The EU faces unprecedented challenges
The socio-economic and geopolitical difficulties experienced by the European Union in recent times have led many citizens to question the real value and reason for its existence. Since its foundation, the EU has moved towards deeper integration, but the global financial crisis which occurred in 2008 arguably presented a turning point and what has followed are a series of crises or shocks which have shaken the Union to its very core. The crisis ushered in an era of significant austerity experienced by citizens across the entire Union. It almost led to the collapse of the Euro, and a near Grexit challenged one of the Union’s fundamental goals of ensuring balanced economic growth and a highly competitive market economy. This period has also witnessed war and instability in neighbouring regions. More recently, since 2016, the EU’s traditional alliance with the US has been shaken by Donald Trump’s policy of unilateralism, while China’s global ambitions including its trade war with the US are also creating uncertainty for Europe’s economy. The consequent rise of Euroscepticism, question marks over the societal benefits of globalisation and liberal policies have been brought to life by a decision by UK citizens to leave the EU and evidenced elsewhere by growing support for populist parties and movements.
How is the EU responding?
Acknowledging this myriad of crises, on assuming his role as President of the European Commission in 2014, Jean Claude Juncker stated that it was the last chance to show Europeans that their Union works for them. To demonstrate the positive impact the EU has on its citizens’ lives, in a significant departure for the European Commission, a decision was made to move away from piecemeal communication about individual policies and programmes to clearly defined and coherent communication. Stemming from President Juncker’s 10 political priorities and focused on communicating what the EU ultimately stands for and how its citizens benefit from its values, policies and actions, the European Commission designed a series of corporate campaigns called InvestEU, EUandME and EUProtects (and later a campaign designed to reach citizens living in rural areas).
In his bestselling book, the author Malcolm Gladwell defines a tipping point as that “magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour tips and spreads like wildfire“. For this article, I’m taking Gladwell’s “three rules of epidemics” to examine if the European Commission’s new approach to corporate communication works.
The Context: An increasingly complex and rapidly evolving landscape
The economic and political shocks felt by citizens have been exacerbated by the accelerating pace of technological disruption and the emergence of a new information ecosystem. Although citizens have arguably become more connected, educated and engaged, this new landscape has also created several challenges primarily characterised by:
- A growing trust deficit between regulators, citizens, industry, the media, and government
- New (often minority) influencers speaking out, mobilising and advocating through digital platforms
- Increased scrutiny and activism including the so-called “call-out”, “woke” and “cancel culture”
- Evolving media ecosystem where social media continues to challenge the primacy and behaviours around traditional media
- Changing behaviours around engagement, expectations of trust, transparency and ethics
The Stickiness Factors concern the communication approach designed to make the campaigns memorable:
- Storytelling: The European Commission’s campaign approach has centred on the importance of a clear, coherent narrative told through a series of stories over a sustained period. The importance of credible and consistent messaging cannot be underestimated, given the level of noise through which organisations must now communicate and which citizens must now endure. A robust narrative will ultimately form the backbone of all external communications and so to captivate audiences; it is essential to take the time to define one that is clear, compelling, memorable, and supported by evidence or data-points which are relevant to citizens.
- Relatable: With citizens increasingly disillusioned and disoriented by the tidal wave of changes impacting their lives and precipitating the desired return to old nationalistic tendencies, to communicate the fundamental values of the EU, the European Commission has chosen local stories and citizens to share real-life examples of its benefits to its citizens. This requires an understanding of local cultures, languages and preferences for methods and channels for communication and effective citizen engagement.engagement.
- Integrated: The evolving media ecosystem demands that effective communication must be holistic, integrated, multi-channel and multi-stakeholder. It also acknowledges that the information consumption habits of citizens are increasingly visual – attuned to images and video and less to traditional newspaper articles, white papers and reams and reams of text. The European Commission’s campaigns have responded to this and have moved away from traditional tactics to ones which blend earned and paid media, digital and social together.
Gladwell defines Law of the Few as the “involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts which are central to the success of any social epidemic“. This means that communicating the fundamental values of the EU is not a task for any single institution or individual but requires a specific set of individuals who fulfil important roles.
- While Member States and relevant EU and national agencies (what Gladwell would describe as mavens) must ensure they provide accessible advice and information to citizens, it also requires independent stakeholders or (as Gladwell defines these as) so-called connectors and salespeople to help drive the message home.
- Local connectors include influencers, media as well as academia, think tanks, industry associations, local community organisations which are identified as credible influencers in local communities. To create impact, the campaigns have sought to engage connectors which have a sizeable social network to help stories spread from one social group to the next.
- They have also involved salespeople, i.e. those who have personally benefited from the EU including businesses – beneficiaries of EU funding or loans, citizens whose jobs focus on looking after people’s safety and security concerns as well as young people.
Such stakeholders act as the EU’s endorsers as they are already convinced of the EU and its contribution to the local economy and citizens and are willing to share their positive experience of the EU with the general public.
Have we reached a tipping point?
As Ursula von der Leyen, embarks on her term at the helm of the European Commission, communicating Europe’s values remain a fundamental priority. Reflecting on the impact of corporate communication and these campaigns, the European Commission in its communication titled Preparing for a more united, stronger and more democratic Union in an increasingly uncertain world stated that the new coordinated approach to communication has allowed the EU to more effectively engage with citizens.
Examining the 2019 European Parliament election results, while the Eurosceptics and far-right parties did not gain the ground they had hoped to secure, EPP and S&D, traditionally the largest groups, lost their absolute majority. However, voters did express clear support for the liberals while the Greens also performed well, which demonstrates the prevalence of environmental concerns amongst EU citizens. It remains to be seen how this more fragmented composition of the Parliament will shape the direction of policy in the next five years. At the same time ongoing uncertainty surrounding Brexit, strong performances by the far-right Alternative for Germany in two recent regional elections and question marks concerning the recognition of the Rule of Law in Hungary and Poland are just a few examples which would suggest that there are no immediate signs of the turbulent and challenging times abating.
It, therefore, remains to be seen when if ever a tipping point will be reached but what is clear is that effective and sustained communication must remain a priority for the safe-keeping of the European project to ensure citizens understand its values, priorities and policies and its benefits to them.