What was also encouraging was talk of new uses of technology. The Saturday night sports paper the Sports Argus folded 11-years ago. The pre-internet queues I recall in newsagents for their delivery are now a memory for people aged over 40. But as the broadcast pointed out, the last edition of the Argus couldn’t carry that night’s FA Cup Final score. So a podcast, video content and sports coverage that is more fan-centric is now the order.
Data is being used more and more to look at the stories that people like, the broadcast said.
A story that’s big on a Trinity Mirror title in Newcastle, for example, can be be a pointer for what could be big in Birmingham too.
And yet, older newspaper people will turn in their graves at complaints made in the broadcast about spelling mistakes slipping into content. They’ll be even more dismayed at the level of trolling that can sometimes pollute comment boxes and Facebook threads. This is a bigger issue than many people realise. This is an issue not just for newspapers but for civic life as well.
Video is the driver for engaging newspaper content.
What did strike me was the use of video by newspapers.
Ben Hurst, Post & Mail news editor responsible for video content, in the Facebook Live broadcast said something telling:
About 12 months ago we were barely doing any video. The rise of the smartphone means that if someone is on the scene they won’t just take a still pic. They’ll take footage. It’s completely changed everything operates.
But not just recorded video is playing a part. Live broadcasts on social channels are becoming increasingly part of the media company’s armoury. Reporters are rarely first on the scene with a smartphone to shoot footage but people are. Ben was open about the fact that they are open to use people’s content.
What does this means for comms people?
It means that newspapers are still in the game. Only they’re not newspapers anymore. They are media companies. They’re not the only game in town anymore either. But they are starting to re-invent themselves.
What do you do if you are comms and PR?
It means taking a look at the content you generate. A press release with text is less effective in a landscape where newsrooms want footage and images. Text at news stands shaped by an editor’s news sense once sold newspapers. Today, content refined by data and often driven by video drives the money-creating job sustaining traffic for media companies.
A simple question dropped into my Facebook timeline this week: ‘Press releases. Defunct or not?’
Not again, I thought.
But hang on.
Eleven years ago tech journalist Tom Foremski demolished them in his post Die, Press Release Die! Die! Die!. The bottle of wine and frustration-fuelled rant the post was a napalm strike on the pointlessness of sending out press releases in a web-enabled world.
Don’t send words, he shouted.
Send words, images, video, audio and contribute to the debate, instead.
As a compass to steer through changing waters this is a supreme piece of piloting.
It’s what senior people expect, was the general gist.
Educate the client
A while back I write a post on the Apple designer Johnny Ives. I was struck by a poster on his wall that was just as much as a piece of table banging as Smith’s press release takedown. In a long list of reminders the poster argued:
“Believe in your f*cking self. Stay up all f*cking night. Work outside of your f*cking habits. Know when to f*cking speak up. F*cking collaborate. Don’t f*cking procrastinate. Get over your f*cking self. Keep f*cking learning. Form follows f*cking function.
And most importantly of all:
Educate the f*cking client.
Newspapers are not newspapers anymore… and we’re not in Kansas
Five years ago Stijn Debrouwere in his post ‘Fungible’ pointed out that journalism has changed.
News will be news. But the ecosystem will explode, and traditional media companies will only be a tiny part of it. If you think about it, that’s already sort of true right now.
Take Debrouwere’s thinking and look around you. Small ads have moved to Buy and Sell Facebook groups. Property ads have moved to Zoopla. News has moved to council websites and neighbourhood Facebook groups. Display ads are on Facebook. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we’re in a different place.
There’s still a place for newspapers. They’ve just changed and the content they need has changed.
But how about the free sheet, I hear you say, that fills it’s pages with council press releases? How long, I reply, do you think that will go on for?
Here’s what I think you should educate the client on press releases.
If you send a press release to many newspapers they go into the bin.
Newspapers don’t see themselves as newspapers they see themselves as media companies who may just happen to print something. Send them images and video that work on the web.
A press release is written in journalese. This is not English. Or the language of the web.
In an emergency, the last thing you want to do is construct a press release. Post to Twitter. It’s where the journalists are.
Yet, if you want to reach a constituency of over 50s who are most at home with printed newspapers then a press release is fine.
You’ll miss other demographics with a press release.
As a primary go-to one channel to rule them all effective channel, press releases are dead.
A 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.
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.
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:
Please use common sense and restraint in circulating pictures and videos of those that have been injured during the incident in #Westminster
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.
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.
Following the incident in #Westminster this afternoon, we can confirm that our Emergency Department treated 8 patients – 6 males & 2 females
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.
This is what I shall take from today – scenes of police, doctors, nurses, MPs and passers by all rushing to help the injured #Westminsterpic.twitter.com/A9RM4vOizL
Not 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.
There is an amazing post doing the rounds on Twitter.
It speaks volumes about where newspapers and council press officers are.
This is it:
We were sent photos of the leader of Slough council at a new roundabout. So here is the leader of Slough council at a new roundabout. Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/64NeO3zRRV
— WindsorSloughExpress (@ExpressSeries) March 2, 2017
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.
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.
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.
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.
