Today’s computers are giving way to artificial intelligence. They are becoming gateways to waterfalls of information. 2D imagery is being replaced by virtual 3D environments. Interactive multimedia networks are interconnecting people, directly. Tomorrow promises self-replicating, rational machines. But our brain, with its three billion year evolutionary root, remains the supreme tool – at least our supreme tool – for perception and analysis.

Communications and Perception Analysis provides the necessary benchmarks to evaluate the impact of messages that our brains perceive and provides a gateway to communica-tions with a human dimension. Understanding trends then assures that communicators consider the realities of the environment in which communications are generated, trans-mitted and received.

Getting started on the path to successful communications calls for some introspection in regard to human realities: an awareness that communicating takes place between two human beings, not between a corporation and its clients, an organization and its mem-bers, or a government and its electorate. Consumers no longer want to buy from faceless giants. They would prefer to buy from someone they can believe. Voters fear manipula-tion and prefer information and guidance. Employees do not value directives, but seek management’s concern and a share in its success.

To communicate successfully we must genuinely consider how a message will be per-ceived and interpreted by its intended targets, the human beings who will ultimately act upon the message. Those who communicate without regard for authentic needs do themselves, and their targets, a disfavor. Communications must not become a race to-wards extravagance and contrast. It must do more than shock, scream and strike.

Communications can, and must, be of a human dimension.

Communications and Perception Analysis combined with clear-cut goals, skilled design and consideration for the aspirations of its targets provides the essential link in the creation of messages whose prime objective is their successful and sensitive impact on human beings.

Evidently, communications and information are the foundation of the next generations. Corporate strategy becomes more exacting as product life shortens fueled by consumers’ faster, more fickle, tastes forcing companies to stay in tune with consumers’ desires. Gov-ernments become less enduring as electronic news gathering and dissemination provide voters greater access to statistics, legislation and opposing views inciting citizens to de-mand quicker results. Employment is more contingent on knowledge than on manual skills as corporate income shifts from manufacturing to services. People want to feel good, despite the abundance of bad. In this light, noisy communications are clearly undesirable.

Prosperity in the next century will depend less on industrial might and financial wizardry and more on effective communications. Tomorrow’s winners will be men and women who understand not just consumer needs but human needs. They will realize that doing what is right for humans ultimately means doing what is right for humanity, our social sys-tems and the entire biosphere. That what is right for the whole is not necessarily incom-patible with commercial or political success.

As you decide on a corporate, political or social communications strategy, remember that intensifying Communications Noise forces humans to seek out familiar points of reference. In tomorrow’s communication wars loud, bold, brassy messages will not win out. Instead, people will favor unadorned, more basic messages that appeal to their fundamental humanity.

Solutions

• To improve how people perceive you.
• To understand what people like about you, your product or your services.
• To understand what people dislike about you.
• To better your chances of being chosen over your competition.
• To decipher which of the signals in your message are constructive and which are distorting it or just making noise.
• To create effective communications tools, spaces, objects or services using messages that appeal rather than repel.
• To make your, or your staff’s, professional behavior more appealing.
• To understand media’s impact on your strategies.
• To understand the impact of trends on your strategies.
• To understand how others’ (e.g. competitors) communications efforts impact or interfere with your own.
• To attain more cost-effective and lasting communications results.
• To function as a responsible communicator.