How Communications Nurtures a Culture of Innovation

When an organization or brand uses the word “innovation” enough, it becomes meaningless.

Think strategically

• Be focused on your outcomes. With clarity of focus comes a clear path to the impact you need to be communicating about.
• Put communications first. Create a communication plan achievable within your resources. Stick to it and execute on it.
• Ask for input. Nurture a culture where ideas for new ways of engagement and communicating about impact are welcomed, explored and discussed.
• Know your audience. Baby boomers, Generation X and Millennials are different in the way they are influenced, and in the way they consumer media and experience the world. Brands need to understand buyer and audience motivation (why they support your brand) and preferences.
• Know where your audience is listening. Communicators and marketers have to understand the platforms that their audiences interact with. Think beyond Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Brands have to communicate where the audience is listening. For example, explore opportunities for in-app advertising with an app developer that shares values with your organization, and who may be interested in supporting your cause.

Think beyond branding

• Start from your purpose, and communicate to your outcomes.
• Recognize your business is not a brand, and your brand is the voice for the business. Think about your purpose, character and culture— the beliefs, values and actions that create your organization’s identity.
• Leaders understand their organization’s purpose, but struggle at times to fully connect that purpose with their audience. They understand what they are on a mission to do, but are challenged by how to effectively share how their cause is different and how their business makes a difference.
• Begin with the premise that all communications are customer communications. When a business is challenged to find the resources to project a professional image and communicate with a clear voice, prioritize communications with a simple sales funnel.
• Your business will achieve greater results in sales, organizational sustainability, and brand awareness when there is a commitment to investing in communications.
• Challenge your team to allocate a minimum of 3-5% of the budget to outreach and communications. Remind your team that design and marketing is part of customer experience delivery.

Put communications first

• Use design to close the (communication) gap between your work and the stories of your work. The role of design is to be disruptive, to interrupt, and gain the attention of the audience.
• Just because everybody else is doing it, doesn’t mean the approach is right for your organization. 
• Tell fewer stories for the sake of telling stories. Create a narrative, and recognize that stories are the meaningful points of interest that serve to align your work with the values of your audience.
• Create visual stories of what your customers achieve when they buy your products and services. Inform and inspire prospective customers through pictures that are worth more than 1,000 words.
• Speak to your audience’s mind and appeal to their hearts.

Design with purpose, communicate with clarity

• Much can be accomplished through continuity: consistently apply design standards to every touch point. Identify someone who will check all of your touch points for consistency in color, typography and tone of voice.
• Take steps to empower your employees to be ambassadors for the organization, and advocates for your brand. Create memorable and succinct talking points, and share them on wallet cards as a resource for your employees to memorize and be ready to share.
• What captures your customer’s attention is not always what is different, but what is familiar. Become a familiar voice to them. Build meaningful relationships, help them to know your voice and understand your brand messaging.

Where can you begin to be disruptive? In a world of email, tweets, and digital saturation, perhaps one of the most innovative and disruptive acts you can do is to recognize that you must market less, and build relationships more

You must be grateful, and express our gratitude to those who support your organization and advocate your brand.

How to practice this act of disruption? Not an email, not a phone call. Write a thank you. Type a thank you. Regardless, what you must do is personalize it, and sign it. Not with your computer signature, but with pen and ink. Send it, and know that when it is received, the recipient will recognize that you’ve taken the time to acknowledge that their support for your brand is important to your business — and that their purchase is meaningful.

Creating a culture of communication and innovation where one does not exist, or is just beginning to form, takes time.

Begin with what you can do today, and one day, one person at a time, you’ll be quietly disruptive, and nurture your own culture of innovation.