The art of governing the corporate “content universe”

A too often undervalued asset, the ‘universe’ of a company’s contents is an indispensable resource, but only if it is well coordinated

The external and internal communication of a company these days have been multiplying messages and channels which overlap, creating duplications or inconsistencies due to many factors, first and foremost the ability to handle large amounts of information.  

While every company relies on a precise communication strategy, it rarely perceives itself as a ‘content universe’ (uni-verse) that spans across all corporate functions, each containing a variety of novelties that, if well managed, are an essential asset for growth in the present times.  

This is the view expressed in a study by Encanto Public Relations and Togada, two communications companies, working together to prompt brands to consider all their communications as a single voice, in order to highlight and coordinate news items that companies often are not even aware of possessing or underestimate. 

While everyone agrees that content is an important driver of visibility and business, it is equally true that managing it is still very demanding, due to the speed at which we communicate and the amount of information we have yet to learn to manage. Relationships, the starting and ending point of every narrative, suffer the consequences of this.

A few days ago, the Financial Times published an item entitled “Economists shouldn’t underestimate the power of a good story” quoting Shiller, the Nobel Prize winner, urging his colleagues to study how ‘narratives’ shape sentiment and, consequentially, economic trends. https://www.ft.com/content/756f605a-7ae3-469a-8a68-78ee41ea8b4f

All too often, the messages posted on corporate social media have nothing to do with what the companies themselves publish on other channels such as newsletters, direct mail to employees, influencers’ posts or online and offline press. In this way, communication rather than following a single information flow, becomes a ‘mutant’, an agglomerate of messages each following a different path despite belonging to the same voice. 

“Companies,” says Roberto Gazzini of Encanto Public Relations, “struggle to conceive multi-channel campaigns by making the different communications per channel coexist rather than having them complement each other.  We need a new approach, which we identified in the ‘content universe’, based on conceiving companies as universes of content, expressed in different ways with different levels of depth and formats and yet able to convey messages that complement each other according to the target they are addressing”.

“The different channels,” continues Togada’s Riccardo Pezzuolo, “must convey information to complete the narrative from multiple points of view, that of customers, consumers, suppliers, employees, and all stakeholders, and this requires for each one rewriting, searching for images, graphics, infographics, or ad hoc videos, all brought together by a single conductor. However, corporate functions often fail to achieve this”. 

This is a job that requires many interconnected skills, or at least should be carried out, or rather governed, by someone who has a 360-degree view on communication, not just about drafting an editorial plan or using a publishing platform. 

In particular, this job requires the ability to govern relations with many different audiences through the stories we tell, to activate the right interaction and achieve visibility in an effective manner. In short, what companies need today is someone capable of doing what orchestra conductors do”.

Encanto Public Relations – Press Office: Cristina Cobildi 02-66983707 – 3483575790