Communications 101

In my 9 years in this field, I've come across many misconceptions of what Corp Comm is, can do, and is capable of doing.

This will be a series of articles explaining the concept of Corporate Communications and how it can be best leveraged.

Corporate Communications, is the art and science of how an organisation interacts with its stakeholders. It is the method of communicating and aligning perceptions of stakeholders with the actuality of the organisation's activities and  views.

What IS Communication?

Before we understand Corporate Communications, we must understand "Communication".

What is Communication? When does it happen? what is required for it to be effective?

Simply put, Communication is the "Activity of Conveying Information".

There are 4 Elements of Communication - 
1) The Sender (S) of the Message
2) The Message
3) The Recipient or Receiver of the Message, and
4) Feedback/Confirmation from the Receiver to the Sender 

The Process of Communication starts when the Sender (S) has a Message (M) that he wishes to convey to the Recipient(R). This is Best Understood in a graphic - 

The Sender of the message to The Receiver, who acknowledges that the message has been recieved through Feedback, thus completing the communication.

For Example - 
You (the Sender) needs a report from your accountant(the Receiver),  so you walk up to him and ask him "Can you give me the XYZ report?" (the Message)

The accountant replies " the XYZ Report? Sure!" (the Feedback)

In this example the Medium/ Media used is "Verbal Communication"

There are 3 Broad Categories of Media that can be used for communication - 

1) Direct Media - One to One Communication using Verbal, gestures, Writing, direct mailers, email, etc.

2) Broadcast Media - One to Many Communication using such as Print (newspapers, magazines, brochures, palmphlets, etc), TV, Radio, Billboards & Hoardings, Point of Sale (POS) Merchandising, POS LCD Screens, Websites,Seminars, Conferences, Classrooms, etc.

3) Collaborative Media-  Many to Many Communication using social & business networking, blogs, wikis, message boards, etc.

So communications, can be extrapolated to any degree, 

For Example 
in TV Broadcast Media, There is one Sender (the TV Channel Programme) and has multiple receivers as illustrated below, The feedback is obtained through TRPs (TV Rating Points), audience polls, viewer market research, etc. 

Collaborative media's best example is this forum - google knols, and wikipedia, though myspace, facebook and orkut are also good examples.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT - NOISE

There is a 5th component of communication, that though not directly, but indirectly has a HUGE EFFECT on Communication - it is referred to as NOISE.

Which I discuss in my Next Knol "Communications - 102"

Looking forward to Seeing you Next Week!

Keep Smiling!