conversation is an engine

Lars Bastholm, recently co-chief creative officer at ad agency AKQA moved to oversee digital creative for Ogilvy North America. In a Q&A posted on AdAge, he talked about wanting a larger platform for messaging:

“You’ve heard me pontificate about what I call social storytelling, where you have a much more open-ended dialogue with consumers. It’s not about pushing a message but inviting people in and it requires you monitor the conversation more thoroughly and to be more responsive.”

There will always be one-way message development. Assembling these messages remains valuable to an organization and serves to hone communication. The mistake is to think tomorrow’s audiences will simply absorb those one-way messages. Tomorrow’s effective message-makers will include points of contact that invite the target audience into conversation.

After sending out messages through a growing number of channels, “monitoring the conversation more thoroughly and being more responsive” is the next movement of corporate conversations. But monitoring and responding are movements many of us are not prepared for, or at least inadequately prepared for. Those activities require a kind of deep listening followed by creative synthesis to piece together anecdotes into a sensible patchwork that accurately portrays our brand’s successes and flaws. It’s a whole-brain activity.

It’s much easier to deliver a monologue than it is to remain engaged in conversation—it’s also far less satisfying for all participants. Maybe we hang back from dialogue because we fear what we might hear.

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