Notes on dealing with customers, the media and the public*

Comment by the Editor-in-Chief

The Business of Brand Management examines brand management in the context of the present and history. This article is part of a series of republications of selected texts by Olaf Leu, Bodo Rieger and Kurt Weidemann from the years 1987 to 2018. What was thought, written and advocated back then is worth re-reading - not out of nostalgia, but because it reflects questions that have not been resolved even today. Johannes Frederik Christensen

Anyone who works successfully and competently in their profession should also be where they should always be when dealing with customers, the public and the media: fully focused. Today, the majority of all messages and information are conveyed via high-tech channels. This must not lead to the misconception that you yourself are no longer as important.

Communication organizes the monologic, dialogic, multifunctional interaction of people with each other, without each other or against each other.

The means of communication today are faster and more diverse than ever before, whether laptop, cell phone, fax machine or on the Internet, and using them is increasingly less difficult. But to build understanding and trust with customers, you still need something very old-fashioned: conversation, eye to eye and word for word.

We keep hearing that we are living in a time of enormous upheaval: communication goes global! The globe is becoming increasingly interconnected, spun into a multitude of electronic media that connects everyone everywhere with everyone at all times and allows us to participate in everything and everyone.

Now we know from history that it is not the new that displaces and obliterates the old, but that it fulfills its mission alongside, in between and beyond it. Hand typesetting has survived the typesetting machine for another three quarters of a century, digital photography will not replace conventional photography, and letter writing will remain an increasingly respected form of communication.

In this network, paper will grow into an elitist or more specialized role . The saying "paper is patient" is only valid as long as it is not printed on. From Martin Luther's translation of the Bible and the Communist Manifesto to the Mao Bible and the publication of the theory of relativity, this carrier system of the spirit has often put an end to patience, shaken consciences and revolutionized knowledge.

With billions and billions of assets now falling into the laps of the second post-war generation as an inheritance, it is surprising that the word "donating" is only understood as a retreat to warmer climes, to more beautiful beaches, to islands of the blessed. Why don't they go and donate what gives life more meaning, money more value, people more revelation: not what they need and consume, but what they need.

The corporate sculptors sit in the companies and work on corporate identity, corporate personality, corporate behavior, corporate communication, corporate image and corporate design. Apparently, companies have problems recognizing themselves and naming themselves. Their self-image and appearance are blurred, duplicated, contradictory or non-existent.

Anyone involved in sending out messages must be able to assess whether they will fall down the wrong throat. And they need partners, agencies and communication experts who can initiate and implement this in such a way that they do not block the windpipe. Information selection and processing cannot be based on the principle of confirming one's own opinions and prejudices.

The use of our intellectual powers is clearly focused on the material. Visionary powers remain unused. The realm of imagination, creativity and courage must be conquered. And the realm of habits of experience, complacency and pecking orders need not be preserved. We know from behavioral psychology that people are only able to develop ideas and forces to change this unpleasant state when they are under pressure to suffer. However, insights usually only grow when market shares dwindle.

We should not only expect a time of reflection, a new beginning and a new start, but also help to shape it. It is not the technocrats and bean counters, the network plan knitters and rationalizers who will bring this about, but people who are being called for more and more clearly: those who take calculated risks. This requires thinking about the not-yet-thought or the not-yet-so-thought, igniting a freely roaming and then purposefully applied creativity. We need a productive restlessness in order to shape reality creatively. And I am not saying this here in the style of a Sunday sermon, but in particular to those who do not want their grandchildren to become chauffeurs for the Chinese.

"Business is no kissing-game". You have to say that to those in need of harmony from time to time. This can certainly be combined with a relaxed serenity without causing anxiety. The sky is no longer full of violins, but roars and flickers from the canned images waiting to be called and summoned. In this science fiction scenario, Adam and Eve - equipped with five senses that have been rather worn out since the creation story - get tangled up in the web of networks or fly off the information highway if they have just a little supply or replenishment problem with the information or think they are missing something.

Marshall McLuhan, who a generation ago predicted "Le mort de Gutenberg", the death of Johann Gensfleisch to Gutenberg, has now come to the following conclusion: "The computer helps us to solve problems faster that we would not have had without computers." Fishing around on the Internet may provide lexical knowledge, but it does not provide education.

Nowadays, bosses and managers are occasionally "outed" as obsessive-compulsive neurotics, as they say. A stress-ridden driver who has lost the desire to patiently motivate others. Management is not exactly an art of living, but an ability to transform irritations and uncertainties into orders and activities that make everyday life bearable to fulfilling and patiently develop the day's success into a lasting success.

What is required today: being open-minded, imaginative, open, innovative, that is not enough. You also have to have the strength to assert yourself. You have to know how the hare runs, hear how the fleas cough, when the cuckoo calls, where the buck jumps and when the cock crows. Knowing this is perfectly compatible with a sensible attitude to life.

There are more hunches than knowledge to be found on the electronic ground, which is swaying under spurts of innovation. Anything can and does happen in the chaotic individual communication of the Internet. No questions are asked about the meaning and consequences of this when technology alone is constantly giving birth to new, faster, more complex solutions without recognizing or even seeking a cultural dimension.

The passwords for the future that are currently being tested: Virtual reality, cyberspace, data highway, global network, infotainment, only allow for the fatal alternatives of the dual principle: yes - no, on - off. And this in front of a person who is stuck between: neither - nor and both - as well as in perplexity and increasingly contradictory future prospects.

As a trained typesetter, I had to deal with my profession very intensively, in the true sense of the word: I still picked up my workpieces, the lead letters, more than a thousand times an hour. Today, that is the deepest Middle Ages and for me it was a lifetime ago. But the learned harmony of head and hand, which still makes me reach for pencil and paper today because I can't think faster than I can write, is still in order today.

The progress of technology is the progress of technology. And nothing else. What progress achieves still has to do with a person who, between the Stone Age peoples and the cyberspace society, is still lugging around a lot of the aforementioned Adam, wandering between deserted factories, paperless offices and meaningless leisure time.

It is not what we see that is changing, but what is on offer. Curiosity seeks fashion more than values. People are always promised that they will retain their independence and individuality. They are spun into a cocoon in order to pull a useful thread out of it later: The cost/benefit ratio must be right. Anyone who is only concerned with money and prestige and easily loses value and impact in the process loses their remarkable character, dulls their consciousness and corrodes their soul. Lost hope is lost life. Conscious living translates insights gained into experience and places hope above experience. A conscience that is only pure because it is not used is like no conscience. It has lost its certainty.

If you want to communicate successfully, you have to stick to one principle: "Keep your ego small!" If you want to make an impact, you don't just have to deal with yourself, but with people who feel this impact, realize it, make them do something that will help them, perhaps even make them cheerful and fit for life. I have something against people who start every third sentence with "I personally" (who else is meant by "I"?). They are not so sure of the persuasive power of their words. That's why they start every appropriate sentence: "For sure...", "For sure I know ... ", or end it with "therefore with certainty". These subjunctive: big spenders also constantly patch "I would like to say", "I could imagine", "I would see it that way" into their flow of speech,

"I would assume", "You would think ... " - Of course you should.

This teaches us not to look for model students, but rather to give a seat and a voice to those who have a sense of foreboding, imagination and new ideas, so that we don't oversleep their visions and work purposefully, restlessly, hard and imaginatively. Ideas that are not lived wither away.

Creativity exists in every profession. "Creative natures", said Robert Walser, "are unspeculative; this distinguishes them from imitators". Creativity requires intuition, inspiration, through which we come to insight, through insight to knowledge and through knowledge to judgment. And those who have the power of judgment no longer solve their tasks with a keen eye for the insignificant.

Earning trust is the hardest and most tedious path in communication, but also the most rewarding. The path begins with quality. Carl Zeiss still carried out quality control personally in his company: with a sledgehammer. In the first 20 years, thousands of microscopes survived this. This method, which is no longer entirely comprehensible to modern thinking, has led to a worldwide reputation that continues to this day. Robert Bosch, the penny-pincher, was always convinced that it was better to lose money than trust. Gottlieb Daimler's creed was: "The best. Or nothing."

Money and ideas sometimes relate to each other like communicating tubes: When the money decreases, the gray cells start to dance and you come up with something to get out of the predicament. If the money increases, you trust in the power of the masses, they will sort it out. In fact, not having stimulates the mind more than having.

Knowledge begins with asking questions or with a close, patient look. Only the mindless talk and talk and talk their way into the Guinness Book of Records or out of their minds. So that this doesn't happen to me, I'm not coming to the end now, I'm at the end.

* An article from the publication "Schwarzseher". The publication rights are owned by Prof. em. Olaf Leu.