Category Archives: communications

COMMS CHANGE: You need to re-think what post-truth comms looks like too

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Reading through the post-Trump and post-Brexit assessment of where we are one passage stood out.

It’s from David Simas, Barack Obama’s political director, in a lengthy New Yorker piece you can read here.

It’s touches upon Facebook fake news and echo chambers:

“Until recently, religious institutions, academia, and media set out the parameters of acceptable discourse, and it ranged from the unthinkable to the radical to the acceptable to policy,” Simas said.

“The continuum has changed. Had Donald Trump said the things he said during the campaign eight years ago—about banning Muslims, about Mexicans, about the disabled, about women—his Republican opponents, faith leaders, academia would have denounced him and there would be no way around those voices. Now, through Facebook and Twitter, you can get around them. There is social permission for this kind of discourse. Plus, through the same social media, you can find people who agree with you, who validate these thoughts and opinions. This creates a whole new permission structure, a sense of social affirmation for what was once thought unthinkable. This is a foundational change.”

And I read this in former CIPR President Stephen Waddington’s Facebook timeline.

It’s public so I’m not betraying confidences. You can see it here.

I don’t have immediate answers to what post-truth comms needs to look like. But it feels like UK diplomat Tom Fletcher’s words about communicating like an insurgent form part of it.  I’m heartened there are people looking for the answers. But I’d say that that’s not enough. You can’t outsource it. It cuts straight to trust, audience and effectiveness. If you are working in the field of communications in the public sector this is something you need to tackle too.

Picture credit: Duncan Parkes / Flickr

CONTENT TIPS: Six laws for content that works on the web… Ooo! Aaah! Wow! OMG! And I didn’t know that!

Six laws for content that works on the web… Ooo! Aaah! Wow! OMG! And I didn’t know that!

Every day we read, write, be amazed, shout, laugh at and share content online.

We do it after we wake-up, go to work, get to work and get home from work. The we do once we’ve kicked our shoes off.

Research would say we see 285 pieces of content every day. I’d say when I’ve got time on my hands it’s a lot more.

As communicators we are every day trying to compete with content that is shouting more loudly. Nobody is waiting for your press release. Or your video.

But how do you make yourself heard over the din?

I think it starts by looking at what works. What works for you? The meme? The 10-secondfd clip? The image? Think for a second.

It got me thinking how if I can catagorise the stuff I see that works. For me, it boils down to five words of phrases… Ooo! Aaah! Wow! Ha! And I didn’t know that!

Sometimes, if you are clever you can tick several of these boxes.

If you are not ticking any of them you need to think if that man in a suit against a wall for 20 minutes is going to fly. The chances are it won’t.

Ooo!

This is the spectacle. The arresting sight that makes you stop and stare.

Colourflow 3 #ColourflowProj #davidmcleod

A video posted by David McLeod (@david_mcleod) on Jan 4, 2016 at 1:58pm PST

Aaah!

This is the story of the dying dog’s last walk. Or the cute child. The thing that tugs on your heart strings.

Wow!

This is a spectacle. The sight that makes your jaw drop slightly.

 

OMG!

This is the one that makes you stop and plays on your fears. Like the RNLI breath test produced to try and persuade people not to swim out-of-their-depth in the sea.

Ha!

This is the funny one. The one that makes you want to laugh and share it with your friends so they can laugh too.

I didn’t know that!

This is the helpful one. The YouTube clip of the Indian student telling you how to fit a new cricket bat grip or the American showing you how to change a tyre. You look it up to help you. You’re amazed at how easy it is to follow and how complex the written instructions sound.

So, if your content isn’t any of those, should it be content at all?

Picture credit: Andrea Levers / Flickr

CHANGE DILEMMA: ‘Why are firefighters who run into burning buildings afraid of change?’

“Why is it,” a Canadian fire and rescue officer said, “Why is it that firefighters who run into burning buildings afraid of change?”

A friend had asked him this and he admitted he was unsure what to reply.

The comment was made at Fire Editor’s #reimagine event in Birmingham where senior officers were debating big change that is coming down the path. Mergers with police forces are on the cards. So is closer collaboration. My role was to talk about the importance of communications in all this but the line about fearing change struck a chord. Not because I think firefighters are inherently resistent to change. Or because they don’t have concerns. Far from it.

It struck a chord because of my own regular soapbox about IT people and what I often say about comms people – myself included:

“Why is it that so many IT people think the everything that happened after the Commodore 64 is dangerous and should be resisted?”

Or what I often say about comms people:

“Why is it that people whose job it is to communicate are so poor at communicating?”

Why do we often fear change when other parts of almost our job would terrify another person?

How can we change that?

Picture credit: Adam Levine / Flickr

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

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?

 

 

 

 

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