By: Marija Margareta Klika, Senior Advisor, Dialog komunikacije
The new European Communication Monitor (ECM) is out – the most comprehensive public relations research conducted by the European Association for Education and Research in Public Relations and the European Association of Communication Directors, with the support of PRIME Research. This study, involving 3,387 respondents from 50 European countries, is particularly interesting for all communication professionals as it best describes the challenges and opportunities faced by our profession.
The results show that communication is changing and adapting to today’s society characterized by the development of hypermodern culture and consciousness. Communication experts and their organizations are trying to catch up with the new time and new culture, recognizing the importance of digitalisation and the application of new technologies, but are still hampered by insufficiently researched areas and adopted skills. Interestingly, as many as 94.4% of European communications experts recognize the importance of visual communication. Indeed, most organizations in their communications use more and more elements like online videos, infographics, and photos made with mobile phones. But what is particularly interesting is that only 12% of respondents possess the skills needed to prepare such materials. That there are technologies and programs that are still underdeveloped is confirmed by the topic related to bots. Only one third of respondents (35.9%) follow the discussions on bots, and 15.9% of them have no idea what this is all about. Bots are generally perceived as a threat to public discussions and reputation of organizations. 73.2% of respondents agree that bots represent ethical challenges, though 4 out of 10 communication experts see potential opportunities as well.
Stephen Waddington, partner in the global PR firm Ketchum singled out some of the most interesting takeaways from this year’s research:
- Coping with the digital evolution and the social web is the most important issue for communication management in the next three years. However, longitudinal data collected since 2007 from nearly 25,000 communication professionals throughout Europe has repeatedly found the strategic alignment of communication and organizational goals as the most important issue.
- Social media and social networks are considered by far (90.4%) to be the most important channel to address stakeholders. Other online communication comes second (83.1%), followed by press and media relations with online newspapers and magazines (82.4%). Longitudinal analyses show that new and social media technology complement traditional channels but they do not replace them. Accordingly, the shift towards online and mobile is consistently overestimated by practitioners. Media relations with print newspapers/magazines are still stronger than expected.
- A large majority of the surveyed professionals (71.5%) witness the cultural transformation towards a hyper-modern culture in their country, characterized by a culture of hyper-consumption, hyper-change, and hyper-individualism. Half of communicators (52.3%) confirm that this has already changed the communication between their organization and stakeholders.
- Accordingly, 43.5% of the organizations surveyed are already changing from post-modern to hyper-modern with characteristics such as continuous change, decentralized IT, rapid adjustments of the workforce, creativity and ethics of perceived responsibility. The transition to hyper-modern culture is strongest in consultancies (57.2%) and private companies (51.8%).
- Bench-marking is still a largely neglected field in strategic communication. Communication departments have generally implemented fewer quality management processes (40.7%) compared to other organizational functions. If they assess their activities at all, they focus predominantly on the performance or impact of messaging activities (up to 51.1%).
Since we have become a society based on visual communication, you can also watch the video with research highlights below.
