The title of my article will immediately bring to mind Sergio Zyman, one of the former legendary managers of Coca-Cola. The two books he wrote; With "The End of Advertising We Know" and again "The End of Marketing We Know", Zyman was able to re-question some well-known facts, at least to dislodge them.
Will the classical advertising and marketing mentality come to an end, but will communication be left behind? Of course, there is no more of that. This new era, which redefines the rules of business life and dares to rewrite even the genetic codes of entrepreneurship, as I have stated many times, is a new era communication that needs to be emphasized, reorganizes marketing organizations and most importantly, feels the need to be 'managed' seriously. made it into a concept.
Those who realized this need for governance late - especially global players - started losing millions of dollars as a result of their mistakes, quite a long time ago. The most obvious example of this was Anders Gronstedt, who drew attention to integrated communication with his book "Customer Century". Following the launch of A Class cars, Mercedes-Benz, one of the most important automobile manufacturers in the world, who ignored a series of test drive accidents involving journalists and made a communication crisis inconvenient, lost millions of dollars in the stock market at the end of this process, moreover, its brand value was experiencing a serious decrease. When the things experienced in this process were examined in detail, it could be seen even with the naked eye how far the company's approach to the issue was from "integrated communication management" and the size of the invoice was due to this.
As of today, you have to deal with a wide range of communication problems, not only with communication crises caused by product or service errors, but also from the damage to your brand by the scandals in the private life of a celebrity you play in an advertisement, to the statements of company executives that may be misunderstood by the public. The most important point that makes the job sensitive is the possibility that your valuable brand, which you have not been dust on for thirty years and that you have brought to a place by working with all your might, will be destroyed in thirty minutes in a communication accident. When the first news of death came from Cevahir, one of the most popular shopping centers in Istanbul, which made a big impression when it was opened, the executives were very comfortable thinking that this was the first and only incident. However, immediately afterwards, news of another fatal accident came and all eyes were turned to the shopping center management again. However, they were the real fatal accident, with those unfortunate statements. They had long missed the opportunity to turn an accident into a commercial value by appealing to the press immediately after the incident, sincerely apologizing, and providing lifelong support to the family of the deceased.
This and many other examples more than show the necessity of proper management of communication. In 2002, when I was the head of the community at the university, we hosted Bersay Communication Consultancy President Ali Saydam. Frankly, I did not realize that individual communication is such an important and sensitive concept until his wonderful presentation, which includes many communication lessons. Two years after that presentation, when I was appointed to my Public Relations position at Doğtaş Furniture, I explained the issue to the chairman of the company's board of directors and made the name of the department "Corporate Communication". Later, I saw that Ali Saydam said, "I think it would not be too ambitious to claim that Communication Consultants will take part in the boards of directors, that they will be as effective and guiding employees in marketing and finance units in the preparation of business plans, and that there will be no middle and upper level managers who do not receive communication training." Several multinational companies had complied with Corporate Communications departments instead of Public Relations departments. Because every point you came into contact with the customer was a communication and it had to be managed correctly.
The importance of communication will increase even more, like the means of communication. In the future, the easier communication will be, the more difficult it will be to manage. We have to re-question our approach to communication in order to communicate more, both institutionally and individually, and to create more value. Without falling victim to a "communication accident" ...
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