Seeing is believing, right? We assume if everyone receives the same message, unaltered, they will come to the same understanding. Of course, in a lot of professional communicators’ experience, that’s not the case. When the feedback is collected, interpretations from the message can be all over the place. Did that mean the message wasn’t communicated…
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Posts Categorized: Stakeholders
How to measure the potential level of public participation
You have a major project or campaign that is not only important to your company, it is also important to the public on various levels. Perhaps some people will be very happy about it, perhaps some won’t be happy at all. Perhaps local residents will be impacted – and therefore local politicians may become…
What Key Messages are … and what they aren’t
Key messages can be useful tools to ensure we say the right thing to the right people at the right time. I like to think of them as sign posts along a winding path through a rugged landscape, or buoys that mark the shipping lane in a harbour. If I need to start a conversation,…
Change is constant. Communicate it well – and with patience
Nothing endures but change. Heraclites, Greek philosopher (535 BC – 475 BC) I can argue communication is a by-product of change. Something is different; we sense it, and we need to know why it happened, and the process of figuring it out leads us to interact with others who may or may not be aware…
Bad advice on public consultation
By Doug Downs, managing partner Public and stakeholder engagement is definitely overrated these days. We live in an age in which subject matter experts, like engineers and lawyers and doctors – even politicians – have to constantly stage faux engagement events to convince regulators and the public as a whole that they are “listening” and…
When ‘just the facts’ are not enough
By Derek Logan, communications advisor Misinformation is the persistent migraine of public relations professionals. To paraphrase an old proverb, a lie is already half-way around the world while truth is still getting out of bed. Misinformation, as defined by psychology experts, is any piece of information that is initially processed as valid but is subsequently…
