As the authors of The Death of Propaganda, which expounds the Three Voices™  framework, in our opinion, while its principles provide useful insights for companies of all kinds, a Three Voices™ approach is best suited to knowledge-intensive companies—in particular, those whose key audiences are strongly involved with the company’s product or service area. Take the example of Adobe Inc.’s Voice of Industry site CMO.com,  Adobe’s audience is highly interested (or should be!) in ways of optimizing their marketing activities via information systems. So done right, it’s not a especially difficult to get decision-makers, at least those in larger companies who can afford Adobe’s marketing automation system, regularly involved with the subject matter.

On the other hand, we’ve tried to imagine whether, for example, a manufacturer of stainless steel screws could benefit from implementing a Three Voices™ strategy. The answer, we concluded, was “unlikely”. We may be wrong, but we find it hard to envision regular, meaningful discussions or user communities thriving in company-owned or sponsored Voice of Industry contexts around the topic of screws. Few things please us more, however, than to have our views challenged and our eyes opened to new applications of this framework.

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