Background score of communication

(extract from the forthcoming book Decoding Communication)

No background music

If the force of attraction of a brand is a natural phenomena, why does it need to be embellished? Why can’t its natural attractiveness get results?

To answer that, I must share an anecdote about a friend from the world of movie-making who showed me the deep-rooted relevance of communications.

An animated raconteur (he was often invited to give story presentations to producers), he not only was involved with the film industry for a living but he also seemed to watch movies for sustenance - seeing two or even three a day. His personal life had been tragic – a victim of a broken family, drug-addiction and a difficult recovery, and failed attempts to prop the family business of renting movie equipment. His cousins were prominent actors in the fan-crazy Hindi film industry, which did not make his life any easier. Now a volunteer-speaker at Narcotics Anonymous, he devoted all his non-movie time in convincing addicts why they should quit, using his life as an example. He is funny, selfless, and a complete stoic.

One evening he invited a few friends to watch a movie - a regular family-drama, on the larger-than-life screen in his house. The movie was an over-the-top Bollywood masala  and we watched the movie like friends do - opining on every aspect of the movie using our half-baked knowledge of the movie-world, taking jabs at the director, actors and everyone else. Throughout the movie, my friend stayed glued to the screen, never even once partaking in our digressions. And, he was crying unabashedly. Copious tears flowed even at the smallest emotional scene. We joked about it among ourselves, but he almost did not seem to notice us. The movie over, he washed his face, and was transformed back to the friend we knew, back to his former self - funny, and yet without much sign of emotion.

Much later, his father, who he loved dearly, passed away. My friend did not show any pain or emotion, though everyone knew how much he felt the loss. When I met him a few weeks later over coffee and compared the two situations, the movie and his father’s demise, and asked him why he did not cry or express any emotion in the latter, while the movie had made him cry uncontrollably. He answered spontaneously, “It is because life does not have background music.” He also admitted that he was himself only when he watched movies - it transported him but also allowed him to be himself.

I thought much about what my friend had said, and realized one thing. The embellishments of communications are necessary to transport the audience to an experience of the Brand. Our relationships with different people and things force us to behave in different ways, so much so that we often mask our real selves. And it takes the background score of communication to make us 'see' our true selves better. Good communication from any source actually helps one communicate with oneself better and is like communion with oneself.