Regardless of what side of the fence you sit on, one thing has been abundantly clear; both camps have been guilty of fudging their message.
Whether consciously or accidentally, both ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ have confused the public and left us all scratching our heads and wondering how this has happened.
When the dust settles, many comms folk (myself included) will probably do well to spend some time to understand where the messages were heard, unheard or ignored altogether.
There will be lessons in this for all of us, non-comms professionals included.
Communicating your product, service or values isn’t just about who makes the loudest noise. It’s actually about who makes the right noise, in the right tone, at the right time.
If I had a pound or euro/dollar (choose the highest value currency at time of reading), for every time I’ve been asked to go and ‘get some coverage’ by people who have yet to define their message, I’d be a very wealthy man.
Good reputation management and ‘PR’ needs to be strategic, concise, consistent and targeted.
The ‘remain’ campaign spoke in a language that only they understood. It didn’t resonate with the public.
Whilst there is a large proportion of the population who would never have been swayed to remain, the errors in defining and recognising the key touch points could have swung the almost 2% (and probably more) in the remain camp’s favour.
It was a communications error we may have to live with for generations.
Get your message right and your customers and clients will choose to remain, get it wrong, and, you know the rest…
This article was written by Piers Zangana
Email Piers Zangana Piers.zangana@susacomms.com
Contact Number: 07960 078 935
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