Communicators: co-create, collaborate & co-operate
Today’s successful communications plans are integrated communications plans. Plans which need collaboration and co-creation. Where paid media sits cheek-by-jowl with earned media. Where content is created and shared with engaged publics who are pulled to an organisation’s owned media.
This means breaching the barricades. Smashing down the walls between public relations, marketing and advertising.
Instead of ‘sticking out our elbows’ and obsessing over ownership we should be demonstrating leadership. Pushing skill sets forward. Embracing new ones. Tinkering with the old ones to make them relevant for today. Learning to creatively solve problems for our clients and employers rather than promoting our own specialties to the exclusion of others.
Creativity isn’t all about beards, tattoos, craft beer and ethically-sourced quinoa. It’s about mental flexibility and adaptability. Creativity is about the ‘appropriateness’ of an idea. Being different is not enough – you must also be apt.
To problem solve creatively we can do worse than to develop our sense of curiosity and play.
Play is a kind of grounded fantasy. It’s neither completely real nor completely fantastical. When my five-and-a-half-year-old daughter plays with her younger brother in a cardboard box the box changes at their will. A boat instantly transforms into a car, or a shop or just a box to store toys.
As communicators when we have one foot in reality and the other in fantasy the tension between the two can be very productive. In fact this is the basic principle behind many creative methods.
These are short thoughts. For longer, more fully-formed thoughts covering business, public relations and change visit www.sabguthrie.info or sign up to email updates.
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