The Truth About The Digital Economy & Its Impact on Corporate Communication
Posted by Patrick on March 4th, 2006
Simpy-Communicate.com ran a great piece the other day titled “The Truth About The Digital Economy & Its Impact on Corporate Communication.” There were two opinions by Peter Wrigglesworth and Jonathan Hirsch that I thought summed up the crux of the article very well.
Peter Wrigglesworth ?Äì Every Sense Ltd :
A real challenge faces corporate communicators. There is a significant shift away from top-down, centre-out communication to relationship-based communication, reflecting a rapidly changing society where the individual is in control. For businesses, the power increasingly lies with the consumer and the employee.
In this fragmented and somewhat unregulated environment, those responsible for corporate communication will have to change the way they work. They will need to be constantly tuned into many different communication channels, monitoring and reacting to an ever-changing environment.
Communication strategies and plans will inevitably be more complex with the move from one-to-many, to one-to-few and even one-to-one communication. Building trusted sources of information and opinion will be key. Openness, transparency, honesty and integrity must be the values of business communicators.
Building trust with the employee and the consumer is the core driver of modern brand builders. We now work in an environment where activists, lobbyists, employees, customers and investors can instantly publish, distribute and share information and opinions about your business. Businesses will be judged by what they do and less by what they say, and what they say will need to be truthful. The biggest challenge will be to get corporate messages heard at all.
Jonathan Hirsch ?Äì HirschWorks :
Organisations will need to be a lot more subtle in their approach to communication. Developing brands in depth rather than relying on advertising, using PR rather than marketing, incorporating CSR strategies at every level and being associated with the right organisations, people, movements and philosophies. Engagement, transparency and honesty will be essential to sustain reputations and in pre-empting damage. Bottom-up, rather than top-down, communications will be the most effective – building grass-roots support – through blogging, for example – and engagement with other bloggers. Companies will need to tell it like it is and be seen to be telling it like it is – because it will be so much easier to see through any marketing messages that present an ‘idealised’ image of the company.
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