Seat at the Table

If you conduct messaging workshops, write corporate boiler plates or simply work in any area of communications, you’ve probably heard the familiar statement from executives: “we are leader, we are innovative, we are employee focused.”  Statement?  More often is comes across as a plea.

The problem with these messages is not that everyone is doing it and that they are meaningless - everyone is and they are - the problem is that they don’t do add any meaning to the company using them.  

Leadership messages in corporate communications are probably the biggest offenders.  Companies tend to take the message too broadly and don’t specify what they are a leader in.  Not every company can be a leader in enterprise security or home furnishing design or commercial real estate.  However, they can be a leader within niches.  Companies should either play up specific strengths (”having sold more office chairs than anyone in the US, we are the leading office chair company and a major supplier of office furniture) or don’t bother.  At least when the leadership message is quanitified is provides meaning that may resonate with customers.  Otherwise, it’s just more fluff people would rather not read.

In Death by Innovation, Mike Bawden raises some important points to consider when discussing innovation as a positioning message.

Innovation may be one of the more overused types of messages in public relations messaging exercises.  In many cases, public relations executives put innovation up as a central message, yet don’t show why audiences would care.    Perhaps beucase they don’t care for innovation for its own sake.  Yet they will care about the result of innovation.  As Mike says, “…businesses must be careful to avoid innovation without reason.”

I tend to take a real work messaging approach.  That is, I aim for messages and wording that will resonate with how audiences actually think and speak.   In terms of an innovation message, that means focusing on the result of the innovation.  If the result is the first X in history, focus the message around being the first.

That said, there are audiences that care about innovation but, again, only in the context of what it produces.  Investors may care about innovation in terms of keeping companies producing best selling products that sell for a high margin.  Business partners and enterprise customers may care to know they are getting the most advanced product.

Innovation for innovations sake may not resonate with many audiences.  But focus ont the result of innovation, and you add meaning to the message. 

The points above can hold true for any public relations and corporate communciations engaged in messaging workshops or related exercises.  General messages likely won’t resonate with audiences and will probably only meet the objectives of satisfying corporate egos.  Be specific, however, and  you might hear people asking to tell them more of the corporate story.