Category Archives: communications

#OURDAY: One day a year like this to see you right

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It’s the annual local government Twitter event today and it got me thinking.

Five years ago I was part of a team at the first local authority to tweet what they were doing across 24-hours.

We won an award for it. But it wasn’t until 10 minutes before the 7am start time that I really thought it would work when I posted a tweet from the corporate account to say that environmental health officers were investigating a noisey cockerel on a deprived housing estate.

In following years the LGA picked up on it as a model and have run sector-wide events.

I’ve had high hopes for the model to help tell the day-to-day story of all the 1,200 activities that local government does. I’m not at all sure that it has managed to do everything it can. It’s not collectively banged a call-to-action drum for social care, for example. Or for people to join libraries or some other service task.

As Twitter slips from third to 5th most popular social media platform maybe the time is right to expand it in future to other platforms. However that may look. Evolve, adapt, learn, iterate.

But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe its enough purely a chance for local government people to be bold, stand tall, be proud of what they do and celebrate all the day-to-day things that build a bigger picture.

If for one day a year local government people can be proud of themselves and each other then that’s no bad thing. If you’ve taken part, well done. If you’ve persuaded someone else to too, even bigger well done.

Or ‘One day like this a year will see me right,’ as Elbow singer Guy Garvey once sang.

Picture credit: raql / flickr

POP STAR: What I learned from one of the most powerful men in pop music: be a geek

A few years ago I did the PR for the most famous man in Walsall you’ver never heard of.

Sure, the borough is not over-stocked with famous people. Three Men in a Boat author Jerome K. Jerome came from the place and so did Noddy Holder, swimmer Ellie Simmonds and drum and bass pioneer Goldie. All good within their own field, sure.

So, in that list most people wouldn’t add Steve Jenkins.

Steve who?

You will have bought, listen to or hummed any of the more than 150 top 40 hits he was connected with. Think Billy Ocean, Steps, The Stone Roses, Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Steps, Kylie Minogue. They wouldn’t be where they are without Steve Jenkin’s role in the machinery behind them.

Steve started his career in the music industry in the 1970s with The Beatles’ management company before moving through the industry to become MD of Jive Records. He did the promo for Stock Aiken and Waterman. He was part of a team who signed an unknown Britney Spears. In the industry he was one of the most powerful men for a very long time.

How did I get to know him?

He’s proud of Walsall so we staged an exhibition of his gold discs, fan memorabelia and the social history of pop music. It was great. He brought Pete Waterman along and a load of others.

So what?

I was reminded of him by this YouTube interview he gave where he talked about the slightly dark art of targeting record shops that featured in the chart returns. His team would go from store-to-store, offer free records for display and then quietly move them to the front of the rack. So, people browsing through ‘K’ would be met with Kylie Minogue straight away, for example. As Steve says, this was all above board and would only have a marginal impact. But if persued energetically it maybe the difference between a new chart entry at 29 and 35.

Here he is talking about it:

So why is that on a comms blog?

Simple. During the months of working on the exhibition one thing above all struck me. He was a geek. In the best sense of the word. He was a geek about the pop charts in the 70s, 80s, and 90s especially. He knew everything about it. How it worked. How it didn’t work. Because he knew it backwards he knew where the difference could be made. So, he knew when to release a record and which Woolworth stores to promote it in. Him and Pete Waterman would plan the promo campaign for bands while on the way to Walsall games.

He was a joy to do press with. Five journalists would spend 20 minutes with him one after another and all leave with a brilliant different anecdote, He has an autobiography you may like.

If only the social web was around when we ran the exhibition. We could have by-passed everyone and gone straight to the fan sites.

Take this lesson from him… know your stuff backwards. Kick the tyres. Learn. See what others do. See where you can get better. Experiment. Be bold.

Above all, pick a subject. Love it. Be a geek on it.  Know it backwards.

Picture  credit: Marco Verch / Flickr

EMOTIONAL DATA: How the f**k did that happen? A serious lesson for comms people

When you heard about the shooting of JFK or the death of Diana you may recall where you were when you heard it.

In years to come – if the planet lives that long – we may recall where we were when we heard that Donald Trump was elected President.

History – if the planet lives that long – will make sense of the shift and in a booklined study someone will look back and think all this was expected.

They may sift through a pile of  sources that all say roughly the same thing… how the f*** did that happen?

Election data blogger Ian Warren uses those six words to open up a blog which comms people would be well served to read. He looks at the data of the last five key elections and looks at the emotion used by both sides. It is, he says, 5-0 to emotion.

The standout point in all of this chimes with a conclusion made at a commscamp session last summer. In a battle between head v heart, heart wins. It’s the emotion, stupid.

The key learning of the last year or so has been that the communication of effective emotional messages is currently beating data alone. This is particularly true in the age of social media which is effectively a delivery system for emotional weapons. Allied to which there is more volatility in our politics than there has ever been.

If social media is effectively a delivery system for emotional weapons then virtual reality as the ultimate empathy machine when it grows larger as Mark Zuckerburg says it will will be that ten times over.

What does this means for the future of facts, reason and logic? I genuinely don’t know.

But above all it reinforces the need to tell emotional stories, to appeal to the heart and to make content that people will engage with. John Lewis got this last year. They used loneliness to stoke emotion along with memory, a familiar song and not talking about the sell. They have used a similar formula this year.

So, if a department store can get it at Christmas, shouldn’t we all all year round?

Emotion, it seems, is for life.

Picture credit: Ben Seidelman / Flickr

BBC EXPERT: Fear change in tech? You’ve seen nothing…

Worried the world is changing too fast? Here’s a thought. You’ve seen nothing.

In 1973, former BBC tech writer James Burke had imagined what 1993 would look like. He came up with what looked like wildly futuristic. Databanks, personal data storage and computers in schools. Older people would be confused, he said.

In 2013, he spoke on BBC Radio 4’s PM. It’s an interview that fried my brain at the time and it’s rattled around in my head off and on for a while.

Fear change? Brother, sister you’ve seen nothing, as Burke says:

“Something is going to happen in 40 years time, if my guess is right that will change things more than since we left the caves. The next 20 years are going to move so fast and in so many directions at once that we’re going to have a job just keeping up.

“The problem is, as we try and solve problems like privacy, feedimng the poor ovf the world and solving the ozone layer we spend months and years of committee time trying to solve these short term problems while in the background in 14,000 laboratories around the world nanotechnology is creeping along very quietly.

“A nano metre is about 1/70,000th of a human hair so one nano metre is the size of about three atoms. There are systems that allow you to manipulate atoms to use them to build molecules to build stuff.

“In about 40 years, and this is not me speaking this is a Nobel prize winner called Richard Feynman who said this all 50 years ago who said there are no physical laws that mean we can’t produce a physical nano-factory.”

Your personal nano-factory, Burke explained, could work as a desktop 3D printer using air, water and dirt and ascetelene gas and you can make anything you like. Anything.

“We will in about 40-years time become entirely autonomous. In other words, be able to produce everything they need for virtually nothing. That will destroy the present social economic and political system because they will come pointless.

There will be no need for nations or governments, he argues. They are there to regulate shortage, protect you and re-distribute wealth and if there is no shortage there is no need for them.

“We have spent the last 150,000 talkative years dealing with the problem of scarcity. Every institution, every value system everfy aspevct of our life has been determined by the need to share out. After the nano factory does its thing we will then be faced with the problem of abundance and in a society where there is no need what’s the point of government.”

There will be no need for social institutions or even cities, Burke says.

So, really, dear reader, you not getting Snapchat may be looked at, if it is looked at all, with mirth far greater than the Smash TV ad robots.  Of course, this is all prediction.

You can listen to the audio clip here:

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CLEVER DOG: What the John Lewis Christmas ad tells you about comms right now

“It is,” as Walsall’s finest Noddy Holder annually says, “Chriiiiiiiiiiistmas.”

Or rather, it’s only Christmas when you hear Slade, eat a mince pie and argue over presents.

Well, it always was until the recent addition nine years ago of the launch of the John Lewis Christmas TV advert.

And 2016 has been no exception. Here is the advert with Buster the Boxer:

Contained within it is everything you need to know about comms in 2016.

Things bleed between channels lots

What is launched on TV now instantly shared across social media, the Press, TV, radio as well as the watercooler. While the launch on TV itself was co-ordinated the social media launch was simultaneous. So, while you watched the telly you may have surfed a tablet. You’d have got the content there too.

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YouTube v Facebook? It’s both

Within 48-hours 7.4 million views had been recorded on YouTube. The views figure was 25 million for Facebook. It will be interesting to see how these figures map out in the coming weeks. Often the buzz is translated to quick views on Facebook then YouTube catches up.

It’s about the emotion not the 

The John Lewis Christmas ad has been about making you feel something. Often, shared values. Friendship. Companionship. Family. This is fascinating. If we feel we are being sold to we get defensive. If we are connected with an emotion we open up. So we buy things from them.

The traditional media are a key part of this.

The content was embedded in newspaper websites and shared extensively across the internet. The new TV-ad also competed for column inches in the print editions too.

Video still tells a story

It’s been something I’ve spent a lot of time talking about. Video is a powerful platform for content. The skills of story telling learned around a camp fire are still valid. The language of film is the langiuage of the web. Story telling arts learned by journalists are still relevant. At two minutes 10 seconds the video works on YouTube.

It’s not Christmas unless there is a parody (part one)

A video made in the summer by a student for an A-level project got 1.2 million years after it was picked up by the internet. A heartwarming story of two snowmen in a snowglobe was made and tells a love story. Aaah. How 2016. We can make our own content and it can be huge.

It’s not Christmas unless there is a parody (part two)

An Adam and Joe-style parody was made and posted within 24-hours of the original with toys taking the place.

It’s not Christmas unless there is a heated debate about the quality of the John Lewis TV ad

Honestly, I don’t remember this happening when I was a kid. Woolworths just made their pile them up and sell them quick tour of the aisles that featured the Goodies and that was that. Nobody was moved. Nobody felt compelled to critique it. Yet, the internet was quickly filled with people taking a strongly-held view of how they thought the advert made them feel. It is, after all, an advert. Not the Christmas Day night Only Fools and Horses special.

Brandjamming is a thing, apparently, not a made-up word

It’s hard to know what words will emerge in 2017. In late 2016 I came across ‘brandjamming.’ No doubt this is because I live a sheltered life. It’s when a campaign gatecrashed the brand to campaign for brands to avoid spending money with newspapers who they say are taking a hardline view of Brexit and other matters.

BIG DIGITAL: Digital comms is much, much bigger than comms

I heard something this week… then read something that chimed with it.

At the Association of Police Communicators event in Grantham I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen for a while After exchanging pleasantries, I asked what was keeping them busy.

A conversation that challenged

“Actually, I’m wondering about taking digital out of communications altogether. Because it should really be in other parts of the business too.”

They then spoke about the £70,000 they’d saved someone else through a digital process.

There’s a good point there. But take digital comms out of comms? It’s good to be challenged.

There’s certainly no point in having a lovely piece of digital communications on a wider process that’s a bit rubbish. Or for comms people to sit in a room and never talk to anyone or be involved with anything.

A paragraph that chimes

Then I read this from the digitally talented Sarah Lay who left her local government job recently.

For you see all communications and communicators should now be digital – they should be equipped with the skills and knowledge to work to the demands of digital, often as the primary channel. But digital is not purely communications – it is also customer service, it is IT and technology, it is behaviour and analytics, it is marketing and product / service development.

It’s that thing again.

Don’t just communicate for the sake of it. Work out why you are communicating then measure it. That way you can look finance in the eye.

Definitely developing new skills.

LIFESAVER: “Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.”

Here’s the slide I keep coming back to and have done for months.

W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. His work has been acclaimed as being one of the key factors that led to the Japanese industrial boom from 1950 to 1960.

He is absolutely right. Without data you are just another person with an opinion.

During my career I’ve not always appreciated this. My career has been a struggle between thought and action. As a journalist, I was measured by action. Write the story, get the scoop. Long term planning was literally tomorrow.

But as I’m often now taking the bigger picture I see the value of data to help you calmly make decisions.

The problem with data is that it doesn’t kick the door down and demand you send out a press release. It’s dull. It’s a pile of numbers. Yet, what stories it can tell you if you spend long enough panning for it like a Klondike fontiersperson hunched over a pan rext to a running stream.

Good data can save a life.

It can tell you, as I heard today at the Association of Police Communicators conference, that abusive behaviour starts in the teenage years. So, comms has been targeted at teenagers that abusive relationships are not acceptable because the data said that’s when offenders start.

So shouldn’t you spend more time panning for data?

 

 

 

 

LOVE ACTUALLY: When you’re communicating head v heart, heart wins

“How?” said one person in the packed room. “How the hell did that happen?”

More than 20 people were crammed into a small room with a dozen chairs at commscamp in Birmingham for the topic on Brexit.

After 40-minutes of pulling apart the claim, counter-claim and post-fact democracy one moment of clarity emerged of how the campaign ended as it did.

Leave won because they appealed to the heart not the head.

Remain lost because they appealed to the head.

As a piece of clarity it’s drifted into my head several times since.

That big pile of numbers you’re trying to communicate? Can you find something that appeals to the heart?

Stop. Think of times when you’ve been moved by the heart. Me? More than 12-months ago the refugee found that when three-year-old Aylan Kurdi drowned and was fetched from the surf by a policeman.

In the US, the family of the dead war veteran Donald Trump picked on appealed to the heart too.

Look around you and you’ll find more.

The ability to understand with the head but tell a story to appeal to the heart is priceless for someone looking to communicate.

Do you?

Picture credit: Bex Walton / Flickr 

MEDIA TODAY: ‘We are not in a 24/7 news cycle. We are in a 360-degree, 3D news cycle.’

“I love newspapers,” legendary Sunday Times editor Harold Evans once said, “But I’m intoxicated by the power and possibility of the internet.”

I get that.

It’s hard not to be a participant or a watcher in the media landscape in 2016 without being fascinated at how fast it evolves.

There was an excellent interview by Alex Spence on political website politico with the outgoing director of communications at the Prime Minister’s Office. Craig Oliver spent six years in the post. Leave politics aside, he has some really useful observations. You can read full post here. Here are a few highlights:

On the changing political media: “The reality is that we are not in a 24/7 news cycle. We are in a 360-degree, 3D news cycle, when news is coming at you all the time, constantly, and the next headline is not the top of the next hour on a 24-hour news station, but in the time it takes for somebody to type out a tweet.”

On which media — TV, radio, newspapers, digital, social — now has most influence on political news: “You’re saying, ‘Is the TV news the most important thing?’, and actually that feels slightly dated as a question. Yes it’s massively important but I still think, what are we saying to the newspapers, what are we saying to the broadcasters, what are we saying to social media, I treat each of those quite equally. They all bleed into each other. Increasingly you have news organisations that do websites, podcasts, vodcasts, you know, essentially mini-TV programs, little videos, little audio bites, it’s all merging together. It’s how are you impacting traditional newspapers, how are you impacting the traditional broadcasters, how are you having an effect on social media and that kind of digital world. It is starting to mesh and move but you still do have to think in each of those three ways about each story.”

On the enduring influence of the newspapers: “Anybody who did this job who didn’t think that newspapers had a very powerful influence on the political debate in this country would not be understanding the situation properly.”

These are points that any comms, PR or social media person needs to understand. It echoes something I’ve been saying for a while. Know your landscape. Know your stats. Don’t be a channel fascist and close things out entirely. Use the best channel. Not the sexiest.

Picture credit: Hakan Dahlstrom / Flickr

 

SIMPLE TIPS: How to run your own unconference

My favourite day of the year from a professional point of view is one where I earn no money and work like a Trojan with others to make happen.

Commscamp has been staged for the past four years in Birmingham and brings 180 largely public sector comms people together.

It’s an unconference which means that the agenda is decided on the day.

But aside from the conversation, ideas and connections from the day the best thing was hearing some people also want to stage an unconference too. There may be one. There may be two. Who knows? Fantastic. I really hope they do it.

The basics about unconferences I learned from Dave Briggs, Steph Gray and Lloyd Davies. All wonderful people. We staged unconferences because we’d been to a few and fancied having a go ourselves. John Peel used to say punk made it easy. All you had to do was push over a telephone box and sell your brother’s motorbike and you had enough money for a demo. It’s not that different with an unconference.

So here are a few tips.

  1. No-one owns it. Lloyd is quite right in saying that unconferences are not owned by anyone. So have a go.
  2. Find some likeminded people.
  3. Just book some space.
  4. Put up an eventbrite to distribute the tickets.
  5. Scrape together a smidge of sponsorship and UKGovcamp can help with that.
  6. Shout about it.
  7. On the day relax and have fun.
  8. That’s it.
  9. That’s really it.

See? It’s that simple.

I’d also be tempted to do it slightly seperate with what you are doing at work. So, it’s not the day job. But it’s a seperate thing helps the day job. That way you get all the fun stuff but none of the middle manager barriers.

One absolute true-ism from Lloyd is that everyone who goes tends to to love them. But then would like to make a minor change. ‘It was great, but if only we could pre-plan the sessions, that would be marvellous.’ Or whatever the suggestion is.

Don’t.

Keep it simple.

Just have some space. A Facebook group works to get people thinking about sessions beforehand. Decide what you are going to talk about on the day. Then give the thing to the people in the room and they will always, always, always deliver.

Picture credit: Sasha Taylor / Flickr

 

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