Thanks for all those that reached out and are sharing in the war on content pollution. I was thrilled to see the dialogue carry over to the Huffington Post. (http://huff.to/1ewk9CM)
Here are some more thoughts to keep the conversation going.
We need to become much more selective with the stories we tell. The sheer heft of the data we command is increasingly a problem, not an advantage.
It is a resource only if we make it one.
We have tools we couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago, even 5 years ago. If we succeed in taking advantage of that, the end result will be a rediscovery of the power of a real conversation between two people.
40 years ago, my brother and I engaged in a legendary conversation. We confronted honestly and passionately one of the great questions of our generation – whether the greatest rock n’ roll band of all time was Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. He took the former position. I, the latter.
I believe I got the better of the conversation.
That’s what conversation is all about. That conversation is a happy memory for me, and that’s what conversation does. It’s relationship – connection.
I’m not suggesting that we can create the special bond between two brothers when we’re talking to customers. But any conversation is still about a relationship, and it’s about connection. Brothers are born with both of those. But we can and should aspire as brands to a level of real engagement every time we tell our story to the world.
If we don’t, after all, why are we out there with our information in the first place?
Relationship is engagement. And engagement is credibility. And credibility is trust. And trust is what we are paid to inspire. Everyone in this room is in the trust business.
You can’t fake it. You can have tera-bytes of data. But if that becomes just another data dump – there will be no relevance. No relationship. No engagement. No credibility. No trust.
Now, let me say, it isn’t a trivial effort. Please don’t think I am being cynical. This is not about manipulating our way onto someone’s wavelength with some kind of superficial but cleverly packaged, focus-grouped insight.
I am at the complete other end of the spectrum.
I genuinely want to find ways to be truly relevant.
The strategic shift must be from the traditional command-and-control model of imposing messages to something much more sophisticated.
To clear the air, to end content pollution – there must be a new model.
It must be a continuous, dynamic cycle: Listen. Understand. Respond, with relevance. Engage. Persuade. And then, at the end of that cycle – listen some more. And start all over again.
This is likely the biggest strategic shift that we will see in our careers as communicators and content producers.
With all that we can know about customers…. What stories will we tell? This is what counts.
We have everything we need to succeed. We are very much in the right place at the right time. We are at the threshold, at the doorway, of the C-suite to a degree we’ve never been in this industry. I think we all know that. I’m sure all of you in this room are highly valued business advisors to your CEO.
But I’m talking about a new role for the PR function: as integral and in fact indispensable to the strategic direction of the organization.
In this new world, it should no longer be possible to divorce business decisions from communication decisions.
Not if we want to generate credibility and trust in a world saturated with information.
That takes art, because communicating effectively has always demanded that. Creativity, a fresh take, bright ideas.
But I think we must now begin to think more consistently of the art and the science of communication.
That has important implications for business decisions, meaning where we allocate resources and what return we expect in return.
In this new golden age of PR, the science is our ability to personalize, to localize and to humanize our interactions as never before. And, here’s the thing – we are able to do that, continuously, because we can measure the impact of all this in real time.
More to come. Let’s keep the conversation (battle) going.
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