Duncan McAusland, an Associate Consultant of GDP Global, is an international marketing and promotional expert, working for both private sector clients and public agencies, particularl...
Legal, decent, honest and truthful – it’s a self-regulating commitment made by the UK advertising industry. Yet in this electronic, cyber-connected world in which actions, words and comment fly in an instant around the world, we have all grown cautious about the quality and veracity of the information with which we are regularly bombarded. So remember today to “Accentuate the positive: make the most of your case for inward investment, through the mists of doubt.”
The dark arts of political “spin”; the downright crookery of internet fraud; the dubiousness of so much spam; the slanted reporting of media owned by groups with their own commercial or political bias; these have together created a miasma through which we have difficulty telling apart the decent, honest and truthful from the dishonourable, the con and the lie. So when we need to promote our own business, industry, region or country we needs be aware that we will be communicating through this fog of cynical suspicion. Our message may be entirely legal, decent honest and truthful but will it be believed?
That’s where the quality of your campaign planning is put to the test. You may have analysed what you think are the virtues of your offering – may even have compared them with what you believe to be the competition. But are these the perceptions of your target market – your potential buyers or investors? Indeed how well defined ARE your target markets? Do you know what they know about you? Do you know their biases, prejudices, likes and fears?
For rarely are big decisions taken entirely on the completely rational grounds of cost and accountable result. Other emotive factors come into play. “If I’m going to build a factory there how easy will it be to persuade some of my line managers to go and live there?” are the sorts of issues that arise. Or “This may be their economic track record but how much faith have we in their political stability over the next ten years?”
These issues call for more than the exposition of tables of facts. They call for emotive communications of image. “We are good, friendly, welcoming neighbours. We are decent, honest and truthful. We are intelligent, entrepreneurial and proactive. We are nice people to do business with.” A better context in which to accentuate the positive features which mark you out to be as good or better than the competition.
The moral of this story?
* Know your target audiences.
* Know what they think and even more importantly.
* Know how they think.
* Get to know not only what are their stated objectives but also what are their inner feelings about you, their positives and their negative suspicions.
Only then will you know which are the most important positives to accentuate.
