There’s a time limit to this post. I hurry to write it before England play Columbia in the round of 16 at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
My first World Cup watching England was in 1982. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve been let down. Let’s get this straight. I’m a cynic.
How the FA used to communicate with video
There was a bloke called Graham Taylor who was the face of the FA. He was 40 in 1985 but his jowly face and provincial solicitor fashion mode made him look so much older. That he was the face of the FA tells you all you need to know. This is him in action, children, with an even older bloke called Ted Croker.
Fun, no?
How the FA now communicate
Coming into the 2018 World Cup, the FA ditched how they normally communicate the squad they’d be sending. Rather than a man walking into a room and reading a list of names to a roomful of journalists they released it straight to their audience.
They made a video aimed at young people of young people shouting the names of players out. A girl in a kit slides in celebration shouting Danny Rose’s name, kids on a bus Harry Kane. It’s a list of optimism and celebration.
Here’s the interesting thing.
My video skills colleague Steven Davies dislikes it. He’s Welsh but he makes valid criticism of the video as sometimes hard to follow with regional accents, a lack of sub-titles and others.
I get that and I recognise the valid criticisms. But I love it. I love how it makes me feel optimistic.
It’s short. It has the demographic in mind. It’s visual with fast cuts and I love it.
Tournament video
It’s also not a one-off. Through the tournament the FA have been producing a stack of content from match highlights to behind the scenes content and quizzes between players that are all shareable across their YouTube, Facebook and Twitter channels.
But just in case it all goes wrong, I’m posting this blog ahead of the Columbia game.
I’m @danslee on Twitter and dan@comms2point0.co.uk. If you hate missing out on the good stuff subscribe to my weekly email here.
This tweet from the University of Reading either is just the right side of things or oversteps the mark.
We’ve had feedback over the last week that some people are unhappy with our plan to offer up to 14 scholarships to refugees living in the local area. To these people, we would like to say: Tough. Jog on. https://t.co/ioDLPp5crw
On the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group, there was dissenting voices between those who liked and those who think this is helping to coarsen debate.
There is no one size fits all with content. This may work in some organisations but not in others.
Using an unscientific yardstick, there are more than 5,000 likes and of the replies there was mix of comments.
So you are indifferent to the criticism or the opinion of those criticizing you, you feel no need to explain yourselves – interesting 🤣
There’s this amazing clip from late 1970s Blue Peter where the presenters are demonstrating the first commercial mobile phone.
John Noakes stays in the studio while Peter Purves heads into the Blue Peter garden and whips out from under his mac an over the shoulder plastic phone. You can tell the smugness in his voice as he dials his colleague.
Ladies and gentlemen, the mobile phone.
And so, Artificial Intelligence – or AI – will become as normal as texting or taking a selfie is now. This is not sci-fi fantasy but what is happening today. Just less than four million Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices have been sold in the UK, researchers voicebot.ai say. By far the largest number in Europe.
But, what is Artificial Intelligence?
In 2018, most people don’t know what Artificial Intelligence is. But what they do know is it sounds scary. In a nutshell, they are computers that learn. The dictionary definition is computer systems that can complete tasks that normally require human intelligence such as visual recognition, speech recognition and decision making.
To get you started, I’d suggest taking six minutes to watch the HubSpot animation that makes it as Blue Peter as possible without a trip into the Italian Sunken Garden:
Artificial Intelligence can be very scary, can’t it?
AI at home is still the preserve of early adoptors. My video skills colleague Steven has had one for months. When he asks Google to do something it often even does the thing he’s asked it to do.
Me? I’m more struck by the rather excellent @internetofshit that talks RTs accounts of Teslas being stranded in the desert as they can only re-start with a mobile phone signal. Or the lift that can’t be used because of a system update.
In that context, AI is very, very scary indeed. But that’s not where AI is right now.
Artificial Intelligence is here, baby. Right here
Of course, its not all swarms of drones with machine guns. In fact. It’s hardly that at all. Former CIPR President Stephen Waddington has been leading some superb work to look at where AI is in PR. I simply cannot recommend his work enough.
Through the #AIinPR project, Stephen and around 20 volunteers have collated an open list of tools that already have elements of AI in them. The results are truly surprising. There are more than 150 tools identified that have an element of AI in them.
What’s striking about the list is how commonplace the tools are. Link shortener bitly, for exampls, has been a staple for the best part of a decade. Mailchimp, If This Then That and Canva are staples of my working day. Your’s too, maybe.
So, if AI is also day-to-day, doesn’t that mean that AI is already having an impact on PR and comms?
The answer to that is ‘yes.’
How much AI is affecting you… and will affect you
Again, Stephen Waddington’s inspired research is useful to map the next steps. His work leads into CIPR’s excellent ‘Humans Still Required’ report by Canadian academic Jean Valin. This sets out how much of PR is already AI-affected. At the moment, 12 per cent of PR is potentially AI. That’s things like evaluation, data processing, programming and curation.
But it starts getting even more interesting when looking at the future. The figure rises to 36 per cent by 2023. There’s a whole range of areas that can be maximised from stakeholder analysis to reputation monitoring. Areas like ethics, law and career management stay outside the long reach of the robots.
All this is striking. But where does it affect you?
The future is already quietly colliding with the presentout of view. There is no one single moment but a series of moments. It’s already happening. There is no announcement to close 100 pits but 100,000 decisions to use different software that can help you do your job more easily.
AI will come not through the organisation but through suppliers. In all likelihood, this won’t be driven by individual teams writing code but an arms race between providers. A to-be-invented Google tool, for example. Or the news management software company that adds AI elements to existing AI elements to its own existing press release management system.
At first, AI knowledge will be outsourced. Given the rapid developments in the sector and the fact that existing public sector teams are busy enough already there isn’t the headspace. Advice from outside will be important at the start. It’ll be as much about efficiencies as it is delivering a better job.
Sit back, but don’t sit back. Others will be doing the hard yards to make this work. But don’t sign your future away. A baseline need to understand AI is needed. You won’t need to know how to code. But you will know how that code can affect you and most importantly of all, you’ll need to know the ethics and the law of it. For the public sector, this is going to be tricky. Right now, there isn’t a publicly-accepted code of ethics for AI. But there are broader approaches that can govern it across the sector. Like GDPR, for example.
Leaders will have to lead to bring teams along. AI is and can be scary. It is different. Yes, it can mean fewer people doing the job. But the tasks it may replace are likely to be the routine in comms and PR rather than the the big ticket. You won’t be sending a robot along the corridor to the crisis meeting with emergency planning to discuss the three day old fire. You will be automating the fire’s evaluation.
The risk of ‘computer says no’ IT teams. PR and comms risk outsourcing AI knowledge at their own peril. From fear or ignorance, there is a temptation to look to IT for answers. But with many IT teams being the blocker and struggling even 10 years on with social media, this isn’t a strategy to take. You need to know some of the basics yourself to work out what can and can’t be done.
Data driven decisions. Often public sector comms can be driven by personality, politicians and practice. One of the great achievements of the UK’s Government Communications Service is to move away from comms that’s just churning stuff out for the sake of it. But other teams and other organisations still shoot from the hip. In an emergency, there is nothing better than working at speed on-the-hoof. That skill will stay hugely valuable. But there feels like a clash between this and the more data-driven strategic approach of AI. It’ll be interesting to see how this works itself out.
Reputational damage and lots of it. The application of bad AI in parts of the sector will be keenly felt. The self-driving car delivering meals on wheels to the wrong house. The very idea of self-driving cars delivering meals on wheels in the first place. This will all be bread and butter. The benefits of AI won’t be celebrated but the disasters absolutely will be. There is a huge role for comms in explaining – and warning – against the delivery.
‘Hey Google, what time does the tip close?’ Websites are useful but cumbersome things. Your organisation will not prosper if they can’t work with tools like Alexa. One idea kicking around is for a box in the kitchen that talks to the local council website and flashes the colour of the right bin that needs to go out the night before. That’s AI right there, that is.
Learning. Ever learning. The comms person who thinks they’ve learned everything is the one who will be replaced. This is not remotely a bold statement. We’re seeing it. If the only skill you have is writing press releases that’s not something you’ll be getting a new job with. But a range of skills and a willingness to learn gives you a chance of a career. AI just underlines this. Stephen Waddington’s advice to learn, read and keep learning is valuable.
Open the pod bay doors, Hal. In 2001 A Space Odyssey the human is faced down by Hal the robot who refuses to open the pod bay doors. This is one moment is the nightmare scenario for humans. It’s the moment when computers take control. But I’m genuinely not seeing this in comms and PR just yet. Hal the robot refusing to do write the Facebook update? Probably not. R2D2 software running the alerts and producing the reports for you? Then next week producing machine-learnt better reports? Absolutely.
My Mum once did something astounding when she was younger. She blew out the Beatles.
She was about 20 and working in Liverpool city centre in the early 60s when a friend asked her to come see this new band that was playing lunchtime concerts at The Cavern club.
Off my Mum went, but half way down the steps she halted hit by a wall of sweaty heat rising from the subterranean club.
“I’m not going in there,” she said, “it’s too hot and smelly.”
And by those slight chances history passes you by.
Your audience will make a decision on whether or not to watch your video within a few seconds. Surprised by this? Pick up your smartphone and go scrolling. You’ll quickly come across a video auto-playing. How much did you watch? A few seconds? And then you scrolled down to the next?
The Beatles came from an era when singles were king. So, they made records to be singles. They needed a hook straight away. They needed you to listen.
When I think of The Beatles’ ‘Taxman’ I think of the count in and the riff. For ‘Twist and Shout’ I hear the guitar riff and John Lennon singing ‘shake it up baby’. Think of any Beatles song and within five seconds you’ve got a hook. You need to think of this when you are making a short form video. Put your best content right at the start. Make people watch. If you save it for the end chances are it’ll just be you.
Beatles video tip #2: John Lennon and the Beatles are bigger than Jesus
When I was a reporter I found hard news easy to write. Put who, what, when, where, why, how in the intro for a hard news story and you have a ‘clothes line’ interview. Dead easy.
I found writing a feature much harder. A feature is a more expansive think piece where you can be more creative.
The best tip I came across for writing a feature was simply this… put the best line in the intro. So the first line of the John Lennon interview should be:
“We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”
So, put your best visual content at the start to get people to stop scrolling and watch.
All video is no the same… it really does depend on what channel you are looking to post it to.
Where your audience is should frame what channels you are looking that.
In turn, those channels should have a big say in how long your video should be.
So, if you are aiming at people on Facebook, 15 seconds for video that is likeley to drop through the timeline is best. Longer than that and your audience is likely to be evaporating.
Here’s an update on the optimum times.
There is research that says 30 seconds for LinkedIn is enough.
There’s a number of other ways to present video I’ve not touched upon. VIMEO has fallen behind in recent years but still has fans and you can upload via VIMEO LIVE with a premium account. You can go live via YOUTUBE LIVE but there is little accessible guidance for the amateur. FLICKR can take video of up to 1GB but will only play back the first three minutes.
360 & VR Facebook and YouTube in particular are chasing this new way of shooting video but there is little out there on maximum and optimum upload times.
It’s a fascinating time to be a comms person… new tactics emerge and old ones fall away.
But like anything, your decisions should be driven less by the shiny and what will get you results.
So, Facebook Live. It’s something I’ve been fascinating by for some time.
The idea is quite simple. You post to Facebook and you have the option to create a live broadcast from your device’s camera as simply as posting some words.
But where does it fit into the landscape?
It’ll help you beat the Facebook algorithm
Being admin of a page used to be such fun. You posted something and your audience saw it, liked it, commented on it and shared it. You sat back and took the applause. But since Facebook Zero and Mark Zuckerburg’s announcement earlier this year that you’ll see less from pages and more from friends and family that’s long gone.
Right now though, use a Facebook Live broadcast and you’ll be reaching more people.
Cool.
But what do we do?
Here’s where it gets interesting because you are really not hemmed in right now by convention. We’re all learning but please, for heaven’s sake, look outside your sector to see how others are doing it.
Sure, think calls to action. But also see your broadcast as educational, fun and interesting that will build your audience for a time when you really want them to do something. A social channel that’s just one long call to action isn’t fun.
Broadcast because the value is to be in the right place at the right time
English Heritage look after Stonehenge. This collection of Neolithic stone tablets has fascinated people for thousands of years. At the moment of winter and also summer solstice the sun shines perfectly at an angle. It is a special place to be. So a live broadcast of the moment and the build up to it makes sense.
Broadcast because you’ve got something visually interesting
National Rail celebrated the longest day of the year with a live broadcast from a GoPro in the train driver’s cab of the Aberdeen to Plymouth service. This is the longest in Britain and runs through some stunning scenery.
It says that the country is amazing, that as a feat of engineering its incredible and also that National Rail understand how the internet works.
Some kickbacks emerged when it was admitted that the video was not as live but the playing of a video recording. But I get that. But then again, what would a livestreamed suicide do for anyone? Or for the organisation’s reputation if the train broke down?
Broadcast because you are commenting on breaking news
Look at what newspapers are doing. They don’t call themselves newspapers anymore. They’re media companies that happen to produce some print.
When the football fixtures were published my team Stoke City’s local media company ran a Facebook Live to run through them. Leeds away is first up. They incorporated comments from readers – or should I see viewers – too.
The camera work wasn’t amazing. It doesn’t have to be.
Broadcast for a Q&A
Over in the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group I’m admin of, we ran a Q&A ahead of GDPR on how they may affect websites.
From the more than 2,000 members of the group we had more than 900 views and more than 50 questions and comments which was fine with us. We’re a niche but highly active forum.
If you’re a member you can see the broadcast here. But as the stream went into a closed group we can’t embed it elsewhere on the internet.
I co-deliver workshops on live video skills that goes into the planning and the delivery using some handy BBC principles.
Before you go live, run a test broadcast where you broadcast only to yourself. You can select ‘only you’ from the settings before you hit post. This allows you to see if your device can be help landscape or has to be held in upright portrait mode. At a big set-piece event like an election count you’ll need to be aware that media companies will more than likely be broadcasting.
But what if my audience isn’t on Facebook?
Then don’t use Facebook, you big silly. With Twitter, Periscope is the live app of choice and instagram and YouTube have their own functionality. But the numbers behind Facebook make it important.
I’ve heard it said that people are leaving Facebook. The stats don’t support that globally although I’ve heard of people leaving the platform in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica saga. That’s fine. I get it. But until there is a better way of sharing cat videos the mass audience isn’t leaving Facebook anytime soon.
Here are two myths about the NHS and neither are true.
Everyone who works in the NHS is amazing.
Everyone who works in NHS comms is amazing, too.
The NHS-focussed third edition of #futurePRoof came out this week. Published to mark the 70th anniversary of the service it is a collection of 26 essays around NHS communications. You can find out more here.
This could easily have fallen into the bear trap of being a big old back-slapping love-in but the value of this collection of writing is that it does start to ask difficult questions. It is a critical friend as well as cheerleader. Denis Campbell, health policy editor of The Guardian and The Observer, is brought in to give an objective view and bangs the table about the mixed quality of NHS comms people. There are some good and some bad, he says, but it is so important there are more good ones:
“I need the former to win out over the latter for both myself and for the sake of the service itself.”
After reading #futurePRoof, it’s a sentence that I keep coming back to.
Good, honest, hard working communications that takes a leadership role and speaks truth to power is something that cuts through many of the chapters in the book.
Here’s a truth. I love the NHS. I think it is the finest thing that Britain has given the world. But not everyone in the NHS is amazing and neither is everyone who works in NHS comms.
Everyone’s view of the NHS is shaped by their own experience
I grew-up in Stafford. My local hospital was the Mid-Staffs General hospital. When the news broke that up to 1,200 people died early across 50 months my Facebook timeline lit up with my friends’ families own horror stories. Some of my friends’ families were amongst the 1,200.
A short time after the news broke, I was at a conference where I overheard an NHS comms person attack everyone who ever criticises the NHS. It is a service that needs defending, he argued. It is a valuable service. It is. There was an embarrassed quiet when I pointed out that I was from Stafford and I genuinely wished that someone had listened to the criticism. So, while I love the NHS I know that sometimes it doesn’t work well and that shouldn’t be spun under the carpet but acknowledged and listened to.
The journalist who writes in the collection is right. We need the good NHS comms people to win the battle over the poor ones. Not just for my sake, but the sake of the service. Comms people should be the canary in the mine as well as being those seeking to explain the work of the organisation.
My family’s experience of the NHS
At its best, the NHS is amazing, My two children may not be alive but for smart-thinking midwives. My brother-in-law almost certainly wouldn’t be here. You probably have your own story, too. Ipsos Mori research puts Doctors and Nurses as the top two trusted professions trusted by more than 90 per cent of the population and there is a reason for that.
There is much good practice in the the third #futurePRoof. An account of the NHS visual identity update for 600 organisations is a useful starting point for someone struggling with the visual identity of one organisation. Ideas on working as part of the leadership team not the comms team are valuable. The importance of data and delivering against corporate objectives can’t be repeated too often. The NHS is an institution that needs critical friends and this book is that.
It should also be celebrated for focusing on the public sector. Here, good communicators can literally save lives.
I’ve just completed the first Facebook Live to the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group. More than 200 people watched the live broadcast and more than 50 asked a question or took part.
Big thank you to John Paul Danon from Council Advertising Network and to Eleri Salter from Haringey Council for taking part and sharing some valuable expertise.
A few things really shone through from the exercise.
As a platform, a Facebook Live is a good way to talk on an issue and solicit questions and discussion.
There is a perception that GDPR is a scary stick to beat people with. If you want it ti be it can be. But the glass half full view is that its an opportunity to get your act together on how you are use people’s data. You are still fine to use it. You just need to make sure you’ve got permission is all.
If there is a hit-list of people to be gone after by the Information Commissioner those at the top of the list are likely to be people who buy-up email lists and then spam them relentlessly.
Speaking of which, it’s amazing the amount of GDPR spam I’m getting in my inbox. Which undermines the authority of the sender somewhat.
You can do bright things with audience insight. It’s helping Haringey Council to better target those who may want to be foster carers, for example.
As a comms person, you need to know this stuff. Or at least have a working knowledge of it. It’s pretty fundamental.
You need to have permission to take someone’s picture or shoot them in a video. You need to set out explicitly what you’ll use that content for. The ‘general marketing on social media’ line won’t wash anymore.
I do wish someone would hurry up and built an app that comms people can use to capture permission and then turn into a searchable data base. There’s a massive opportunity for some bright person.
It’s always a bright idea to test broadcast a Facebook LIve before running the main broadcast. I did and spotted a few glitches.
Responding to people who join by waving and saying ‘hello’ to them isn’t such a bad idea.
The Information Commisioner’s Office will be running a public facing education campaign about GDPR. It would be useful for your organisation to build trust by getting right across that.
Council Advertising Network employ bright people who know their stuff.
Most councils use a lot of tools which may fall under GDPR. Don’t rip them out just to comply. Work out what you need to do.
Don’t delete your existing entire image library. Mark it with ‘don’t until the GDPR process is complete’.
The CIPR have got some really good resources if you are a member and Govdelivery have some useful stuff.
Big thanks if you chipped into the discussion or watched and also to John Paul and Eleri. This is the first of a series of occasional Facebook Live broadcasts from the headspace group.
Okay, heard the one about the unsolicted email from someone offering GDPR services?
I know. Funny, isn’t it?
Or an inbox full of emails asking you to re-sign-up to an email list?
There are changes looming with how people look after other people’s data. It’s causing a lot of people to look nervously for a golden bullet. There isn’t one, of course. You need to read some stuff on the subject youself rather than outsource it.
So, as a break from it all, here are some jokes captured from Twitter. Why a hashtag? To see if people would see the funny side of GDPR. They did. If you can’t laugh you’ll cry. The Erasure one is my favourite. How about you? I promise not to share.
That is none of your business. Data tracking is not allowed under any circumstances and the chicken has not given prior physical consent to being contacted. So you'll have no way of knowing if said chicken reached the other side.#GDPRjokes
Knock knock. Who's there? I'm asking as I need to ascertain who is attempting to gain entry to my joke. I won't use your name for any other purpose and you can ask me to forget (perhaps hit me with a stick) at any time. #gdprjokes
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walked into a council office – to complain that they’d been identified by reference to their nationality as a result of a data breach revealing special category data #gdprjokes
