Lessons to Reality

I've finally crafted my first full PR commstrat. It was surprisingly easy considering it's the first time I'm doing it alone. But also considering the sheer number of times that we have crafted it in class, I think my manager was impressed with the speed I was working at. Before anything was said, I was already dishing out headings and sub headings, pounding him with questions so I could craft the right marketing messages.

I remembered once in class, that the lecturer mentioned that bosses don't necessarily understand or appreciate communications as much as it deserves to be understood or appreciated. With that one piece of information, I made sure to explain why I asked certain questions and why certain things were important to be set down and agreed upon. I felt like this really helped her understand my perspective and it put the both of us on mutually understanding level that we could both give and take. An example of something that didn't really make sense to her was my insistence on locking down on a one liner condensed tag line that would sum up the whole of what West Coast Swing was. In her point of view, West Coast Swing was something that was too complex to sum up in one sentence. My point of view, was that it had to be, if not how would you (1), tell people what the dance is all about, (2) have everyone in your organisation sing the same song? I did agree with her that there are definitely different things people appreciate about the dance, be it the music, or the moves, or the connection or the competitions; and that was perfectly fine, but to a new comer, having 5 different perspective of the dance would just throw me off.

If you had the chance of reading my previous post about "Asking the Right Questions", I recognized that what the community wanted was fun. At the end of a long discussion, we narrowed it down to this: "West Coast Swing is the super fun street partner dance that everyone needs to try!"

This was something that ran through the whole organisation and had everyone's approval. I put it through my commstrat and even created mini handphone wallpapers for everyone to use on their phone. It was pretty cool what having the whole organisation unified in their vision did. The whole atmosphere was different and everyone knew what to say to people that they met. I was pretty happy that something as simple as having one key message, did to the entire organisation.