Hey, MarCom!: Ideas and Narratives

Sessions began today at 11:00 AM GMT at TEDGlobal 2011. I was there. I had a lime-green notebook and a black pen. While listening to 16 presenters & performers over approximately 6 hours (two breaks) I wrote in the notebook on just one occasion. Not because there was nothing of value, but because TED, I'm learning, must just flow over you.

The Stuff of Life, the theme of this year's global meeting, has been further refined into sub-themes that provide a framework for twelve 115-minute sessions over the 3-1/2 days of TEDGlobal. Session 1: Beginnings ranged from topics including the biology of matter to the cultural impact of income inequality in westernized nations (not good) to the ethical policing of the Internet. I watched Session 2: Everyday Rebellions from the conference Simulcast Lounge, which has its own interesting vibe but given the amazing content of that particular session, I was kicking myself for not being two floors up watching it live. I ran back upstairs for Session 3: Coded Patterns and was equally thrilled. Life it turns out is fascinating at the macro, micro and mitochondrial levels.

All the speakers were memorable, but let me come back to the one time I picked up my lime green notebook and actually wrote something down. Two words: "Ideas and Narratives." The speaker was Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist who emerged in his late twenties from an Egyptian prison convinced that Islam was being hijacked for political purposes. He now "works to promote conversation, tolerance and democracy in Muslim and non-Muslim communities." Mr. Nawaz defined "ideas" as beliefs and "narratives" as the stories that describe those beliefs. Says Nawaz, "Ideas plus narratives plus symbols plus leaders equal social movements," citing this as the reason islamic extremists who leverage the energy of resistance at the grass-roots level are so successful in generating social groundswells. By contrast, established democratic leaderships tend to govern at the broadest, top-down levels rather than harnessing the energy of a social movement driven by ideas, narratives, symbols, and leaders.

It occurs to me that I've been struggling to articulate a similar disconnection that I sometimes see in the clients that we work with at Eccolo. These are for the most part large organizations that use marketing communications to talk about themselves in an effort to attract buyers. We often talk to them messaging around customer problems from a position of thought leadership -- communicating a vision for the industry that addresses these problems and provides leadership in developing solutions. In other words, an "idea" that identifies a problem that must be solved in the industry and a "narrative" that describes how that vendor sees the solution and how it will benefit the customer, even if it doesn't benefit the vendor itself. The result is a groundswell of engagement around the idea, with the vendor leading the narrative discussion.

Social medias are obviously ideal for this kind of engagement (need I mention "Arab Spring"?) however, narratives around thought leadership must be driven through all marketing communications. White papers, research reports or trends reports that allow enterprises to own their idea and provide their unique narrative can be very powerful, in fact essential, in creating this level of interaction with prospective customers.

Please forgive me if I'm reaching here. I don't want in any way to trivialize Mr. Nawaz' work, however, I think there is an application of his theory to corporate marketing communications. I believe that enterprises who wish to gain customers need to think about gaining recruits for their "cause" -- highly engaged recruits that believe in the thought leadership of the vendor because they believe the narrative provided in its communications. Your thoughts on this would be very welcome.

Lastly, the final speaker today was a remarkable Hungarian musician, Balazs Havasi. His site is http://www.havasi.eu/hun/. Check it out and you will be blown away. 'Nuf said.