John Wagner poses the question, “How do we find the middle ground between overly messaged corporatespeak and impossible-to-comprehend, do-it-yourself communications?”

Some of his thoughts:

PR people need to learn new roles — facilitator, coach, tutor, mentor — to go along with strategic counselor.

We need to think less about controlling messages and more about whether our company’s messages are being understood and believed.

We need to be asking these questions: Are we credible? Are we real? Or are our perfectly crafted missives simply being dismissed by a skeptical audience?

We need to be listening more than we talk, to understand what is being said by others — as they are the ones who control the messages.

Audiences today have the tools and sophistication to look behind the curtain and see how the world of PR works. They know that companies spend a lot of money to get their messages heard. They understand that the newspaper that plops on the front porch each morning is not some pure, objective “truth” on stone tablets. In short, the BS antennae are up.

The answer is not to be unprepared but to be even better prepared than in the past — so that your company’s execs can move beyond canned messages to engage in genuine dialogue with employees, customers, and investors. To do so effectively, execs (and corporate communications teams) must fully internalize the company’s vision, mission and goals at a level beyond the usual sloganeering.

(Oh, and John: I’m glad I didn’t have to sit through that 50-slide PowerPoint. I think the speaker might have had to dodge some rotten-fruit projectiles coming from my general direction.)

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