Joseba Kamio, director of the communications company Harman, was the speaker during the two days of the day and on the second day he pointed out how some had told him the day before that he had given wood to the dialect. He clarified that his intention was not to give him wood, but to put what he noticed on the table.

In the two mornings of the conference the room was almost full and although the afternoon round table was less crowded – the beach is one jump from the Miramar Palace in San Sebastián and the weather was excellent – few piper.
At the time of the coffee, the member of an organization that works at the Basque Country mentioned: “We’re always talking about how to communicate.” The Basque technician from a small town told us: “I’ve heard Kamio talk about it more than once. It shakes you and that's why I'm here. Yes, when we promote the Basque language we use eternal forms of communication, we have inertias. But how do we go from theory to practice?”

The course was organized by Belen Uranga of the Cluster and Pilar Calcada, director of communication of Innobasque, and was not a succession that fell from the sky. At coffee time, as in the room, there was concern; what image are we giving of the Basque language? How effective are our communication strategies? The speakers – in addition to those already mentioned, Joxerra Garzia (UPV/EHU), Iñaki Iurrebasoko (Aztiker) and Igor Calzada (University of Nevada) – tried to say those that the audience did not want to hear.

Black comes to the White House

More than one speaker recognized the complexity of the subject; because we are talking about communication and what we have to communicate, the language. Joseba Kamio said on the first day that the subject and the objective that we had on the table are very complex. On the second day – because the wood had already been softened – he pointed out that the subject is very complex. Pilar Calzada, wanting to awaken hope, gave us two options: to dare and try or kill ourselves. It wasn’t easy for the Negro to get to the White House, but they did.

The need to adapt to new times

How to promote Basque in the new context of communication? I mean, in the digital age, in the age of globalization, how to prepare the message? For whom? For whom? How to get it to you? The model of sender-channel-receiver is dead and the social networks provide a thousand other possibilities. Have we started taking advantage of them?

As for his capacity for change, Kamio said clearly that he sees the whole dialect as institutionalized, comfortable. The agent feels incapable of change and expects the communication agencies to do their homework. The director of Harman told us about his experience, linked to the Basque language and others. The intention of most clients is to hire the communication agency and make the communication plan, which means that the organization or association works less, and Kamio believes that the opposite is that, even if the communication agency is hired, the client has to work more than before. Pilar Calzada has had a similar experience; the organization, the company, has noticed that it is impermeable. Kamio asks the question: do we need fifteen sociologists in organizations or fifteen marketers – that is, marketers?

What's the message?

You have to develop communication strategies to promote the Basque language, you have to think about campaigns, but what is the message? Joxerra Garzia used the example of the Villabona-Amasa route to explain this issue. We want to go to Amasa, although we do not know where Villabona is. First we have to create the image of origin, that is, what is the image of the Basque language? What do people think about Russian? If we don’t know that, we won’t know which way to go to get the image we want to give to Basque. Garzia said thus: “It doesn’t matter what you think, you have to know what people think.” Kamio took one more step: “We’ve been with people for a long time.” The

director of the company, Harman, explained what he considered to be the characteristics of the communication strategies of the dialect. The dialect develops the psychology of the oppressed, defensive psychology. It is constantly working on communication, but above all it is quantitative: registration data, so many demonstrations... Instead of figures, he would communicate experiences. The indicators of the psychology of the oppressed would be pity, denunciation, anger, shouting, condemnation... He compared the Basque language with Greenpeace. Greenpeace tells us that the planet is dying, but it also carries out drastic actions to the point where activists risk their lives. The dialect says that the Basque language is dying, but the actions are not equivalent to this. There is no correlation between what has been said and what has been done. By the way, he proposed to look at ecological marketing for linguistic marketing, because there is something to learn in this field.

Question from Belen Uranga: but does the message have to be unique? Response from Kamio: “Yes, and please.” It's hard to work on just one message. This has been highlighted by more than one speaker and listener, who, in the words of Joxerra Garzia, gathers for the hustle and bustle of the dialectic debate. Are you ready to work together on a unique message to promote Basque? Pilar Calzada gives an example: he is carrying out campaigns in different localities to promote the Basque language in commerce. Maybe we're running similar campaigns in one and the other. Can these actors with the same objective not come together and prepare the campaign?

Housework for the Cluster

Communication strategies, yes, but they must be done beforehand. Agents who want to promote the Basque language should be informed, they should know what we are talking about. During the course, it was recognized that this work can be carried out by the Sociolinguistic Cluster. The basis is sociolinguistics, which, in Kamio’s words, are otherwise communication strategies, campaigns, aesthetic happenings or diverticism.

Therefore, on the one hand, the need to have solid foundations for the development of good communication strategies was emphasized, and on the other hand, both speakers and listeners put homework to the Sociolinguistics Cluster: to do the work of theorizing about communication strategies and compile the communication strategies that have been carried out.

Here and there was a feeling that what is being done in the field of communication in general is not valid today. That the frustration is widespread in the way in which the objectives set and carried out by the campaign are not met. Kamio told listeners that they might have gone to the course looking for recipes, but he didn’t have any.
Instead of recipes, we were shaken by the audience, the dialect. The fear of Kamio, if he had given us wood. What he said in succession: it serves to make sculptures like burning wood.