Talking About Communication:
The importance of Entrepreneurism and Creativity across every aspect of the industry.
Public Relations, Advertising and Journalism are all professions that have been known to butt heads. Their roles are inexplicably intertwined.
They are constantly competing for audience, clients, airtime, ideas. And yet, they are often required to become temporary collaborators, working towards a common goal for a common client. That collaboration becomes the holistic and complex workings of the media and communication industry.
The role of the communications industry is to get specific messages to an audience who are constantly bombarded with information and distractions. Yet within the industry, the messages are often conflicting — what advertisers want us to hear is probably completely different to what journalists, or certain PR companies want us to hear.
And, to add further complexity, the audience itself is now involved in the production of culture and media, not just the consumption of it. In the western world, we all spend most of our time immersed in some kind of media, and we are all caught up in the industrial production and circulation of culture. The communication industry produces culture made up of spoken and written word, audio and images, but they also have developed platforms for all people to produce and exchange their own content.
Time and time again, entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to expand and change the world forever, and each time the world of media must adapt so that the world itself doesn’t fall behind. Entrepreneurism has shaped the entire communications industry. Entrepreneurs change the game, and so only entrepreneurial thinking will allow individuals and organisations to stay in that game.
The role of an entrepreneur is to “zoom out”. To look outside the organisation, look to the driving forces from the environment, and look at the entire “game of business” holistically.
So often, business-owners get caught up in the inside of their business, and forget to look at what is going on outside.
If we look specifically at Public Relations for a moment, the entire industry is about bridging the gap between the outside environment, and the marketing strategies within the brand. Within every business that employs Public Relations practices, there is an element of entrepreneurial thinking.
Entrepreneurial thinking is about using external driving forces that you have no control over, and finding a way to use them to your advantage — to take control again. Things like politics, technology, social trends and globalisation, these all feature heavily in the communications industry, either as subjects or as evolutionary forces.
Media production of any kind — journalism, advertising, film or television, music — is all a form of culture creation.
But no individual or company can completely control the production of culture, because it circulates through society and consumers.
Which is where creativity comes in…
You simply cannot have entrepreneurism without creativity. The entire notion of thinking outside the box is impossible if you can’t imagine your way past pesky things such as “the norm”.
Creativity in the oldest sense of the word is to create order out of chaos.
In Journalism you must order the facts, look at the chaotic whole. You have lots of information coming from different sources — sometimes opposing views and contradicting opinions. You must select what information is most important, and presenting it in a way that is understandable and interesting to an audience.
In advertising, you must take one brand, out of a loud and boisterous infinity of alternatives, and make the world believe it is the best option.
Public Relations, in all its varied forms, is about a specific entity becoming the focal point of a specific audience.
Creativity is your only hope of executing any of those objectives.
The development of technology is the defining driving force of every industry in the world and communication is no different. Every facet of the industry, from workplace conditions and regulations to our ability to manage communications across the globe, is affected by how technology grows.
For instance, online “bots” are becoming more and more present on social media and other online forums, which in turn changes the game in Public Relations, Advertising and Journalism. In Mexico, the government uses tweet bots to confuse and overwhelm genuine grassroots social media campaigns — imagine trying to run a successful online PR campaign when your opposition doesn’t require food, sleep or a conscience? Is this the direction of communication? Will all of PR become automated in the future?
These kinds of technological challenges in the world of communication forces an evolution of how we operate. And this required entrepreneurial thinking, creativity, and innovation. To stay on top of the game you cannot afford to be “up-to-date”, you must be ahead, ready to adapt at all times.
Look at the success of journalists and media companies who embraced social media in its early stages, and have since developed the multi-platform news bulletin structure that is currently saturating every possible audience. Journalism is about being heard and understood. Print news, television and radio aren’t nearly enough in the digital age, so you must create your story in a variety of forms in order for the audience to hear you.
The notion of journalism being a dead or doomed industry is ridiculous. It isn’t dead; it has evolved. It has not let itself fade into obscurity; it’s developed new ways — like multi-media news bulletins — to stay relevant. Creativity and innovation brings longevity and growth, it ensures an industries relevance and prevalence in an ever-changing society.
People who are currently studying communication-based courses at university will not be working within the current media and communication structure. Innovation will create a new and entirely different media world. Communication is all about that readiness to adapt to the language of the listener, and technology is constantly creating new languages to learn.
But this kind of industry environment is fast-paced and volatile. In real-life practice, the external driving forces you are trying to engage with impact the success of entrepreneurial thinking and creative communication practices.
For instance, regulations and laws can never keep up. The exploitation of employees in the communication industry will always be prevalent simply due to the nature of the beast. Change and insecurity are a constant for workers. Not to mention the inconsistency and ambiguity in the kind of self-regulation that dictates the Public Relations, Advertising and Journalism streams.
And again, in terms of real-life application, innovation needs more than just powerful businesses and dedicated people behind it. The economic, political and social environment needs to allow entrepreneurial ideas to be converted into marketable products. You may develop the most life-changing online communication model, but trying to launch it in a country with low Internet access, or with a government that restricts the availability of online content just wouldn’t be possible.
Work in communication can be cut in half if you ensure you pitch the right ideas and information to the right people. Otherwise you have set yourself up for failure before you have even begun.
Entrepreneurial thinking is all about managing the unmanageable using creativity, and the future of every industry rests in the hands of up-and-coming entrepreneurs. The communications industry has been demonstrating for years that it has the capacity to adapt and keep up with an ever-changing world. In doing so, we have enabled individuals, governments and organisations to be aware of the changes happening in society every day, so they can adapt too.
Resources:
http://www.pria.com.au/newsadvocacy/pr-in-the-age-of-the-robot
http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/public-relations-earning-place/302060/
https://www.academia.edu/709282/The_Media_Logic_Of_Media_Work
Key Concepts in the Creative Industries — J. Hartley (2013)
The Entrepreneurial Process — McManus & Powe (2009)
http://www.innovationjournalism.org/archive/INJO-2-4_split/INJO-2-4%20pp.165-180.pdf
