Online or offline, soul-to-soul communication works
Ideas, in order to grow, have to have a playground. And you must allow them to take off and fly from different distribution runways. But first let me share with you a glimpse of the possible playgrounds in the new media and current marketing situations. Without a doubt, there is a clutter of products, of messages and channels. A cursory look at supermarket shelves will tell you that the market is littered with all sorts of products in varying sizes, colors and forms. They come from everywhere.
Maybe 10 years ago, Facebook, Multiply, Friendster and Twitter were not in your consciousness or even part of your list of activities to be engaged in. You added friends using the now-classic slumbook (is it still in vogue?) or any equivalent platform. Today, you buy music from iTunes. Before, some of you got to listen to your favorite music with a 50-centavo coin dropped in the once-ubiquitous jukebox. Your motivations are the same, but the tools have changed. And the changes nowadays come fast. You are part of the first generation to discover it all, thanks to Google. It has become an all-important tool to find data needed for both professional and personal research. You are now engaged actively with Yahoo! and other social networks and online sites.
Today you participate. You vote for your favorite housemate in a reality show, get intimate with the budding romance of a love team, or root for a talent-show contestant. You create your own content and post it on YouTube. You share your thoughts, opinions, experiences, pictures, and music. You go virtual with Role Playing Games (RPGs) like Tamagotchi, CounterStrike, Farmville or Mafia Wars. Never before have you had total permanent connectivity to all peers with SMS devices available in various colors, shapes and configurations.
You live by support and the lifeline to friends is available via SMS and MMS. Being in school, at work or even being asleep is no excuse to ignore a friend who asks for help. As you read this piece, the mobile phone is the only device that almost half of the population of the world carries. You are no longer a captive audience. You are a moving target. Pretty soon, you will no longer have “prime time” in your vocabulary. You are always connected to your friends and the Internet talking about people, issues, events, places and brands. You are no longer a passive consumer or viewer. You are now both an audience and a producer of your own stories. You decide what marketing idea to consume, at what time, where and how, and how to react to it. You follow brands that offer something. As Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow, said, one has to be remarkable, worth talking about, noticeable, exceptional, new and interesting to be appealing to you.
In communication, the popular AIDA principle still works. You need to continue to make people aware and interested, make them desire your offering and move them to your preferred action. The concepts of brands and branding have not changed, too, where brand loyalty will be earned over time through consistent positive experience and engagements. The mantra remains: Treat me well and I will return the favor. The challenge is how to create brand or corporate evangelists. And to do this communicators have to stop interrupting, directing, shouting, using high-powered messages, reacting, constantly looking for return on investment, offering big promises, and explaining too much, and instead start engaging, connecting, enticing, building engaging concepts, interacting, looking for return on involvement, using intimate gestures and being more revealing and discovering.
In PR, for example, the challenge is to deliver value. Or more simply put, “make people’s lives better, not bitter.” It sounds simple enough, so how can this be done? Build the PR into the product. Make it so great that people can’t help but talk about it. In other words, engage your public and make a strong commitment. They will feel more confident if you make your program a continuous part of their lives. How do you do this? Have a lot of insights, observe and listen to them.
The things that have so far been shared may be obsolete in a few months. The important thing is that you have to develop the enthusiasm to embrace change for the next eight or 80 years of your personal and professional lives. Aware of the speed of change, it is advisable that you to do what great basketball players do. They don’t run to where the ball is, but to where that ball will go. More important than being ahead, though, is taking a step back and reminding yourself that one thing has not changed for million of years: the nature of man.
Up to now, mankind must hunt and care for the brood, the clan, the family or the gang. He must achieve more to become the leader of the pack. Mankind still decides on whether to fight or flee. He still needs to belong to a tribe for security. Man’s motivations remain the same: to live, learn, love and be loved in return, and leave a legacy. In this age, it is very tempting to say that your project is a success because you are able to reach five million people in five continents within five minutes. But when you reach them, the deeper question is, are you able to touch them? It is tempting to say you have Googled it, downloaded the e-book, have bought the book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, Fully Booked or National, or have come to learn about Kindle, Nook and the E-Reader so you know the right answers. But first, do you know the right questions? It is attractive to say it is so easy now to create content. You can be a citizen journalist or performance artist. Just get a cheap camera and shoot the damn picture or the movie in your mind. But are you shooting straight into the heart?
The tools mentioned are enablers and they are very important things. But they are not everything. As ABS-CBN president and COO Charo Santos-Concio said in one of her talks, “I believe it is very appealing for you to be philosophical, but in truth, life in the communication industry is about trying to understand what a communicator is saying, and then you die.” To illustrate the point, she cited the examples of Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. Stewart has shown many designs for homes, various recipes and lifestyle ideas. Is that it? Not at all. She showed people around the globe dignity where once there was only drudgery. That’s how Stewart connected to millions of people. Were you bothered when Oprah got fat? Nope, because you also knew that her life was filled with hurdles, but she was able to get out of the rut and become an inspiration to many. And that’s how Oprah became one of the world’s top 10 cult brands.
That’s it. More than connecting iPad to iPad, or cell phone to space station, the real deal is connecting person to person. More than mind-to-mind, what resonates better is heart-to-heart, soul-to soul communication. Good content creators and communicators are most effective when they remind people of the goodness of men and their ability to become better persons. That’s why, Concio underscored, “You can only create content with enduring appeal if you have ingrained in your consciousness the value of genuine concern for humanity.”
Millions loved the songs of Michael Jackson like Heal The World and Man in the Mirror because he truly cared for humanity. He drew from his own experiences as a poor black boy before he became a rich white person. Not a lot of people knew that Michael Jackson was the Hollywood celebrity that gave the most money to charity. Like the artist Van Gogh pouring out his anguish in his broad, rough strokes, or expressing his need for hope in a starry night sky, your creations or communication are a sharing of yourselves to which many others can relate. Now, what can you share about who you are when you do not even know yourself well? Great creation and great communication are all about great storytelling. The story that you tell is a reflection of yourself. Every wound, every scar from your struggles in life has an interesting story to tell. That is why creators and communicators need to evolve as persons. You can only give what you have.
Concio also averred, “You can tell stories in a way that only you can tell. To have a life rich enough to share, you must imbibe the value of empathy. Empathy sees beyond what the eye can see. Empathy separates the ego from the soul. Your ego negatively judges people who threaten you or don’t conform to your biases. The soul has neither pride nor prejudice. The soul sees the pain behind the criminal or the human being behind the cruel parent or the slave-driver teacher. If you have empathy, you can create better characters. Try to remember the creative works that you have done in the classroom — radio and TV scripts, advertising storyboards or short film screenplays, and presentations. Maybe you will agree with me that in all these endeavors it’s the character, not the celebrity that audiences love.”
In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith is best remembered as a unique persona. Maybe not the kind you see every day but he had motivations to which millions could relate. In his character, you saw beneath his skin. You saw his inner strengths, his soul. As such, you are encouraged to see beyond what the eye can see. As Antoine de Saint Exupery said in the book The Little Prince, “It is only through the heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” And maybe you only need to remember the Avatar when he said, “I can see you” to the woman he loved. He didn’t mean, “You are all blue,” he meant, “I can see your soul, I can see your pain.”
As such, you are pushed to be seen as a person with enough pain in your past. And with a vengeance, you are ready to share your own interesting, intriguing and even intimate stories in a way that only you can tell, in a way that can move people, that can inspire millions, that can amaze the world. All these point to the value of creativity.
“Creative people are able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things,” Concio said. “And the reason they were able to do that was they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. But unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity.”
The broader one’s perspective on the human experience, the better your creativity will be. And the better your communication will be — online or offline. Try adopting the value of creating worth in what you do — worth in your connection, worth in your uniqueness and worth in the variety you bring into your life.
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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions and suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
