Communicating for lasting impact.
Remember when Attenborough joined Instagram?
Following the recent Parliamentary premiere of Save Our Wild Isles - a fantastic call to action for businesses supported by WWF-UK, RSPB and National Trust, we’ve been reflecting on its narrator, Sir David Attenborough, and his work as an environmental communicator.
You might remember when he joined Instagram in 2020. The account gained one million followers in four hours, a record growth at the time. You might even be one of those followers wondering why you’ve not seen him in your feed since. But can you remember the heart of that first post’s message?
‘Saving our planet is now a communications challenge’.
It had a big impact on many, us included, but for the majority of his now 6m followers, how memorable was the call to action?
His account was active for only three months and has been dormant since October 2020. In a 2021 interview with Digital Spy, he discussed his moment of Insta-fame; ‘I was persuaded to [join] in order to do a message about conservation. So for a limited period of time I contributed to Instagram, but I'm off now. I'm not on it anymore and I don't intend to go back. I've got enough problems with post’.
There are some key lessons to take from this short paragraph:
Brands need a concrete, motivating ‘why’ upon which to build a communications plan. His reason for doing it – the persuasion of a friend – wasn’t strong enough to secure longevity.
Without a long-term strategy, an engaged audience is useless. 6 million people in the world haven’t seen a single post from his account since. What opportunities have been missed by letting that pass?
A single message isn’t a campaign – but it can spawn one. No matter how well a post does, it can’t build a relationship in isolation. Repetition and continual review is essential to make a lasting impact and inspire your audience to act.
Be realistic about your resources. If you can’t service the strategy or plan you have, it’s all but guaranteed to fail.
Effective communication is so much more than social media posts, reels, data visualisations, press releases or even speaking gigs at conferences or interviews on podcasts. Without being connected and guided by a long-term strategy, these spikes in interest are just that – a flash in the pan which can be forgotten as quickly as they’re delivered.
In today’s ‘economy of attention’, your message is just one of hundreds that a person will see. Think about your own day. Between waking up and going to sleep, how many messages do you hear or see – and how many have stuck with you? Everyone from a minister in government to the person you just nodded at in the street is experiencing the same noise, and it’s our job as change-makers to stay at the forefront of their minds.
The systemic shifts required to secure environmental, economic and social prosperity won’t happen overnight – so we need to plan for the timelines which that change is working to. In order to build and maintain momentum, it’s essential to communicate in a way which educates, empowers and proves a desire for action which can’t be ignored by businesses and policy-makers.
Of course, Attenborough’s relationship with social media is excusable in the context of his career and impact as a whole – but it’s a worthwhile reminder that results aren’t guaranteed just because you’re best in class.
Next time you post, write or talk – ask yourself some simple questions first:
Will this reach the right people?
What do I want them to do after seeing or hearing this?
How far from that action are they?
How am I going to take them on the journey toward that action?
No matter how incredible the proposition, urgent the action or high the profile, crucial messages can quickly sink beneath the noise if they’re not kept afloat by an effective, practical strategy for delivery.
