The final week of November saw a week of breakthrough presentations at EssenceMediacom and EssenceMediacomX from our partners, our teams and a wide set of inspirational people.
Everyone was asked to come and deliver their view on how brands can breakthrough in the New Communications Economy (NCE).
One clear theme stood out from many amazing sessions. Culture has undergone a transformation in the last decade.
It used to be that there was a dominant mono-culture. This would either be dictated by or amplified by established media platforms. The glossy magazines would set an agenda for the season, or TV shows would create the buzz for the season. A new release by a band or the latest hit musical might fuel that theme.
Now there is no mono-culture but a set of overlapping and contrasting multi-cultures. And these are not dictated from above but formed by micro-communities. Everyone can contribute to and might contribute to, or even star in, the zeitgeist of the moment.
From the thousands of communities on Reddit, to the explosion of fan communities on YouTube, and everything in between, it is micro-creators, geeky communities and their weird and wonderful points of view that make culture real now.
This isn’t new, but now it is properly widespread. In 2012 in my co-authored book Tell the Truth, honesty is your most powerful marketing tool, we published a case study about an innovation in magazine publishing, a new phenomenon that at the time was very successful in leading the way. We wrote: “Magazines have always traded on knowing what their readers want. From Cosmopolitan’s vision of the young single woman to Good Housekeeping’s soothing of the household matriarch, a wide offering of publications produce images and words to satisfy readers dreams and aspirations. This is the classic model and it is traditionally left to the instinct of the editor to pronounce and deliver it… A new model of journalism is evolving now that is based on audience behaviour online. Goodtoknow has transformed from a top down editor’s opinion led publication to a bottom up reader-enlisted model.”
It’s editor, and pioneer of community fed editorial, was Jolene Akehust, and she led the way, 20 years ago, by flipping the model. She informed content from what was trending in online forums, and she aimed for the tone of voice of shared experiences in supermarket carparks between busy mums. She confided in me at the time that she didn’t really fit the gang of the other women’s mags editors who (supposedly) dictated culture.
Even earlier, in the 1990s, I was really intrigued to work with Converse’s ad agency who employed a “cool hunter”, Jane Buckingham, who travelled the world looking for the new hottest fashion passions to feed back to our comms strategy. The plans weren’t driven by what the media considered trendy, but by micro communities in far flung cities.
This week our EMX ceo Clare Chapman interviewed Adam Baidawi, GQ’s Deputy Global Editorial Director and Editor in Chief of British GQ. He explained that GQ had transformed, from a publication that dictated how one homogenous cohort of men should look, behave and buy, to a title that reflects and adds to different pockets of culture. It’s no longer about looking for the biggest audiences as an editorial focus, but instead finding the biggest enthusiasms (however niche) and putting them in the spotlight.
In the New Communications Economy, where user generated content is now the dominant content in young people’s lives, you can breakthrough if you put people, their passions and their communities first.
Now we’re all cool hunters, and there’s millions of communities to seek out for the next (for the moment) big thing in the zeitgeist.
Please don’t bore us, get to the chorus.
Friday, January 19th, 2024First lesson of presenting:
Say what you’re going to say. Say it. Say what you have just said.
I learnt this in my first ever presentation training and it is true not only of presentations, but every time that you want to communicate.
Got some feedback for a team member. Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said.
Pitching for a payrise. Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said.
Breaking up with someone… Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said.
Writing an awards entry, Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said.
People’s ability to hear what they want to hear is pretty amazing, and our brains love to stick to existing patterns of thought, so if you have something new to pitch you need to make it simple and repeat it.
If you complicate things, then that will allow misinterpretation.
If you hedge around an issue, people might just not hear anything that you say.
If you assume that they will work out what you mean from your subtle implications, you’re probably wrong.
And if you love (as many in adland do), to lead up to a big reveal, don’t count on the fact that people will still be paying any attention at all unless you have given them a really good reason to by, yes, you guessed it, saying what you’re going to say in the first couple of minutes.
Our favourite sing-a-long songs demonstrate this beautifully. It doesn’t matter what the artist intended, all people remember is their interpretation of the chorus.
The Pogue’s classic, with the wonderful Kirsty MacCall, Fairy Tale of New York from 1987 is a perennial favourite in the UK.
But have you really listened to the lyrics? They aren’t cosy, they aren’t that Christmassy and they aren’t really suitable for a singalong with your nan or your kids.
Britain’s favourite Christmas song, starts in the drunk tank, and goes downhill from there: Blessed Shane now “won’t see another one”.
Every Step You Take is still popular as a classic wedding song, and the Police original from 1983 was of course about a stalker. 40 years later, it’s still hugely popular, as a love song.
There’s a Bowie favourite used to rouse crowds and boost corporate spirits; but when people hear “Heroes” what they hear is just the line “We can be ‘heroes’!”. What they don’t hear is that the song is actually about a doomed, dysfunctional couple whose dream is that they might be ‘heroes’ (Bowie includes the ironic quote marks, just to make it absolutely clear that they’re not really heroes) just for one day.
Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen is played at patriotic gatherings. Its about how badly vets were treated after Vietnam.
And the highly hummable, Stevie Wonder hit, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours, is less of an actual love song, and more of a dodgy and unbelievable grovelling apology for bad behaviour.
Of course, there’s more.
And why should the artists who made the hits worry? After all they may be misunderstood, but as my grandmother would have put it, they’re misunderstood “all the way to the bank”.
The key point here is that this is more common than you might think, and this is worth remembering every time you begin to compose.
Let’s assume that most of our readers aren’t writing hit songs, but you probably are writing presentations, scripts for meetings or working out how to sell something.
Two crucial points to remember are:
You need a chorus, something memorable, and repeatable.
No-one will remember anything else apart from the chorus.
And, as I have said,
Say what you’re going to say, say it, and say what you have just said.
Or in other words:
Say the chorus, repeat the chorus, repeat the chorus again.
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