How to communicate for positive action?
Reading Time: 9 min
While we are bravely going through the second year of the pandemic fully experiencing the disruption of the world that we once knew, I can’t stop thinking about Joan Didion’s words in the preface of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. They reflect a writer’s anxiety to navigate through an American fragmented society in the 60s:
I had dealt directly and flatly with the evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart: I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder.
Since last year, I can imagine that many of us could resonate with Joan Didion’s words. As Joan, we too had to reassess what was meaningful in our personal and professional lives and equally important how can we contribute to improving things in our society. How can we work together to overcome the many challenges we face? We too are dealing directly with the evidence of atomisation that currently reflects the many bubbles in which people find themselves. It feels like society has never been more polarised.
Within this context brands, organisations, businesses need to communicate, engage with their audiences, sell, raise awareness for important causes, fight misinformation, try to change attitudes and behaviours, educate and inform. How to navigate through such an environment in a way that you succeed as an organisation, bring value to your audience and contribute meaningfully to society? And why communication plays a major role in all this?
What is communication for positive action?
The communication for positive action is the communication that seeks to unite, understand, include and create an impact on society and the world. It is the communication that comes in support of people’s needs and goals. It is based on the care we have towards the words and messages we share. Because we care about the people we address to and seek attention from. They are consumers, audiences, employees, stakeholders. People.
In Everybody Writes, Ann Handley talks about the empathy for the customer experience that should be at the root of all your content, because having a sense of the people you are writing for and a deep understanding of their problems is key to honing your skill. Content created merely to further a search engine ranking is a waste of time and effort. What matters now is creating useful content that solves customer problems, shoulders their burdens, easies their pain, enriches their lives.
Why is communication for positive action important?
Businesses don’t operate in a vacuum. They are part of a larger network that includes social, cultural and political systems. To bring value to their audiences, brands need to acknowledge that and act accordingly. In other words, they need to have a great deal of knowledge in the social, cultural and individual systems of the market in which they operate.
They also have to consider that consumers and employees expect more from them. They believe brands can be a powerful force for change. And they expect brands to represent them and solve societal problems. More than ever brands address to a belief-driven buyer who chose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues. Together with consumers and employees, brands also have the opportunity and responsibility to be part of the social, economic and political change.
Four steps how to communicate for positive action
STEP1: Stop and think. Then act accordingly.
I know, this one has become a rare bird nowadays. We may argue because of the speed in which we carry our personal and professional lives, the FOMO (fear of missing out), the pressure from our bosses who are in turn pressured by their stakeholders. It seems we are always running out of time.
In times of crisis, we want quick fixes so we can go on with our lives. While I was developing the Migrationlab Foundation during the migration crisis in 2015, I received few angry messages on social media. People asked me what I was doing to solve the crisis. A crisis that paralysed the entire European political scene and divided the society. A small gathering of people should have carried all the responsibility for finding THE solution to this massive challenge and fast, if possible. Dominated by fear those who wrote me were demanding action for a problem they didn’t fully understand, an issue they couldn’t fully grasp, a discussion that was not enough debated authentically in the public space with everyone involved. To make sense of what was going on, I proposed exactly the opposite: a safe space, co-created together with everyone affected by the crisis, in which we practised reflection, discussed openly, looked at the issue from different angles, provided context and most importantly facilitated the encounter and collaboration between various communities who otherwise would have never met. We challenged the existing narratives and thrived to create new ones that presented people as human beings.
It is no different in business. Commonly, communicators and CEO’s tend to go full-on with tactics without having a strategy to support them. As we are navigating through a massive global challenge, it has never been a better time to just stop and reflect about where you are heading and how you want to proceed. Before running a PR or marketing campaign, create a dedicated space and time to stop, catch your breath, and think things through. Together with everyone involved.
STEP 2: Consider and understand the socio-economic and political context in which your brand or organisation operates
I’m a big fan of the economist Kate Raworth. In her book Doughnut Economics she argues that the new economy for the 21st century, the Embedded Economy -as she calls it- nests the economy within society and the living world, while recognising the diverse ways in which it can meet people’s needs and wants.” In other words, businesses are part of a larger ecosystem and not the central point. When communicating internally and externally, brands and organisations need to take into account the socio-economic and political context in which they exist.
Burger King UK had so many ways to mark their commitment to gender equality on International Women’s Day this year as they were launching a scholarship in support of more of their female employees to become chefs. But they completely missed the mark. They opened their campaign with a controversial tweet that read “Women belong in the kitchen”, and that excluded entirely the full context.
The Twitter community reacted with harsh criticism. Still, Burger King UK stood by their strategy:
“Why would we delete a tweet that’s drawing attention to a huge lack of female representation in our industry, we thought you’d be on board with this as well? We’ve launched a scholarship to help give more of our female employees the chance to pursue a culinary career.”
In the end, they had to apologise and delete the original tweet entirely.
Nevertheless, the Burger King UK Twitter account added 10,000 followers on Monday, March 8th, 2021.
Activists, women’s rights organisations and other collectives have been fighting to change gender stereotypes for decades. Including such a controversy in your communication strategy without taking into consideration the work of these groups for so many years is not only disrespectful, but it doesn’t help advance in any way the very cause you are fighting for. You create more harm. And your audience will always be there to hold you accountable.
Burger King UK’s strategy and responses showed one thing. That they didn’t internalise the value of the cause they were supporting despite their initial intention being right. Hence, they couldn’t deliver what was most important through their communication.
The issues we are dealing with at the societal level are complex and present many layers. As communicators most and foremost we need to understand what the social movements are about to be able to navigate their layers on behalf of our brands and organisations.
STEP 3: Challenge the status quo
We can only evolve if we challenge our beliefs and the way we do things. Seek the change in the way you communicate and act on it. Start with small steps. They can get you far. Ask yourself how inclusive and accessible your language is when you write that tweet, blog post, Instagram story or PR campaign. Does it offend anyone? Are you creating confusion or misunderstanding in any way? Are you creating controversy in exchange for shallow engagement that contributes to more noise and polarisation? Do you exclude anyone in your audience?
Which brings me to the next point.
STEP 4: Your brand’s communication should reflect the diversity of people it seeks to address and engage
Diversity and inclusion are not new topics. Activists, cultural and social organisations and collectives have been advocating for and talking about for years. As 2020 revealed, a large portion of brands and organisations are still struggling with adopting diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) in their workplaces, and their communication and marketing campaigns. Sometimes is because of a lack of understanding of the issue, or lack of knowledge. Other times is a lack of motivation or simply they don’t know how to take action.
A basic start to adopt DEI in your communications includes:
A diverse team: before starting thinking about diversity and inclusion in your campaign you need to ask yourself how diverse is the team that is working on it.
Work with your biases: acknowledge your own biases and work with them so that you don’t include them in your PR campaigns. Harvard University offers a free online tool called Project Implicit that measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report.
Regina Luttrell, Ph.D., assistant professor of public relations and social media at Syracuse University, wrote a comprehensive article about how to prioritize diversity and inclusion in your communications.
She also developed The Diversity & Inclusion Wheel for PR Practitioners, a tool that provides additional layers and context in better understanding various segments of our audiences beyond race, ethnicity, gender, age, and abilities.
Furthermore, it is encouraging to see how certain brands go beyond their DEI campaigns and start supporting their peers with representation. Dove, a brand that has its ups and downs when it comes to how they have been approaching DEI along the years, created a campaign that offers up its own models to appear in other brands’ commercials for free, in order to encourage them to consider new looks.
How many brands hurried up to take on this offer? Not many. Which means that we still have much work to do.
The role of the communicator
The role of the communicator has evolved, as it should, in a society that is constantly transforming. Alongside handling our craft and staying up to date with the latest developments in our industry, we have to constantly be mindful of and understand what’s going on culturally, socially, and politically in the market we operate. We need to adopt reflection and depth both in strategy and tactics. We need to care for diversity, inclusiveness and accessibility in our language and campaigns. Conduct ourselves according to the set of ethics established by our industry. This way, not only we become the trusted advisors that serve best our clients but we also create a positive impact on our society and the world.
I’m curious what communicating for positive action means to you and what do you do to nurture it?
Leave a comment below or get in touch.
