Public Engagement: The Burdens of Responsibility and Leadership – Big Questions Ahead
There are, of course, clearly some uncomfortable and inconvenient truths that businesses and the Communications companies of the future will need to confront to determine if they really are Fit for Purpose in a greener, more conscience-driven, conversational and Citizen-empowered world of Public Engagement.
If Less really is More, thinking will need to shift to accept that companies cannot just go on selling “stuff”.
At its most fundamental level, the traditional role of marketing within Communications will diminish significantly. If Less really is More, thinking will need to shift to accept that companies cannot just go on selling “stuff”. A new understanding of needs and desires will be fostered within a world that desperately needs to consume less (and on a more equitable basis). The pursuit of profit will – in time – become secondary to the pursuit of the greater good – and this will demand a re-alignment of the Communications framework as a whole. We believe we will witness the triumph of Engagement over Economics.
Openness and Transparency will, furthermore, become business imperatives. Any lingering sense of the opaque will need to be disregarded forever. The age of spin is dead. The only shield of secrecy that will legitimately remain is the one that guards commercial sensitivities. Communications companies will need to re-configure themselves and be prepared for greater scrutiny from a new generation of Citizens that will peer into not just what a company does, but how it does it, what it says and how it says it.
A new moral compass has come into play.”Value” may rest on the basis of Good Purpose rather than economic profit.
A new moral compass has come into play. In a Digitally democratic world which is witnessing the final erosion of old world Communications, new and different questions are being asked of companies and their communicators. The Leviathan wisdom of the crowd may not prevail, but it has certainly demanded a right to be heard. It is, as yet, difficult to ascertain who sits on the right side of right and wrong – but, for sure, there will be less tame acceptance of the polluters and the despoilers and those un-accepting of their societal role, than has been the prevailing norm.
So, the clamour looks set to only grow for companies and brands to adopt a more utilitarian approach – and to serve the greater good. This, of course, represents something of a return to nineteenth century, Citizen values. The traditional notion of “shareholder value” (the historic get out clause for those who put profit over responsibility) will, we believe, change fundamentally, as the next generation of greener “info-entials” emerges. “Value” may rest on the basis of Good Purpose rather than economic profit. Dividends may be community, rather than monetarily, focussed. Our language will inevitably change as a result.
Communications companies cannot and must not sit as moral arbiters – but they will need to re-think at what point they ‘Just Say No’.
Above all, the Communications companies of the future will need to re-think at what point they “Just Say No”. If green is so much more than the new black, they will need to ask themselves if or how they are prepared to work for the polluters and wasteful, those with questionable records on sustainability or workers/ human rights and conditions? This leads into complex and uncomfortable territory – complicated still further by an oscillating moral compass that is at present unsure of where the dividing line between “good” and “bad”, “acceptable” and “unacceptable” currently lies. Communications companies of the future will need to be pragmatic and commercial realists, for sure – but they may still be labelled as hypocrites and find themselves victims of radicalised campaigns from Garage NGOs. They cannot and must not sit as moral arbiters – but they will need to decide, themselves, where they stand on specific issues and within specific industries, just as they did in the great tobacco debate, two decades ago.
The Communications world has of course arrived at this point partially by accident – a happy coincidence of the impact on brand, corporate reputation and communication fuelled by the three seismic shifts of Climate Change, Wellbeing economics and Digital Democracy – but now is the time to codify the new system of Public Engagement and to set it, properly, within the Citizen Renaissance. This cannot be achieved without accepting the inevitability of further change. Technological advancements will continue to shift cultures. The calls for accountability and transparency will increase. Governments will most likely seek greater involvement in Citizens’ lives, not less. And, all the while, the planet continues to diminish its resource base and Consumers who are not yet Citizens continually fail to match Wants and Needs. Within the New World Order of Communications, both knowledge and stories will fly at greater speed – and Communications companies will have a vital role to play as both agents and catalysts of epochrophal change.
