Organizational communication barriers The use of the wrong medium

The use of the wrong medium

You have to announce a temporary hold on non-essential stationery spending in your department. How do you communicate this?
Believe it or not, I know of one company who were seriously considering holding a major public meeting about this, with the department head having to get up in front of the entire department in the staff restaurant and explain why her staff couldn't order disposable fountain pens for a while.
I know of one group that were thinking of rolling out a small internal initiative via an expensive multi-media cd-rom, one to be given to each member of staff.
In the first case a simple memo would have sufficed; in the second a simple announcement on their intranet would equally have gotten the message across.
Similarly, an advertising campaign on local radio would be a highly ineffective way of reaching the desired audience if the message was complex and really intended for a narrow niche audience.
A public presentation, with 'obligatory' PowerPoint TM slideshow full of complex charts and data, would be the wrong medium if the message you were trying to communicate would be better served by a white paper, or some similar print-based format that allowed the audience to digest the complexities at their own pace.
When considering which medium to use for which type of mesage you wish to communicate, it is wise to analyse the following:

• What is the fixed cost of production? Are there ad agency fees, broadcast or print fees that must be paid, irrespective of the number or volume of items produced?
  
• What are the variable costs -- such as cds, dvds, audio cassettes, printing costs?
  
• How long will it take to write, edit and produce your communication in your chosen medium?
  
• What percentage of your target audience are likely to have access to your chosesn medium at the time you choose to publish/play/present it?
  
• What percentage of your target audience will be likely to pay attention to your chosen medium?
  
• Is your message a complex one? Would your message be more easily and readily comprehended through auditory, tactile or visual (e.g reading or images) modalities?
  
• How quickly do you need your audience to comprehend and take action on your message?