Political communications is failing due to misreading audiences, wrong messaging strategies, and a detachment from building relationships. Traditional stakeholder groups are changing rapidly and being replaced by "modern tribes" - transient communities defined by issue affiliation rather than demographics. To improve communications, politicians and businesses must map and measure these new tribal stakeholders through their physical attributes like mobility and cognitive attributes like discontent, understand what issues are important to each tribe, and focus on building trust through character, competence and delivering on promises. Measuring tribal engagement and sentiment across online and offline forums will be key to adapting communications strategies at the tribes' rapid pace of change.

1. @CARMA @mazennahawi CARMA.com

2. Tribal Relations:
How our understanding of trust
will change amidst the failure of
political communications
@CARMA @mazennahawi CARMA.com

3. Overview
• Political communications is failing
• Traditional stakeholder groups changing rapidly
• Politicians (and businesses) failing to grasp this change
– main driver of lack of trust
• Deeper look into new stakeholder groups “modern tribes”
Complex dynamic of trust in future PR &
communications

4. Political Communications is failing
Source: HBR

5. Political Communications is failing
Poor Measurement & Research
• Misreading audiences
• Wrong objectives, intent and priorities
Failure to Communicate
• Wrong messages
• Polarizing communications strategies
Failure to Build Relationships
• General detachment
• Arrogant elitism, isolation
Failure in results
• Inability to compromise
• Failure to deliver

7. My People
Love Me

10. Lessons learned
• Dislike, mistrust of politicians is not new
• Scandal has always existed
BUT
• The unprecedented scale, volume of dislike, scandal is ….accelerating
• The wide-spread impact is global, local and deep rooted
• We are entering an age where trust is increasingly rare
• Dislike in all its forms – including hate – is on the ascendancy
• Credibility of institutions is severely diminishing or dead
• The collapse of institutions is being replaced by ‘Modern Tribes’

11. Lessons learned
The collapse of institutions is being
replaced by ‘Modern Tribes’ – transient
communities that now are increasingly
setting the global agenda and redefining
social contracts

12. Modern Tribes?
• Global shift in stakeholder groups
• Moving from traditional, predictable and lasting stakeholder groups…… to
unorthodox, unpredictable and temporary stakeholder groups
• Stakeholders groups “Modern Tribes” are defined far less by traditional
metrics such as gender, age & location – and much more defined by new
metrics such as issue affiliation, social contract, mobility and communal
values.

13. TRADITIONAL MARCOMS
STAKEHODLER MAPPING
Tories: Target Conservative Voters aged
45-60
Coke: Target youth age 18-25 in cities
Critical Flaws in the traditional model:
• The line between internal/external stakeholders is
increasingly blurry – staff are customers, community
leaders are on the board etc.
• People do not stay in one place anymore
• Definitions of ‘wealth’ and ‘income’ are shifting
• Issues, loyalties, preferences were the last things to be
considered (if in fact they ever were)
• Slow/incapable at tracking mobility, change in
circumstance
Internal Stakeholders
(Board, shareholders, employees)
External Stakeholders
(Customers, Clients, Voters, Media,
Community, NGO)
Age Seniority
Gender Income
Location Ethnicity

14. Modern Tribes?PhysicalAttributes
Global
Mobility
Low-cost travel to
internet & phone
connectivity
Wealth
Most people have
more money than
ever before
Health
You are young &
probably working
at the age of 60
nearly anywhere in
the world
CognitiveAttributes
Contentment
/
discontent
People are
increasingly driven
by being content or
discontent
Entitlement
All factors lead to
people expecting a
broader and
deeper set of
inalienable rights
Intellectual
Fluidity
Decision making is
quick, changeable
based on quickly
moving but shallow
sets of data

15. 7 Key features of ‘Modern Tribes’/New Stakeholder Groups
Physical Attributes
Mobility Wealth Health
Cognitive Attributes
Discontent Entitlement
Intellectual
Fluidity
Tribal Attributes
TRANSIENT COMMUNITIES
• Modern tribes can form and
disband very quickly.
• They coalesce around ideas and
hopes - not places or age groups -
and certainly not around
institutions
• Modern tribes are not exclusive
and interlock with other tribes
• Modern Tribes often have no name

16. What do these tribes look like?

17. What do these tribes look like?

18. What do these tribes look like?
“Hannah’s Tribe”
• Modern tribes can form
and disband very
quickly.
• They coalesce around
ideas and hopes - not
places or age groups -
and certainly not around
institutions
• Modern tribes are not
exclusive and interlock
with other tribes
• Modern Tribes often
have no name

19. Measuring Modern Tribes: Refining Stakeholder Mapping
TRADITIONAL MARCOMS
STAKEHODLER MAPPING
Tories: Target Conservative Voters
aged 45-60
Coke: Target youth age 18-25 in cities
Internal Stakeholders
(Board, shareholders,
employees)
External Stakeholders
(Customers, Clients, Voters,
Media, Community, NGO)
Age Seniority
Gender Income
Location Ethnicity
Physical Attributes
Cognitive Attributes
Mobility Wealth Health
Discontent Entitlement
Intellectual
Fluidity
Measure:
Connectivity
Travel
Measure:
Real PPP
Affinity to Share
Measure:
Activity &
Contribution
Measure:
Sentiment by
issue
person,
Organization
Measure:
Demand intensity
Social positioning
Advocacy
Measure:
Data availability,
Accuracy

20. Measuring Modern Tribes: Refining Stakeholder Mapping
TRANSIENT COMMUNITIES
• Modern tribes can form and
disband very quickly.
• They coalesce around ideas
and hopes - not places or age
groups - and certainly not
around institutions
• Modern tribes are not
exclusive and interlock with
other tribes
The big re-alignment in audience measurement
• Before setting an objective - understand if it’s in fact the one your
stakeholders/customers want! – let them decide your agenda.
• Understand all the ‘tribes’ related to your business: Monitor,
analyze and simply list their leaders, followers and issues.
• Do not stop at traditional/primary audience models - make the
effort to build in the ‘tribal’ nature of these stakeholders groups:
measure the tribe’s physical and cognitive attributes
• Understand the engagement and messages that will foster
trust with these ’tribes’
….Now you can start a serious PR/Communications campaign

21. Understanding Trust in the Tribal context
• PR is foremast about relationships (not outputs/activity)
• Modern Tribes are based on trust
• How do we engage - ethically and scientifically - on a basis of trust?
Trust
Character Competence
• Tribes are easy to find and reach – so find them!
• Meet he tribe: Nothing beats human contact
• Let them talk first; you listen
• Build objectives, products, services, policy – with
their views in mind
• Engage, update, adapt
• Deliver the value you promised on time, with the
right qualities
• Challenge yourself to see if the value you are
delivering is making a difference
• Always have excellent, accurate information
• Measure…measure….measure
• Be ready to change at a moments notice

22. Measuring Trust in the Tribal context
Refine your Monitoring/Listening Program
• Cool off on the keywords, strengthening broad data-mining
• Monitor what matters: Do not go for all clips/mentions – focus on People, issues, themes
• Integrate your monitoring across all channels: Digital, traditional but never forget/leave out grey literature
• Jump on any opportunity to listen in person to the “Tribe”/Stakeholder group
• Scientifically capture, tabulate and correlate your monitoring information to match analytics with your
objectives
Modern Tribes/Stakeholder groups are transient communities: They are cross border, multi-everything, fluid
and change place, ideas and positions very quickly – you must be able to adapt at their speed.

23. • Let Science guide your strategy, Let ethics mark your engagement
• Rebuild your stakeholder map: Go easy on primary metrics & invest in identifying tribes/groups that matter to
you. Keep it simple: focus on people and issues
Measuring Trust in the Tribal context
Primary Leadership:
who is in charge of the tribe
Secondary leadership
Key internal, external
influencers
Members of the tribe
Inter-locking tribes
Your relationship with
this group
PEOPLE ISSUES
Core & secondary drivers
Key messages by
advocates &
detractors
Trust/credibility metrics
for you and for them
Forums of engagement
(media, events)
Definition of success

24. Measuring Trust in the Tribal context
• Are Trust barometers helpful? Yes, but don’t over do it – more importantly have a trust index for
each stakeholder group and their associated issues.
• Always remember to measure misinformation: Often ignored in an industry which is slightly too
optimistic by nature. If you are only measuring positive content and engagement then you are not
seeing the whole picture - which means you do not have the whole truth.
• This sounds complicated? It will be when you set it up, but once you have done so it’s easy to
maintain and adapt

25. Conclusions
• We have always known about mistrust in politicians, scandals…..what is different this time is this is now impact global
society as a whole.
• Discontent is diminishing traditional institutions and they are being replaced by “Modern Tribes” - new stakeholder
groups that are transient communities primary coalescing around ideas, and less around income, location, gender….
• PR and communications professionals, especially in public affairs, must re-think stakeholder mapping and create new
models to engage and measure with these communities
• Measuring is key to understanding and engaging these audiences
• As with all great PR, keep it simple – let science guide your strategy and let ethics mark your engagement

26. Thank you!
@CARMA @mazennahawi CARMA.com