Gravitas
John Lennon wrote “All You Need is Love” in the late 1960s as an enduring slogan of social change. But, today as we struggle with a global economy on the mend and resulting high unemployment, better to consider that all you need is gravitas, especially when it comes to strategic communications and marketing.
That Latin word is widely used in today’s business world even while most people may not know it comes from ancient Rome. There simply is no better, singular word in the English language to describe the highly valued traits of personal substance, depth of character, and essential strength of personality.
You either have it or you don’t. You may eventually acquire it as you gain personal experience in life. But, nobody can fake it if they haven’t already got it.
My gravitas is the direct outcome of my having chosen to learn from many life lessons. It’s one thing to age–everybody does. Not everybody wants to grow or change, however, while experiencing personal and professional challenges.
Unique Blend of Experience and Savvy
When I talk about what I can bring to an organization for marketing and communication leadership, I point out how unique I am. I connect the dots to show that who I am comes from where I have been and what I have already done:
Why I am unique is that I have major-market experience in executive speechwriting and other traditional methods of public relations and strategic communication, experience in mainstream media news and public affairs, and experience using today’s digital media and succeeding in strategies and tactics for social media channels use.
To Whom Should You Listen?
You may hear someone with a recent college diploma telling you that it’s important to use Twitter or Facebook when making strategic communication plans for your business. Yet, no matter what that person may say, you won’t be able to dismiss the essential truth that they never lived in a world without the Internet.
A person’s ability to master communication and marketing cannot focus primarily upon computer technology or software. A core understanding of how and why people interact as they do must guide all strategic communications and marketing, regardless of what technology people may use.
Think about this carefully: What can anyone who did not survive in business before the Internet or social media really offer as professional counsel to you?
My gravitas derives directly from my many years of professional experience writing and providing strategic communication leadership and counsel to business executives. Plus, I also have years of professional university-level teaching of business writing, news writing, and writing for public presentations such as speeches, PowerPoint decks and similar presentations. I am both traditional and contemporary in communications and marketing leadership based on a breadth and depth of professional experience as a writer, editor, and producer of print, broadcast and online content.
I have had full-bird colonels in the US military and Senior Executive Service people at the Pentagon who read, reviewed, and ultimately approved my editorial work. I also have survived in major markets in business before the Internet in writing and communication counseling of civilian people, business people and even a celebrity or two. In short, I have been tested under the most demanding circumstances and I have prospered.
From experience, I have learned that using the Internet is only one tool of many available for creating success in today’s strategic communication efforts towards effective social marketing.
“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of what to say and how to say it.”– Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965)
