Can an over-worked message backfire?

I’ve noticed a trend in communications from large corporations and organisations. Their messages come across as corporate, impersonal and devoid of any human emotion. And I’ve watched professional communicators and communications trainers encourage this practice. And I hate it! It goes against so many things that MicroMedia stands for.

A lot of the time it isn’t going to make any difference – and as such, it won’t cause an effect (either one you want, or one you don’t). But using a corporate, impersonal message at a time when people are feeling high emotions can potentially throw fuel on the fire.

I watched with interest, and concern, communications that were released by the West Yorkshire Police following a fatal shooting on the M62 motorway in the UK on the evening of Monday 2^nd January 2017.

Like many, I have a breaking news app running on my smartphone and was shocked to read: ‘Around 6pm this evening (Monday January 2), during a pre-planned policing operation near to the M62 in Huddersfield a police firearm was discharged and a man has died.’ (See the statement at the bottom of the document.)

What shocked me? Was it that there had been a shooting in the UK? Was it that someone had lost their life? Of course. But the communicator in me baulked at the statement:

‘a police firearm was discharged and a man has died.’

This couldn’t be more corporate, it couldn’t be more impersonal and it couldn’t be more devoid of emotion.

For communications of this type to work, you have to assume that humans are logical beings with emotions…

But we’re not…!

We’re emotional beings that can find logic… if we want to!

We are highly complex beings capable of being highly logical. And we can reject that logic instantly. We’re capable of cognitive dissonance and compassion.

We only have to look at the ‘post-truth’ political era that we have entered to see that people would far sooner react emotionally than process facts.

You try to process the phrase ‘a police firearm was discharged and a man has died’ and there are emotional and logical disconnects. Examine the perfectly acceptable and understandable emotional and logical assumptions a reader would have, after reading that statement:

Someone’s been killed!

A police officer has shot someone dead!

Who was killed? (If you lived close to the M62, you might ask is you knew them.)

But the provided statement doesn’t match the reactions above – and I’m assuming that's on purpose. It has been ‘crafted’ to remove all emotion. But is that a good idea?

My major problem with this statement is the use of the phrase ‘a firearm was discharged’. Everyone can see that this is code. It’s code, trying to get away from the fact that there was a human being holding the ‘firearm’. It’s code trying to get away from the fact that a human being made the decision to pull the trigger. It a corporate mechanism to try and remove the human holding the gun. It can be argued that it’s trying to convey that the ‘firearm’ killed the man, not the person holding it.

It’s like the military using terms like ‘collateral damage’ in an attempt to remove the emotion from the fact that civilians have been killed, or ‘friendly fire’ to desensitise the fact that service-personnel have been killed by their own allies.

I read this statement and worried that the message had been overworked and tweeted about it. I was surprised that no one commented on my concerns – but in reflection, I shouldn’t have been. Communicators are currently trained to be corporate, impersonal and remove emotion – so why should they think that there was anything wrong with the message?

But I will argue that being impersonal and devoid of emotion backfired on the police. The message was effective in ‘informing’ people that something had happened. But the lack of emotion potentially fuelled something they didn’t expect…

Community resentment.

Quite rightly, the initial statement didn’t tell us anything about the person that had died – after all, it would be improper to do so until their next of kin was informed.

But very soon after the incident, it was revealed that the dead man was from an ethnic minority.

As soon as you have that fact, it’s all too easy to stereotype. But as communicators we have to have our audiences are the foremost of our thoughts. And this man’s community should have been one of the principle audiences.

Again, it’s all too easy for me to review this in retrospect – but if I had been asked to prepare a statement for this situation, my first question would have been ‘How trusted is my police force within this community?’. I would then have used this as a check-mark against any message I generated – let alone release.

How would I react to the statement if I were a member of this community?

Am I seriously being told that a gun killed this man, not a police officer?

A member of my community has died, but the police don’t have a single emotion about it…

Ironically, the lack of emotion in this statement could be seen to have evoked high, negative emotions in the community. Indeed there were protests against this shooting that caused traffic to come to a stop and damage to a police vehicle. The local MP took to Facebook to appeal for calm.

Can I 100% say that this initial statement caused this community resentment or civil unrest? Of course not.

But I will argue, that in this case, it did more harm than good.

So what should this constabulary learn from this and what could they have done better?

First, a quick review of constabulary’s Twitter channel shows that they have used the words ‘firearm’ and ‘discharge’ together so often, that it’s become a cliché – and it’s being pointed out to them by their own audience. They have to stop using this phrase immediately as it’s undermining audience trust.

If you look at what the force said at the inquest, the messaging was better. During the inquest it was stated that ‘During the incident an officer discharged a firearm in the execution of his duty with the shots going through the windscreen of the Audi.’ This still uses the words ‘firearm’ and ‘discharged’. But there’s a human present with ‘an officer’ and there was a ‘reason’ to use that weapon via ‘in the execution of his duty’.

Review all the statements released by this constabulary online and you’ll see they all lack so much.

If the communications had started with:

'A police officer was called upon to use their weapon during an planned operation on the M62 that resulted in the death of one male. More to follow...’

Would it have provided a better foundation on which to communicate with the desired audiences?

In my opinion, yes. That’s what I train at MicroMedia; realise there are emotions and acknowledge them; if humans are involved, be honest and say so.

And most of all, if you remove emotion and stay impersonal… Expect your audience to come after you. People speak to people, not faceless emotionless organisations.

Media Approach to Communications. Does it work? The case-study that started MicroMedia.

I've spent 20 years in the Royal Navy and one of the reasons I chose that life was that I couldn't - and still can't - stand by and watch injustice.

My father-in-law had been running an independent Do-It-Yourself (or home improvement) shop in Salisbury for over 40 years. Things we're getting hard in that sector and he had to admit that he wasn't the young buck he was when he started the shop. We all had to sit down and make the heart-breaking decision that given profits weren't what they used to be, we'd have to close Teed Tools and let him retire.

My father-in-law hard at work in the shop.

On examining the books, I was shocked to see how much he was paying for advertising - and I couldn't see the adverts, let alone the return on investment. With more investigation, I found that he was paying thousands of pounds to advertise in Post Offices with the most awful and inappropriate stock graphics - all in the hope that someone that's in a queue to send a letter or pay a bill, might be inspired to call into his shop.

I was the Second-In-Command of the Defence Media Operations Centre at the time and in a fit of anger at the company that had tied my father-in-law into a multi-year contract for this 'advertising', I informed the entire family that I was taking over his advertising and marketing!

Sure, I had done media for the military, I had developed messages for operations and deployments - but could I take this to the civilian and commercial arena?

I developed a media plan that only used Twitter, Facebook and Google+. I then forged strategies that would gain the attention of the local newspaper and radio station.

Transferring the way the UK military conducts Media Operations, I developed a media plan, constructed easily repeated messages and studied the audiences we needed to influence. And there were 3 simple things we kept playing with:

• Let the tradesmen that used store have a good laugh.
• Generate interest in the my father-in-law's story from the traditional media.
• Remind people that they could save money by tackling tasks themselves.

The most powerful of these was making tradesmen laugh. The number of double-entendres you can play with a DIY store is amazing:

• Come and feel our knobs and knockers - Made you look, made you stare, now come and see our amazing hardware!
• We've got wood on Wednesday - Have you? We'll even cut it to size!
• When was the last time you had a good screw? Ours are of the finest quality.

People interacted and that led to people listening to how they could save money by taking on projects themselves.

We increased footfall (tradesmen were always commenting about the morning 'rude' post), increased takings - and on the last day he was trading, the pavement was blocked with customers 4 or 5 deep at the door before we had even opened the store.

And we didn't pay an advertising or marketing company a single penny.

Then there was a crisis. My Father-in-law got robbed in the store taking much needed cash to aid his retirement. I instantly knew that emotions were high - and also knew that the emotions we were feeling was a story that other would react to. So, I contacted the local press - I didn't bother with a 'Press Release' as I knew that it wouldn't be as effective as an emotional phone call to the news desk.

Photo from this newspaper article.

"I thought you should know that Mr Teed of Teed Tools was robbed today. Someone took a load of cash from his till when we wasn't looking. I mean, he's in his seventies and he's running his last sale so that he can retire. Who would do that to someone that's served the community for over 40 years?"

No matter which way you look at it, I gave them a story with amazing words that excite the media. - theft, anger, elderly, retirement, compassion, society, service... So of course they ran a story.

This led to local radio conducting interviews, additional newpaper articles - and footfall and income increased yet again. The local radio even ran a piece during his last day of trading thanking him for everything that he had done for the community.

Did it work? I'm delighted to say that we managed to raise enough not only to ensure he's enjoying his retirement, but we even managed to buy him and his wife a house in the area so that he can still keep in touch with all his friends and former customers.

As we closed the shop door the final evening, I realised that I could take these skills and help other companies take over their own media presence. And the seed was planted to form MicroMedia.

I've reviewed all of the military training I've received, from planning, audience analysis, to 'Courses of Action' and 'Decisive Conditions' - then blended it with the media channels that are available to all of us and finding way to make your stories of interest to all forms of media, both traditional and web-based... And launched MicroMedia Ltd.

It's all about the ethics of MicroMedia - no lies, no spin, save money where you can. But, most importantly, you are the media - You've got stories the media wants and they can shape the way you can gain the effects that you need...  And you won't have to waste thousands of pounds on a slideshow shown to a disgruntled post office queue.