Three years ago, a journalist reached out to a comms director named Priya after months of media silence on her organization’s gender equality work.
He told her that he had seen dozens of press releases from rights organizations that year, with most of them blurred together. But in his words, one story she had recently shared, a first-person account from a young woman navigating a broken legal system, had made him stop scrolling.
“It felt real,” he told her. “Like an actual human being was on the other side of it.”
Priya was very excited when she told me this. The reason being, that piece almost did not get published. Someone on the approvals chain had flagged it as “too personal.”
I have seen this play out quietly, again and again, with communications leaders working on some of the most important causes of our time. You pour your heart into campaigns meant to challenge injustice, change policies, and lift up communities. And still, the visibility your work deserves feels nowhere close.
One leader I worked with said it plainly. “We are doing everything right, yet it still feels like we are invisible.”
I had heard that sentence more times than I could count.
The first thing I tell every comms leader who comes to us here at Valsig solutions, is that more content and more hours will not fix the problem. That is the hardest trust to accept, especially when you have been taught that consistency and volume are the answer. But chasing volume is actually what keeps you stuck.
So what works?
It is actually taking your existing strategy and going much deeper with it.
That means building fewer stories, but making each one stronger. It means rooting your message in real experiences and real community voices, not language that sounds impressive in a boardroom but means nothing to the people you are trying to reach.
In the same breath, it means being clear about who holds the power, who is responsible, and what changes when things go right.
Just like Priya’s story above, she did not need more content, what she needed was someone to help her stop sanding down the edges that made her work human. By the end of her first month writing such human led stories and campaigns, stakeholders in her company had no other option but to notice the change.
That is what happens when you stop sacrificing personality in your campaigns.
At some point, every comms leader we have worked with has had a Priya moment. A story that was real, that almost did not make it out because someone called it too much.
And if someone ever tells you your story is too personal, too raw, too close to the people it is about, then remember the journalist who called Priya. He had seen everything. And the one thing that made him stop was the story that had a human aspect in it. Your campaigns deserve the same human aspects to be visible online.
What do you think about this one? Drop your thoughts in the comments, as we would love to hear from you!.