Communication 2.0: Symbolic Identity, Interactivity, and Research

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been in an extensive dialogue with some professional colleagues regarding the importance of reputation management (which in many ways is a return to good, solid communication and public relations practices) to provide communication value in a (long-tail media) world of fragmented communication channels.

Our discussions have reinforced my thinking about some of the key areas that are/will be needed by communication professionals in the 21st century. In short, I believe that communication professionals must embrace and master a holistic approach when it comes to integrated communication. There are three areas that comprise this holistic approach - (1) symbolic identity (or brand management), (2) interactive strategies and tactics (continuing to master all media and channels at your disposal), and (3) communication-based research.

Symbolic Identity & Brand
As the number of media channels continue to expand and traditional (and not so traditional) audience groups continue to segment the need for a strong brand and understanding of your symbolic identity is imperative for marketing and communication professionals. Having a cohesive, understood symbolic identity helps you cope with the changing elements of your audience. We, as humans, continue to re-tribalize through our symbol systems – most of which are now delivered electronically. This retribalization makes it nearly impossible for communication practitioners to master, let alone manage, all available channels. Instead, one should understand the symbolic dramas that comprise their brand or identity (see research). In many ways, as Reis has said, it is the rise (or return) of PR, as communication professionals need to manage reputation (and symbol systems) rather than channels. One way to do so is to be honest to your identity – know what it is you are and embrace it – don’t try to be all things to all people, it will help you in the wild, wild west of Web 2.0. It is my belief that most brand damage comes from within – try not shoot yourself in the foot buckeroo.

Interactive Strategies & Tactics
The name of the game, so far this century, is interactive. The Web, Web 2.0, Social Media, etc. continue to be new, or emerging, channels that introduce a new vernacular. We need to continue to use good, sound communication practices and balance that redundancy with the novelty of new channels. The channels enable and restrict the message as well as the potential bandwidth for our symbols. We no longer have the luxury of mastering a few channels and messages – in a world when we generally had similar shared experiences when it came to the places and types of media we consumed. However, we need to understand how the Web, interactive, and mobile is changing the way we negotiate meaning with our publics and the cue-givers. Appointment television is over. Newspaper readership is dying. However, interactive continues to grow and better yet it is measurable (with the caveat that just because you can measure doesn’t mean it’s valuable). With the growth of interactive channels and devices it is important to know how new technology enables and constrains your communication with your audience segments. Strategically, you need to understand and master grounding your symbolic identity in a valuable way with your constituents. Tactically, you need to consider messaging and CRM tactics that leverage an interactive world that is continuing to leave the desktop and mouse behind. Think about the iPhone and gesture technology, texting (and the vernacular or vulgar, depending on your point of view), and search engines influencing web traffic as examples of how new media is changing the communication landscape.

Communication-Based Research
Finally, research. Specifically, communication-based research (qualitative and quantitative), like that in SymbolicID. What’s research have to do with the two items above? Well, a lot frankly. You need to know what symbolic visions or dramas your audiences are participating in. The best way to get there is to use communication-based research. Communication professionals need to understand how to operationalize communication variables and constructs. This is what helps you tell a fact from a not-fact and avoids expensive scavenger hunts with your communication campaigns. You need to know what creates value for your constituents. You need to measure and manage the customer-experience. Beyond traditional marketing and research metrics (which are necessary but not sufficient), you need to be able to understand meaning, motive, identity, and emotion as the construct a symbolic reality for your audience segments. You also need to understand the current value and life cycle standing of your symbolic identity. This understanding impacts your communication strategies and tactics. Remember, all symbolic visions have a life cycle, which includes five stages:
1. Consciousness Creation (bringing a new symbolic identity to life - -think innovation);
2. Consciousness Raising (growing the vision, expanding your audience);
3. Consciousness Sustaining (shielding the committed, inoculating against competing visions);
4. Decline (the vision loses currency in the symbolic marketplace) and; finally,
5. Implosion (the vision dies as there is no symbolic value in the market place).

Research helps you better understand, explain and predict audience behavior. Through a mix of research tools available to us, it becomes easier to conduct research from easy to conduct quantitative surveys and polls, to in-depth qualitative work. While it becomes easier, like our communication practices, you need good, solid research practices to help you separate facts from noisy and expensive non-facts. Communication-based research is the key to "cracking the code" on constituent behavior. Research is sounding pretty valuable right now isn’t it? To what extent can you currently explain and predict your audience behavior?

In summary, the three components of symbolic identity, interactivity, and research helps tie together a unified and valuable approach to communicating with our constituents in the 21st century. A holistic approach, grounded with the previously mentioned touchstones, will prevent a confusing smattering of shotgun tactics that can hurt more than help your brand. Instead the approach enables you to effectively tie together your strategy and tactics in a valuable and meaningful way. Utilizing these elements will prevent you from wasting energy trying to keep up with the Joneses 2.0. Right, everything just sounds more authoritative if you throw a “2.0” on the end. But seriously, you should really focus on the trifecta of symbolic identity, interactivity, and research.

Knowledge Management & Innovation: The Knowledge Brokering Cycle

One of my professional interests is knowledge management. From base level items that may technically be information management (in the areas of customer service -- pushing the right information closer to the customer) to the concepts of a knowing organization and strategically leveraging knowledge to develop innovative products and services. While preparing for a project to address innovation within health care, I was reading HBR's book on Innovation. One of the chapters, by Hargadon & Sutton ("Building an Innovation Factory") is an interesting overview of the process of knowledge brokering (rooted in the work of Thomas Edison). The authors highlight a four-part process for knowledge brokering, which is a great pragmatic approach to starting to try and repeat a process, rather than saying "then the magic happens...and we're really not sure how."

The Knowledge Brokering Cycle:
1. Capture Good Ideas
2. Keep Ideas Alive
3. Imagining New Uses for Old Ideas
4. Putting Promising Concepts to the Test

Within these steps, some other knowledge management basics are touched upon such as: (1) if you want more ideas, get smart and creative people to interact -- give them the space, technology and resources to do so; (2) leverage the concept of parallax -- look at items from multiple perspectives, industries, products and services; and (3) try to cultivate (and save) good organizational knowledge -- don't let your good ideas leave the company when a particular person leaves the company (unless directed by a judge).

The downer when reading these things or working on other knowledge projects is that I'm reminded of a "Ground Hog Day" / Sisyphus (not surprisingly, Murray is more accessible than Camus) nature of a lot of our problem solving works. It seems like we're continuing to work on the same problems. Elements change, but at times it seems like the same rock and the same mountain. However, as an old boss said, he'd rather we use our brains for thinking rather than remembering. If we can increase the organizational remembering, maybe we can think through more innovations.

Language Acquisition & Symbographic Research

I recently sat in on a lecture/salon regarding language acquisition research and it re-confirmed the power and value of SymbographicTM research to help understand the meaning, motive, emotion, and identity of constituent groups and audience segments.

As some of you know, my wife is in the data collection phase of her PhD dissertation. She is using a mixed-methods approach -- looking at motivation among middle school-aged students to persist or not in foreign language immersion programs. I sat in on a presentation she gave earlier in the week and saw some strong parallels in her research and those of my research and consulting background in communication and symbolic identity. Not to trivialize her research or over simplify it, but rather to keep this post a manageable length I’ll focus on two items – the value of Symbographic research in understanding your audience segments and the need to conduct research with your target customers and constituents.

1) In her research, she is seeing strong elements of motivation and identification that would not be picked up solely in a quantitative study. From a SymbolicID and Symbolic Convergence perspective this makes sense. While we may have people that are demographically and sociographically similar, their motives and identification with a foreign language are quite different. From a Symbographic perspective, some of the students persist for righteous reasons (they want to learn more, stretch the brain, etc. – which is quite interesting that middle-schoolers are that progressive), while others do it for more social reasons – family and peer group influence, or by learning other languages you can communicate with more people. Social reasons may exist for not persisting as well, as the kids are now feeling nervous about fitting in with their peers. I’m guessing there would be few pragmatic reasons for persisting in a language immersion program.

2) Another element in my wife’s research is way the students have been traditionally left out of the research. Some scholars are recognizing and calling for research with the students when discerning their motivation for persisting – not continuing to rely on the teachers and parents for data. This reminded me that we often gloss over the customer/end-user in our communication and research efforts, like the students have been in previous motivation research.

Take-Aways
1) Symbographic research provides valuable insight into the meaning, motive, identity and emotion of your consitituent groups and audience segments. By understanding the dramas (righteous, social, pragmatic, hybrid, or no vision) you can more effectively communicate with your audience than relying on your standard demo-, socio-, and psycho-graphic research.

2) Remember the end-user/customer in your research and design.

Podcasting Continues to Grow

From eMarketer & Universal McCann. Look at the global growth of podcasting (specifically, and social media generally). Now, compare that to the trend lines for appointment television and newspaper subscriptions. To paraphrase McLuhan, we are seeing a retribalization of society driven by electronic media...as the long-tail continues to stretch.

Kamen is working on a new type of prosthetic arm

As you know, I've been fascinated with TED.com as of late. Here's another great video from the site. It's Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, talking about his new project.

Poetic Prophet - Waxin' and Milkin' All Your Suboptimized Sites

It's hard to be a prophet in your own town, especially when it comes to SEO, site conversion, and paid search. Let the Poetic Prophet drop some mad rhymez to help optimize.

Sanctioning Agent, out!

What's Your Connection Strategy?

Beyond brand and symbolic identity, you need to understand the technology that will be used to deliver your message and enable engagement with your stakeholders. The technology you choose creates structures that both enable and constrict future communication. Five years ago, we didn't think about gesture technology or a robust web browser on our phone. Five years from now, what will we have available? User experience and design elements will be challenged as we continue to move away from the standard keyboard, monitor, mouse framework.

Lying & Symbolic Identity

Hillary misspeaking...er, lying. about what happened in Bosnia 12 years ago may be her Howard Dean scream, the Quayle "potatoe" moment, Dukakis in an ill-fitting helmet riding in a tank, or a George Allen "macaca." One that reminds voters of what they might fear about the candidate and lets that dominate the media. Dean (crazy), Quayle (dumb), Dukakis (weak on military), and Allen (racist) become hard to shake when the candidate themeselves provide the ammo to "ground" a negative idenity. This nearly innoculates them from success as they reinforce a negative dramatic vision of their personae. Maybe Hillary can ask hubby Bubba how one should tell the truth. I did not have sexual relations with... Oh wait, he did.

Remember kids, you want a sane person on the other end of that red phone, not one that thinks she's under attack.



Take aways:
1. Meaning is co-created -- just because you say it doesn't make it so, your audience participates in the construction of a symbolic reality.
2. Today's technology and media cycles make it harder for you to try and recreate your image, especially when you leave behind such easy targets.


Gotta run, I'm under fire...head down, zig zag.