Thriving in the next communications age

Deep fakes. Synthetic media. Disinformation at scale. Yesterday at the PRSA 2019 International Conference #PRSAICON in San Diego I had the opportunity to share some thoughts about how we, as professional communicators, can thrive in an era where truth is entropic and increasingly under attack.

As the saying goes, history doesn’t always repeat, but it often rhymes. And I think we can learn a lot from where we came from and what that tells us about how to be successful in the future. As communicators we have lived through two ages of communication, and are now looking hard at this new age of disinformation. (NB that any discussion of ages or epochs requires some literary license, which I have taken here ??)

The first age in modern communication began with the concept of propaganda around the 1920s when Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays looked at what had happened through the war effort and the rise of mass media. For example, Bernays concocted a campaign to get more women to smoke called Torches of Freedom, linking emancipation and smoking together as an example of equality.

The second age, beginning around the 1960s and which is arguably just ending or just ended, is what I call the age of explanation, where we move from simply trying to get people to buy things – or tricking them into doing things – to explaining things. It was around this time that you could say that communications became a profession, something that people aspired to do, something that people studied.

And if you look at the singular event that put communicators in the public eye in this age, you should look at what happened with Tylenol in the early-1980s in Chicago where bottles of Tylenol were tampered with, poisoning numerous people and igniting wide-spread fear. Johnson & Johnson took accountability and quickly pulled the product from the shelves. They were highly transparent, using communications to keep the public informed every step of the way. As a result, instead of ending up with an event that damaged their brand, they increased the value of their brand. And they showed us the value of modern communications, too.

Both of these ages used a specific mass media to reach critical mass. In the first age, radio brought the world into the living rooms of households around the world. In the second age, television did the same thing but in living color and with moving pictures.

Now we’re moving into the third age where disinformation is rampant. Like the first two ages, technology continues to enable the spread of content – but this time at a pace and scale hardly imaginable. And it isn’t delivered just through mass media. It’s delivered and spread through social media. We’re getting news and entertainment, 24/7 if we want it, from many devices. From the ones in our pockets and on our wrists and desks to the ones that are connected to our TVs.

Disinformation isn’t just a form of bad information. It’s “anti-information.” It’s like pumping static into a room, a low-level buzz that’s just loud enough that you can’t think. You can’t absorb new facts. And you can’t make up your mind. Its messengers are digital technology and social media. It’s everywhere. And it feels like it’s getting noisier and noisier.

Before getting into a few things we can do as communicators to thrive in this age, it’s important to consider the role of the media. They are being used to spread disinformation that hurts them and us as communicators in the long-term. I wrote about this a previous post: A Free, Trustworthy & Empowered Press in the Digital Age. I called out four things at the conference:

First: Understand the adversary

Media should better understand the adversary or sets of adversaries who are working to degrade their trust and standing.

Second: Stop carrying the anti-truth virus

Right now, the media carries the virus that is damaging them. You often see them repeat a claim, often in the name of “debunking it.” They already know something is untrue, but allow that virus to spread to their readers/listeners/viewers in an attempt to fact it out. This is not effective.

Third: Stop lending credibility

Media has to stop lending it out. Data shows that “debunking” a claim – especially if part of that debunking allows an individual or group to make a statement or show up on video is counterproductive. The goal is often to simply cause doubt – and to spread the original disinformation.

It is true that every challenge is an opportunity in disguise, and for communicators, these new challenges also show opportunity. More than ever, organizations will look to the communications function to help them thrive in this disinformation age. Here are three key skills I believe are essential to be successful:

First: Be Storytellers

The basic art and craft of storytelling is the best thing that we can continue to do as a profession to be successful in this new age. Think about how stories travel. How they’re shared. How they’re consumed. Who is credible and why? Don’t just tell people what you’re doing, show them why you’re doing it and why it matters. Build stories that are resistant to disinformation because they contain their own truth embedded in them so deeply that they can’t be untangled and used against you.

Second: Be A Diplomat

Practice the art of diplomacy, starting inside your organization. Find a way to work effectively with people across your organization, including business leaders, engineers, sales leaders and marketers in a way that builds consensus. Pull people together and make clear that as communicators you want to be part of this solution and not part of the problem. In my work, there are times we lock arms with competitors to find solutions even when things at first appear to be in conflict. When your goal is to find win-win solutions, both internally and externally, it’s amazing what can be achieved.

Third: Be Relentlessly, Relentlessly Honest

When we look back at origins of our profession, it wasn’t always built on telling the truth. Our reputations, as individuals and as brands, are invaluable. And our reputation is built on being relentlessly, relentlessly honest. It’s okay to be wrong and to make a mistake. We all do it. But it is never okay to be deceptive. I often say, “If you're doing something you’d feel embarrassed about if people knew about it, you should probably not be doing it.” Doing things that under the light of day would be seen as bad are the sorts of things that will get us in trouble and cause people to trust us less.

Trust is the common thread running through everything we do. It is our stock-in-trade. A foundational value for our profession and the organizations and people we represent. Every day we need to work on building trust by telling stories that illuminate the souls of our organizations, stories about the people and the individuals that make up our workplaces, that show that we’re being human, that we understand the role we have in the world and that we’re actually doing things to make the world a better place.

Our CEO, Satya Nadella, often encourages us to find meaning in our work – a deeper sense of purpose at the nexus of our passions, skills and values. Our profession offers us the opportunity to find more meaning in our work than ever. If disinformation is defined as deliberately and often covertly spreading falsehoods, then we – the people who communicate every day on behalf of organizations big and small – can define the future of our profession as purposefully and relentlessly shedding light on the truth.

That’s how our profession will thrive in the next generation of communications, and also how we will help the people we serve – as well as the societies we live in – thrive.

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