Dan Slee

Oh, the weather outside is frightful… and you’re wondering what to get for the PR, communications or social media whizz in your life.

Here are some suggestions for your to buy the comms, PR or digital person in your life or maybe just for spending Amazon vouchers on.

For the mobile phone owner

You’re at home or work and you need to listen to your phone hands free. This retro TV bluetooth speaker is the one you want. Slide it in and it looks like you’re watching the telly with the sound far louder.

Buy one for about £15.

For the grammar nazi

For £28, Modern Toss two mugs, a notebook, a bookmark and two cards. Marvellous value.

Absolutely perfect for the grammar nazi in your life but beware, you’ll need a parental advisory sticker so maybe think about where you’ll leave them out.

Buy one here for £28.

For the environmentally responsible Thick of It fan

The fictional government department in the Armando Iannucci satire is the Department of Social Affair and Citizenship – or Dosac. There’s a lot of coffee drunk. Here’s a way to celebrate your favourite comms show while not harming the planet. 

Buy one here for £12.

For the Bulls**t spotter

Nothing says ‘bulls**t’ like pressing a button that tells the whole room. A flashing buzzer with five different sound effects and light which will be audible by the press of this button.

Buy one here for £7.89.

For the mobile phone owner

Turn your smartphone into a cinema, kind of, with this mobile phone projector.

Buy one here for £21.95.

For the fan of Jamie McDonald

Malcolm Tucker has all the attention. But for serious swearing it has to be senior press officer Jamie McDonald. And with this you can have a cup of tea and be reminded of his best lines. Parental advisory.

Buy one here for £12.

For the comms person faced with understanding online communities

‘Buzzing Communities’ by Richard Millington is part autobiography and part data science. He begins his online life running a games forum online and gets the sack for not being able to explain whether or not he’s been a success. He runs an online course for several thousands of pounds and the book is a fine alternative.

Buy one for £15 here.

For the t-shirt and grammar fan

You love spelling and you fancy yourself as a bit of a Lover Lover Man (or Woman) then this t-shirt is for you.

The Comma Sutra t-shirt.

Buy one for £16.99.

For the comms person aiming who is likely to be faced with an online storm

 Kate Hartley’s book ‘Communicate in a Crisis’ is a handy guide if you may be faced with an online storm. It explains how the internet works, how a mob forms online and gives strategioes for how to cope with it. Tip: read it before you end up getting a kicking online. Otherwise you’ll end up with a icking for reading a book when you should be firefighting.

Buy one for £12.99.

For the stressed comms person

Developing a mindful lifestyle takes practise, time and patience. Old habits must be softened and replaced with new ways of thinking. So, this jar of tasks can help.

Buy one for £13.95.

For the comms person who likes notebooks

Firstly, lets get something out of the way. Moleskine are lovely. But they’re over priced and they’re a rubbish size.

Wheras Leutchtterm are A4 and more practical. Fill your boots.

Buy one for £16.50

For the PR person who has to put a lipstick on a pig

These stickers are handy. They fit in a discreet place on your keyboard and remind you of what you do with the message: ‘Public Relations: Because Someone Has to Make You Look Good.’ Silent win.

Buy one for £1.69

For the comms person who likes typography

Many people take typefaces for granted. Good typography often gets taken for granted. It does its job effectively. Bad type choices really stand out and not always in a positive way.

‘Why Fonts Matter’ by Sarah Hyndman tells you why.

Buy one for  £11.77.

For the data geek

Let’s face it data has a bad wrap. So why not celebrate your interest in numbers with a poster that lets you revel in it.

Buy one for £11.38.

For the comms curious

We are hard wired to respond to stories. Story telling has been an art for thousands of years. Will Storr’s book on ‘The Science of Storytelling’ is readable and credible. Based in science but able to spin a yarn.

Buy one for £8.81.

Everyone knows the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf and the huffing and puffing.

One little pig had the straw house and the wolf blew it away and ate the pig up.

The second little had a house made of wood and suffered the same fate.

The third little pig was prepared and built a house made out of bricks and was fine.

This children’s story is an allegory whose hidden meaning is to be prepared for future events.

There’s a warning to comms people not to suffer the same fate and be the unprepared pig that gets gobbled-up.

The message is from the CIPR Artificial Intelligence in PR – or AI in PR – group. These are the people who are horizon scanning in the area of artificial intelligence in public relations.

Translation: Artificial intelligence is the theory and practice that computer systems are able to perform tasks that normally require humans. So, that’s translation, analysis and some basic decision-making. 

There’s some fine people involved so when the CIPR AI in PR group issue a warning it’s worth paying attention to:

The #AIinPR panel has issue a stark call to PR practitioners to ‘upskill or risk getting left behind and harming the future of our profession’ as global research clearly shows public relations is not ready for artificial intelligence.

The call comes following an intensive 12-month global research project carried out by the CIPR Artificial Intelligence in Public Relations panel, which has been looking at serious literature on artificial intelligence and its impact on the professions.

After looking at close to 200 global publications on artificial intelligence in the professions (to date) in detail, the AIinPR global panel has drawn some pretty painful conclusions about our own readiness for the AI world as a profession.

In short, we are not ready for artificial intelligence and we’ve hardly begun.

Anne Gregory, renowned PR academic and AIinPR panel member, who has lead the research project said: “Public relations is significantly behind the curve – in fact we are sleep walking into AI.

“Other professions have already done major work on the shape of their future workforce, reviewing education and training, looking at their future role in organisations and society and at the ethics of AI. We need to get cracking, and get on with some serious work in all these areas.”

So what can you do?

The broad warning is the need to develop better skills in data, artificial intelligence and machine learning in your own role as well as advising business and organisations on AI.

It sounds science fiction, doesn’t it?

You’ve probably got your hands full with plenty of other things but this is pretty serious.

Thankfully, the nice CIPR AI in PR group have published a list of useful links and reading on their page you can find here. There’s also a pretty mammoth updated Google sheet orepository of links.

• An introduction to AI.
• The impact of AI in PR (CIPR log-in needed).
• AI and the new imperative for communications.

The AIinPR panel would like communicators, across the globe, to add to this huge piece of work by letting the AIinPR panel know about any other serious literature that talks about AI and the professions. We’re especially looking for material on the public relations profession.

There’s also an AI YouTube explainer from Hubspot here:

Can you help?

The AI in PR group are also looking for contributions to their repository of learning. That may be an academic abstract, a post or another piece of work. All you need to do is add a description – 50 words tops – and add it to the Google document here.

This final AIinPR repository will be launched at The Turing Institute on 16 January where they and the Government Office for AI are set to join the conversation on AIinPR’s call to the PR profession.

We will also launch the AIinPR 2020 plan, at the event, which will include new AIinPR panel members from the AI and tech industries to help drive the PR and communication industry further forward.

It’s interesting to see Kerry Sheehan take over the Chair of the AIinPR Panel from Stephen Waddington. They’re two people I rate highly.

Picture credit: istock.

The basics of human comms is having real people talking in a way that feels real.

Step forward Fallin Primary school in Stirling who have made a delightful video on the subject of respect.

A number of children, police, teachers and school meals staff tell the camera what respect means to them. There’s subtitles and some delightful children. The school children aren’t from central casting. They’ve got broad Stirling accents.

The video was posted to the internet which means that I presume that the makers got permissions and GDPR all boxed off.

The power of this is that the family of those featured will be quick to share giving the video a greater reach.

Sub-titled it means the video can reach 80 per cent of the audience who watch video without sound.

While copmmissioned by an external company the fundamental video could be replicated with a smartphone, clip-on Rode microphone and some basic editing software.

The video can be seen here:

🤝 #Stirling Council is proud to support #AntiBullyingWeek

Check out this fantastic film @FallinPrimary and the school community have made to show that #StirlingChoosesRespect

What do you think #respectis?#ChangeStartsWithUs pic.twitter.com/jLxZ4BKHXR

— Stirling Council (@StirlingCouncil) November 11, 2019

A thank you to Lisa Potter for spotting this.

There’s an election coming but how can you communicate the result?

The future of the United Kingdom hangs by a thread and how we vote for the 650 MPs will have huge bearing.

The results of each poll have tremendous importance and its down to local government people to help communicate them.

Sure, there’s battalions of journalists covering the story. But the very fact there is underlines the need to have one clear voice that communicates the result on the night in real time. A voice that can cut through the national noise and answer the question: How did my vote do?

There’s SEVEN ways to communicate an election result

Pinning the handwritten results to the noticeboard

The original and best. The result written on paper and pinned to the public noticeboard. This is a legal requirement and is the first way. What you’ll need: drawing pins, a piece of paper, a pen and a noticeboard.

Helping journalists get the result out

Much of the local government comms team’s time on election night is helping service the needs of journalists at the count.  With a lot of deadtime until the result its a chance to put faces to names. There’s clear election law about what can and can’t be done. What you’ll need: An up-to-date copy of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists and a good working relationship with journalists and also the elections team.

Post to your website

The basic result with the basic numbers. Promptly. In real time. Not at 9.20am the next day when the webteam land and have a cup of coffee. What you’ll need: A website and someone with access to publish on it on the night.

Post to Twitter 

The basic result with the basic numbers. Add whatever the national – or local – election hashtag is. Feel free to add a video of the basic announcement too. But not the acceptance speech. Leave that to the journalists. What you’ll need: Access to the corporate Twitter account and accuracy.

Post to Facebook 

The basic result with the basic numbers. Feel free to add a video of the basic announcement too. But not the acceptance speech. Leave that to the journalists. What you’ll need: Access to the corporate Facebook account and accuracy.

Broadcast a Facebook Live

Tell people that you’ll make the broadcast and roughly what time the broadcast is expected. Keep people in the picture if that changes. A smartphone is fine. But make sure its fully charged. Take a MiFi too or run it off someone’s WiFi hotspot. Don’t rely on the venue’s public WiFi as everyone will be piling on. Run a test broadcast before you decide to do the realthink just to make sure there’s not a data blackhole. One big note of caution: the sound you’re trying to record will be lousy.  Plug into the PA system for the sound or stand close to a loudspeaker. What you’ll need: A mifi, a fully charged smartphone, a charger to make sure that happens, a power bank you can plug into to ensure that happens.

Issue an email

Lastly, there’s time in the weeks ahead of election to create an email list to post out the result in real time. Councils who experimented with this during local government elections reported strong open rates. An email to wake-up to means you don’t have to go trawling through websites and through social media to try and find the result you’re after. What you’ll need: A mailing list where people have given you their consent they’d like to be emailed.

Lastly, don’t put all your hopes of communicating into one basket. You’ll need more that that. But whatever you do make sure its properly resourced.

Picture credit: istock.

When is a mistakenly cut video not a mistakenly edited video? That was the question posed by the BBC.

With the General Election of 2019 days old the Conservative party tweeted a video of an ITV interview with Labour shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer.

On the BBC Radio 4 6 O’Clock News bulletin, Amol Rajan reported that Starmer in the edited clip appeared to hesitate with the words ‘Labour has no plan for Brexit’ added to the screen. In the original interview, he alleges, he didn’t.

When the difference was challenged on Twitter by a BBC reporter, Rajan, said the Conservative Party doubled down on the attacks.

The BBC Media editor in the bulletin added:

This is how modern media strategy works. First doctor a video. Then when you’re called out for it publish fresh attacks. What matters on social media is the noise you create, the cut through rather than accuracy.

Of course, that creates a problem for journalists. By highlighting fake news you draw fresh attention to a falsehood so ensuring that a falsehood is seen by countless more.

The Conservative Party may therefore have grounds for chalking up the doctored video as a win.

The video in numbers

The original clip was posted just before noon.

Fact checking website Full Fact challenged the video at 6.29pm – some six hours later.

By 8pm, on the day it was posted the video which hadn’t been deleted had been viewed more than 400,000 times.

You can listen to Rajan’s piece on the BBC Radio 4 Six O’Clock News here from 13’37”.

You can see the original tweet challenged by BBC’s Daniel Sandford here.

So what does this mean?

I don’t normally blog about political comms and do so here on professional lines as it touches upon comms ethics and tactics.

This story touches on academic research Stuart Bruce that shows when you rebut a falsehood people only remember the original falsehood.

It also poses a series of questions.

When the original online content contains a falsehood what then? 

When its based around video which is more trusted than plain text what then?

What come back is there?

The Advertising Standards Authority stopped regulating political ads in 1997. Twitter announced they would refuse to allow political ads. But this isn’t an ad.

We’re supposed to get more cynical at challenging things but most people simply aren’t going to track down the original interview and compare the clip against delivery.

So what then?

In 2019, the news cycle moves so fast that minutes count and as hours pass attention switches. The allegation of ‘fake news’ is left in the wake of the original.

It’s not for me to say if the approach breaches the CIPR Code of Conduct here.

Even it it was, what difference would it make?

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr.

There’s an election swinging into view so I’m writing this quick signposting blog to two useful resources.

Purdah is the period that governs what you can and can’t publish as a council officer.

The idea is that the comms team cannot be the mouthpiece of a politician running for election.

There’s two links I’m pointing to you towards. Firstly, the Local Government Association guidance and secondly, a blog I’ve posted about advice for social media.

The LGA advice you can find here.

This guidance provides advice on the publicity restrictions that should be observed during the purdah period. It should be read in conjunction with any guidance produced by your own returning officer or monitoring officer, which provides specific advice depending on your local circumstances.

The social media Purdah advice I’ve blogged is here.

There’s this funny period in the run-up to an election which sees local government comms team change behaviour.

Gone are the press releases from politicians and in comes quotes from officers. Why? To ensure that the council cannot be accused of political bias in the run up to polling day.

The pre-election advice for the NHS can be found here.

This briefing sets out considerations for NHS foundation trusts and trusts in the period of time known as the pre-election period, or ‘purdah’, leading up to the 2019 UK general election on 12 December. It highlights the practical implications around provider activities.

The Civil Service advice you’ll find on this link here.

The basic principle for civil servants is not to undertake any activity that could call into question their political impartiality or that could give rise to criticism that public resources are being used for party political purposes.

As ever, check against delivery and with your legal team.

Picture credit: istock.

A famous Greek bloke once said that he couldn’t teach anybody anything but he could make them think.

Seeing people think is one of the delights of the Vital Facebook Skills workshop I deliver with Sarah Lay.

We’ve both had long experience of running corporate pages so we can deliver advice on how to create better content that’s on the right side of the algorithm. I’ve researched groups and Sarah works with Facebook ads. That’s wonderful theory based on practice but one thing I’m really keen on is to get people thinking about when to engage and not to engage when people comment.

To misquote Mike Tyson, you can have the best plan in the world until someone punches you in the face.

So, when to engage and when not to engage.

For the most part, days go by with routine comments but every now and then there’s something more challenging.

In the training, I have some real life scenarios and throw them open to people. The aim is to get them to think.

The scenarios are the kind of thing that gets posted to a public sector page or a community group every day.

One thing really does shine through in this exercise. That’s that there is very little black and white on how to handle things but a lot of grey.

Each comment you’ll read as an admin is slightly different but some basic rules do apply which I’ve never really written down in one place.

1. Don’t argue with an idiot. It’s something I’ve blogged about before. Don’t have a slanging match with someone.
2. It’s fine to draw a line in the sand. If someone is off-target with their opinions its fine to respond if you’re factual and polite.
3. Don’t punch down. The BBC Press Office do this really well. Don’t beat someone up who is smaller than you are. It doesn’t look good.
4. Count to 10. Don’t respond by shooting from the hip. Reflect.
5. Take it offline. That involved discussion? Take it offline. Particularly if there is personal data being discussed.
6. Run it past a colleague before you post it. You’ve written something as a response you’re not sure about. What does your colleague think?
7. Add a name to it. People will shout at logos and will shout less if they think there’s a human. At the end of the day we all just want to be listened to. ^ Dan.
8. Let people be angry about policy. The world doesn’t smell of fresh paint. It’s not your job to censor debate if you’re in the public sector. It’s fine for people to disagree.
9. Have some house rules. A social media policy in plain English that says what behaviour you’re okay with and what you’re not is essential.

You’ll need thinkers to be the admin of a Facebook page. I hope this list helps you to think.

You can find out about Vital Facebook Skills workshops here.

Picture credit: Flickr / Sharon M Leon.

I’ll be honest, I wan’t sure how relevant for public sector people the new guidance for influencer marketing was.

So much of what government does is around owned channels and maybe trying to influence media.

But some reflection and a fascinating discussion at commscampnorth has opened my mind a little.

The guidance ‘We’re All Influencers Now’ you can find it here. Both authors Sab Guthrie and Stephen Waddington I rate highly as I do other material also published under the FuturePRoof banner.

What the guidance says

An influencer is someone who has carved out a reputation through creating social content on a platform who can influence or shape someone’s behaviour.

The popular view is that this is Joe Sugg, a YouTuber who also made it to Strictly Come Dancing or Zoella and her £12,000 charge for a post and the feeling amongst public sector people is that this just a different league.

But there is more to it than this and as a sector this is predicted to grow from £4.5 billion globally to £18.4 billion by 2024.

The advice is particularly good on governance and points out that the Advertising Standards Authority and Competition and Markets Authority are starting to step into the sector. There legal are issues around IP that you need to consider.

How this may effect the public sector

At first glance, this isn’t something that falls squarely into the lap of the public sector. Useful to know as a communicator maybe, but not a day-to-day requirement.

However, a discussion at commscampnorth change my mind. One attendee spoke of how influencers were being used to reach young people around rail travel. Free rail tickets are being provided in return for the influencer talking about how far away the destination is and how they travelled there.

That’s influencer marketing.

I can recall NATO using influencers to reach young people in Eastern Europe to talk about what the organisation does.

That’s influencer marketing, too.

It made me think of times back in the day when I’ve worked with members of the town Flickr group. Come and photograph the town hall, was the invitation. And can we re-use the pics under licence for free with a credit?

Or, the health watchdog who worked with young people to encourage them to create health-related messages on their Snapchat accounts to circulate to their peers.

Both of those are influencer marketing, too.

A working knowledge of the framework would be a handy thing to have in any communicator’s back pocket.  This work gives you a framework to use.

Picture credit: US National Archives / Flickr

I’m writing this in the cafe of the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford the day after commscampnorth.

I have a cup of coffee on the desk in front of me and on the wall silent films are playing and I’m reflecting on the event the day before.

I have headphones on and Elbow has dropped into my Spotify.  Don’t tell me algorithms can’t read your mind.  It’s been 15-months since the last comms unconference and I’m so glad we’ve got back into the habit.

I’m a quarter of the organising team, a thirtieth of the volunteers and one hundred and fortieth of the attendees who made the event work.

Before the day slips through my fingers, I’m capturing a list of a few things I learned.

1. Bradford is amazing. This sandstone city is built on hills, wool, friendliness and a lack of bullshit. It loved being Victorian, didn’t like the 1980s but is evolving and reviving and quietly likes it when visitors fall in love with it like a spritely old couple who grow prize-winning geraniums in their back garden.
2. Kala Sangam is amazing. Our venue for commscampnorth was a sandstone General Post Office converted into a South Asian arts centre whose mission is to bring everyone together through the arts. A friendlier set of venue staff I’ve never met in 10 years of running events.
3. An unconference is made by the attendees. The agenda is decided on the day by the attendees.
4. It would be great to have a day of #RealLinkedIn. Ditch the show boating. Just for a day post what your day is really doing.
5. Every unconference has an underlying theme. For this one there was a feeling of not just doing something because its new and shiny but concentrating on the purpose and the results.
6. Facebook groups have become mainstream. The idea of connecting with a group seemed revolutionary a few years ago. It isn’t now.
7. Wellbeing in comms has momentum but the danger is that it becomes lip service. I’m hearing  lots of organisations talking about how its okay not to be okay. If that’s the case, its okay not to expect your staff to answer emails after 6pm and to have enough staff to do the job. I’ve read some utter bollocks from organisations who behave in diametrically opposite ways to the one love way they claim to be.
8. Imposter syndrome is a real issue in comms. When this was floated in the Facebook group before the event there was a real groundswell towards it. The session was also popular. There was a shout for Clare Josa’s book ‘Ditching Imposter Syndrome’ here.
9. Change comms comes back to ‘what this means to me’ not how shiny it will look on someone senior’s LinkedIn profile. It’s so easy to forget that.
10. Audience insight beats habit and gut feeling every time. This was a strong undertow this year.
11. Better email marketing is achievable.  But it still remains a bit Cinderella. Probably because its less visible and shareable as a really eye-catching social campaign.
12. Social media has been growing in an organisation for 10 years. While there’s an argument for giving people the tools and sharing the sweets there’s also an argument for taking a rain check to see what’s working and what’s not.
13. David Banks knows his stuff on media law. You can find him here.
14. Bright people are leaving the public sector to do more things in the public sector. The trend towards the gig economy that started a few years ago is increasing. I get that.
15. A commscampnorth or commscamp without a cake stall would be like Christmas without Santa. And Kate Bentham is perfect at the job of running the stall. Well done to those who donated and to sponsor Nick Hill for donating £200. The man is great.
16. It is always wonderful to see first timers at the event. My own aim is to give people the space and permission to think differently. Its important that job descriptions are left at the door. In the intros we accidentally forgot to include where people were from and I was quite struck how that made people people rather than organisations.
17. But I do worry that we don’t open the door enough for first timers. We trialled a buddy system this year ahead of the event on Facebook. I don’t know if this worked but I’d like to see how we can make it easier for solo first time attendees.
18. Trust the process. To make unconferences better, I always go back to a podcast between Dave Briggs and Lloyd Davis.
19. Accessibility regulations are difficult to enforce. The government hasn’t set out penalties as GDPR did. So, people just shrug and ask for their pdf to be uploaded that can’t be read by blind people. The idea of building connections between organisations who are trying to do it well is a really good one.
20. One danger prospective heads of comms need to remember is that they’ll be doing less comms.  This may be a good thing but it is a true thing.
21. I love the idea that people can run something as part of the event. The lunchtime run – or runch – works for those who love the running and Albert’s walking tour of Bradford drew 60 people. Carolyne’s tap dancing was also a fab idea.
22. If you are using creative commons images read the licence and abide by it. If they ask you to credit the photographer then do so. Or else you may get a bill.
23. A good team. Albert Freeman, Bridget Aherne and Josephine Graham are good people to organise an event with.
24. Working with good sponsors is good. Bravo MusterPoint, Touch Design, Granicus and CAN. I hang my hat on all of them.
25. There was huge love in the room for Emma Rodgers who usually organises these things. I’m glad we raised more than £500 for MacMillan Cancer the cause she suggested.
26. In the big question of the day, Who was is the best Bradford entertainer Kiki Dee or Tamsin Archer, it was Kiki Dee. Well done, Kiki.
27. An unconference is a simple idea. You get the right people in the room and when it ends is the right time for it to end. They talk about how you can crack the problems we face TODAY.

If you’d like to be kept up to speed on future commscamp events you can sign-up for this email list here. I’ll blog again on hows to run an unconference and again once the ace Nigel Bishop finishes editing pics from the day.

Lovely stuff.

My attention was caught by a group of future communications leaders who were learning about best practice and for the life of me I couldn’t help but hear alarm bells ringing.

Best practice is something that has worked well in practice.

But the thing is, the world is so complex, what may be best practice 12-months ago often isn’t today.

When I dig behind something that has worked I’m often struck by the amount of research that has gone into it.

It is the act of research that’s the star of the show not the whizzy graphics.

A few years ago Sport England ran a campaign ‘This Girl Can’ that encouraged 2.8 million women of all sizes to do something to exercise. Suddenly, everyone wanted carbon copies.

Stop it.

Avoid best practice.

Instead, go and research to build your own beautiful ideas that will work today and if you’re lucky next week, too.

Picture credit: istock.