Teachings from the Trump election also apply to your business

You’ve been listening to your media agency and read a bunch of quantitative studies. Good for you. So has Hillary’s team.

The ever-growing populism, the lack of understanding from the so-called elites as well as the ever decreasing influence of the media should not be the sole concern of political parties and political communications professionals. It has taken some time to talk about the proverbial elephant in the room (pun not intended), but it cannot be avoided anymore.

You do not know your consumers anymore (did you ever?)

As complex individuals full of contradictions and faced with a constant flow of information, people are always changing their minds and expressing themselves in news ways. Ironically enough, we have never had as much data to analyse than we do now, yet we seem to be utterly incapable of anticipating people’s behaviours.

Corporate structures seem convoluted and nobody truly believes in them anymore.

People do not want to be told how to vote or think by ‘hierarchy’. People want options, they want to see themselves in a candidate. People want to be heard.

Most companies’ online advocacy programs fail miserably. Why? Because employees feel like they are being used. Though they will happily pretend to fit the mold (don’t bite the hands that feeds!), it will take more than that to affect the deep beliefs that make up what is becoming more and more important to them: their online personal brand.

Learning #1: If you want brand ambassadors, you better start listening to your employees first and craft a corporate vision & message that embody their expectations.

Your corporate messaging is not effective.

Sure you like it, after all it is the fruit of several months’ worth of brainstorming sessions, not to mention the hefty fee that the fancy focus-groups agency has invoiced you. Well bad news: it is not working. Nobody listens to it nor remembers it.

Learning #2: listen to what is being said online, it is the only thing that matters, the truth, as it were, is out there.

Your CEO sounds fake.

Your CEO is out of touch, they sound fake and their PR team’s efforts wouldn’t fool a child.

Spending hours on their phones reading, watching and commenting insane amounts of information means that people are simultaneously more intelligent and more stupid than before. One thing is certain however, they don’t welcome nicely crafted corporate messages as candidly as they might have in the past. They want something genuine, real people with strengths and flaws that they can relate to.

Learning #3: Help the CEO show his true self, be it as a flawed individual: people need to see it to start believing again.

Is traditional media slowly making its way out of the picture?

Don’t get me wrong, they have become much better at providing information: accurate, instantaneous, supported by data, etc. But it carries little to no influence these days. You are wasting your money if you are expecting to have the media help you win hearts and minds, as it might in fact do the exact opposite.

You should be more wary of disappointed customers and disgruntled employees rather than editorialists or journalists. People are fed up with them, they do not want to be told what to think, they want to gather their own information and form their own opinions, without feeling like they are being taught a lesson from high above.

Learning #4: you need to be your own media, as no traditional media will do the job for you, at least not efficiently. Transform your communications team as fast as you can into a smart content producing factory.

It’s now past the dawn of a new day for media, yet it seems there is a bit of an eclipse for some. Coming from the online reputation field we saw this trend grow ever stronger: the increasing impact of online conversation has now become very tangible. We have witnessed the birth of a new mankind, one that cares more about the virtual world than the real one, one that uses social media to take their revenge on elites, governments, and organisations that they feel oppress or threaten them.

The wake-up call is especially dramatic in politics but it is likely that it will be hitting the corporate world just as hard! So start changing today, it is not a moment too soon.

Illustration by Andrea Caliò