In a changing environment with tremendous competition among messages, how can we ensure that our communications have maximum impact? APCNews talked to Paz Peña, a Chilean journalist and social communicator who has been working on digital rights issues for the past eight years. She was advocacy director for the NGO Derechos Digitales, APC’s member organisation in Chile, until recently when she branched out as an independent consultant.
APCNews: What do you understand by “strategic communications for advocacy”? How can this concept be applied to organisations that have multicultural, geographically dispersed audiences, and that work online?
Paz Peña: “Advocacy” is the process of seeking to influence public policy decisions; in this context, organisations need to think of the best ways to communicate their concepts effectively. This is where strategic communications are essential. The audiences where advocacy impact is sought may vary, ranging from a specific authority, to the general public. I think organisations with multicultural audiences tend to believe they have to communicate universal concepts. That is a valid approach, but I think it is more politically significant not to avoid the diversity within these universal concepts, but rather to flaunt and display it, and appeal to the wide range of communities that the organisation works with.
APCNews: From your experience of working at Derechos Digitales, what best practices would you recommend to achieve greater impact through communications?
PP: The basic thing is to determine the organisation’s DNA: who they are, what they are recognised for by the general public and among their peers, what differentiates them, in short, the nature, character or personality of the organisation. And I think these questions are answered not only by reading the organisation’s strategic plan, but also by observing its members and their internal interactions. With this in mind, one can develop a strategic communication plan to maximise impact on multiple fronts: from the plans implemented on social networks, to online campaigns, for example.
APCNews: Working in communications requires specific skills, but at the same time it requires the involvement of the organisation itself at certain levels. How can these issues be addressed within an organisation?
PP: Yes, organisations wanting to have an impact – especially in a tremendously competitive environment – must understand that communications are an essential part of the process, and cannot be viewed as a separate issue, on the side, as it were, as unfortunately they are sometimes seen. Organisations must incorporate them into their processes, and have to do so boldly. There are no surefire recipes and it depends on the organisation, but I think a good place to start would be to integrate social communication professionals in the organisation’s political discussions: the strategic perspective on what message to select and how to deliver it, which communications professionals might contribute, could be decisive.
APCNews: Ways of working in communications have changed significantly in recent decades, to the point that it could now be said that one of the constants is permanent change. What advice do you have for working on communications in such a changing environment, and particularly, for working with strategic communications that involve the politicisation of those very spaces themselves?
PP: I think one must distinguish between two aspects of a single communicational process: the multiplicity of platforms to communicate from, and strategic discourses. In the first instance, I think we are living in an amazing time which encourages organisations to be super creative – for example, a few years ago everyone was making well-produced videos, and now it is all down to 20-second animated gifs, and tomorrow everything could change all over again! The challenge here is to think on our feet, stay alert and creative and keep experimenting.
Now as for the discourses, and how to situate concepts within a context that is always political: although they are influenced by these platforms, we must always be alert to the power of words within a specific context. A classic example that makes a lot of sense in Latin America is: does it make any difference to your audience whether you talk about “the people”, “individuals” or “citizens”? Fine-tuning this discourse is decisive. In Chile, if I visit a centrist or right-wing public authority who has lived through the dictatorship, they will probably respond differently to my discourse if I use the term “the people” or if I say “citizens”. Politically, these terms are differently loaded. Here the recommendation is for organisations to think about their messages as discourses, and not as mere words that may make sense to the organisation but do not take into account the nature of the audience it is trying to influence.
APCNews: When we talk about design in relation to social issues, remembering that not everyone is up to speed here… Is a picture worth a thousand words?
PP: In my opinion, a key decision we made at Derechos Digitales was to regard graphic design as an integral part of strategic communications. Nowadays we are bombarded with so many messages, no one has much time or can take the time to read anything. So you have to grab the attention of a person in authority, or an ordinary person, in a matter of seconds, and you are competing with companies, governments and other organisations with much bigger budgets. For this, powerful graphic design is essential. But you must not adopt the facile idea that all you need is one talented designer: in fact this is team work, in which images summarise discourses, and although this may appear so simple, it takes a great deal of time for trial and error.
APCNews: As a concrete example, please tell me a bit about the story behind the avocado poster used for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) event held in Brazil in 2015. How did you come up with the design? What sort of internal negotiations were involved?
PP: The impact team at Derechos Digitales faced a great challenge some years ago, which was to base our work on the Latin American point of view and overcome the strong image Derechos Digitales had of being a purely Chilean organisation. So, for instance, we took the decision to have all our stickers in Spanish, and to use images that would be easily recognisable to Latin audiences. We avoided mentioning technology, as much as possible, because what is important to Derechos Digitales is human rights. Similar logic was behind the avocado poster, which was one of the ideas proposed by designer Costanza Figueroa as an attractive and powerful image of a product that appears in dishes throughout Latin America, and is moreover surprising; it takes you away from “technology”, it is fun, and it is also recognisable to the international audience we were addressing. There were no negotiations, in fact: the entire advocacy team agreed that it was ideal.
APCNews: Non-governmental organisations, movements and networks are characterised by having a lot to say, sometimes with considerably less impact than we would like our messages to have. How can this be turned around or reworked?
PP: As we said earlier: the way to achieve impact and influence is to develop strategic communications from the core of the organisation, group or movement. As I always say: you can be “right, dead right” in what you say, but that does not necessarily mean that your ideas will have impact. Nobody’s interests are served by having your ideas wind up in a 200-page report gathering dust on a shelf. When organisations understand this and begin to take communication processes seriously – and I include social communication professionals here – I can assure you that increased impact will be visible very soon.
APCNews: Do you think that a network like APC needs a strong communications team? In your view, what would a strong communications team look like?
PP: Investment in a communications team is exactly that, an investment, not an expense. And I think that strengthening such a communications team could yield great benefits to the organisation and its networking activities. Does it have to be centralised? I don’t know, it depends on how the organisation sees itself. In my experience, there are three main stages in strengthening a communications team: first, integrating communications professionals into the organisation’s political decision making and into all the processes that produce the organisation’s goods and services; second, giving the communications team decision-making autonomy, which is no more than granting it professional confidence; and third, resourcing it so that the communications team can produce competitive goods and services.
Find Paz on Twitter @pazpena, on her website www.pazpena.com or by email at paz [at] pazpena.com.