Communications – Page 10

Europeans and Obama (not another post on Obama?!)

As if enough hadn’t been said or written already (and I don’t profess to be an expert, by any stretch). An interesting thought nonetheless: why are we Europeans still so enamoured of Obama?

A mix of some of the following perhaps.

To many, he’s still a rockstar

The US and Obama are always big news, but not that big compared to what’s happening here, and the fact is, he’s miles away and can’t by nature have as much impact on our day to day as our own politicians. The freshness and star appeal of 2008 thus hasn’t waned as much as it might have done if we’d seen him dominate the headlines night after night or if we could realistically blame him for our own ills. So as trite and sensationalist as it may seem, as far as we can tell, he still nearly looks and sounds the part – just as he did when he captivated the world back in 2007-08.

If not a rockstar, he’s the sort of American we feel most comfortable with

Right or wrong, we see him as professorial, smart, honest, engaging without being overbearing, seemingly willing to listen rather than act on instinct. This contrasts with the type of American some of us feel slightly uncomfortable with i.e. unashamedly brash, impulsive and unselfconscious.

Values

Despite his relative disinterest in our continent, we still think his values are European in nature: his penchant for soft power, universal healthcare, wanting at least in principle to shut down Guantanamo, gay rights, women’s rights et al. Sure, Guantanamo remains open, the healthcare bill has no public option, the use of drone attacks under his watch has been boosted, his support of gay marriage is a fairly recent development BUT we assume that these are compromise measures, not his personal predilection.

We don’t care about his supposed biggest failure (and in any case it’s not entirely his fault and it seems piffling compared to our mess)

The recovery has been slow and unemployment remains too high? Big deal, that’s their issue, and in any case, the US is doing better than we are; frankly their woes seem piffling compared to the Eurozone travails.

The Republicans partly got us into this mess in the first place

Most of all, the reason many Europeans remain keen on Obama is the other guys. True or not, the 2008 collapse which then led to all sorts of other troubles, none more so than the Eurozone crisis, is blamed on Obama’s predecessor and his party.

The Republicans are creepy

A lot of us still view the Republicans as a sinister lot: virtual pantomime villains; certainly not the responsible party of smaller government and sensible regulation. Rumsfeld’s eerie glare into the camera as he said Old Europe didn’t matter and the subsequent cataclysm that was Iraq still grates. As does – to many – their view on universal healthcare, climate change, abortion, progressive taxation, guns, the death penalty and gay rights, as well as their hawkishness on foreign relations. More than belief, it’s perhaps the tone used by many in the party: the visceral hatred and virtual foaming at the mouth at the mere mention of another opinion on the aforementioned issues makes us feel as tad uncomfortable as this sort of belligerence is usually reserved for extreme fringe parties on this side of the Atlantic. Couple that with many Republicans’ endorsement and continual espousal of their particular notion of American exceptionalism which we would dispute, to put it mildly, and it’s perhaps no wonder that most Europeans – left and right – were pleased with the outcome on November 6th.

Am I forgetting anything?

Digital principles from the US presidential campaign applied to our far smaller pond

My colleague from Fleishman-Hillard in Washington DC, Bill Black, was in Brussels a couple of weeks ago to host an event on the use of digital in the US presidential campaign. Good thing that Obama was triumphant, given that the presentation centred on extolling the phenomenal development of the digital element of his campaign since the last election. It’s getting less air-time given that it’s so 2008, but certainly, the campaign’s use of data in particular is truly ground-breaking.

I was asked to round off the presentation with a couple of brief insights on how the principles of the campaign could be applied to Brussels. Slightly tricky given the considerable differences in scale, critical mass, funding and the fact that we had people with drastically different communications needs in the room (political parties through to embassies and perm reps through to corporates).

Nonetheless, there were 3 points in Bill’s presentation which are unquestionably applicable to Brussels, which I summarised as follows:

Using data

Data can also extremely valuable to a Brussels crowd, albeit usually for a different reason. In the US campaign, as with most large campaigns, the prime purpose of mining data is to understand audiences so as to better target them. In Brussels, in most instances, we know our audiences pretty well, or they’re so small that we can find out about them using more cost effective means (a survey or even just asking them directly). However, exploring and breaking down data can pay great dividends in another way, namely building stronger argumentation.

In short, if you represent the interests of an organisation, country, party, region etc. you can use data collected through various means online to understand the views of people in relevant constituencies, and where relevant, align your position so that it reflects these same views, thus strengthening your case significantly. Too often in Brussels, argumentation is based on assumption, or what you’d like people to hear, or it’s too basic to actually matter. In the private sector, how many organisation, for instance, prattle on about the number of people they employ or the percentage of European GDP they account for?

Instead, imagine you’ve used data to determine – hypothetically – that there are 3,000 people in constituency X who have voiced support for you or are likely to support your position, proven through data indicating what these people have said, published, read and shared. I’m sure some people concerned with privacy will shudder, but there’s sure no better argument winner. In addition, analysing a broader set of stakeholders through data can help identify influencers beyond traditional stakeholder groups.

Smarter about content

Old news no doubt but still worth emphasising: with the mass of information being published, being more personal, conversational and publishing material in a variety of attractive, relevant and concise content types is essential if you wish to break through the clutter. This as ever remains a message worth repeating in Brussels, where we remain enthralled by the highly cerebral, overly detailed report or paper as the sole publication type worth thinking about.

Getting senior people involved in social

Again, hardly rocket science, but an interesting insight from the election. The likes of Axelrod were far more involved in social media this time around than in 2008, and this resulted in more stuff being shared and spread. To be frank, although social media lowers the barrier to entry to communications, often allowing people who are smart and interesting yet not high in the food chain to gain an audience, the fact remains that high-profile people usually carry more immediate clout when engaged in communications. This is a valuable lesson to the organisations in Brussels, both public and private, who farm off social media to the intern or even a 3rd party, when ideally, the figureheads of an organisation should at least be somewhat involved.

Social media fatigue in Brussels

Not long ago, Brussels was wildly excited about the potential of social media, from two perspectives:

Social media = EU saviour: proponents of the EU construct believed that social media could help bridge the divide between member states and Brussels, connect citizens and the institutions, and generally make the EU more visible, democratic and transparent.
Social media = Public Affairs tool extraordinaire: organisations operating in policy-land believed they had a wealth of new options at their disposal, whether they were looking to reach out to policy-makers, build coalitions, or generally raise visibility and momentum around issues that mattered to them.

In both respects, we’re experiencing social media fatigue, as even the most ardent enthusiasts are appreciating that social media is no silver bullet without the right building blocks. Meaning what?

Social media ≠ EU saviour

The EU is dull: it remains uninteresting to many because it’s distant and deals with issues that most people don’t care about. Tax, education and healthcare are more interesting than REACH and fish.

The constitution debacle and now Eurozone has dealt a massive reputational blow: the fact that EU enthusiasts often seem to not care much invariably fuels accusations of it being elitist and undemocratic.

Leadership and communications: many leaders and others responsible for communicating Brussels to the world frequently struggle to articulate its significance without coming across as – again – elitist, pompous and/or uninteresting (some, not all!)

The piñata effect: given that the EU leadership and those responsible for communications don’t articulate their activities and raison d’etre especially well, they’re an easy target for national level politicians, media and others wanting to pin the blame for everything – rightly or wrongly – on Brussels.

Language: last but not least, we may now have channels that allow for instant, barrier-free communications, but we don’t all understand each other.

Conclusion in short: the building blocks aren’t right i.e. if we don’t have the right people saying interesting and relevant things, to the right people, at the right time, in the right tone, who cares if we have shiny social media channels at our disposal?

NB: Mathew has written about EU communication and social media in far more detail and quality than I have here – have a look at his blog if you’re interested in this topic (although he’s stopped blogging for now).

Social media ≠ Public Affairs tool extraordinaire

Organisations often aren’t allowed to say anything interesting: when talking to policy audiences, or audiences that are affected by policy, it helps to be permitted to talk about policy. Sometimes the lawyers, or company and/or industry culture won’t allow it.

Public affairs functions within organisations often have no strategic communications capability: they operate in a policy silo, blissfully unaware of the fact that communications (on or offline) can actually be pretty effective when done well. Net result: limited use of data, analysis and measurement, and thus poorly targeted and ineffective output.

Structure and resources: linked to the previous point, organisations may think communications is fab but simply don’t have the right organisational structure, people or outside support to conduct it well.

Organisations sometimes really don’t have anything interesting to say: sometimes there’s a lull when no particular dossiers affect an organisation and they have nothing remotely interesting to say that would interest policy audiences (NB: this is only the case with utterly uncontroversial industries, of which there are only a few e.g. if the Financial Services industry had nothing on going at the moment – utterly hypothetical of course – they’d still have lots to do to mend their reputation and thus to communicate).

Conclusion in short: again, although some digital PA is very good, the building blocks often aren’t right i.e. as above, if we don’t have the right people saying interesting and relevant things, to the right people, at the right time, in the right tone, who cares if we have shiny social media channels at our disposal?

Dodgy to amazing: where do Brussels communicators lie?

I recently helped a client develop a framework that defines multiple phases of development in digital comms, broadly and in specific disciplines (e.g. content marketing, social media or search, for instance). The thinking is that it’ll show where the organisation currently lies and where it ultimately wants to get to – a very useful exercise indeed.

For my own amusement (I’m that sad) I’ve drawn up a simple (and slightly sardonic) grid for communications and communicators in Brussels

NB: I treat comms and policy work – i.e. traditional advocacy – as separate activities given that it’s usually how they’re approached in Brussels. The pedant in me would say advocacy is just one channel in an organisation’s communications suite.

	Dodgy	Half decent	Good	Amazing
Mind-set	Comms is for idiots who don’t get policy	We understand the value of comms in informing traditional policy audiences	We appreciate the value of comms in shifting the pin in Brussels and beyond, which in turn can affect policy-land	Comms will be as important – often more important – than traditional advocacy, if it isn’t so already
Brussels bubble	Nothing matters outside Brussels	Sometimes stuff outside matters, but we tend to ignore it	Stuff outside matters, and we work actively with people at national level	We make no distinction between Brussels and national level interests when necessary
Structure for communications	No structure (or the intern does it all)	Mid-level comms manager and limited support	Senior level comms manager and good support	Senior level comms manager fully integrated in organisation’s leadership
Channel strategy	Comms = press releases to the entire Brussels press corp	Mainly owned and earned media (e.g. events, website, newsletters, media relations that isn’t spray and pray)	Full array of channels (paid, earned, shared and owned media) i.e. include more marketing and social media	Full array of channels, part of a single overarching strategy, fully integrated
Integration with traditional advocacy	There’s policy work, then separately from that we’ll do a press release when we host an event	We have our basic positions available publicly but don’t update regularly	We regularly communicate around our policy work in all comms channels	Policy work and comms are fully aligned
Targeting	“Decision makers and the general public” i.e. no idea who we’re talking to and why	We have given serious thought to who we’re talking to and why but don’t have data	We did some initial analysis (polling, focus groups, interviews) to understand our audience	We did initial analysis and do ongoing tracking based on specific KPIs to make sure our comms is always relevant
Content production	What’s content?	Regular content updates, but ad hoc and limited senior level input	Regular scheduled content updates, some senior input	Very regular scheduled content. Senior expertise apparent in all content items
Measurement	Huh?	Basic KPIs for core activities measured manually or with basic tools e.g. media coverage, event attendance, website hits – but tracking without consequences	KPIs for an array of activities and use data to inform future comms activity	KPIs for an array of activities and use data to inform comms activity AND overall strategy

Thoughts welcomed.

PA professionals: picking the right “influential” people

A Public Affairs staple, as with all fields of communications, is to seek out “influential” people who support your side of the story and are willing to say so. This gives you and your side of the story credibility, so the logic goes.

So who is usually sought out as “influential” in PA? Often, the academic (or scientist) for clearly these are highly credible folk: smart, independent and presumably not profit driven. Again, sounds logical, you’d think, and what’s more, the Trust Barometer tells us academics are amongst the most trusted people out there.

Yet as anyone working on issues in Brussels can confirm, you can have scores of cuddly, bearded academics on your side, without the tide changing on your issue.

Why not? Could one reason be that we’re applying rational thinking to an irrational process? You ask someone who they trust: the CEO, the academic, an NGO, someone like you… You’re given time to think, and you’ll provide the rational answer: clearly, I trust academics.

Yet we don’t make decisions rationally, we do so emotionally. Our gut tells us how it is. In a meeting I recently attended, a clever man said that 95% of decisions are “emotional” not rational. Let’s be conservative and cut that down to 80% for the purposes of my little illustration here:

In summary:

Academics and scientists appeal to our rational being, which reflects perhaps 20% of decisions.
Who could influence emotional decision making? Perhaps a regular Joe like me with a clear link to the issue at hand, ideally an emotional link (I work in industry X which people are trying to shut down; my child suffered at the hands of substance Y). A celeb? Not any celeb, but a well-known person with a less than spurious connection to a cause (OK hardly Brussels fare, but remember Joanna Lumley and the Gurkhas, legitimised by the fact that her father had been in a Gurkha regiment?) Or a community and/or business leader who, again, might not be just like me or be a celeb, but has taken an issue on board with real fervour.
What do these type of influencers have in common? In short, they approach an issue from the heart, not in a cold-blooded analytical fashion, and are thus more likely to influence emotional decision-making.
And journalists? Clearly influencers, but they’re hard to place – it depends on the individual, the publication and their approach on the day, so I’ve placed them on the threshold.

Online habits vary: social technographics applied to Brussels

Forrester’s Social Technographics Profile Tool is superb; take a look if you haven’t previously. In short, it breaks down social users into different categories, ranging from inactives (don’t use social) to creators (produce and publish stuff). The figures can be broken down further by demographic variables (age, sex and location) which makes it useful reading for marketers and communicators. Looking to reach German men in their 30s? Focus on content more than engagement, given that they read lots but don’t like to share and interact. Italians? Go for engagement and even user generated material, cos they love the stuff.

What if we applied a similar model to Brussels, with the following variables:

Sex
Age
Nationality
Sector/area of expertise (health, financial services, tech, environment, trade etc.)
Organisation (Commission, Parliament, Council, Perm Rep, in-house, NGO, agency, trade association etc.)

What would we likely learn? No doubt there’s extremes: a southern European male, aged 45-55, specialised in financial services and working in the institutions would likely be an inactive (although there’ll certainly be exceptions). Meanwhile, a young Swede working at an agency on tech issues would probably be at the other end of the spectrum.

But what about the less obvious middle ground? A 40 year old Hungarian working on trade issues at their perm rep? OK the critical mass of data to get that specific would probably be lacking, but as a basic indicator, I think it’d be fascinating nonetheless.

Stop running communications programmes – run campaigns instead

Too often, communications efforts conducted in support of Public Affairs ends are treated as programmes and not campaigns, making them mundane and less likely to work.

Meaning what? Let’s imagine, in theory, that we’re trying to ban the Internet. What would a programme look like (utterly simplified and wildly hypothetical)?

Standard PA fare no doubt:

After planning and strategising, we’d probably build a coalition of likeminded people and organisations (angsty parents, with the backing of responsible newspaper publishers and the music industry perhaps?)
We’d develop a series of suitable messages and storylines about how the Internet has led kids astray and destroyed businesses, which we’d test and finalise, and distribute as content/storylines in a variety of channels (on and offline)
We’d work with targeted media and bloggers to try to get our side of the story across in their publications
Clearly, we’ll have identified make or break policy-makers (an eclectic mix of arch conservatives and anti-business types probably) and developed appropriate programmes for the coalition to engage with them

That’s all very well, but probably won’t help us stand out from the crowd and win over hearts and minds.

What would a campaign look like? Oddly enough, pretty similar, except we’d also have the following:

A campaign name (short, memorable, punchy e.g. save our kids, but obviously much better and with no competition in search engines)
A 10 (max) word catchphrase to describe the one main campaign goal
A striking visual identity (logo, colours etc)
Some milestone that represents an end date (X is happening – we have 60 days to save our kids!)
A dedicated home online (i.e. not as a sub-page of a larger site, as you’d invariably have with a programme) as well as supporting channels (social media, probably)
A champion i.e. an individual who “owns” and is the face of the campaign, be it a business leader, celeb, community leader, or a complete random elevated to champion status because they’re relevant (an aggrieved parent looking to save her cute, buck-toothed son from web wickedness)

Does it all sound a bit gimmicky and unsuitable to the oh so technical and cerebral dossiers most people think they work on? Perhaps, but the type of campaign you choose to run can vary greatly, depending on the nature of the issue. When there’s a clear, simple grassroots angle, you can go boisterous and colourful (like Hugh’s Fish Fight, say). But if your issue is less likely to capture the public imagination or is inherently unpopular, sure, be more staid and low-key. However, the principles remain the same: a campaign trumps a programme every time.

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