No. 1
By: Stevan Allen
This is the first in a series of regular articles about writing and communicating I hope will be of benefit to you.
My 30-plus years as a professional journalist, political press secretary and strategic communications executive have gifted me with a generous number of experiences and lessons. Many I had to learn the hard way and from mistakes or missteps; the rest from being battle tested in the trenches of the real world.
If you follow this series, I can guarantee zero theoretical concepts. Also, the information I will be providing is free – no salesperson will visit your home and you want be spammed to death. This is about paying it forward.
So what’s with “The Cave Wall?”
Two big reasons and one small one.
First, the ability to communicate is now a basic, essential tool for survival – like food or fire. It is not a luxury. It not an option. It is a requirement for success and managing your business, non-profit, association, government agency or legislative agenda. If you do not engage in a communications program, you will not avoid communications challenges but either create them or be defined by someone else messages.
Second, our society has returned to the cave. It is well established that cave drawings were some of the earliest forms of communications and storytelling. Since the Ice Age, humans have been evolving. Everyone knows this. Historically, the arc of major evolutionary breakthroughs, include such things as music, spoken language, printed language, smoke signals, pony express, carrier pigeon, telegraph, Morse Code, radio, television and Internet.
At some point in this process, at least for me, communications started to devolve. Yes, the delivery mechanisms have become more sophisticated with all the social media platforms and ability for individuals to create and disseminate their own content.
But what has become more primitive is our attention span and inability to consume more than a snippet of information. In the past few years, we have gone from soundbites to 280 characters on Twitter. A standard online video has been downsized for human consumption; the rule of thumb used to be 2-5 minutes. Now it is more like 30-60 seconds.
Nuance is dead. Thoughtfulness is in short supply. We are now grunting and banging our clubs again – just with digital tools.
Third, the name “Cave Wall” was a bit different, more memorable and more visual than “Communications 101.”
There you have it. Please feel free to follow this journey as I map out a wide range of communications insights, tools and approaches that may help you and your organization navigate this new Ice Age.
