Communication without communicating: The new challenge for business and political leaders (2)

A great thinker of antiquity George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

This is a major pitfall for business and political leaders in Nigeria. Leading in this 21st century has gone beyond flattery or mere rhetoric. The internet has democratized communication and we are no longer in the era of ‘I talk, you listen.’ Political and business leaders are finding it very hard to move audience from where they (the audience) are to where they (the leaders) want them to be.

Words alone have failed to capture people’s mind. In fact, words alone have become so dangerous a communication tool that many leaders have been severely criticized and to some extent lambasted especially on social media all because their words were met with unintended interpretations.

To get a clearer picture of what I am saying let me remind you of some famous quotes in the media.

Stealing is not corruption.

Padding is not corruption.

Nigerian youths are lazy.

Foreigners planning to intervene in election will leave Nigeria in body bags.

I trust my husband but won’t allow him bathe my daughter.

Though, the authors of these quotes have repeatedly argued they were quoted out of context by the media, the point-blank truth is that the media are not in the business of making a leader’s communication look good. Therefore, leaders must not just communicate but do so in a way that produces the desired message they want to pass through to their audience and not misconstrued or misinterpreted.

Let me use the Bud Light Beer’s slogan to drive home my point.

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The American beer giant Budweiser produced a new beer for women called Bud Light Beer and in order to make it appealing to women they decided to position the beer as a brand for women who are bold and daring with a slogan which says “Up for Whatever” and backed it up with a twitter marketing campaign entitled #UpforWhatever.

Budweiser thought that the slogan was a great communication. Unfortunately for them, not only were they not communicating what they wanted the audience to hear but were also inadvertently communicating what the audience didn’t want to hear. As a matter of fact they were insulting women and helping to promote sexual harassment.

There was massive public criticism of the company from activists, feminists and other influencers. The company was accused of creating a product that makes women vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse. The public outcry led to a call for boycott of the product especially on the social media. This boycott had adverse effect on the Bud Light brand launch.

And finally, the company bowed to pressure and withdrew the campaign.

The theory of symbolic interactionism states that, “We do not react to what people say or do but to the interpretation of what they say or do.”  Budweiser thought Up For Whatever means ‘bold and daring, ready to face any challenge’ but the audience interpreted it as saying the beer gets women drunk and vulnerable to sexual harassment.

The truth is that the audience’s interpretation is what they hear and that was what their thinking faculty responds to. Communication is not all about talking or sending messages. It is more about mind connection, a state where two or more minds clearly get the picture of what the other person is saying in their minds. They see what the speaker has seen. They feel what he/she is feeling. Therefore, the new challenge for political and business leaders is how to communicate in a way that their audience hears what they want them to hear and respond in the desired way in order to yield the desired results.

This type of communication doesn’t happen by accident, it is planted. Yes, planted like a seed because this 21st century audience is different. It lives in an age of information overload where there is more information than the time to process it and where the attention span becomes shorter by the day, “you now have less than 10 seconds to grab people’s attention” according to a study conducted in Canada by Microsoft Corp.

Consequently, your communication must be laser sharp. This level of strategic communication cannot be achieved by thinking out of the box, you must get out of the box completely. This is why message engineering has become imperative because communication though started as an art, has gone scientific.

Ishola Ayodele, a specialist in message engineering, sent this from ishopr2015@gmail.com

 

Here are few elements of message engineering.

Message fitting: The message must resonate with the audience. It must be the way they like to hear it.

Message implantation: Just as something is placed inside a human body in medical implantation, in the same vein communication experts have devised a scientific systemic process for implanting a message in such a way that it creates a feeling of ownership in the audience’s mind.

Message design: Knowing what to say is no longer enough in today’s web 2.0, you must know when, where, how to say it and most importantly why you are saying as well as why they should care to listen.

Stakeholder mapping and engagement: The rule of communication is ‘Know Thy Audience’. Many of the leaders mentioned above got burnt by the public’s flame of rage because they didn’t know who they were talking to. Many of them thought they were talking to the reporter in front of them but unknown to them it was the teeming millions of people watching them and were busy doing the interpretation.

To wrap up, political and business leaders must understand that, “Communication is not about talking but provoking the desired behaviour.”

 

Nigerian Tribune