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	Phil's Blogservations Sunday, January 04, 2009 Posted by philgomes 6:22 PM Having A "Message" Is Fine, It's "Messaging" That Sucks Having A "Message" Is Fine, It's "Messaging" That Sucks In PR 2.0 circles, it has long been hip to say that there is no place in modern communications for a company with "messages" and that any company with "messages" is somehow lost in the digital weeds. A PR person who says otherwise is derided as a knuckle-dragging troglodyte while the supremely useless you-don't-get-it crowd gleefully jumps in and piles on. I disagree with the premise that messages are necessarily dead. This was a fallacy that was allowed to progress because the some PR folks were too busy ingratiating themselves with a small set of influencers to think the issues and distinctions through. If your company doesn't have a "message" — a set of clear ideas that codify how it sees itself, its industry, and the world at large — then why the hell does it even exist, let alone communicate? Frankly, a distinction needs to be made. Messages aren't dead. In fact, in an age when meaning is more important than ever, I argue that that having a message or clear set thereof is vital and necessary. It's "messaging" that's dead, defined as the development and cloying repetition of corporatespeak statements devoid of meaning, rendered in a language that no one uses, delivered without the benefit of listening first, and presented in venues and contexts where they are clearly inappropriate. A communications environment where a company needn't have a "message" would be great for lazy communicators who don't want to be bothered with the qualitative measurement of the success or failure of their programs. At that point, "just having a mostly positive conversation" is considered "success". I should hope that, as a profession, we can do better. Now, only a fool would expect that online communities would ever speak "on-message". Only an irresponsible communicator who is unfamiliar with how online communities operate would set that as an objective. However, we're in the business of making a persuasive case on behalf of clients — helping companies, organizations, and even individuals to convince other individuals and third parties of a particular vision or point of view. That's a "message". How the message is conveyed — either by entertaining one-off YouTube video or sustained, mutually beneficial conversation with online communities over a period of time — is a lengthy discussion for another time. The fact is that a company should have a message, or risk irrelevance. Technorati Tags: pr, public relations, social media HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.