I've been working in communication for last ten years. In fact, March 15 would be 10th anniversary of my professional career. My previous paid professions before 2000 include: surveying primary school, shoveling snow, gathering fallen tree branches, security dispatcher, library periodicals check-in asst, library front desk person, html coder, career development assistant, surveyor of environmental damage, intern to financial consultants, etc, etc. I credit all these diverse opportunities to give me a decent understanding of communicating at different levels.
These exposures also have made me critical of lousy communication campaigns.
Lousy communication happens in many forms, whether it's someone who drones on and on because s/he is in love with her/his own voice, or someone who fails to contextualize the recipients' profile and adopts a "one message fits all" approach. I've also sat through an appalling job interview where the interviewee tried to ingratiate herself by savagely criticizing the organization she was interviewing with.
But none of the communication campaigns can hold a candle to the "changemaker" campaign which is being run by/through Ministry of Women and Children Affair (I think). I wish I could be sure.
Back in January, I was in Barisal, and I saw billboards touting something like, "come join the changemakers in our community". My first response was, who the hell are these changemakers? why should I join them? What benefit am I going to get by joining the changemakers? What am I going to expect from a "CHANGEMAKER"? It seemed like a clear case of someone with a large budget being in love with a concept without taking into account the medium, the audience, the implication of the message. Even a pretest involving a sample of one or two should have revealed that literate (otherwise who's gonna read your billboard) people of Babuganj doesn't really care about your campaign, unless you tell them what they're going to get.
I forgot about this billboard (it was forgettable) until recently when I saw Womens Day posters all around Ramna Park touting, wait for it..., yes, you guessed it, CHANGEMAKERS. This time it was worded something like, supporting changemakers can prevent domestic violence. Or something like that.
I was jogging. I saw the word, changemakers, and broke out in hives. Just kidding. At least this time I saw that this was a multi-partner campaign project involving the ministry, some donor organizations, some local women organizations, etc. At least five logos. No one giving this campaign a second thought.
A quick Bing search revealed that "changemaker" is a buzzword used by Ashoka Foundation, and that there were several organizations in BD who are part of this network. Why, oh why couldn't they adopt a more local word?
Ah, then I wouldn't have a job then would I? I have always maintained that the reason I get to keep jobs is not because I am any good, but everyone around me are so bad.
I'm sure the donor organization was happy the posters were printed and plastered all over Dhaka city. The campaign designer is probably combing his beard pleased that his concept stuck, and he can blithely add this to his resume. The manager was happy that the money was spent, and he could write in his quarterly report that he did something special on womens day. Yet, all the messages disappear into the white noise surrounding the target audience.
Makes me long for my days in private sector. I got paid less, but at least I could do something about these things. And not have to nod politely and move on.
Conscience is a bitch.
