All posts by Sebastian

Hide and seek: communications for the curious

June 6, 2016UncategorizedSebastian

If curiosity killed the cat, then there were a lot of dead felines at the Chelsea Flower Show recently. And why? The brilliant Antithesis of a Sarcophagi garden exhibit designed by sculptors Gary Breeze and Martin Cook; a block of granite concealing within its monolithic maw a beautifully planted garden – only evident through a few tiny viewing holes.

Anything to see here?
The genius of this exhibit made fine work of one of the oldest tricks in the book – delayed gratification. Don’t give everything away at once; make them work for it. It’s amazing what people, even a future king and queen, will do if they’re significantly intrigued. In this case, garden lovers queued around the block – sorry – for up to 45 minutes just to see what secrets the granite block was hiding.

Make them work for it
There’s a lesson here for the corporate communicator. We’re all used to making information as readily available as possible but why not, on occasion, make the audience – external or internal – work a little to find out what you want to tell them? Don’t show everything at once, keep the real find hidden and make them do a little work for it.

It goes against the grain to hold something back but if somebody has to make an effort to find something out, chances are, the message they take away is likely to be all the stronger for it. The catch? You will need a very good hook to entice your audience to go the extra distance and take matters into their own hands.

What’s your ‘granite block’?
Perhaps you don’t have a 44 tonne block of granite handy but if you can come up with a hook to do the same thing – a brilliant headline, a great image, a task to perform, an irresistible challenge – and entice your audience to go and find out some more, the results could be more effective than simply dishing it all up on a plate.

Sometime less can really be more.

Mind your message

February 7, 2016Talking to your customers, Talking to your employeesSebastian

There’s an old adage in the communications world that goes something like this, ’Your message is not what you say, not what you write, it’s not even what they hear, it’s what they take away.’

Sounds obvious but how many communications plans start out with some key messages that look sensible on paper but by the time they’ve been communicated come to mean something completely different to the people they’re meant for.

The main point is the understanding and appreciation of your audience. Who is it you’re communicating to? How receptive will they be to the particular message? If the audience is your employees how do they like to be talked to? Is it simple language for the shop floor or jargon (hopefully not) for the management?

Writing for a particular audience can be a challenge. Putting yourself in their shoes and understanding what ticks their boxes really demands that you spend time at the outset considering the various target audiences for a communication.

Above all, don’t assume that because you’ve said it that you’ve communicated it.

Good communications goes down the pan

July 2, 2015Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, WritingSebastian

I’m a great believer in celebrating good examples of communication wherever you find it. So I’d like to apologise to my fellow rail passengers on the 14.58 train from Peterborough to Norwich last Sunday afternoon for hanging around the train WC with my camera phone.

Fear not dear reader, there are no prurient revelations to be confessed here; my motives were driven purely by professional interest as a communicator.

Lifting the lid in the said WC – in itself a hygienically challenging feat – I came across this great message which made me chuckle.

So why is it a piece of great communication? I think there are two reasons:

Well targeted – can’t argue with its relevance for everyone who uses the WC
Amusing – it has a serious message well balanced with a bit of humour. It can be hard to get the tone right when you want to introduce a touch of levity, but I reckon this gets it just right.

Not bad for toilet humour…

Where’s your ‘green lawn’? Some reputational disasters can be hiding in plain sight.

June 2, 2015Communicating in a crisisSebastian

There’s a new pastime that’s all the rage in drought stricken California. Outing celebrity green lawns. In terms of environmental activism, it’s not up there with strapping yourself to a decommissioned oil rig in the middle of the North Sea or risking life and limb to disrupt a Japanese whaling ship, but nonetheless, it’s doing a great job of heaping shame on those celebrities who seem to rate their green lawn as a higher priority than irrigation for crops, or even drinking water.

For those tasked with safeguarding a company’s reputation, we get used to rooting out those potential crisis situations buried somewhere deep within an organisation. But how often are those reputation manglers hiding in plain sight? For many a celeb in California, they appear unaware that their conspicuously green and verdant lawns are a reputational car crash in the waiting. For many companies the same principle applies, except of course it’s usually not a green lawn at issue.

What was once acceptable…
Perhaps it’s a tax arrangement that may be perfectly legal but under today’s intense public scrutiny has become questionable at best; or employment practices (zero hours any one?); or the sponsorship of a particular event or organisation that once made sense and now seems clichéd or unacceptable; or even the hobby your chief exec pursues.

You can get too close sometimes to a situation to realise a potential PR crisis in the making. Perhaps it’s worth stepping back for a moment and asking yourself, where’s your ‘green lawn’?

It’s the way I tell ‘em (again and again and again)

May 7, 2015UncategorizedSebastian

You’re at a gathering; drink in hand; the conversation flowing…someone cracks a joke, and in the laughter that follows you think of a great retort and give it both barrels. The trouble is, not everyone hears it, so you repeat it again to the person next to you but by then the moment has gone.

The Germans have a word for it – witzbeharrsamkeit – which roughly translates as shamelessly repeating a joke until everyone present hears it.

Given it’s General Election day today, it feels as if there has been loads of ‘witzbeharrsamkeit’ going around – although, admittedly, it’s not generally jokes that have been endlessly repeated over the last month but manifesto pledges, or party sound bites.

Politicians often talk about ‘cut through’ – those messages that really resonate with the electorate and stick in the mind. The trouble is, and this is the same challenge whether you’re trying to be the Honourable Member for Croydon South or communicating a business restructure to 10,000 employees, simply sending out some messages is not the same thing as effectively communicating.

And if you insist on trying to repeat a message that has failed to engage its audience, it won’t necessarily make a communication any more effective, in fact, it could become as embarrassing as our well travelled joke.