In 2006 the late, great Robin Williams starred in a Barry Levinson film called Man of the Year. The premise was that a political comedy/talk show host (think Jon Stewart) runs for President, as an outsider, and wins.
Levinson thought the possibility of this actually happening so slim that he wrote in a sub-plot of irregularities in a new electronic voting system that preferences candidates with double letters in their surname (Williams’ character was Tom Dobbs) to explain how the TV star turned a wave of populist appeal into an electoral college win.
Ten years later Levinson must be thinking ‘why did I bother’? The far fetched is becoming reality as Donald Trump rides a tsunami of populist appeal to primary win after primary win in the race for the Republican Party Presidential Nomination.
The real test of Super Tuesday primaries is almost upon us but, win lose or draw on that important day, Trump and to a considerable extent the Democrat “outsider” Senator Bernie Sanders, have redrawn the American political map and perhaps the way all western politicians will frame their future campaigns.
The mythical Tom Dobbs initially struggles to compete with establishment candidates but when he bursts out of the political mould, turning the switch to vaudeville (as they say in showbiz) to make his points his popularity rockets. His messages are simple, simplistic in fact, but they are delivered with naïve sincerity and are undeniably entertaining. As a result, he taps into a deep dissatisfaction with the rigid and harshly partisan two party system.
Trump has shown that he can mine that degree of voter frustration with broad statements of objectives and with often offensive comments that would see career politicians crash and burn. But he just gets stronger. He took on the Pope for heaven’s sake, and the Pope issued a clarification!
Sanders is a 25 year veteran of the Senate who is running as an “outsider” by to positioning himself as a Democratic Socialist. A term that until recently would have seen any American politician laughed off the stage. Yet he is tapping the same frustration, just with a younger audience.
Politics as usual is becoming anything but. Hillary Clinton may still prevail through tight organisation, demographics and getting out the vote, but the political scene has changed, forever.
We have had our brush with shallow populists in Australia. Think Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer. However, our electoral system does not offer the opportunity to catapult to the top job without first earning at least some political stripes. That’s probably a good thing. It allows time for the imposters to unclothe themselves.
In a multi-media, instant gratification, increasingly superficial message driven world it will be a brave politician who ignores the lessons already provided by the USA’s electoral process.
In 1976 the Sidney Lumet film, Network, written by Paddy Chayefske, had Australian actor Peter Finch, as top rating news anchor Howard Beale, deliver rants against the comfortable coalescence of media, business and politics, always ending with a trade mark cry of :
” We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take this anymore.”
Hollywood may have proven to be more prophetic than even it could imagine.
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The digital transformation of stakeholder engagement
Communication is transitioning to a ‘new era’ in service delivery efficiency and effectiveness.
It is a ‘customer-centric’ service delivery; i.e. ‘providing the best possible customer experience (satisfaction) utilising the most efficient delivery model’. This means not only new technologies, but also a new approach to personal communication.
Modern Innovative government is committed to addressing this because of the rising expectations of citizens, increasing fiscal pressures and delivering technologies that enable these new ways of information management and communication.
This trend is not only what is expected of government. Consumers are also pushing for it from the private sector.
The approach to meeting this change requires planned communication practices and creative approaches to ‘connect with’ and ‘serve’ citizens.
Specifically, citizens are seeking access to information that is delivered in the simplest, most user-friendly and efficient way. For many, this means the options to receive information that is easily accessible, accurate, timely and digital or personal in nature, depending on their individual circumstances.
This ‘push’ also coincides with the evolving nature of communication, especially the rapid adoption of internet enabled devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
Unfortunately, many government departments and companies do not have the digital or stakeholder engagement expertise to champion change across their operations to realise the benefits of digital stakeholder communication.
RMKA is at the forefront of these changes in communication and service delivery trends.
We bring this expertise and ‘communication model’ to governments, business and the philanthropic sectors to ‘create change’ to deliver ambitious programs to engage citizens, customers and other stakeholders and cement their positions as leaders in their areas of expertise and operation.
Donald Trump – Man of the Year?
In 2006 the late, great Robin Williams starred in a Barry Levinson film called Man of the Year. The premise was that a political comedy/talk show host (think Jon Stewart) runs for President, as an outsider, and wins.
Levinson thought the possibility of this actually happening so slim that he wrote in a sub-plot of irregularities in a new electronic voting system that preferences candidates with double letters in their surname (Williams’ character was Tom Dobbs) to explain how the TV star turned a wave of populist appeal into an electoral college win.
Ten years later Levinson must be thinking ‘why did I bother’? The far fetched is becoming reality as Donald Trump rides a tsunami of populist appeal to primary win after primary win in the race for the Republican Party Presidential Nomination.
The real test of Super Tuesday primaries is almost upon us but, win lose or draw on that important day, Trump and to a considerable extent the Democrat “outsider” Senator Bernie Sanders, have redrawn the American political map and perhaps the way all western politicians will frame their future campaigns.
The mythical Tom Dobbs initially struggles to compete with establishment candidates but when he bursts out of the political mould, turning the switch to vaudeville (as they say in showbiz) to make his points his popularity rockets. His messages are simple, simplistic in fact, but they are delivered with naïve sincerity and are undeniably entertaining. As a result, he taps into a deep dissatisfaction with the rigid and harshly partisan two party system.
Trump has shown that he can mine that degree of voter frustration with broad statements of objectives and with often offensive comments that would see career politicians crash and burn. But he just gets stronger. He took on the Pope for heaven’s sake, and the Pope issued a clarification!
Sanders is a 25 year veteran of the Senate who is running as an “outsider” by to positioning himself as a Democratic Socialist. A term that until recently would have seen any American politician laughed off the stage. Yet he is tapping the same frustration, just with a younger audience.
Politics as usual is becoming anything but. Hillary Clinton may still prevail through tight organisation, demographics and getting out the vote, but the political scene has changed, forever.
We have had our brush with shallow populists in Australia. Think Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer. However, our electoral system does not offer the opportunity to catapult to the top job without first earning at least some political stripes. That’s probably a good thing. It allows time for the imposters to unclothe themselves.
In a multi-media, instant gratification, increasingly superficial message driven world it will be a brave politician who ignores the lessons already provided by the USA’s electoral process.
In 1976 the Sidney Lumet film, Network, written by Paddy Chayefske, had Australian actor Peter Finch, as top rating news anchor Howard Beale, deliver rants against the comfortable coalescence of media, business and politics, always ending with a trade mark cry of :
Hollywood may have proven to be more prophetic than even it could imagine.
Is your data crisis management plan in the clouds?
Australia’s ‘catch-up’ with the digital age highlights the power of information security to make or break your business plans today. China’s recent cyber attack on the Bureau of Meteorology’s computers – although denied by China – is a timely reminder to all Australian businesses and governments that such actions can compromise sensitive systems across the whole public and private sectors.
The much welcomed recent moves by academia, business and government for Australia to ‘catch-up’ with other nations in the development of our technology innovation sector brings this to the fore even more.
It is reinforced by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s announcement of a push to protect the nation’s commercial and strategic secrets from cyber attack.
Digital crisis management now should be high on the agendas of all risk committees.
As we move towards the magical 2020, issues and crisis management plans can mark the difference between business success and failure in effective responses to digital attacks.
The Melbourne-based information security firm Trusted Impact highlighted in a recent survey that key business objectives, such as revenue growth, product quality, time-to-market, customer loyalty, company reputation and shareholders value are all at risk if information security is not interwoven into the fabric of the digital organisation.
The pace of change is such that in the past decade, we have lost iconic brands, such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kodak and Yellow Pages to the digital age. Their demise highlights the adage that a ‘stitch in time, saves nine’ is just as relevant today as it was in the 18th Century when it was used as an incentive to the ‘lazy’ to fix a small hole before it became a larger one.
The ‘lazy’ organisations today will quickly have large reputational problems tomorrow because of global news services if their IT, communication and management people are not aligned in their mitigation responses.
The very nature of organisations moving more and more data to Cloud is a perfect example of the need to ‘be aligned and prepared’. Losing visibility as to who has access to your data in Cloud poses the question: “How do you do ‘incident management’ in a cloud environment?”
Fast and social, disastrous consequences
The arrival of social media has been both transformative and disruptive. Certainly for anyone under the age of 40 it is likely to be a major part of their daily lives.
Any medium seen by billions of eyes will quickly attract the attention of business communicators, and rightly so. However, as with any communication channel, the use of social media needs to be carefully thought through, for both message and for suitability.
Of critical importance is the prime differentiator of social media; it is communal and largely uncontrolled. Businesses engaging in social media are undertaking the modern equivalent of standing on a soap box in a busy town square and shouting one’s views, or offerings to invite instant crowd feedback.
Recently another industry disrupter, ride sharing platform Uber, arrived in Melbourne and started making life quite difficult for the local taxi industry. Uber does not need highly prized taxi licences, despatch, depot or taxi rank infrastructure. All that is needed is someone who wants to make a few dollars out of driving folks around in their car and an app on a mobile phone. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the Victorian Taxi Directorate would want to stop Uber.
In addition to the legal challenges it launched, the VTD thought it would be a good idea to launch a social media campaign to remind people what a ‘fantastic’ service they offered. So their agency launched a Facebook page with a competition asking customers to share their happy taxi customer stories. The supposed incentive being that they could win a year’s free taxi rides.
If you don’t already know what happened next there is a fair chance you will have guessed.
The campaign was wildly successful in providing a public forum for anyone with a gripe about taxi services to vent their displeasure. From smelly cabs and sweaty, clueless drivers, to aggressive and sexist behaviour all the way to actual sexual assaults, the site was swamped with unhappy customers who basically told the taxi industry where to stick their free year of rides.
#Awesome!
The whole thing went viral in the worst possible way and was then picked up by all the traditional media, heaping more criticism on the industry and the industry body.
The campaign was scrapped, the agency fired and the Victorian Taxi Directorate had to make the humiliating admission that they would focus on better service delivery rather than social media gimmicks.
The lesson? Don’t rush into the latest communication medium without fully understanding how it works and what the possible outcomes could be. Strategic communication planning will help avoid such disasters, but close consideration of the chosen tactical communication tools is also required if the potential for an own-goal is to be eliminated.
The first principle of thinking things through is not a bad starting point in any communication activity.