Not the usual beast!

Advertising is looking distinctly prehistoric as we near the end of the first decade of 21 century. It came from an era when the advertiser controlled the medium and when one way was the way. Fast forward to the events in Tehran and China and we see the State desperately trying to recapture the power of monologue by removing the ability to talk back. By closing down the internet and mobile phone networks, the State aims to deprive protestors of the ability to communicate. But is too late- for tyrannical regimes – and for advertising. We have tasted the nectar of dialogue and we’re lovin’ it. Three major factors are at work, rewriting the rules of communication. Karl Marx assigned power to those who owned the means of production. Today it’s safe to say that power is in the hands of those who own the means of communication- and that means the billions of people who have benefited from the meteoric rise in cheap communication. We have all become Starbucks broadcasters with the ability to reach millions over a cappuccino. Secondly – and they are connected – there is a growing intolerance and mistrust of the old authorities of the state, the church and big business. We simply don’t take their word for it anymore. The third agent of change is the proliferation of media. We no longer have three TV channels, we have thousands. There are 63 million Facebook users, 50 million blogs and around 2 billion mobile phone accounts. Put simply, shot gun targeting no longer works as consumers run for cover in their own specialist, hand build networks. They are dancing to their own iTune now. So what does this all mean for PR? The answer is an awful lot. We started by talking about monologue and one way communication. Well, the next word is not, surprisingly, dialogue. It’s polylogue. Everywhere, everyone is talking to everybody, about everything. In these complex networks, news travels fast, but not in a linear way. We all saw how Twitter broke the news of the Hudson River plane crash and how it has been keeping the world up to date on events in Iran. But it is not the speed of word of mouth that really defines its role in communication. It’s its authenticity. We tend to believe what our friends tell us more than what the media tells us. You only have to look at the impact sites like TripAdvisor have on reputation to see that personal recommendation is now the most powerful influencer in deciding where to stay. The iPhone largely owes its success to word of mouth marketing, partly stimulated by the company withholding information to encourage rumour and partly because it’s such a great product people want to talk about it. For PR people to embrace word of mouth, we don’t have to tear up the Rule Book. We have been lighting fires of intrigue for decades. But we must be aware of the new clauses in that Rule Book. · Create content people want to share. No one passes on a bad joke. And if you can embellish the joke, put your stamp on it, so much the better. · Reign in the spin. Allow the consumer to discover the wonders of your product rather than telling them. Let them create the buzz for you. · Trust. Let go of your precious messaging strategies. They will be diluted, corrupted and sometime lost. · Influencers. Like deliberately spreading a rumour, tell the person with the most friends · It’s not just about social media. Hands on experience and live encounters leads to powerful advocacy