Communication is everything and a crucial part of our daily life. Some people go even further and say that it is everything.
The American author John Gray who wrote “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” is strongly committed to this theory as he advises that communication is very important in helping to bring a relationship back into balance. However, not only relationship counselors believe in communication. “The Father of Advertising” David Ogilvy, for instance, who Time called “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry”, believed in the deep impact of communication and I guess we can acknowledge that his worldwide success proved him right.
What does communication mean?
The pivotal question which compulsorily occurs is of course, why does communication have such an important role, to the extent that it can turn an unhappy relationship into a happy one. It even made Dove for instance, become the top selling soap in the U.S. The slogan at that time was “Only Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream.”
When we have a closer look at the etymology of the word “communication” which comes from the Latin word “communicare” and means “to share” we get a slight hint. The Latin word “communis” means “things held in common”. So by sharing information between each other, we also enter someone’s community (Latin “communion”) and we get in touch with each other. Thus, communication is more than just exchanging information. It is also forming a community with the person you are talking to.
How do we communicate?
So how do we do it? The first basic model of communication by Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver consisted of 3 basic parts, very similar to radio and telephone technologies: sender, channel, and receiver. The model is comparable to a telephone conversation. The sender was a person speaking into the telephone, the channel was the telephone device and line itself and the receiver was the other person on the telephone listening to the first person. Interferences during the conversation can occur which they defined as noise. The strengths of this very famous model are no doubt the simplicity and generality, but the model explains only the basic parts of communication.
Why is communication so important?
Having learned that communication is more than exchanging information, we come to the conclusion that there must be more to why it is so important to communicate with our families, partners, and friends, and of course with our customers in order to maintain a good working relationship on both sides. This is why modern companies communicate with their customers and partners through various “channels” (speaking in terms of the Shannon-Weaver model of communication): from press releases to articles, newsletters to advertisements, case studies to brochures and flyers, websites to social media sites. However, that is by no means everything. Communication is constantly evolving. An example of a modern communication methodology is a webcast. This allows companies to keep their clients and partners totally up to date. Moreover, it also gives the audience a chance to be interactive. To ask questions about new features, products, etc. As webcasts can be recorded, somebody who missed a webcast can watch it at a later stage via the internet. Webcasts are also convenient because they are easy to join without having to travel. Nevertheless, it is important to communicate face-to-face. So it is therefore essential to get personally in touch through meetings and various events such as road shows, business breakfasts, trade fairs and in-house exhibitions.
At Teldat we are very highly conscious that “communication” is vital in order to “share our information” with our clients and partners. We use all the above methods of communication and are always investigating for new modern communication platforms.
