Transcript
[00:00:05.480] - Imogen
Hello and welcome to Dear Comms, the coffee break podcast where we tackle your biggest corporate comms challenges. I'm Imogen.
[00:00:13.800] - Amanda
And I'm Amanda. We're here to give you practical, no-nonsense advice so you can focus on the things that will really drive influence, engagement, and impact.
[00:00:23.730] - Imogen
Today we are joined on the podcast by Daisy Powell Chandler. Daisy is a self-described energy and sustainability nerd. And she's spent her career advising political parties, charities, and global businesses on policy, reputation, and campaign strategy. So nothing much then. She's worked on multiple general election campaigns, so we can all blame her, parliamentary elections, and also political campaigns such as Remain. On top of that, she's also the host of what I find the most amazingly titled podcast, which is Why Everybody Hates You. And Daisy, welcome to Dear Comms.
[00:01:02.960] - Daisy
Oh, thank you so much, ladies. It's a delight to be here.
[00:01:06.580] - Amanda
So I'm going to jump in. Everyone at some time or other has criticized politicians for being poor communicators. They don't answer the questions they're asked, they don't show any vulnerability or humility, they aren't transparent, or quite frankly, in recent political sort of shenanigans in the US, ignore the facts presented to them. But there are definitely things that communicators can learn from them.
[00:01:33.100] - Imogen
Yeah, I think the first thing that springs to my mind is politicians are absolutely obsessed with understanding their voter and understanding the people that they're trying to convince. Why is this important, Daisy, and do communications teams need to get better at doing this?
[00:01:51.550] - Daisy
I think, first of all, I'm gonna put myself on a hiding to nothing here and leap in and briefly defend politicians. Oh, go on then. I know they have, they have a terrible reputation, they really do. Um, but I think in terms, if If you compare a political communicator to a corporate communicator, in terms of transparency, these are people who are constantly watched, they're constantly expected to be communicating. So, I think the context in which politicians are often working is very difficult for most people to understand. It's also very difficult to have a lot of sympathy for them, and I also appreciate that. But I think that, that is really important. One thing that communicators, both political and corporate, do share is that most of them could do with better data. But at least particularly in a political campaign context, yes, political parties do tend to amass a whole bunch of data about what their voters think, and particularly data about the voters who are seen as the swing or most important voters in that election.
[00:02:58.930] - Imogen
Yeah, and within a corporate context, that would be that kind of big middle of employees. So you've got your evangelists and your ambassadors at one end, you've got your 9-to-5, I don't really care as long as I get paid at the other end, and then in the middle, you have this big group of people who could be persuaded to move up to that evangelist area.
[00:03:22.690] - Daisy
Yes, I think in the internal comms perspective, that is exactly how you might think about it. You might also think of them as the, um, the occasional buyer of your product, or someone who buys a very similar product but could perhaps be persuaded to switch to your brand. So in this case, parties will often concentrate on those swing voters in the marginal seats, the ones most likely to switch hands in this election. And what's actually One of the interesting things about elections, and perhaps misunderstood by people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about this, which is most people, is that those groups change from election to election quite substantially. And that can mean that the people who understand those groups also change quite fundamentally from election to election. Quite often, corporate communications teams will have a view of who their target audience is, whether that's internal or external, that doesn't change much over time and also may not be updated with new data regularly. Whereas as you get closer to an election, political parties will start to amass more and more data about their particular swing voters. So at the moment in the UK, for example, that's Labour's hero voters.
[00:04:36.070]
And also there's a lot of data being amassed on the related but slightly different reform-curious voters, people who have voted for voted Tories and Labor in the past, but are now interested in or have voted for Reform in the latest set of elections. And understanding what those people care about, what motivates them to go to the polls, is something that all of the political parties here in the UK are particularly interested in. So, examples of that in a corporate setting are much further and further and farther between, because in general, corporates amass data over time and have a much more static view of where certain purchases are. And in some cases, that's for really sensible reasons because consumer views or internal views on a particular topic are likely to be more stationary. I may not change my view on pasta brand very often, for example, or my views on my internal benefits package may be relatively stable over time. However, in other faster-moving markets, That could really be holding back comms teams from understanding what matters to their audience, if you have a very static view. More voters matter, more seats matter, but that then means that your targeting of those messages does have to be a bit more nuanced.
[00:05:55.230]
And the same is true if you're dealing with a whole bunch of different products that might appeal to different audiences. And what you need to find is a unifying theme that allows you to talk about why you're providing all those different products, but allows you to still be authentic and people to understand what you stand for.
[00:06:13.680] - Amanda
Talking about core themes or, or core messaging, a lot of that tends to revolve around a strong purpose and a vision. And all those things can ebb and flow. I think politically there is still always a, a core to who you are and, and what you do. How can businesses get better at that?
[00:06:36.760] - Daisy
Oh, it's hard, isn't it? Um, but I think it is really, really important. I agree with you. And I, I think actually, um, if you listen to some of the repeated complaints you get in focus groups about political parties, it is often a feeling that they have lost a why, that there isn't a strong purpose to them anymore. There's a backstop to this, which is that I think all voters understand that really the reason why parties contest elections is because they believe that they will be better at governing than the other lot.
[00:07:07.780] - Imogen
Yeah.
[00:07:08.040] - Daisy
So the uniting why is we think the other lot will be bad for the country. And then the question is, what is the positive message off the back of that? What is the how we will be better? And I think this is something really important for companies to think about, but possibly not in the way that they most often do. So I think a lot of organizations think about purpose as a thing that they're going to communicate outwards, that they're going to do a lot of comms about how we believe in this thing, and if you believe in this thing, you belong with us. And also, if you believe in this thing, then you're kind of somehow allowed to buy our product. And that's where I think it flips into something quite negative. And I think the same also happens sometimes with political parties. Actually, people buy things And people vote for political parties because they're going to get something that matters to them.
[00:08:04.320] - Imogen
Absolutely.
[00:08:05.190] - Daisy
And when you put a barrier between you and those people by saying, you have to believe in our purpose before you can have this thing that we want to sell you, or this, before you can vote for this thing that we want you to vote for. Join our tribe. Join our tribe. You have to join our tribe. And actually, all of us need to accept every communicator has at some point drunk the Kool-Aid of thinking that what matters is getting everyone to agree with them. And actually, in very, very few cases is it true that you need your consumer, your voter, to agree with you on everything. In fact, to agree with most political manifestos, you would have to be a very strange person. It's— there are many contradictory things in manifestos. You would also have to have a strength of opinion on more issues than I think most sane humans can have. That is not normal. And similarly, most people are not going to care about your corporate purpose. That doesn't mean it's not important, though, because what corporate purpose gives you, for a start, is internal clarity. It helps you to recruit the right people who are going to help you achieve your task.
[00:09:07.890]
It helps you to prioritize when you have to make terrible budget cuts or when you have to focus on what your strategy is going to achieve this quarter or these 5 years. But it also means that, yes, you may not be talking in your comms about your purpose, but you will have external consistency in how you talk. And in what you prioritize in those comms. And that, in the end, is what builds trust. And trust is what convinces both voters and consumers that they know what they're getting, and they believe that even if you have to err from the path, that they will understand why, and you'll be able to explain that within a framework that they understand.
[00:09:46.250] - Imogen
I think that's absolutely right. I mean, whenever we are doing storytelling, for example, and training people on storytelling, one of the first things I say is that people don't buy products. They buy a story about what that product can do for them or how it's going to make them feel. And by having that purpose and vision, you're absolutely right that it's putting money into the trust bank, I guess, so that when things do go wrong or when you do stray away from a path that someone expects you to go down, if you do have clarity of purpose and vision, people are going to be a little bit more forgiving. In supporting you through that journey.
[00:10:25.440] - Daisy
Exactly.
[00:10:26.180] - Amanda
I think the word authenticity jumps to mind here, in that if you behave in an authentic way to how I expect you to behave, i.e., your vision and purpose, it's— you're given more permission, I think.
[00:10:43.430] - Daisy
Yes, exactly. And that can also backfire. So sometimes, And this is a bigger issue with political parties in general elections because manifestos these days are huge. They can be like 70, 80 pages. Each one has multiple bullet points on it committing them to all kinds of things. Now actually, historically, most of the academic research I've seen shows that parties are pretty good on following through on their manifestos. You get sort of 70-plus percent of manifestos are delivered in most parliaments. So that's actually a pretty good foundation for trust. But what happens is people, much like GenAI, will hallucinate things that they assume are in your manifesto, and they will then critique you for not having delivered against that. And that is particularly the case on issues that tend to cut across parties, that people will feel a strong identification with a party and they will feel a strong identification with a particular policy, and they will assume therefore that those two things are aligned.
[00:11:41.840] - Imogen
Yeah, I was just thinking about manifesto promises and I was In my head thinking, it's almost like a communication strategy at the beginning of the year. It's setting out what you're planning to do during that fiscal year in the organization, internally, externally. And when you're saying that people assume certain things are in manifestos because of what they believe about that party, it can be the same with communications and what people assume are in the communication strategy because 'that's what comms does,' or 'that's what I believe comms should do.' And it just, it makes me think that we have to be really clear and very prescriptive as to what comms does, what comms doesn't do, where it can add value, where it can't add value, and where are the things that we are not going to take a position or we are not going to do something on. So I think that's also something we can, we can probably connect between the two, the two spectrums.
[00:12:41.040] - Daisy
I think that's so true. And one of the, the CorpComms tools that I particularly love, it's old school, and I think most people think they're very dull, but I love a stakeholder map because I think understanding where all your stakeholders are— I know, they're just, I mean, they're such a useful tool and I think massively underrated by a lot of people. But starting with what is it you're trying to achieve, and then talking about, right, who are the people who are important to this mission, and how much do they know about you, and what do they care about? Can be a really useful anchoring tool, because otherwise, I think quite often, comms gets backed into working from the main corporate strategy, right? How are we going to communicate all of these things? It's like, first of all, take a step back, take a leaf out of the politicians' book. You are not communicating about the whole manifesto. That is where madness lies. I mean, one of the problems in the 2010 election was that we had like 9 talking points. Madness. 3 is fine. 3 is a lot.
[00:13:40.100] - Imogen
Always 3.
[00:13:41.720] - Daisy
But 9, even 6, it's way too much. And the same thing, if you are putting out a new corporate strategy, your comms strategy is almost certainly not going to talk about most of that strategy. And it shouldn't.
[00:13:54.460] - Imogen
We have to remember, no, we have to remember people forget things. We are not clever as a species. If we could remember everything, we wouldn't have books, we wouldn't have to write things down. We forget. Everything. If you are facing people or delivering people 9 different messages on the different things you're going to do, they are going to forget absolutely all of them. So keep it to 3, keep it very simple, keep it very focused, and keep repeating it. And then maybe those 3 messages are going to get through.
[00:14:27.870] - Daisy
Yeah, and for all that people, um, mocked the message consistency of some more recent recent political campaigns in the UK, Theresa May's "strong and stable" being possibly the most obvious one, but "get Brexit done," another one. First of all, I know I'm a political geek, but most people who pay much attention to politics would still probably vaguely remember those. You still get jokes in pantomimes about "strong and stable" occasionally. So, people can remember those because they were repeated often enough, and in fact, it's almost the The test is in the authenticity of those. Part of the reason Strong and Stable gets laughed about is because it wasn't felt that Theresa May's government then matched up to that. So again, you're back to pick your core purpose, communicate about that. We accept that corporate strategy has to have a bunch of other stuff in it that you just have to do, but that doesn't mean you have to be communicating about all of it. What is your core message? What is going to take the people who matter most to that strategy along with you? And that's not to say lie. About the other stuff. But there is a big difference between hiding things and making them center stage.
[00:15:40.010] - Imogen
I think I want to move on a little bit from this because I'm thinking about all the different things that communicators have to do. And again, linking it back to politics, and sometimes the right thing to do isn't necessarily the most popular thing to do. in communications or in business in general, I'm thinking things like layoffs and budget cuts or shifts in strategy, not a popular move, but possibly the right move in order to achieve objectives. How do you— politicians have to juggle with this the whole time. What can we learn from how they deal with this and help people to continue to communicate with integrity in the face of this challenge?
[00:16:26.770] - Daisy
So, I think, first of all, to go back a step, you start with the purpose. Be really clear why you're doing this, how it fits with the overall plan. That provides your why, because where there are losers, there will be people who are upset. That is completely understandable. Now, I personally think probably government should be slightly more brave about taking decisions where there are losers, because otherwise I don't understand why you bother getting elected. To govern is to choose, get on and do it. That doesn't mean it's always fun, and there are definitely better and worse ways of doing it. So, have the clarity about why. Second of all, just have clarity. The absolute worst-case scenario is you make an announcement that affects people's lives, but it's also really not clear from the announcement what is actually happening, right? You, unless there has been some disastrous leak, in which case you should sort it out and get clarity ASAP, you should not be making that announcement unless you can tell them enough information to understand the impact on their lives. And I think that, that goes for corporates, even in a product recall, you know, what, what is the risk?
[00:17:39.280]
Who does it affect? How should they behave now? A lot of clarity and make sure it's very clear to whom that is addressed as well.
[00:17:49.770] - Imogen
There are always going to be sort of fundamental questions that a consumer or an employee is going to have immediately when they are told something, and you need to get ahead of those questions and answer them before they're asked, right?
[00:18:01.790] - Amanda
Yeah. And if you don't know the answers, say you don't know, but commit to a timeline in terms of when we will know more information or when the next update will come.
[00:18:12.450] - Daisy
Exactly, and explain why there is uncertainty around it. Yes, we're doing this because of this, the impact will be this, we will know more on X date because of this thing. So that they don't feel that you're hiding something, because even if you're not hiding something, the appearance that you are could be incredibly damaging. And normally in politics, my— you'll have to forgive my language, you're gonna have to bleep me out— my mantra in politics is that it's nearly always cock-up, not conspiracy. It is remarkable to me that political parties manage to conspire even within their own building to contest elections because they are made up of humans who make mistakes and have their own internal political squabbles all the time. Mostly the lack of clarity becomes— comes because humans have made mistakes or because we just don't know. But clarity around that in and of itself, of where the uncertainty is, is really important because these are people's lives. Even if it is only their chocolate biscuits being recalled, the uncertainty that might cause, you do not know what the impact that's going to be. So, be as clear as you can, lay out a timeline.
[00:19:15.850]
I think there is also a really important thing in here around understanding when to say sorry and when not to say sorry. There has sort of been, in a way, an epidemic of everyone apologizing all the time. We apologize more and yet it sort of seems less sincere, partly because you sort of wonder sometimes why someone is apologizing. They've just told you it's not their fault. They're apologizing. So I think actually we need to be a lot more strategic most of the time in deciding when to say sorry and when to hold your ground and say, this bad thing is happening for these reasons.
[00:19:52.400] - Amanda
And what you're saying sorry for. Are you saying sorry for the thing happening or sorry for the way that you feel about what's happening? Because it's very different.
[00:20:02.210] - Daisy
And what you really want to avoid is one of those non-apologies where you are not sure why you are saying sorry, but you feel you ought to say sorry. So then you say, I'm sorry, you feel that, way, at which point you're basically making it the other person's fault, which is the worst of all possible worlds. So be really careful about apologizing. And I think if you then take it onto the how does this all look? So that's how to do the apology, non-apology explanation, whatever it is. But I also think there is a really important timing thing in here, which you would think politicians would be better at than they are. And actually, probably some of the better people on this are the Trump administration. They do a thing that then is going to piss off a lot of people and then Tomorrow they're on to something else a bit wacky, and the news cycle has moved on, and everyone has got outraged about something else.
[00:20:48.120] - Amanda
There are classic political mistakes. What are the ones that corporates should avoid like the plague?
[00:20:56.200] - Daisy
I think if you go back to knowing your voter or knowing your consumer, I think there's a really obvious one there of examining your own priors. And—
[00:21:08.470] - Imogen
What do you mean by that?
[00:21:09.450] - Daisy
So, politics, everyone very sweetly thinks it's a bit like The West Wing, or maybe The Thick of It, in that there's people doing polling all the time and they have loads of focus groups. But actually, within departments, there's much less data running around, and particularly junior MPs and backbenchers won't have much data coming in. So they tend to go off reckons. And that particularly happens when they're talking about the members of their own party or particular types of voter who they maybe come across in their own constituency surgeries. And they'll say, "Oh, well, people think this," or, "The members want this." And I'm quite often the one in that room who's showing them the figures saying, "Some of them do, but actually the majority are on this side of the argument." And there's a lot of, "Well, what you don't understand is," right? Actually, I think what you don't understand is you are only talking to a small subset. And I think to come back to that point about refreshing your data more often, I think there's also a point for corporates to remember in that making sure you have the data. Are you asking when you're putting together a campaign, have we checked that what we think is true is in fact true?
[00:22:22.730]
Or are you basing a whole load of comms on something that someone stated with certainty in a meeting?
[00:22:29.070] - Imogen
Yeah, or is there actually a problem that we're trying to solve? That's the classic one. You know, we'll get, we have a problem with X. Well, how do you know you've got that problem? Oh, we just know there's a problem there. Have you asked them? No. So, a lot of the time, I think, and I think it happens across sectors, across industries, there will be an assumption that there is a problem because that's what we think there is, but actually, if you ask the question, then the problem might be something else entirely.
[00:23:01.850] - Daisy
Yes, and sometimes there's a really rational reason why you're answering the wrong problem. Sometimes it's because the problem that they pose back to you is really difficult, and you are not sure you can solve it, and so you're trying to offer them something else that you can achieve.
[00:23:19.840] - Imogen
Sure.
[00:23:20.330] - Daisy
But I think that needs to be done with a certain amount of humility and understanding that that's what you're doing. What you don't want to do is roll out a product, a benefit, an idea, a political campaign based on what is basically a sop to people rather than an actual solution, and then wonder why they're not more grateful. You need to go into that knowing that you are trying to replace something, or you need to go back to the drawing board and say, "Hmm, this doesn't quite hit the mark. Maybe we have to push ourselves a little bit further to actually come up with something." And both companies and political parties are in a position of power that they can shift people. You can convince people that maybe this does solve their problem. But actually, there are some real fundamentals that come back time and again around people's feelings of security, their feelings that they can provide for their family, that actually, if you're not addressing those, you end up in a real mess. If you, if you are seen to be weakening those, weakening people's control, people's safety, people's ability to offer a better life to their kids, that will come back and bite you.
[00:24:39.870]
And if you offered them a whole bunch of things in the meantime that were like, oh, I, yeah, I know what you actually want is this, but here's some other things that are pretty and might distract you. Over time, what that builds up to is a picture that you didn't really understand what the problem was to begin with. And if your team this whole time did understand the problem and just decided not to tackle it, that's, that's one thing, but I think there's two separate problems here. There's teams that literally don't understand what the problem is, and then there's teams that decide to ignore that and offer something else.
[00:25:12.530] - Imogen
I think Imogen and I's most powerful two words with our clients is, "But why?" There are some things that politicians and political strategists like yourself do that work brilliantly in business. What can we steal from your knowledge?
[00:25:29.950] - Daisy
Well, we've spoken a lot today about values and purpose. I think they are really important, and I think that is important, like, what are you trying to achieve, both personally, but as a company? And I think that will help orient a lot of your work. We've also mentioned that pitfall, don't get to the point where you're convinced that the reason people should buy your thing or do your thing is because they share your values. I think actually there is something, though I've slightly mocked it, there is something in that, like having things in your manifesto that you know people will want. Like, don't tell someone that in order to be in your tribe, they have to pass a membership test. You want them in your tribe, so stop trying to put them off. And in the end, though they may be attracted by your values, actually the thing they're buying is not because of your values. They want it to be cheap, easy, or cool normally. So be one of those. I think we should probably tell politicians a bit more of that. I think for all that we mock politicians for being repetitive, that's something that we should all steal.
[00:26:46.500]
Message discipline, it is a truism in politics that unless you are bored sick of saying it, the electorate has not heard it. Um, sure. And so there's a reason why you see all those awful outtakes of politicians basically repeating the same line over and over again, and the only people who laugh at those are political insiders. Everyone else has just seen the final clip that they came out with.
[00:27:08.970] - Amanda
Oh, we use them in media training sessions, Daisy.
[00:27:12.990] - Daisy
Exactly, exactly. I think Other things to remember are, and I'm not sure whether politicians always get this right, but I think they do understand. If you come back to that stakeholder map, you aren't always communicating with the same group of people. There's a reason why manifestos are written with multiple audiences in mind, and that's because there are lots of different groups of people you need to communicate with. How does your comms strategy take that into account, even if it's just not producing one set of materials, making sure you have them written in one that's a bit more jargony for your policy types or your stakeholders who care more about the detail. How are you layering that information? One company that I worked with on updating their sustainability plan, I was really impressed by the way they thought about the future. So actually a lot of the sustainability plan was mostly for quite an elite audience that cares about that kind of thing. Environmental NGOs, consultants, investors, those kinds of people. But they're a consumer-facing brand and they understood that whilst the public weren't interested in the details now, all of the materials needed to be accessible to the public if they clicked through from something else, if they landed on that place on the website, it needed to look of a piece with the rest of their brand, but also they expected a bunch of those issues to become more important to consumers over time.
[00:28:44.190]
So making sure that they had the materials available in a way that was going to be accessible to those audiences. And I think that's something that in general, if you are a special advisor in a, in a, in a department in government, you do think through some of that. How am I briefing different groups of stakeholders? Am I getting them in for a pre-briefing on this? Are we doing a roundtable with the industry on this? They're not always great at it, but I think there is slightly more of a push towards doing that, whereas quite often our comms teams are fairly siloed. We may have a, a separate stakeholder engagement team that sits within corporate affairs that may be different from the brand team, that may be different from the broader comms team. And that creates a whole bunch of problems in terms of creating that clarity that runs through the comms. And so again, having that one animating purpose, a clear stakeholder map, and a short set of talking points that can then be fleshed out into different types of materials.
[00:29:42.510] - Imogen
I think that's probably a great place to round off, Daisy. I think that's a really good message to leave people with. You know, have clarity of purpose, clarity of vision, be true to yourself, but also be concise and consistent in the way in which you're communicating. And remember that your audience are people and have have human needs, understand what those needs are, and relate to them. And I think that's probably everything we can learn and wish that politicians did the same the whole time.
[00:30:13.670] - Daisy
Oh yeah, it's a constant conversation between the two. And honestly, part of the reason I have this job is because there is so much that we can learn both ways. And that's, I mean, that's part of the fun.
[00:30:25.630] - Imogen
It was an absolute pleasure to speak with you. This is going to be an episode that's hard to edit because there is lots of things that covered over our time together. I'd encourage anyone who's interested in reputation management, which frankly should be anyone listening to this podcast, to subscribe to Daisy's podcast, and I'll link in the show notes. But for now, I think that's another episode of Dear Cons done and dusted. If you'd like us to cover a specific topic, if you have a burning question you want to answer doing. Leave us a comment, connect on LinkedIn, send us a pigeon, whatever works for you. But until next time, goodbye.
[00:31:07.070] - Amanda
Bye.
[00:31:09.000] - Daisy
Thank you.
[00:31:09.650] - Amanda
Bye.
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