The most important part of all marketing communications is to convey the benefits of the product/service as they would apply to an individual potential 'buyer'.
Most media stories about the EU are negatives, not benefits. It is not really the media to blame - their dogged pursuit of bad news was and is to be expected. But there are lots of benefits accruing from European unification. The failure of the Communication commissioner to tell the story of these benefits to a general audience is scandalous. It is largely caused by a lack of imagination and an amateur understanding of what communication is. You can't be me, I'm taken
When they try to come up with "tangible" "benefits" for citizens they usually turn out rather daft.
And this is probably by design, too. With the emphasis on subsidiarity and proportionality (everything should be done at the closest level to the citizen that is both practical and effective) most of what impacts the average citizen is done at the local or national level.
And I am not sure that's a bad thing, either: I'm a Spanish Federalist, not a French Centralist.
Can I ask again for a Swiss case-study diary? (Confederacy, local sovereignty, direct democracy) A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Local benefits are disconnected from the supranational institutions and systems, but local negatives are blamed by national institutions on the supranational, because it is easy, gets them off the hook, and 'who is going to check anyway?'
There are massive benefits realised by the redistribution of EU funding to underdeveloped regions or areas undergoing industrial transition. There are huge benefits in EU wide standardization and consumer protection. There are also large mistakes made (biofuels, paper reuse etc etc) but no worse than the mistakes that national government regularly make.
The greatest benefit of the EU IMO is the sharing of diversity, of finding out there are many solutions. The existence of a better way of doing things in one country, can be a benefit to all countries.
That is what ET does on a minor scale - the sharing of diversity in solutions and the origination of imaginative solutions. If only ET could be scaled up!
But that would not solve the communication problem. We also share in a style of language and presentation that does not appeal widely. ET is not consumer-ready, and perhaps should never be. But, as we have often discussed, the concepts and presentations developed here do need to reach audiences outside ET. And there are many audiences, each requiring a different type of communication style and content. You can't be me, I'm taken
We also share in a style of language and presentation that does not appeal widely. ET is not consumer-ready, and perhaps should never be.
It would indeed be strange and no doubt frustrating if we were to speak to each other here in soundbites and ad slogans. Do you think a discussion forum of any interest is also going to have wide appeal?
This is not in defence of an exclusive, elitist yadda yadda watering-hole for intellectuals. Just that it's not the job of a community discussion blog to handle direct mainstream communication. That's a whole other job on its own.
There's the message, the messenger and the passenger. All 3 need to be discussed and correlated imo. But as I said, there are no clear reasons why ET has to be consumer-ready. You can't be me, I'm taken
Who might (easily) do better than the lot we've got, but would still be up against the compartmentalisation of national/language media, and the sense that real political life that matters is in one's home country (just look at the eagerness <snark> of the pols to be MEPs compared to something in public view in their own country).
I don't see marketing/communication as alone capable of turning this situation round. We need institutional change to create a pan-European political space that then can be effectively marketed as the place where things are happening.
We need institutional change to create a pan-European political space.
Agreed. But we, voters, can say something to eligibles in each election. One school of, say, "Pan-European Citizens" could intervene in pre-electoral moments to try that politicians may think that Europe can give them votes. And also remind voters that Europe exists and is our overall framework.
The lack of politicians on Europe is based on their own interests as politicians.
I think (already in the Spanish referendum, and now in the Irish one) that the left-wind (?), which supported the NO, however, it did not inform citizens. When Procrustes looks after you, you're sure to fit in.
