Designing communication means
Delivering your messages
Your messages are delivered through communication means and media to your audience:
- Face-to-face, verbal: presentations, speeches, interviews, focus groups, round tables
- Print media: letters, brochures, posters, magazines, newspapers
- Broadcast media: radio, TV, internet
- Social media: facebook, youtube, twitter
Which media are effective?
This depends firstly on your objectives. Do you want to:
- Inform?
- Influence knowledge or attitudes?
- Influence behavior?
- Involve stakeholders to help you reach your objectives?
And it depends secondly on your stakeholders & target audiences:
- What do they know about your issue and about the proposed change?
- How do they feel about it?
- What is their interest in your intended changes? High or low? Do they gain or lose?
- Which senders and media reach them, do they trust and value?
One-way or two-way communication?
An important decision is how and when you are going to use one-way communication and two-way communication.
One-way communication
When you use one-way communication, your audience cannot react to your messages.
When you have to persuade, motivate or involve people, one-way communication is mostly not effective. In case your audience does not agree with your message or when your audience does not benefit from the changes you propose, one-way communication usually fails. To get stakeholders involved in your project, one-way communication is not enough.
Examples of one-way communication:
- Brochures
- Lectures and speeches
- Letters, articles and advertisements
Two-way communication
Two-way communication creates interaction between you and your audience.
It is effective when you want to understand, to influence and to involve. A dialogue creates shared understanding and shared meaning. This is a crucial foundation for healthy working relationships which are necessary when you want to accomplish sustainability change as a joint effort. And in most cases, you cannot reach your goal alone. You need cooperation.
Examples of two-way communication:
- Face-to-face talks
- Telephone calls
- Focus groups
- Meetings
- Round tables
- Workshops
Each situation is unique
There are no fixed recipes or secret formulas to select and design your communication media. However, we can give you these rules of thumb:
- Do you want to understand your audiences and stakeholders? Then two-way and face-to-face communication is most effective. Informal talks combined with focus groups is often a good recipe.
- Do you want to involve stakeholders and get them to cooperate? Use two-way communication! Start a dialogue with focus groups, meetings, joint fact finding and round tables. You will bridge gaps. The owners of the problem will become owners of the solution, as stakeholders know best which solutions fail and which solutions work. They will come up with a package of measures you could never have thought of yourself.
- Do you want to inform and create awareness about an issue which is not controversial? Or do you want to instruct an audience which is willing and positive about you and your goals? Then one-way communication can do the trick. Use signs, posters, flyers, newsletters (the ones read by the target audience), brochures or verbal instructions.
Let’s take a look at our case of Simona and see which communication media she selected and designed to reach her aim:
