The art of conversation – and why Bob Hoskins was right

As Bob Hoskins used to say, it is good to talk.

Yet increasingly, it seems many don’t agree.

Take a recent YouGov poll for example.

It revealed that almost half of us spend less than 15 minutes each day talking on the phone.

And the bleakest stat of all? One in ten of us simply refuse to take a call.

As a communications specialist, maybe I’m slightly biased but I think Bob had a point.

It really is good to talk – yet the art of conversation is vanishing.

Emails, WhatsApp and voice notes all serve a purpose. In our increasingly hectic world when we are constantly on the move, they can be real timesavers.

But we can too easily forget the immense power of a simple one-on-one conversation.

A conversation allows us to unearth so much more from the other side. It can splinter off down paths we hadn’t anticipated, allowing us to really see what’s bubbling underneath the other person.

In terms of PR, it allows us to unearth the real story.

That’s what we do at Harvey & Hugo – just ask Beth Wilson.

She runs a small but successful embroidery business in Teesside. She sought our help to promote an office move.

It was a positive story about growth, and one most agencies would settle for – but at Harvey & Hugo, we don’t leave a stone unturned.

We wanted to know more about Beth, her business and her life – and to see what else she had going on.

It just so happened to be that one of her fantastic designs was going to be shown to around two billion people at the Superbowl that weekend.

Fast-forward 48 hours, and Beth’s been on BBC and ITV – with around two dozen pieces of major coverage for her business.

That right there is the power of conversation – something too many agencies sadly now view as an inconvenience.

So many would rather phone it in than phone you.

A few generic questions via email or WhatsApp may be enough to form your press release, but will those questions stir emotion?

And will it help your story be felt?

That’s why I created Harvey & Hugo. I don’t just want to tell a story, I want to tell the story, one that your audience will truly invest in.

Recently, we celebrated our 50^th episode of PRsonal, our award-nominated podcast that tackles the real hard-hitting stories in people’s lives.

If you hadn’t noticed, podcasting is currently enjoying quite the boom. As a PR medium, it is red-hot.

Yet it is just people having a conversation – are we so starved of it ourselves that we are tuning into a stranger’s chit-chat for entertainment?!

So let us all start to look beyond voice notes and group chats – and keep the conversation alive.