Being direct... AdVantage Mar 2005
What's More Important: Me ... or Us?
In any relationship: there's self-interest and there's common interest.
As soon as either my interests or your interests become more important than
our interests - the relationship MUST be under threat
It is very early January 2005, and the production deadlines for these columns require that I sit here contemplating subject matter for March's column.
Reflecting on the year just past, I recognise that it was not only rather a momentous one for me personally; it was also quite an extraordinary one for humanity in general. The year started off with the discovery on January 7th 2004 - that I was within a hair's breadth of having my life snuffed out by heart disease brought on by diabetes; however an emergency heart by-pass combined with a serious wake-up call to do some proper exercise (I now walk about 35 km per week and love it) - has improved my life enormously.
Internationally, we have had the usual ongoing human conflicts, including Afghanistan; the US/Iraq war; the Israel/Palestine problem, as well as the numerous clashes of self-interest that characterise Africa, and provide our President with a busy travel schedule. The US election was probably the most polarised in many a year, and thanks to the first example of the relentless attention of the world's mass media - it had an amazing effect on other parts of the world too. In my view (and I tend to agree with them), the democrats want the world to have less controls and greater economic and personal freedoms. Making people accountable by emphasising both their rights and their responsibilities - is absolutely where the world should be headed!
Republicans, on the other hand, believe that a no-nonsense iron-fist approach shows the 'bad-guys' who's boss, and who appear to feel 'so what' if a few liberties get dented along the way (particularly if it makes their favoured corporations a few bucks as well). However, it also seems that enough members of the American public were that concerned about their safety (since 9/11 too much freedom is deemed to be just too risky for far too many Americans) - that George Bush prevailed for four more years of the same.
Then, on Sunday December 26th an earthquake in the depths of the Indian Ocean caused the death of some 150 000 souls in the literal blink of an eyelid. While the situation surrounding the Tsunami phenomenon is tragic in the extreme, it was most impressive to see the way in which the whole world immediately rallied around to help those affected. Are there perhaps important lessons about the sharing of common interest to be gained from this enormous human tragedy?
Now, (and this is my second example of relentless attention from the mass media in 2004) it appears that as soon as they realised the massive scale of the Tsunami, all of the major International news channels - CNN; Sky; BBC; Al Jazeera; CBS; NBC, et al - flew key correspondents to the affected areas and the consequence of the Tsunami was transported into the world's living rooms in all its destructive detail.
From a communication point of view, the images were raw and real; empathy hardly had to be manipulated by the media - people could see it for themselves, and undoubtedly thought: 'there, but for the grace of God…etc' I am sure that the emotional response to the visual images of destruction evoked a genuine compassion in people, and many just wanted to do whatever they could to help.
The effect on people worldwide was immediate! Just take for example that while some 44 Britons were thought to have died, the British public ante'd up around £75m in aid in just a few short days. Literally everywhere, people began making arrangements to go to Asia to help, or at least to make some financial contribution to ease the suffering of those affected.
Even though we often feel that much of our world has become very 'self'-oriented and even greedy, when a natural disaster occurs, it seems that our 'humanity' comes to the fore, and we reach deeply into ourselves and into our pockets to do what we can to help.
When one thinks hard about this tragic situation, one realises that it wasn't very many years ago that the process of communication itself was almost all via the mass media (and broadcast or one-way) and that at its core was the need to make the public AWARE of something. The images resulting from the Tsunami and the attention of the world's media together did an incredible job of making the entire world aware of the plight of South Asia.
So, the effect of awareness-oriented mass communication on human emotions remains as powerful today as it ever was. It follows therefore, that advertising imagery which is aimed at evoking an emotional response - and flighted in the mass media with budgets that afford reasonable frequency - can be very effective at creating awareness for a brand.
When we move into the area of communications aimed at building brand relationships (a euphemism for most everything else except awareness), then many of those familiar with managing communications attempt to manage brand relationships and sadly, fall into the trap: Relationships can only be shared, they cannot be managed. Self-interest has an uncanny way of destroying any relationship.
Marketers who are genuinely focused on customers don't only evaluate the financial return that they get from those customers, but like Richard Branson as example, seriously focus on the delivery thereof. An outstanding experience will always get more than just sales…it will encourage customer A to talk about his/her experience to probable customer B.
I just wish that more communications practitioners would get to grips with the separate communication dynamics required for promoting awareness, and those required for matching promises to actual delivery of value. The former is about a promise wrapped up in imagery….the other about ensuring that the delivery does not become an understatement or parody of the promise made! Sometimes, in the interest of awareness, the promises made in the ads, just simply cannot be delivered.
The human response to the tragedy of South Asia gives me hope that perhaps one day, unbridled self-interest can once again be tempered by a return to a much greater sense of 'us'.