Our Perspectives
Fail to communicate, communicate failure
13 October 2009
Padraig McKeon
The failure to prioritise communications has resulted in a spend of more than €8 million on Lisbon Treaty campaigning by the government, political parties, business groups and civil society over the past few months. This is before one even begins to count up the time spent on the debate by Irish public servants and business leaders. However, given the short-sighted attitude of society to the use of professional communications methods in government and politics, it seems likely that this is a cost we will come to incur again and again.
Sixteen months on from the first Lisbon referendum, Ireland has decided that its appreciation for the benefits of EU membership is greater than its concerns about the detail of how that membership will be administered. Over the past six months, there was a concerted effort on the part of a number of different groups and institutions to engage with the public, to sell Europe and its benefits to Ireland. The story was told in many different ways - everything from old fashioned rallies in towns and villages through to the exploitation of the capabilities of Web 2.0. And all the tools worked.
In truth however, that work was required to fix a hole that should never have been allowed to develop in the first place. The story that was told about Lisbon and the EU over the past six months was not a new story. Yes, there were some guarantees built into the political packaging around the Treaty that may have captured a few sceptics at the polling station but the real reason why Lisbon fell the first time was because Irish people had stopped believing why Europe was important to us – because nobody was telling us.
Roll back to ten years previously, to a time when EU money was a core part of Ireland’s budget for national development. Part of the delivery of that budget required that the involvement of the EU was kept high profile. However, once the EU’s funds achieved that most fundamental of development objectives - making us self-sufficient – dialogue from government aimed at the public about the benefits of EU membership stopped and the problems started.
There is a strong argument to say that if consistent communications of the benefits of EU membership for Ireland been maintained on an ongoing basis for the past ten years, then there would never have been a need for the campaigns and the expenditure of 2009. That alternative would have entailed a strategic use of communications, which could have been planned and budgeted on a rolling multi-annual basis, with research on its effectiveness built in.
Effective communications planning is rarely in evidence in the delivery of public services in Ireland. As a nation, we are immeasurably better off and better provided for in 2009 than we could possibly have dreamed of 20 years ago. However, because there has been a dearth of constructive, planned communications around this message, many Irish people today genuinely believe that we are ‘worse off now than ever we were’.
Of course the nub of the problem is that in politics, ‘communications’, and God forbid, ‘PR’ is a dirty word. It is time to wake up and smell the coffee. One of the most important aspects of delivering any initiative by government is to create a public understanding around it. This can only be achieved by taking a long term, planned approach to communications.
It is time to step away from the specifics of political party alignments and the silos of government departments and agencies, to create a central communications capability at the heart of government. The objective should be to enhance the public’s understanding of the positives that the State is delivering to its people and of what is driving that.
There need be no fear that there will suddenly be a takeover of the public mind or some form of collective brainwashing achieved as a consequence of the creation of such a capability. In Ireland, we are fortunate to have a very active, engaged civil society that demands more and more accountability from its government and that will not let any misrepresentation go unchecked. A vigorous and strategic effort to communicate by government will in turn create a more informed, engaged citizenship.
To decline to do so for fear of being badged as ‘spin doctors’ is an abdication of part of the responsibility of public service and good governance - a failing that has cost us €8m directly in only the last six months and who knows how much more in other contexts and over time.
As a nation, we are beginning to realise that after we emerge from recession, the world will not automatically revert to its previous shape – that there will be ‘a new normal’. In that context there is nothing to fear from a more enlightened approach to communications.
COMMENTS
15 October 2009 @ 17:47:43
Excellent point and well made Padraig.
Personally, I suspect that any reticence on the government's part to invest in outsourced comms to the level that they should is down to public perceptions of the industry.
PR is often represented in the press as frivolous and ineffectual at best or Goebbels-like and anti-democratic at worst.
PR needs to take on itself as a keystone client.
Thomas Brunkard from Bvisible Communications
16 October 2009 @ 13:59:35
Completly agree Padraig. Poor communications often costs the taxpayer in the long run. When people say 'I wasnt informed' or 'I didn't understand' it is a clear communications failure. However communication is often portrayed as 'spin' when in fact it should be recognised that sometimes advice is needed as to how best to convey a message in understandable language.
Unfortunately for some other vested interests it's easier to paint a negative picture of PR as poor communication leads to far more news stories than good communication.
Johnny Fallon
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