What Does a 16th-Century Map Have to Do with Effective Messaging?

Image caption: Jacopo De’Barbari’s 1500 map of Venice, which appears to be drawn from an aerial vantage point. It was the largest map ever produced at the time and provided a novel view.

An Unprecedented Perspective

In 1500, a Venetian painter and printmaker named Jacopo De'Barbari drew the first-ever aerial map of Venice. The map was extraordinary for a few reasons:

• It was the largest print ever made. At 4' x 9', the map had to be printed on six sheets and pieced together.

• It offered a view never before seen, because there was no one vantage point in or around Venice that could provide such a view. (There were no aerial drones in 1500!)

• It included both large-scale geographic information and minute details, such as doors, windows, and even chamber pots (10,000 of them!).

How did de'Barbari draw his bird's eye view of Venice when manned flight was still three centuries away?

It’s believed he used the work of several different surveyors, some of whom climbed bell towers throughout the area and drew what they saw. He relied on diverse perspectives to create a coherent picture and provide Venetians and others with a literal “big picture” view that had been lacking.

So, what does De'Barbari's map have to do with company communications and messaging?

What Corporate Communicators Can Learn from De’Barbari’s Approach

Organizations are made up of departments and functional areas that may have very different objectives and perspectives on how they should communicate with their audiences. Successful corporate communications incorporate all these viewpoints into a cohesive approach that employs an overarching strategy, consistent messaging, and a coordinated use of media.

The viewpoints of external audiences are very important, too, because company communications need to address their needs and concerns and resonate with them, in order to be successful in moving those audiences to action—converting them to customers or members, retaining them, getting them to take an action, increasing their value to the company.

Like the surveyors' drawings that helped De'Barbari assemble his map, each each of these viewpoints is needed to construct a cohesive vision of your organization and messages that serves internal and external goals.

To communicate that cohesive vision and in relevant ways, you need a messaging platform—a guide to how to talk about the company and its offerings in a way that is directly relevant to your goals and your audiences.

Using a messaging platform, your company can communicate consistent messages about--

• the attributes that differentiate your company from the competition

• your value to your target market, based on your audience's known needs and motivations

• how specific products and services address your audiences' needs and problems

The same way De'Barbari blended several visual perspectives into one, your messaging platform should be based on insights (evidence-based and relationship-informed) from everyone involved in strategy and the customer/member experience:

• executives

• product and services subject matter experts

• sales and marketing staff

• events and education staff

• anyone else customer- or member-facing

By basing your messaging platform on a blend of informed perspectives, you can communicate in a consistent manner that supports business goals (what the company wants) and audience goals (what the market demands).

Additionally, if your organization is positioned to offer a unique view of your industry or profession because of your position within it, your research, and/or your ability to curate information from a variety of sources, your synthesized vision can—like De'Barbari's map—provide unequaled value.

The effort you spend collaborating on a cohesive approach to communications will go a long way toward providing a view of your organization that incorporates the "big picture" information about your company's differentiators plus the decision-empowering information that gets your target audiences to engage with you.

Put cohesive messaging out on your website and in all communications channels, and you've mapped out your own success.

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If you'd like help developing audience-focused messaging, or understanding your audiences better through research, get in touch.

More about De’Barbari’s map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_Venice#/media/File:Jacopo_de'_Barbari_-_View_of_Venice_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg