Tension PWBS — TENSION

*Inner striving, unrest, or imbalance often with a physiological indication of emotion*

Tension is a source of energy and something we can harness to fuel our Why—our reason for being and acting, our cause.

Tension is found in every industry, market and community. Residing between What is and What could be; it's both frustration and opportunity. And when What is seems closer to What was than What could be, some of us feel the need to act.

This article aims to illuminate tensions created by the communications industry that has surfaced in discussions with industry colleagues, clients and those targeted by communication, regular people—friends and family; you and me when we've logged out and left the office.

FOR SOME OF US

The communications industry

…Is stuck in the pleaser-trap. Now, at the point of no return paralyzed by sunk-cost and thinned margins—not thin enough to force disruption, just enough to keep digging for relevance.

Intrinsic motivation and idealistic energy—critical for creativity and innovation—get suppressed in a race to the bottom, competing on price and speed. The offer is "just-enough-solutions" to equally risk-averse crony-capitalistic buyers, topped off with a dash of social justice and environmental activism to compete for self-praising industry rewards, conveniently serving as both antidepressants and proof of relevance.

For some of us, profit is not the reason; it's an effect of bold ideas, hard work and impact.

Creative talent and aspiration

…are trapped in a fixed agency-business model, conveniently applicable to all fields (PR, Ad, Social, Event, Content, Branding, etc.), offering the same two products: attention (basic) and engagement (premium). It's a perfect model no longer able to evolve; it can only be replaced.

Unable to change, it has become a hunt for whatever and whoever brings revenue to keep the agency running, with every project carrying the weight of the whole structure. This chase has no time for a reflective and explorative process—now replaced by a streamlined sales process with a factory-like approach to idea-development and creative work.

For some of us, being a cogwheel wasn't what we had in mind.

With social media

…the communications industry became a racket-factory shovelling out bland ideas with polished edges. There's no time for originality in a world that favours frictionless efficiency. Forced 'ad'aptations, reposts, mimicked memes, blatant influencer referrals, and nostalgia-soaked remakes are the safest and fastest way to achieve results in a virtual world that never stops.

In service of the report—when people (and bots) are reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet (views, clicks, likes, followers, comments and shares)—the favoured strategy is more, faster for less.

Ideas made to fit in a mobile game banner, 4 seconds before a Youtube clip, on Instagram—now, the world's most advanced Catalog Marketing tool—(not so) sneakily, it continues to replace more original posts in our feed with sponsored posts and ads.

Ideas shaped to fit perfectly symmetric holes in a content calendar with a daily posting schedule—the social media giants themselves say their algorithms favour quality, yet their whole business model is built on quantity.

For some of us, creative work is meant to be effective, not efficient.

The digital transformation

…brought undeniable efficiency through automation but at the cost of personality and (human) connection.

It gave us access to a never-ending stream of real-time data telling us what our audience wants but at the expense of originality and imagination. It replaced the need for imaginative exploration with a sandbox of repetitive experiments towards improving the process, not the craft.

For some of us, it's not enough to always give someone what they want but to figure out what they didn't know they wanted.

We've lost track

…of the real audience—the people we seek to serve. The actual audience often appears to be the corporation itself—a risk-averse entity, held together by conformity, powered by numbers, composed of perfectly stacked silos, whose operating manual is labelled Preserve and Report.

Our clients, the managers in charge of keeping this entity on course, are stuck with silo-thinking—paradoxically, a marketing challenge isn't always solved by more marketing. Report-friendly numbers define their success. Based on last year's performance, their budget leaves no room for spontaneity or undiscovered opportunities along the way. Creative energy seems better spent on finding ways to cut costs and limit the time it takes, producing even better numbers to report.

For some of us, people need to be more than numbers on a spreadsheet for communication to matter.

The need for specialization

…has led to an exhausting fragmentation of communication as a solution. The Internet gave us a new world to fill with more services, adding a new world of complexity for the buyer.

More agencies involved means additional walls between the buyer and the best possible solution. It means more contact points to entertain, excess operational resources, and a puzzle of sub-solutions ambitious to be The solution, competition for budget and attention, making visionary goals harder to both plan for and pursue.

For some of us, the future agency is a small team of visionary generalists tapped into a network of specialists. Together, offering temporary, multidisciplinary teams with endless combinations not restricted to the communications industry.

FOR SOME OF US

Communication should be

…an instrument for cultural progress. A means to make our world a better place by helping companies offer themselves in a more emphatic way, with both customers, employees, and society in mind

There are so much ambition, aspiration and creativity in our industry that could go towards helping our clients innovate themselves and their offer in many more ways. To provide inspiring, entertaining and educating actions—fancy words and flashy visuals are not enough—with goals set beyond superficial numbers.

Instead, most communicative efforts are short-lived fireworks, in service of efficiency.

New marketing inventions like Cause Marketing is undermining, not strengthening our industry's relevancy and worth to the rest of the world, outside the sandbox. Cause needs to be at the centre of our business, driving our brand and story to be true and useful.

For some of us, actions speak louder than words because actions require more of us, which means more for them, resulting in more of them—our community of customers, colleagues, partners, investors, members, fans and followers.