At the 2017 SXSW Conference, a number of pundits—from the former Obama administration to Visa and the Washington Post weighed in on the best way to reach audiences, to create disruptive communications. Camille Sheehan, a PR associate for Cision, who reported on the event, notes the need for brands to “shake things up” when their communications aren’t getting the results they’d hoped for. She says, “With rapidly evolving technology and new mediums of communication, we’re getting to a place where an insane amount of time is being spent on the packaging and overall delivery of what we’re saying but the actual message is getting lost in translation.”
This observation can hardly come as a surprise to busy brand communicators who fear that their expensive and presumably well-crafted messages are falling on the proverbial deaf ears. Haven’t we all felt that there’s so much noise out there that no one is hearing us?
Reflecting on what appears to have been a common theme at the conference—“Say what you mean, and mean what you say—Sheehan proposes three ways that communicators can do a better job of connecting with their audiences.
The first technique is not what I would call mind-blowing or new thinking, but it merits consideration nonetheless: “Disrupt the native advertising/sponsored content arena by shifting the focus away from your brand and more towards what benefits your audience.” In short, stop telling your market how wonderful your brand is and think about how you can convey “What’s in it for me?” Good content is important of course, but it must reflect your knowledge of your audience, what it wants, what you want it to take away, and the action you want it to take. And it should integrate the brand without taking away from the story. (The Budweiser Clydesdale commercials are a stellar example.)
Next is “Disrupt the connection with your audience: Speak to resonate with all, not just a few.” We’ve all been brought up on targeting and segmentation, so this idea seems almost heretical. The point speakers at the conference made is that inclusive language helps people identify with your message and helps them feel connected with it. Think about “Yes, we can;” the “we” was an unspecified group not, say, fans of Ted Nugent.
Finally, there’s “Disrupt by making your brand’s voice heard on a particular advocacy, policy or political issue.” Ms. Sheehan notes that an increasing number of brands are “stepping forward or speaking up on issues that they feel are important to their audiences. (Check out the link she supplies to politically tinged ads aired at this year’s Super Bowl. ) I may be flayed for this, but I believe the recent Pepsi commercial, no matter how inept it was, represented an effort to make a “political” statement. (I’m thinking Miley Cyrus would have been a better choice that Kylie Jenner, but hey, the Kardashians give me the heebie-jeebies.)
OK, so these three ideas don’t represent revolutionary thinking, but I think they’re good reminders of our need to go back to marketing fundamentals in our communications and think about our audience’s needs, rather than our own.
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