The kind of disruption to traditional business models in the retail, hospitality and transportation sectors brought on by the likes of Amazon, Airbnb and Uber is happening in communications. Unfortunately, Canadian companies have been slow to adapt to the changes. They need to rethink how they communicate to their audiences. What remains the same, however, is the value of great stories and storytelling.
That was the message Rick Murray, Managing Partner of NATIONAL’s Toronto office and Chief Digital Strategist for the Firm, and Alan Fryer, Senior Consultant at NATIONAL’s Vancouver office and former CTV journalist, gave at today’s NATIONAL Exchange event in Vancouver.
It’s no surprise, news consumption has changed drastically. According to a 2016 study by Pew Research Centre for Journalism & Media, today, 72% of adults get their news online, 46% prefer to watch it (versus 35% who want to read it), 63% get their news from family and friends, and 72% get their news via mobile devices.
The era of a news deadline is long gone and not only are people are getting their news from traditional outlets, but they’re increasingly turning to citizen journalists and social media.
Yet many companies are still communicating through traditional means, only sharing information at periodic times of the year by issuing a news release or through paid and earned media. Too many companies are communicating to their clients on their own terms versus reframing their story to actually reach them on their customers’ terms.
How do you do that? Data-driven communications.
People are consumers, and we have created an ‘on-demand’ society. One of the biggest changes in communications is the access to data. Companies need to take a data-driven approach if they want to effectively engage with their audiences.
Whether you’re a consultant or work in-house, as a communications professional our jobs need to be more about accessing data (most of it freely available), mining it, providing insights and developing tailored content. Said differently, identify how customers want to receive information, identify what information they want to receive and give it to them.
The other key difference for PR professionals today – using data-driven storytelling provides measurable results. Instead of wasting money on marketing efforts based on hope or potential impressions, we can tell what works and what doesn’t in real time. We can adjust the content quickly to optimize results and we can demonstrate return on investments. The key is to keep learning what people want, need and respond to and build on that.
It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much.
