Post-Truth Era - Do We Need to Change Our Communications Strategies?

I wasn't really surprised to see that the Oxford Dictionary declared that the word of the year was 'Post-truth'. 2016 was a year that took so many of us by surprise, what with the UK voting in favour of Brexit and the US people electing a TV celebrity to the highest office in the country.

What frustrated Brexit/Trump opponents was that their audiences appeared to have stopped listening to facts and were believing anything they were told by their competitors. And I use the word 'frustrated' very carefully, as this is what they should be - but they're not. They're angry.

Anger can be all consuming. It can cause you to keep on doing what you're doing, but harder... And you still don't get results. And in some cases, things get worse.

Let's play with an analogy.

Fire.

You have a campfire and you need to put it out. You know that pouring water on it will do that. You know that fire-fighters use water to put out fires. So, when you're presented with an unwanted fire, you just pour water on it and you've dealt with the situation...

But what about an electrical fire?

Most of us know that fighting an electrical fire with water is a bad idea - so we need to change the type of extinguisher we use.

And that's the communications arena we've now entered. There are still flames and heat, but you need to look at the cause of the fire to be able to deal with it. But the Post-Truth era has changed not only the cause, but the fuel.

I'm hoping that none of you have ever had to deal with a magnesium fire. There are flames and extraordinary heat. But, if you attempt to extinguish the fire with water... the water gets converted to hydrogen and oxygen - and adds enormous amounts of fuel to the fire and you're now in explosion territory.

And that's what's happened in the Post-Truth era. We have a different cause for our 'fire'. And a substantially different, and volatile, fuel. Continue communicating in the way you have been and you're throwing water on to your magnesium fire.

So what's the cause that enable Post-Truth communications? Principally, disenfranchisement.

People have lost trust. They feel they are not being listened to. They feel that the 'old ways' of doing things and status quo haven't worked - so they want to hear something new. They don't feel connected with the 'traditional' way of doing things and are looking for an (or any) alternative.

So what's the fuel?

Emotions.

People are upset, angry and want someone to agree with their feelings. They also want someone to blame.

Take the example of the Conservative Member of Parliament Michael Gove. On the run up to the Brexit vote Mr Gove was interviewed by Sky News and was presented with a list of nations and high ranking officials that thought that the UK leaving the EU was a bad idea. His response...

"The people in this country have had enough of experts."

The interviewer jumped on this suggesting that the voters we're going to have to employ "blind faith" in their decision making if they weren't listening to experts. But he, and we all, missed the point.

Gove had hit on something - and something raw. People don't like being told they're wrong. And Mr Gove effectively told them that they could dismiss anyone that disagreed with them. And they liked it - because of emotions.

In my previous post, I spoke about the fact that we, as humans, are not logical beings with emotions. We're emotional beings that have logic - when we want to. The Brexit debate was very emotional, as was the US Presidential Election. And here was their game-changer. Their principle messaging content wasn't facts. It was emotions.

This struck a chord with their audiences. They were employing the emotional nature of human beings to influence their decisions. We all do. We're all susceptible to it.

If you dislike someone and someone else agrees with you, you feel validated and solidify your feelings. But if someone tells you 'they give so much back to society, donate large sums to charity and repeatedly help their neighbours' - it's not uncommon to think 'Well... I still don't like them.'. You reject facts and fall back to your emotions.

Talking emotionally is so powerful because:

Emotions - Feel - True.

My previous post mentioned cognitive dissonance. And here it is in action. I feel something, but I can't express it in words or logic. Someone agrees with my feelings and it reinforces them. In fact, we then feel that these emotions are now facts by the very fact that other people agreeing with me.

And when someone challenges us with facts, we feel like we are being denied our feelings. We feel like our emotions are being dismissed... And the people denying our feelings, dismissing our emotions... They're the people we can blame!

That's why Post-Truth communications are such effective influence tools.

So what do we need to do to counter Post-Truth communications?

Get emotional!

We still need to collect our facts. But once we have them, we need to determine what emotions our audiences will resonate with. We then need to create our messages with those emotions at the forefront, substantiate them with facts, then return to the emotions.

This is nothing new. Aristotle postulated the Ethos, Pathos, Logos modes of persuasion. Traditional communications have centred on the Logos mode occasionally supported by the Ethos mode. Whereas Post-Truth centres on the Pathos.

So I suggest that we need to examine our communications strategies and see how we could develop messages that follow the order of:

• Pathos
• Logos
• Ethos
• And return to Pathos

To work in the Post-Truth era, and still work with facts, we need to examine the fuel that's being used. then we need to use it ourselves.

But make it more powerful by embedding the facts into the emotion.

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.