Kakha Maghradze makes predictions for the year 2023 in the field of communication in Georgia and offers a solution to deal with them.
Crises—Tensions and conflicts are rising around the world. This process will intensify in 2023 due to the war in Ukraine and the new global redistribution. There will be a difficult situation and acute political confrontation in Georgia as well. All this will be transferred between them in the information space, so there will be frequent cases of deliberately negative portrayal of opponents. Added to this are bugs and user dissatisfaction that spread quickly through social networks. Finally, we will get frequent PR crises and reputational problems in various subjects.
o Solution — The solution is to develop strategic communication and implement preventive activities. Analysis of potential crises and advanced "mitigation" communication will be most effective.
Political correctness - Information activities and campaigns about or involving women and members of other vulnerable groups, people of different races or ethnicities will be more "spotlighted" by the public, where importance will be given to combating stigmas, stereotypes, and social clichés. Mistakes in this direction can be disastrous not only for small and medium-sized businesses but also for large brands and popular organizations or individuals.
o Solution — Specialists involved in the process of communication should delve more deeply into social processes of various directions and should try to understand minorities and vulnerable groups more.
Sincerity - On the one hand, global cataclysms and on the other hand, the openness of the information space, which is connected with the development of technologies, revealed the need for honest, natural, and explanation-oriented communication. The time of manipulation, exaggeration, and presenting people or brands in an overly positive light is gone, and I think this is the most difficult thing for our industry and professionals to accept. A special problem in this regard is the Georgian customer and his request to "come up with something" that will make people fall in love with a product or a politician.
o Solution — we will have to explain all of this to the clients that the flattery is no longer appropriate. A rather painful and at the same time interesting process begins.
