considered as merely checklist and unrelated with the eventual message and activities output.

One simple question that is often overlook by practitioners is “what do we provide to a specific group of consumers?”, or perhaps rephrasing it to a more concrete context “what problems that a specific group of consumers have that we can help solve?” Whether it’s product or service base, whether it’s core proposition or added value, for us to be able to relate to our consumers, there should, or even must, be a problem they have that we can help resolve. Either we’re selling soap for those who pursue hygiene, or computers for those pursuing productivity, or financial service for those wanting to multiply their earnings. It’s a fundamental question which communication practitioners need to address. With such context, demographic and psychographic analysis would have more depth and utility in devising concrete messages and communication activities.

Returning to communication innocence and understanding such communication fundamental would help practitioners in maintaining their path amidst all communication ideas or jargons circling them, be it from consultants or from internal team. It’s a simple step to achieve that communication promised land of loyalty and word of mouth.