Using communications to reshape your market

By David Lewis, Memetic founder and Director

Let’s say you've invented something new and amazing. Something that solves a problem the world is facing. But the people who need to buy it just aren’t ready for it.

Your buyers are set in their ways. They work in conservative sectors like aerospace or pharma … or government. Budgets are allocated in ways that favour 'safe' existing suppliers. They are happy doing what they’ve always done - no one wants to take a risk on something different.

For your great idea to have a shot at success, you need the people with the money to think differently.

This is the story of one of our first ever clients, EV charging company Connected Kerb. Back in 2020, Connected Kerb was a startup with a low power, kerbside EV charger. This made perfect sense. Half the country doesn't have a driveway, and it’s much easier to charge your car outside your house for eight hours while it's parked, than to drive to a car park and sit there for half an hour. Back then, most local councils didn't get this. Their mindset was 'the charge needs to be fast', not convenient. So they were throwing money at town centre fast chargers. 

To sell at scale, Connected Kerb didn't just need to promote their product, they needed to change the way their buyers thought.

Turning the tanker 

So how do you change the way people think about a problem?

First, accept these things don't happen overnight. It takes time for a tanker to change course. So plan for a long term campaign which gradually nudges your entire audience onto a new path.

Second, get your underpinning story straight. This is the story of your audience's journey from where they are to where they should be. It should inspire change. It must not mock your audience for how backwards and out of touch they are (many fall into this trap). Link your story to what they want to achieve - in the former example, councils genuinely wanted to accelerate uptake of EVs, so we needed to explain why slow kerbside chargers were key to achieving that.

Write your story down in a few paragraphs and use it to inspire all other communications. Keep that story at the heart of everything you do, and only change it when your audience has reacted, and their need has finally changed. They need to hear the message several times before the rationale becomes clear – so use your story to ensure your central call for change stays consistent, even if the delivery mode varies, gradually chipping away at your audience's resistance.

Third, before you start telling the story publicly, build the evidence for your argument, so your audience can clearly see why they should act (and can make the argument to others in their organisation). A mix of hard data and lived experience makes for a potent story. That makes your audience's decisions easier to make, and your calls for change harder to ignore.

Your argument should also anticipate and solve problems. It’s all very well saying kerbside chargers are great, but how exactly do you go about getting them in the ground? We spoke to infrastructure and financing experts to identify practical routes to deployment at scale, addressing decision-blockers before objections can be raised. 

Where your innovation is truly unprecedented, focus on allaying doubts through case studies, reporting on trials and independent assessments, and by explaining clearly how it actually works (buyers often see deployment challenges as solvable, but if they don’t believe the science behind it, you don’t stand a chance).

Finally, take all this data and insight, and turn it into a long-term strategic communications campaign. Identify the channels your audience engages with - publications, social media, events. Create programmes of content aligned to these channels which drip feed a variety of content to your audience - coming at it from different angles, but all rooted in your single story of change. Drip feed these routinely to your audience over at least six months across owned, social, paid and earned channels. 

Stay the course. It’s fine to tweak and innovate as you create new content, but don't change the core message regularly. Campaigns for change take time and require you to hold your nerve and not get distracted by new shiny ideas. After six months or so,  if well executed, you will start to see meaningful change in how the industry thinks and talks about the problem you solve, with your company seen as the forerunner in this new world.

Connected Kerb now operates one of the largest EV Charging Networks in the UK. 

To discuss how we can develop communications programmes that shape your market and showcase your solutions to emerging problems, contact david@memetic-comms.com 

Read our case studies on long term, industry-shaping campaigns for Connected Kerb and the Fusion Industry Association.