The Presidential election is now a couple of days past, and regardless of what you feel about the results, I suspect you feel a sense of relief. A brief respite from political ads and sound bites is very welcome!
By some accounts, this most costly of elections cost the participants in the Presidential race over $1 billion. Overall, in all races, approximately $2.5 billion was spent. All for thirty second snippets to tell us how bad their opponent is.
Imagine what that $2.5 million could have done. I have this fantasy of the candidates using their campaign war chests to actually solve problems on the ground in the areas they are campaigning in.
Imagine if a senatorial candidate bankrolled a road project or a job fair. Think about someone running for representative paying the mortgage for an underfunded social service agency or hiring a couple of teachers for a struggling school district.
Imagine presidential candidates personnally investing in projects they believe in. I think that we would all start to look forward to campaign season as a time when things really happened as opposed to a time filled with too much rhetoric and too little action.
Imagine how this election season would have changed if we had candidates who decided to show rather than say.
The only losers would be the television networks. I'm OK with that.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Friday, November 2, 2012
Quality vs. Control
In today's marketplace, a communicator needs to focus on clarity of message and connecting with key audiences more than controlling the message.
Occassionally a communicator may have the illusion that she can control the message. It is only an illusion.
Today's marketplace provides us with an opportunity to have a dialog WITH our key audiences (new media) versus a lecture AT our key audiences (old media). Everyone knows that in a dialog, you can only realistically control no more than one half of the conversation.
So what are we professional communicators to do if we can no longer realistically claim the super-secret ability to control the message?
The answer is something we should have been focusing on all along. We need to refocus on the clarity and the quality of our messages. We need to sharpen our pencils (most likely metaphorically) and pay attention to creating carefully crafted, concise messages that clearly communicate one or two key messages. (For the mathematically inclined reader, or those of you who are aspiring marketing consultants, you would state this as 6C=Q.)
When you can only control your half of the dialog, you need to make sure that is a high quality half!
We need to focus on making sure we are delivering messages that communicate our key message as clearly and engagingly as possible. THEN, we need to listen for feedback that will tell us if our messages are as clear and engaging as we anticipated. If they aren't, you adjust and start over again.
If your quality is good, I guess you don't need to worry about control.
Occassionally a communicator may have the illusion that she can control the message. It is only an illusion.
Today's marketplace provides us with an opportunity to have a dialog WITH our key audiences (new media) versus a lecture AT our key audiences (old media). Everyone knows that in a dialog, you can only realistically control no more than one half of the conversation.
So what are we professional communicators to do if we can no longer realistically claim the super-secret ability to control the message?
The answer is something we should have been focusing on all along. We need to refocus on the clarity and the quality of our messages. We need to sharpen our pencils (most likely metaphorically) and pay attention to creating carefully crafted, concise messages that clearly communicate one or two key messages. (For the mathematically inclined reader, or those of you who are aspiring marketing consultants, you would state this as 6C=Q.)
When you can only control your half of the dialog, you need to make sure that is a high quality half!
We need to focus on making sure we are delivering messages that communicate our key message as clearly and engagingly as possible. THEN, we need to listen for feedback that will tell us if our messages are as clear and engaging as we anticipated. If they aren't, you adjust and start over again.
If your quality is good, I guess you don't need to worry about control.
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