{"id":1749,"date":"2012-07-30T22:54:37","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T03:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/\/"},"modified":"2016-01-27T18:16:45","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T23:16:45","slug":"the-onthinktanks-interview-laura-zommer-part-2-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/the-onthinktanks-interview-laura-zommer-part-2-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Zommer, Director of Communications at CIPPEC (Part 2 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supposedly a think tank does not produce knowledge for the pleasure of it, but to modify reality and impact on it. With this objective, not investing in communication is a contradiction<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leandro Echt:\u00a0What do you think are the main opportunities that think tanks currently have to transmit their work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Zommer:<\/strong>\u00a0Generally, in Argentina there isn\u2019t a production of information and research that is done in a timely and reliable manner for the political class. There\u2019s a need for information, which opens a window for think tanks that are able to position themselves from a place that isn\u2019t polarised. On the other hand, through the years politicians and journalists have learned to \u201csqueeze the juice\u201d out of these organisations, although without the intensity that we would like. Now, when a political actor wants to give legitimacy to a certain measure he thinks of think tanks, and ten years ago he wouldn\u2019t have because he didn\u2019t know any. Think tanks are the \u201cvoice of expertise\u201d, even though political actors know who to call upon according to what\u2019s most convenient for them. Another opportunity is the use of technology for certain campaigns. This hasn\u2019t been explored much yet at\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>; but it is a strong objective for my term at\u00a0Chequeado.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

LE:\u00a0What similarities and differences are there when working for the press, the private sector, the government and civil society organisations?<\/strong><\/p>\n

LZ:<\/strong>\u00a0I sometimes get angry at some of my colleagues\u2019 criticism at politicians or journalist claiming that don\u2019t pay attention to think tanks. In the majority of these cases, we must first think about what we are doing wrong, because the need for information exists: either we\u2019re too slow about it, or it\u2019s in the wrong format, or it comes from the wrong place, or we fail to call their attention. It\u2019s not that think tanks are diamonds or gemstones and no one sees them or understands them; it\u2019s us that don\u2019t let ourselves be seen or understood. I always say that the advantage of these organisations is that the media and the majority of political actors think that when you talk to them from a think tank, you\u2019re the voice that personifies the \u201cpublic good\u201d. However, we don\u2019t always defend the public good, but a particular cause. For example, when we lobby for a law, we don\u2019t fight for everyone\u2019s interest, but that of a certain sector, and that isn\u2019t always made explicit.<\/p>\n

However, in the minds of journalists, when a think tank announces something, they trust that information. So you jump the first barrier. If I, as a journalist, get information from the government, the first thing I think of is what they\u2019re withholding from me. If I get information from the private sector, the first thing I think of is that they want to make a profit by looking good. But when I get information from a think tank, the first thing I think of is \u201cthese people have exhausted themselves researching for so many months, and they\u2019re telling me something that\u2019s worthwhile and that serves everyone\u201d. In any case, if I have misgivings, I think about who\u2019s financing them, why they\u2019re doing it, etc, but that\u2019s a second barrier and in general I the think tank would have had to previously have done something wrong to that actor or journalist for that distrust to appear. So, the main advantage is that think tanks have an \u201caura of innocence\u201d around them, and if they know how to use it, it can allow them to convey information without obstacles.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the main disadvantage, though manageable, is that you generally have few resources for communication, compared to the private or public sectors. I feel that at\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0we wasted infinite opportunities for communication, not because we didn\u2019t have ideas or content, but because we didn\u2019t have the capacity for it. It\u2019s easier when you have a team of twenty people instead of five. Or, for example, it\u2019s better to hire a producer to make a video than to make it yourself. But I feel that this is all manageable, so long as the organisation has a certain social value because with donations from the private sector or associations, you can overcome this: there are many examples of campaigns donated by publicity agencies, but you have to find these opportunities, you have to know how to jump the barriers in your way. This is usually a problem for new organisations, the problem of the chicken or the egg: if you haven\u2019t done anything relevant yet, your name doesn\u2019t stand for anything, and it\u2019s hard for a big agency or a trained professional to do anything for you, because they have a lot of other options to dedicate their time to. For organisations such as\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>, resources can be gathered through associations or donations, but think tanks that are still relatively new have to figure out other ways.<\/p>\n

LE:\u00a0Which aspects of communication are specific of public policy research institutions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

LZ:<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t think there\u2019s an aspect that\u2019s specific to research institutions. The first thing that comes to mind is that you must communicate something complex in a very simple manner. But this is something that must also be done in the private sector (for example, when a mining company has to convey the impact of open exploration, etc) and in the public sector (for example, when implementing a certain policy that is sensitive matter in terms of public opinion, but that has many long-term benefits \u2013 if explained in an inappropriate manner, it can fail). The same goes for internal organisational culture and processes: the challenges are the same in all sectors. I wouldn\u2019t say that research institutions have a unique way of communicating. That\u2019s why while looking for my replacement we didn\u2019t think that it was essential for the person to have experience in think tank communication.<\/p>\n

LE:\u00a0In what way and how is communication linked to impact on public policy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

LZ:<\/strong>\u00a0Communication and impact are intimately linked, much more than what many actors will admit. Discussing this is like discussing the role of communications in politics: it might not be clear that the role of communication is central, but it is.<\/p>\n

Looking back at the experience and some mistakes made at\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>, generally when we weren\u2019t efficient in making an impact on policy it was because we didn\u2019t find the way to get through to the right person. If you have serious research, with evident quality, the main problem is that you may not have the resources; the time or the energy to do everything it takes to get to the right person and in the way that they feel is convenient. And sometimes the person you get to is not the one that makes the decision. So, your impact could be presenting information to the government\u2019s opposition so that the quality of debate improves even though they later lose, or presenting information to the government so that discussions with the private sector are less biased on economic interests. I consider that communication and impact are linked in a direct manner: in my eight years at\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>, we never had impact with bad communication. In any case, there might not have been public communication because, of course, communication can also be done behind closed doors in a meeting with the advisor that the person who makes the decision listens to the most, and that can be your communication strategy.<\/p>\n

One must not confuse good communication with public visibility. Sometimes communication is not public.<\/p>\n

LE:\u00a0What kind of strategies or tools have resulted most effective for\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0when communicating with key actors in the public policy making process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

LZ:<\/strong>\u00a0Since\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0has a large range of programs, the relevant actors within each sector are diverse. Among the tools that have resulted most effective are policy briefs: brief documents, with an executive summary, that have to do with current and central national events. But going through\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0publications, one can see that the programme that has had the most impact in the history of the institution, the Education Programme, has generated very few policy briefs. So it seems that something is not being considered here. One cannot talk about the state as if it were one. For example, the Ministry of Education\u2019s employees are most likely to read a paper than the Ministry of Security\u2019s employees, or the Justice\u2019s employees. So, the most effective thing is to have a wide range of tools that, taking into account who you want to get in touch with and when, will let you transform your research into diverse formats.<\/p>\n

For example, we used to publish more books than we do now, because we\u2019ve decided that we\u2019ll only do books when they generate value, whether that is in terms of innovation or if they\u2019re the culmination of a process. But if you\u2019re going to write a policy brief and you know that the community that makes up your audience will want more than a four to ten page document, you need to be backed up by an academic article or a book. The policy brief can be the tool that you can attribute the most impact to, but it\u2019s only because there\u2019s something behind it that supports it: when an actor calls you up to ask questions, you can answer him or her. The same thing goes for the short videos that\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0is developing at the moment. Generally,\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u2019s public is made up of decision makers, journalists and donors.<\/p>\n

For the elections in Santa Fe a film meant for the province\u2019s voters was made on the Boleta Unica and it was very effective because that audience was more interested in getting informed about it with a 3 minute long film than by reading a document, even though it was only ten pages. A press release is also tedious if it\u2019s a list of steps you have to follow to vote. So, making films is a good choice, but it\u2019s not just the film: if someone was interested in it you can link them to a document, an academic article or a book, or you can contact that person with someone from your staff that can give him o her more information about what the film presents.<\/p>\n

We are also conducting, alongside\u00a0Enrique Mendizabal<\/a>\u00a0and the Politics and Governmental Administration Program at\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>,\u00a0an exercise on reflecting on how to communicate complex ideas, what the obstacles are, through the Boleta Unica case<\/a>, for which\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0is trying to convince that, besides its implementation, this program has to have certain particular characteristics. While doing this exercise we realised that there is a point that\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0did not develop: when\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0decided not to have more public visibility, because it got to the point that it\u2019s more effective to have individual meetings with key actors, in this meetings it\u2019s not the policy brief the tool that\u2019s most effective, because the political actor in question isn\u2019t going to read a ten pages paper. Perhaps with the policy brief you managed to identify who\u2019s in favour and who\u2019s against your proposal, but it doesn\u2019t work for the meetings when you have to communicate complex ideas: a new way of presenting complex information must be found, which permits, for example, the synthesis that Prezi allows instead of Power Point, in which ideas aren\u2019t chronological. What is needed is a tool that permits questions that can be answered and yet generate other questions at the same time. When this is developed it will be most effective.<\/p>\n

LE:\u00a0How can think tanks make the most of the opportunities that the internet gives in order to be more visible and to involve other actors and audiences in their proposals?<\/strong><\/p>\n

LZ:<\/strong>\u00a0In\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0we have conducted studies, along with\u00a0Nick Scott<\/a>, an expert on digital communication from the UK, who was working at\u00a0CIPPEC<\/a>\u00a0for a few months. What we found is that, if the think tank has limited resources, the internet will not provide much, in the sense that designing a good 2.0 strategy is very intense in terms of human resources, since you must have a senior or semi senior member on call at all times. But if you don\u2019t have the resources, when choosing whether you\u2019ll use two hours per week of a director\u2019s time for him to write in the press or appear in television instead of writing on the internet, you\u2019ll go for the former because you can reproduce it on the web.<\/p>\n

So, in order to make good use of digital communication you must think as a 2.0 organisation such as the\u00a0Ciudadano Inteligente Foundation<\/a>, whose logic is to reproduce discussions all the time on social media and the internet. And for that you must involve an online senior manager, but this must be an institutional decision, since you\u2019d need the whole organization to respond immediately, meaning, it signifies a change In organisational culture (for example, it implies involving all of your directors and the Executive Director in the use of social media and the internet). But if you\u2019re not going to make that decision, a good choice is to map how the internet works in your country, and later associate yourself with those institutions, mediums or individuals that can make your research visible at the opportune moment.<\/p>\n

For example, one of\u00a0Chequeado.com<\/a>\u2019s founder\u2019s ideas was that, having the organisation the capacity to communicate, it could become an ally of other organisations that do not have all of the resources for this task at their disposition. There probably is, in any country, an institution, medium, journalist or intellectual that can be an affiliate of think tanks on a specific subject, if the communications team did not think itself as 2.0. Just like, a couple of years back, we thought that if we wrote an academic article or a book, the prologue should be written by somebody relevant or it should be co-authored with somebody senior, now you can think about associating yourself to an institution with the capacity to communicate your research via social media and the internet.<\/p>\n

LE:\u00a0Why should a think tank make a strong investment in communication?<\/strong><\/p>\n

LZ:<\/strong>\u00a0Because supposedly a think tank does not produce knowledge for the pleasure of it, but to modify reality and impact on it. With this objective, not investing in communication is a contradiction. Even if you\u2019ve discovered a great idea, if it stays on your computer\u2019s Desktop you will have no impact. It will give you personal satisfaction if you\u2019re a nerd or a computer rat, but it won\u2019t have an impact.<\/p>\n

Besides, from a more utilitarian point of view, I\u2019m convinced that everything that a think tank invests in communication will return to the institution. What that means is that for many it may be difficult to enlarge the communications team instead of other teams, but I think that it\u2019s convenient because\u00a0good communication will surely bring more money<\/em>in terms of individual donors and will leave the donor much more satisfied, because with good communication it\u2019s more certain that the impact of a project will be larger. Unless it\u2019s a donor that doesn\u2019t care about impact, you need to communicate. Again, I\u2019m not talking about communication in terms of public visibility, but that it can also be meetings with key private sector actors on the subject that you\u2019ve researched, since they might be the ones that will have to bring up the proposal to the government and not you as a think tank.<\/p>\n

Having a good communications team means having one or more individuals thinking about what to do with the results of the studies, the way to exploit them and not let them be forgotten by getting immediately involved in other projects. This is why I\u2019ve insisted that all proposals must have a communications\/dissemination phase before closing the project, so that the product reaches the intended audience. \u00a0Even if it\u2019s four academics; if you don\u2019t get to them then, the project will have been for nothing.<\/p>\n

Next week: part three of the interview.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supposedly a think tank does not produce knowledge for the pleasure of it, but to modify reality and impact on it. With this objective, not investing in communication is a contradiction Leandro Echt:\u00a0What do you think are the main opportunities that think tanks currently have to transmit their work? Laura Zommer:\u00a0Generally, in Argentina there isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[334,333,220,545,194,196],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-argentina","tag-cippec","tag-communication","tag-director-of-communications","tag-latin-america","tag-leadership","article-types-interview","people-leandro-echt","series-communicating-complex-ideas","series-communication-as-an-orchestra","series-latin-american-executive-directors","theme-communications"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}