FUTURE PLAN: How to Write a Comms Plan: 10 steps and a download

32354342833_afd876d927_bA good comms plan helps you to get to where you want to go… without one you are almost certainly going to fail.

You can fire a rocket into the sky and you might successfully hit the moon but the chances are you won’t.

Back in 1969 when NASA put a man on the moon they did so with research, resources, planning, science, evaluation and creativity. Without those elements they would have failed.

I’m going to tell you why I realised comms planning was a good thing.

There are many comms plans. This one is mine. You are free to use it. I’ve uploaded it to Google docs here.

Don’t do fig-leaf comms planning

Here’s a thing. I came to realise that comms planning was the most useful tool very slowly.

For 12-years I was a reporter. Forward planning was literally tomorrow lunchtime. It was the here and now of frontpage leads and by-lines.

Moving to communications, I wan’t sure about comms planning. Some people would demand a comms plan when all they actually wanted was eight pages of text to add to a submission.

“See?” They would say. “We’ve got comms covered.”

This fig-leaf comms planning drove me up the wall. Your work as an attachment that’s never looked at again will never work. There was a better way.

Why you should write a good comms plan

A good comms plan makes a difference.

It asks where you are now, where you want to go, who you want to talk to, where they’ll be, what’s the one thing you want them to do, how much worktime and money you have, how long you’ve got, how you’re going to evaluate to see if it has worked. It then looks at the tactics. In other words, the things you’ll do. The content you’ll write.

Comms planning is a tried and trusted process that leads you to the right answers. It may not be the poster that your client first demanded. But that’s okay. You’ll have something better than a poster.

It stops the ridiculous waste of ‘I want back of bus ads’ without the research into whether or not bus ads will work.

But before you sit down with the comms plan

This is the hard part. It can save a lot of time and spare blushes. The purpose of the comms plan is to help someone move from A to B. For example:

–         Move from we need 20 new nurses to having 20 new nurses.

–         Move from we need 100 sign-ups to we have 100 sign-ups.

–         Move from we need 10 per cent fewer calls to the switchboard to have 10 per cent fewer calls to the switchboard.

But here is the tricky part. You need to put a number on the A and the B. Without that you won’t really know where you are and where you are going to. Like a driver with a map, you’ll be going round in circles.

You need – gently – to ask and challenge whoever is asking you for some PR and comms to go away and define where they are and where they want to go to. You need this to be done ahead of the comms planning session.

UK Government executive director of comms Alex Aiken is a big advocate for not doing comms without a business plan. I get that. It’s a handy rule of thumb.

You can’t write a comms plan if they don’t know where they are or where you are going.

And when you sit down with the comms plan

Here’s a simple rule. Have the people in the room who will make the key decisions and those who will carry them out. Four or five people? That’s fine. Just you and one other person? I wouldn’t bother. You want people to feel as though this is their comms plan.

As the comms person, you are facilitating. Time is of the essence. Spend no more than 15 minutes on each of the first nine elements. Set out the timings at the start. This way you won’t be distracted or go up a blind alley.

Find a place where you won’t be disturbed for a couple of hours. Put your phones away. A cup of tea or a drink. Some biscuits, maybe.

Oh, and two things are banned. The word ‘aewareness’. It means nothing. It is nebulous. Why do you want them to be aware? To volunteer? To sign-up? Ask. Challenge politely.

Timings

I’ve added timings to this. You can change them for something you are looking to do. It can be maybe 10 minutes far shorter for a small plan, for example. But having timings set out from the off can help keep you focussed.

Where are you now? (5 minutes)

You’ve done this before the meeting, so there’s no need to spend too long on this. This points out on the map where you are.

Where do you want to go and why? (5 minutes)

You’ve done this before the meeting too. This works out where you want to go. Why do it? Because a campaign to recruit 100 new nurses is different to one to recruit 10.

Who do you want to talk to and why? (10 minutes)

This is the part where you work out who you really want to talk to. So, for a campaign to recruit nurses it is members of the nursing profession. You want to talk to them so you can recruit them.

What’s the one thing you want them to do and why? (5 minutes)

Make this a call to action. You want the nurses to go to the recruitment website and apply.

Where do they hang out? (15 minutes)

This is the part where you work out how to reach them. Are there nursing forums or publications? Can you find them on Facebook with ‘nurse’ as a tag?

How much work time and money do you have to help you reach them? (15 minutes)

This is the part where you look at your resources. You may have a day a week of capacity, for example, and a budget of £500. If the budget is zero, this is the point where you establish this and frame if more is needed. If none is forthcoming, this is the point where you manage expectations.

How long have you got? (5 minutes)

How long do you have to recruit people? A month? Six months? 12-months? This sets the timeframe and gives a sense of panic and urgency if that’s needed.

When and how are you going to evaluate? (10 minutes)

This is critical. Be clear at the start so you can see if the campaign has been a success. If you are recruiting nurses, count the number of recruits. But if you just leave it at that you aren’t seeing the full picture. Why do you need to recruit nurses? Because you have to pay agency staff? And how much extra do they cost? £5,000 a year? And how many agency staff are you paying for now? So each one you recruit saves £5,000? So if you recruit 10 you are saving £50,000? This is the point where you may be able to loosen the purse strings if this is needed. In addition, ask what the difference to the organisation will be if the campaign is a success. Will more nurses bring more capacity? How many hours a week? Ask questions. Suggest the research is done. Everyone is busy. But without this data you are flying blind.

Once you’ve got a handle on what metrics you’ll count, look to keep tabs on it. A year-long campaign to cut recruit nurses should be checked at regular stages to see what tweaks are needed.

Who are you going to tell that you are doing this so you can tell them how it has gone? (5 minutes)

This is a simple one. When you run a Marathon you make a public declaration so you need to follow through. Is it your boss? The client’s boss? Work out who that person is.

Whats the timeline of tactics for it all? (15 minutes)

This is something you can start in the session but you may need to work up away from the planning session. Tactics are all the things you’ll look to do. The posters, the Facebook ads, the LinkedIn discussion.

That’s a quick run through. I’m happy to help you. You can find me dan@danslee.co.uk or @danslee on Twitter.

Picture credit: informedmag / Flickr https://informedmag.com/

LONDON ATTACK: six tweets that show how the public sector comms stepped-up

breakingWhen a terror attack struck London the people who ran towards it were members of the public sector.

We’re used to seeing police act when a man with a gun is on the loose. Brave? Yes. That’s what they’re trained for, isn’t it?

But nurses and doctors running from a nearby hospital towards the noise? That floored me.

Underpaid, taken for granted, criticised and budget cut to the bone the UK public sector is a hard place to work. It has none of the glamour of the private sector. But when chips are down they deliver.

Police at the scene and the nurses who risk their lives should get full credit. But the locked-down civil servant who then returned to work the next day also serve. So to do the public sector communicators who responded to keep the public informed.

For students of how the media works, Stephen Waddington has produced an excellent summary of how the attack happened. From the first frightened tweets from those at the scene to rumour and hate speech. You can see it here. It got me to thinking of the role public sector comms played.

Here is a bit of background.

The London terror attack response began with burning cows

In 2001, the UK farming industry was devastated by foot and mouth disease. Thousands of cattle were destroyed and generations of farmers’ work was ended in minutes. For days the country seemed paralysed. Government agencies, the British Army, councils and others all worked across each other. Many left hands didn’t know what many right hands were doing. Enough. The result was the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 which sets out who will respond about what. The key principle is to ‘warn and inform.’

A piece of law ensured that a bunch of people who don’t always work with each other that well now would.  In a geographic area council, police, fire, NHS and others work together in local resilience forums. A dry name for your Parish-pump COBRA.

Emergency planners know where the bodies will go

Every council has an Emergency Planning officer. They have plans in place for when things go wrong from a Second World War hand grenade to a major terror attack. They’ll know how to respond, who will respond and if needs be where the temporary mortuaries will be.

“See those emergency planning officers?” I was told when I started to work in local government in the West Midlands. “They even have a plan for an inland tsunami on the local lake.”

It’s true. They have.

Emergency comms isn’t crisis comms

My good friend Ben Proctor has devoted much of his life to the study of emergency comms. A former head of comms he also works as a volunteer for the Stand Task Force. These are volunteers from around the world who act globally in support of major incidents.

Ben is very clear that emergency comms isn’t crisis comms. Emergency comms is lives being at risk. Crisis comms is a company’s reputation. As he has blogged, that’s quite a big difference.

Practice in peacetime when cars aren’t on fire

One reason why the public sector communicators rose to the challenge during the terror incident was the planning and practice.

Just over 12-months ago the public sector led by London Fire Brigade ran a four-day exercise involving 1,000 casualties. A collapsed tower block and crushed tube trains were the mocked-up scenario. Talking to communicators afterwards, they learned lots.

The riots of 2011 where social media emerged also played a role. The public sector realised that when the cars were burning it was on Twitter that the news was breaking. Bright police officers realised they could reach people directly by social media to shoot-down rumour and reassure.

Today, the starting point for an emergency is Twitter. As London Ambulance Service said this week at our masterclass when a crisis happens the last thing they do in the comms team is answer the phone. They go straight to Twitter and communicate with journalists and the public at the same time. That would have been an amazing thing 10 years ago. Today? That’s common sense.

Six tweets that show how to respond in an emergency

A marker holding statement and the death of the press release

By putting out a brief statement on Twitter London Ambulance Service put two markers down. First, they knew and are responding. Secondly, it sets them out as a trusted source for further information. The days of waiting six hours for the full picture and a press release are long, long gone.

  Ask people nicely not to circulate graphic content

When a plane crashed into traffic passers-by shared graphic images of debris, body parts and burnt corpses in a car with the number plate clearly visible. At first, they admonished those who shared the images. But after a backlash they realised it was better to appeal to people’s better side. Which is the same approach that the Metropolitan Police took:

 

Signpost to people to the right place

The best meeting I ever took part in during my time in the public sector took place a few weeks after the 2011 riots. Police, bloggers and council comms sat round a table to work out how we could do a better job. No media were invited. Why? Because their print-first next day communication strategy was exposed as flat footed. The hyperlocal bloggers who were fielding rumour were the frontline of news.

One thing became clear. The bloggers told us that they knew the council wasn’t responsible for the emergency. But they didn’t understand why council accounts online were silent.

“Just signpost us to where we can find out what’s going on,” one told us.

So, we drew up a strategy of if the emergency was police-led, the council would point towards them.

As Westminster Council did here:

Speak to journalists directly by making the update public

One of the biggest changes in dealing with an emergency is how public sector comms people deal with the Press. Post the updates on Twitter and you won’t have 20 phone calls on the same subject.

 

Reassure in realtime

As I’ve been banging on about, video in realtime works. So, a message of reassurance works.

It is your job too to combat rumour

Buzzfeed ran an excellent post on the rumour and fake news that circulated in the wake of the attack. But here’s the thing. While it is useful for the public sector to challenge rumour we all have a role to play in not circulating it.

 

GONK GONE: Stop the free stuff, there’s no money

 

14843063703_fffe0c243b_bNot long ago a council launched a snazzy video for residents on how they were looking to make millions of pounds of cuts.

The first question asked by a resident was ‘how much did that video cost?’

By and large free stuff – pens, pencils, stress balls and the like – aren’t given away in local government any more.

But elsewhere this week I’m surprised to hear that’s not the case.

Despite £22 billion of savings needed in the NHS and 1.2 million people on waiting lists for social housing there are still parts of the NHS and social housing who give away freebies. Why? Because evaluation shows it makes a difference? No. Because they always have.

Unless you can clearly evaluate the difference that lucky gonk made in pounds shillings and pence I’d stop it, if I were you.

Picture credit Flickr / inthepottershands

 

 

GOOD COMMS: Who, what, when, where, why… but most of all WHY

There is an amazing post doing the rounds on Twitter.

It speaks volumes about where newspapers and council press officers are.

This is it:

 

It’s an image of a councillor stood forlornly at a roundabout. There’s a story behind this, I’m sure, and I’m not being too hard on Slough Council for this.

‘Why,’ one person in my timeline asked ‘didn’t the reporter ring up and ask about it?’

Because newsrooms have been slashed. Unless it’s particularly interesting-looking they probably won’t.

Unless you make the content interesting and sharable they probably won’t be interested.

So flipping make it interesting and sharable, then.

Before you post ask yourself if it tackles ‘Who, what, when, where, why… but most of all WHY.’

And if its digital content, if doesn’t make you go: Oooh! Aaah! Wow! OMG! Ha! I didn’t know that! then don’t post it.

BOTTOM LINE: Don’t be a glorified shorthand typist

15503065423_a38875bc61_oI keep saying this over and over.

You are not there to write someone a press release, design a poster or start a Twitter account when they click your fingers and ask for one.

You are there to give good professional communications advice.

Yes, that sometimes means telling someone that in your professional opinion they  shouldn’t have that press release, poster or Twitter account.

Unless you do you’ll always be nothing more than a glorified shorthand typist and they won’t have a professional opinion of you.

Yes, you are better than that.

DIGITAL COMMS: There is no final victory

20058515505_1f0087d001_bWhen can we declare victory on the shift from old-style comms alone to the new stuff?

When the Ofcom stats show how people are using the media?

When you make a slick presentation to someone important and they get it?

Or is this a constant house-to-house battle step-by-step?

It is, I’m afraid the latter.

Remind people through your feedback. Include social stats in the core of your evaluation.

Experiment a little.

I was struck by a long, deep sigh of a post from Euan Semple on his blog where he reflected on the BBC trying things he did a decade ago.

Most of the places where social has gained a toehold inside an organisation have reverted to their old ways as soon as those who cared enough gave up or left.

Change doesn’t just happen. You have to keep pushing, keep trying, keep picking yourself up and doing it again. If you don’t entropy kicks and things return to “normal” with depressing predictability.

Keep going. Keep fighting.

As some quoted in the comments box of his post.

There is no final victory as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.

Keep at it. You’re winning. It’s just it doesn’t always feel so.

Picture credit: Patrick Strandberg / Flickr

VIDEO LESSON: What a cringe-making public sector video can teach you about making a non-cringe-making video

Stilted, awkward and forced.

Pity the poor graduates forced to endure the Austalian Government finance department’s attempt at recruitment.

For more than two years I’ve helped to deliver training on how to make and deliver good comms video. Along with my colleague Steven Davies we’ve looked at best practice. But sometimes you can learn from not-so-best practice, too.

What does this teach? Don’t work with a script. Let people be human.

There’s also a parody. But watch out. It’s parental advisory.

RED LIGHT: Why be a comms person in the NHS if you can’t stop a bleed?

27014484070_94a0d5b45e_b

In the worst half hour of my life, my wife struggled to give birth to our first born whose heart kept stopping.

It was too late for cesarean. The baby needed to be born right now. Two mid-wives shouted at my wife to ‘push’ as the heart monitor dipped in and out. Within half an hour he was. Why the crisis? A perfect knot in the umbilical chord had been blocking oxygen.

Thank God for the NHS. Without them my son may not be here.

So when the Daily Telegraph run an NHS knocking story from a right-wing pressure group about a comms issue I paid attention.

Every hospital, the piece said, must change its logo and online footprint at what is a time of crisis for the NHS. ‘What a waste,’ was the underlying tone. Even a pro-NHS Facebook group got caught up slamming the changes as ‘shameful.’

Blogger James Turner wrote an excellent takedown of the Daily Telegraph story from a designers perspective. No, all signs don’t have to be changed straight away. In summary:

YES: The NHS has new identity guidelines which include new rules on how the logo should be used.

NO: No one has to spend money updating signs, letters etc until they were going to be changed anyway.

YES: It did cost some money to NHS England

NO: It didn’t cost money to Trusts and was infact, a pretty cheap exercise considering what design can cost.

YES: Design is important to the NHS, it’s what helps people access services and engage with healthcare.

NO: Design isn’t a “non-job” you patronising arse.

What’s the point of a NHS comms officer if they can’t stop a bleed?

For me, this raises the wider problem. Should you have an A&E nurse or a designer?

Or, as someone asked on Facebook, why have an NHS designer if they can’t stop a bleed?

Faced with such a simple question, you can see why people think what they do.

But life and death is a much more complicated than that.

In the NHS, there are 450,000 doctors and nurses. Supporting them is an army of people. Porters, medical secretaries, cleaners, finance people and receptionists are just a few of the army of people needed to make an organisation work.

What’s the point of an NHS porter if they can’t stop a bleed?

What’s the point of a housing web manager if they can’t change a window?

Or what’s the point in a council press officer if they can’t fill in a pothole?

I’ll tell you what their point is. They play a part in in making the organisation work just like a porter or a finance person does. But I think comms people need to make people see this.

The simple fact is that communications, marketing, web people and yes, designers are needed. Why? Forget reputation for a minute. Because they can help make a difference to people’s lives and to the bottom line. The Come Back to Nursing campaign to re-recruit lapsed nurses my colleague Darren Caveney played a part in helped save £90 million, for example. The flu jab campaign helps save people’s lives.

Be the difference and tell people

‘You’re just a bunch of non-jobs. Why should I bother doing what you say?’

This cheery greeting came when I worked in local government. The then minister Eric Pickles had made another attack on local government communications.

I’ve said this before. The only way to dispel this falsehood is by demonstrating worth. Not just by making nice things but by making a difference in the bottom line. So, it’s not enough to have a logo or communications. It needs to show the pounds, shillings and pence difference that it makes. That campaign to get people to go to the chemist rather than A&E. Look at data over different periods. Can you say how many people did that? And what the benefit was?

NHS branding? Why bother? It’s a sensible question. Here’s six reasons.

You can cut down on missed appointments. Missed appointments cost the NHS £1 billion a year. My mother-in-law gets post from a range of people. If it doesn’t have an NHS logo she doesn’t know the letter is from the GP or NHS Trust. If it does she’ll leave it on the mantlepiece so my wife can make sure the appointment is on her calender. As a result she doesn’t miss an appointment costing the NHS money. That’s branding.

Finding the right place in a really big building… part one. I had a sad episode in a hospital three weeks ago. I got the phonecall at 11pm and travelled 30 miles to a hospital I didn’t know in a town I wasn’t familiar with. Bleary-eyed I knew I was getting to the right place by the hospital’s NHS branding and the clear lettering that pointed me towards A&E. There’s a reason that NHS branding is as it is. Same as British Railway typography. It’s clear, authoritative and you get the information you need from a glance. That’s branding.

Finding the right place in a really big building… part two. Hospitals are big places at the best of times. Sure, if you work there you know where it is and how it works. I’m struck by how the thought that goes into the NHS typeface can help signpost people clearly. If it’s doing that job quietly it means it’s not people turning up late for appointments or accosting staff in the corridor more than they do. That’s also branding.

Getting your message out. Your comms team have a job to communicate to people a big raft of messages. Having the templates and approaches laid out means that they’re job is easier. The have the tools and people who they want to talk to can know straight away that its the NHS trying to talk to them. That’s branding.

It saves cheaper to have one lot of branding Here’s a thing. In the NHS there are 242 separate trusts, providers and social enterprises. At £10k a pop that could be £2.42 million which I’m guessing the NHS doesn’t have. That’s branding.

It’s professional. The NHS has 1.3 million staff. They are often highly skilled professional people who do an amazing job. Not having decent branding can make the operation look a bit amateurish, to be honest. I think the people who work in the NHS deserve better.

It would be wrong to think the NHS is unique in needing to talk about the benefit of good communications. If you work in the public sector you need to tackle that question too. And make sure people in your organisation know why you do what you do.

 

Picture credit:  WP Paarz / Flickr

NEWS FLASH: Fake news at the Parish pump… and what comms and PR people need to do about it

 2325659252_2006a3cb31_oYou need to think about fake news.

Not the click-bait churned out by Moldovan teenagers in their bedrooms but the stuff on your neighbourhood Facebook group or page and newspaper comments page.

Around the village, estate, town or city where you live and work there are scores of groups and pages. On the internet, it’s often where people hang out. Hyperlocal blogs have been hailed as the new frontier. True, there are some cracking ones.  But it is to Facebook groups where a huge chunk of audience has gone. Almost unnoticed.

Look for stats on groups online and you are struggling. Why? Because Facebook would like to direct you to the highly monetised Facebook pages where there is an abundance of data. Look for data on groups?

So,you’ll have to go digging yourself.

Search your own groups

It’s simple. Go to Facebook. Search for a place. Search again in groups. Have a search ion pages too. A recent project at an urban borough found more than 3,000 pages and groups searching by town and community. Some had only one person. Others had 15,000.

Run your own search. You’ll be amazed. Seriously.

Facebook pages and newspaper comments

And let’s not forget that newspaper comment boxes are there and the public actions very often have thriving Facebook pages too. Let’s be honest, often there is a whiff of mob rule on them and caution is advised.

But you need to engage 

If newspaper comment boxes are a bridge to far I think we should be starting with Facebook groups. I’ve talked about the need to engage on them before. It’s a simple premise. Go to where the eyeballs are. If they are talking about you, go there.

Some of it is true. Some of it is false.

Time after time these past few months I’ve reached the same conclusion. The fact that the public sector is not by and large engaging in these places is deeply corrosive. The fact that some organisations are starting to is a useful step.

Fake news ‘be very, very, very worried.’

This isn’t a new thing. Rumour and misinformation have been going on since the days of cave drawings. Globally, the issue is massive. At News Rewired in London last week journalism academic Claire Wardle told us to be ‘very, very, very worried.’

The ability to fake a photograph is a given, she says. Making fake images go viral is easy. But faking video? Dear God. That’s now here.

Why is this particularly worrying? Because as Wardle says, we have learned to be sceptical about words. We are far less sceptical about images and are hugely trusting about video. She argues that we need to have the same scepticism about our emotional response as we do in other areas of our life.

As the Edelman Trust Barometer says, we are far more trusting of ‘people like us’ and will take on what they say or our Facebook friends say than a chief executive.

Types of Parish pump fake news

Here’s two types to look at.

Misinformation. It’s well intentioned but wrong. Back when I was in Walsall, a Muslim girl tweeted that she’d heard a Muslim boy had been stabbed by an EDL-sympathising Sikh gang. It was wrong. A West Midlands Police Deputy Chief Constable was quick to state there had been no reports.

Or it’s the rumour that polling stations were closed early in the Scottish Independence Referendum.

Or that you need to use a pen rather than a pencil to vote.

Disinformation. It’s wrong and it’s circulated knowing that it’s wrong. That’s the malicious council-bating. Like the humorous but entirely false story of the car park attendant at Bristol Zoo. Or the photoshopped shark in the floods.

There’s a whole sub-area of family court driven disinformation.  The false claim of a child abduction in Surrey that from time-to-time re-emerges. This isn’t unique.

So, is your Facebook group filled with ‘fake news’?

No. Damage isn’t the prime reason they are there. For the most part Facebook groups are community minded and more interested in people find a plumber or posting the picture of the lovely sunset. They are an excellent opportunity for you to engage with real people.

Can the Parish Facebook group be more dangerous than a national far right news site? Not on it’s own, no. But in that community? I’d argue a rogue post has huge potential to cause you damage in that community.

I’ve heard the argument, well made by Euan Semple, that there is a volume control on the mob and we should avoid it. I can sympathise with that. But I don’t think the public sector has that luxury anymore.

If conversations are taking place in dark corners on the web,

So how to engage?

Engaging on Facebook groups

  1. Join groups with your own profile as yourself.
  2. Approach admins from your own profile and ask politely if they can post your engaging sharable content things for you. Make the content you are asking relevant. A history event to entice a group interested in local history, for example.
  3. Build your relationships with the admin and the people on the group too.
  4. Remember you are representing your organisation.
  5. You don’t have to engage with every online conversation.

Engaging on Facebook pages

  1. You can comment on Facebook pages as your own Facebook page.

Engaging on online newspaper comment boxes

  1. Add comments as a named individual. Be human. Signpost. Add a link.

Look, none of this is easy. Some of it you may balk at. But it needs to be done.

Dan Slee is co-founder of comms2point0.

Picture credit: Andrew Feinberg / Flickr

OMG PR: Weirdest Questions Asked by Journalists of Public Sector Comms and PR people

 

15964303314_63273b31ba_bFor a while now I’ve been banging on about the importance of Facebook groups. Not pages but groups.

For even longer I’ve been going on about the importance of doing and sharing.

So, the two things have come together as the PublicSector Comms Headspace group. You can join here if you are from the sector.

Sure, it’s a chance to ask work-related questions and there’s a pile of them. Out-of-hours calls, Facebook advertising and plain language comms have all been covered. But it has also been a chance to kick-off the shoes. In just over a week almost 500 people have signed-up.

For this blog I crowd-sourced a list of the weirdest questions asked:

The War Memorial Query

As part of WW1 commemorations we were asked if we had email addresses of local people who served in the War. They wanted to take a picture of them beside the war memorial. And if we could, can we tell them what memorial has their name on it ‘so we could get their reactions’.

– Amanda Waugh

The ‘Skylightgate’ query

Journo: “what’s a skylight?”

Me: “what do you mean, what’s a skylight?”

Journo: “There’s a planning application in for one and it sounds like it could be an interesting story.”

Me: “Trust me, it’s not an interesting story.”

– Ian Curwen

The is a fatal fatal query

A radio reporter once called me and asked: “Were the fatal injuries serious?”

I don’t know how, but I played it with a straight bat and answered: “Yes. The victim died.”

– Anonymous.

The spiritualist question

Weirdest ones tend to come in via FOI: how often has your Council employed a spiritualist? How often has your Council received reports of ghosts in Council buildings. Really disappointed that answers to both questions were nil.

– Lisa Potter.

The weird Body Part question

Literally JUST got a call asking whether we were planning to use the A1 Motorway to transport any giant body parts, for a BBC Daytime series.”

– Sophie Ballinger

The weird siege question

“Can you tell me how long the siege will be going on for? Do I have time to get a photographer there?”

– Jeni Harvey.

The Teenage Mutant Turtle question

Journo: “I’ve been tipped off that there are some sort of mutant ninja turtles breeding in the ponds at the country park and they are killing ducks… can you check it out for me?”

Seriously. That call really happened to a colleague. How we laughed when said colleague had to gently explain who the teenage mutant ninja turtles were and that someone must have been pulling their leg. The reporter however, didn’t find it as funny.

– Kathryn Green.

The weird eclipse question

“How many working hours were lost for people going out to watch the solar eclipse in 199X – this was while I was working for the Local Gov Ombudsman as a press officer – not sure why he thought we’d know, but I helped him work through an example maths problem.”

– Ingrid Koehler.

The weird horse question

“Do you have any CCTV of that horse loose inside your Hospital?” – in my time in the NHS, probably the only media enquiry I’ve ever had from Horse and Hound.

– Adrian Osborne

The weird time travel question

Journalist: “I saw a piece on Twitter about Councillors visiting a site. Will this go ahead given this morning’s incident at the site?”

Me: “Well as the piece on Twitter was video and photos of the Councillors visiting yesterday, and we haven’t invented time travel yet.”

– Lisa Potter

The weird mafia question

Reporter: “Can you confirm that your hospital received stolen body parts from the mafia in New York?.”

– Maria Vidal.

The weird nudist question

Reporter: “We’ve been told a clothed nudist has been stopped for cycling across a public square in the city centre”

Me: “surely a clothed nudist cycling is just a cyclist”

Reporter: “well yes but he’s known to be a nudist”

– Johno Johnson

The War Memorial question

Reporter: “I’m just putting together some copy, and looking at the photos I can see Great War but can’t make out the dates…”

– Jon Phillips

The weird helicopter question

Him: “Can you tell me what the helicopter is doing please?”

Me: “Sure, where about is it?”

*awkward pause*

Him: *deadly seriously* “Well, it’s in a sort of Sky position?”

Me: *Stifles giggle* “Umm I kind of meant what town”

Him: *nervous laugh* *sounding very embarrassed* “Oh right… I see…”

– Charlotte Parker

The weird dancing horse question

“In a previous existence ‘can you make the horse dance while we film it?’ I may be able to do many things but making a horse dance in Mexico I had to draw the line at.

– Emma Rodgers

Picture credit: Wes Dickinson / Flickr.