{"id":6404,"date":"2017-10-18T09:38:08","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T09:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=6404"},"modified":"2017-10-18T09:38:41","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T09:38:41","slug":"eek-out-and-empower-moments-of-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/eek-out-and-empower-moments-of-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"SEEK OUT AND EMPOWER MOMENTS OF CONNECTION"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

Chelsea Handler and Mary McCormack are angry about the state of the country, and they\u2019re not alone. If you\u2019re familiar with Ms. Handler\u2019s work, you may be expecting a very boisterous, well-informed, and humorous monolog on the subject. You would be wrong in that assumption, but only about the boisterous part.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Handler and McCormack\u2019s essay \u201cWhy We March<\/a>\u201d has resonated with so many, myself included\u00a0 because it is real, authentic, and honest. It\u2019s not about how hypothetical changes affect hypothetical people. It\u2019s about how real changes affect real people, and why fighting for what you believe in is always worth the effort. You will know exactly what the authors believe by the end, and exactly\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0they believe it.<\/p>\n

Why Framing a Message and a Moment Requires Authenticity<\/strong><\/p>\n

When brands speak, consumers don\u2019t always listen. In defense of those consumers, why would they? So often, brand-speak is little more than noise \u2013 a brand projecting the image it thinks its customers want to see, with no substance to back it up. At the risk of offending someone, they wind up boring everyone. Or they simply say nothing at all.<\/p>\n

Embracing the moment comes with risks, especially during troubled times. You might say the wrong thing, offend the wrong person, or get involved in a conversation that\u2019s beyond your expertise. You might make an embarrassing error, or go viral for the wrong reasons. The way things are going, you may even get an angry tweet from the president himself.<\/p>\n

But you know what? If you\u2019re not willing to take a chance and give people a voice, you will never, ever frame a moment like Handler and McCormack do. \u201cWhy We March\u201d works precisely because its authors are not afraid to speak their mind in a constructive, eye-opening, honest way. There is no way to work backward and recreate that authenticity. Either you have it, or you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Empowering Employees to Embrace the Moment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Moments normally pass quickly, but these are not normal times. All of us, including your employees, are faced with the same stories when we check the news in the morning. The instinct for many brands would normally be to run, hide, and ride out the political storm, ideally without angering anyone from their target demographics.<\/p>\n

Except that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening. On the one hand, you have\u00a0the biggest names in tech making a statement on equality<\/a>, and taking action. Not through lobbies, but by supporting their diverse employees very publicly and empowering those employees to have a public voice. You can also see the other side of the equation if you just open your Uber app. What\u2019s that,\u00a0you deleted Uber<\/a>? Such is the risk of a brand taking action solely based on its bottom line.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about authenticity, and you can\u2019t embrace the moment after the fact. There\u2019s no handbook to getting it right, either, though you\u2019ll usually find that common sense goes a long way. Empowering employees to speak up and be unique always comes with risks, no matter the subject matter. The risk that comes with remaining silent, however, is also very real.<\/p>\n

The key is to be constructive, in good times and bad. There\u2019s no doubting for a moment that Handler and McCormack don\u2019t pull any punches when you read \u201cWhy We March,\u201d but it\u2019s framed in a way that calls attention to the issues much more than it calls attention to the authors. If it were written by two people you had never heard of, it would still be just as moving.<\/p>\n

Your employees have a voice and deserve to be able to use it. Not just on the big-picture stuff, but in those important moments when they are interacting with customers and need the freedom to be human. No matter what industry you\u2019re looking at, brands are speaking up in a way that they really haven\u2019t before. Those words only have meaning if the people who work for those brands are also given the freedom to have a voice and use it constructively.<\/p>\n

#RonR<\/a>\u2026\u00a0#NoLetUp!<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously posted at\u00a0TedRubin.co<\/a>m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chelsea Handler and Mary McCormack are angry about the state of the country, and they\u2019re not alone. If you\u2019re familiar with Ms. Handler\u2019s work, you may be expecting a very boisterous, well-informed, and humorous monolog on the subject. You would be wrong in that assumption, but only about the boisterous part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tedrubin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6406,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6404\/revisions\/6406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}