It's been a while since I've ended up in the most beautiful profession there is, communication. A profession that is still developing and since the massive adoption of the Internet in recent years, the communications job has become even more interesting and fun. And I’m so happy that I’m exposed to new things almost every day. At the same time, because I've always worked internationally, I have had the privilege that I learned a lot from colleagues from many markets and cultures across the globe. That's how they taught me the ins and outs of financial communications in London and New York. And while we still were making choices about which resources to be deployed, our British colleagues were already on a much more strategic way involved in internal communications. Finally, in the US I learned how close marketing and communications are connected. In my view so close that it makes no sense to maintain an artificial division between them.
Is our profession too Anglo-Saxon?
But what I’ve actually never realized, is how Anglo-Saxon our profession is. Of course, it firmly developed on the other side of the Atlantic and has since boomed. But with the increasing importance of countries like China, India and Africa, we also have to deal with new insights and ideas from those markets and cultures countries. And this gives an interesting new dimension to our jobs.
The communication professional 3.0
That became evident again recently, when I joined a major PR conference in India to share my views on the communication professional 3.0. First of all and despite all the specialties, I think we still need more integrated thinking and doing while we also have to take our role of trusted advisor a lot more seriously. Thirdly, without being responsible for the reputation of our organization we need to play the important role of an orchestrator of how the reputation is formed. Finally, we need to work hard on our accountability as this will help us to become much more respected better business partners. I admit, accountability is not the most light-hearted subject for such a conference. But if we shy away from it, I’m afraid our profession will lose credibility. Being accountable towards our internal or external clients is crucial in order to make a valuable contribution. And given the number of questions from the audience and the tweets about this topic I think it was received well.
India: every day more than 100 million newspapers sold
The beauty of such a conference are the sessions where you also can learn much again in this case non-Western views. One of the most striking sessions was a performance of two young communication consultants who warned us not to put too much emphasis on the impact of social media overestimate. In understand their point of view as they represent a market with a 30 percent Internet penetration while the dissemination of news, especially outside the bigger cities, takes still place through traditional media: India is the largest newspaper market in the world, with more than 70,000 different titles and more than 100 million newspapers sold per day.
Storytelling rediscovered
What I still remember most was a workshop on the popular theme of storytelling. Actually it was more a dialogue between an Indian mythology student and a former communications consultant, now known as "mythologist", who helps companies and organizations to discover their stories and to tell these. It was amazing to hear these guys bridging between mythology and storytelling. And incredibly interesting to hear from them how brands, agencies, organizations, CEOs and communication departments can learn a lot from a communication technique that is already very old. During their workshop they took us on a historical journey through the exploits of Hercules, the Bible, the Indian Mahabharata (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata) as well as recent Disney movies. And by doing this, they learned us that storytelling only became a (commercial) success when it was perfected by American marketing and communications professionals. Reason enough to re-read Joseph Campbell and learn from his insights on the art of storytelling; never too old to learn.
Is our profession too Anglo-Saxon?
But what I’ve actually never realized, is how Anglo-Saxon our profession is. Of course, it firmly developed on the other side of the Atlantic and has since boomed. But with the increasing importance of countries like China, India and Africa, we also have to deal with new insights and ideas from those markets and cultures countries. And this gives an interesting new dimension to our jobs.
The communication professional 3.0
That became evident again recently, when I joined a major PR conference in India to share my views on the communication professional 3.0. First of all and despite all the specialties, I think we still need more integrated thinking and doing while we also have to take our role of trusted advisor a lot more seriously. Thirdly, without being responsible for the reputation of our organization we need to play the important role of an orchestrator of how the reputation is formed. Finally, we need to work hard on our accountability as this will help us to become much more respected better business partners. I admit, accountability is not the most light-hearted subject for such a conference. But if we shy away from it, I’m afraid our profession will lose credibility. Being accountable towards our internal or external clients is crucial in order to make a valuable contribution. And given the number of questions from the audience and the tweets about this topic I think it was received well.
India: every day more than 100 million newspapers sold
The beauty of such a conference are the sessions where you also can learn much again in this case non-Western views. One of the most striking sessions was a performance of two young communication consultants who warned us not to put too much emphasis on the impact of social media overestimate. In understand their point of view as they represent a market with a 30 percent Internet penetration while the dissemination of news, especially outside the bigger cities, takes still place through traditional media: India is the largest newspaper market in the world, with more than 70,000 different titles and more than 100 million newspapers sold per day.
Storytelling rediscovered
What I still remember most was a workshop on the popular theme of storytelling. Actually it was more a dialogue between an Indian mythology student and a former communications consultant, now known as "mythologist", who helps companies and organizations to discover their stories and to tell these. It was amazing to hear these guys bridging between mythology and storytelling. And incredibly interesting to hear from them how brands, agencies, organizations, CEOs and communication departments can learn a lot from a communication technique that is already very old. During their workshop they took us on a historical journey through the exploits of Hercules, the Bible, the Indian Mahabharata (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata) as well as recent Disney movies. And by doing this, they learned us that storytelling only became a (commercial) success when it was perfected by American marketing and communications professionals. Reason enough to re-read Joseph Campbell and learn from his insights on the art of storytelling; never too old to learn.