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

28115003294_08e4e1eae1_bWhen you heard about the shooting of JFK or the death of Diana you may recall where you were when you heard it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotion, it seems, is for life.

Picture credit: Ben Seidelman / Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can listen to the audio clip here:

//embeds.audioboom.com/posts/1574606-james-burke-predicted-the-future-in-1973-now-he-does-it-again/embed/v4?eid=AQAAAH8gJ1jOBhgAghghhh

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things bleed between channels lots

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

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

YouTube v Facebook? It’s both

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

facebookjohn

It’s about the emotion not the 

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

The traditional media are a key part of this.

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

metro

Video still tells a story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIKE WTF: “A like’s a like… never fall in love with a liker.”

This cropped up as a Facebook memory thing this morning. It’s brilliant.

Take a look at it here:

“She took a screenshot of his snapchat and he tried to deny it, he said I didnae like her instagram, I just liked her facebook post that was a screengrab of her instagram, it wisnae her actual instagram.”

If you need to know how the youngstrells are communicating with each other, it’s marvellous.

By the way, this is a YouTube of the actual embedded Facebook. Not a screenshot of their instagram.

WRITE STUFF: 15 pieces of advice for journalists heading to a career in PR

23106362469_a553484d8b_bSo, what is the difference was between journalism and PR? I’ve stopped and asked myself the question this week. I’ve been thinking of how to explain the difference.

For 12-years I was a journalist and rose to become assistant chief reporter of a daily regional newspaper. Back then I would have told you that the difference was news was everything they don’t want you to know. The rest is PR, I’d have said.

Eight years on and director of my own company I know the difference is more to it than that just a lack of shouting news editors and no double murders.

The truth is that if there was a Venn diagram, there would be surprising little between the two. At best, it’s a common use of the English language and the knowledge that news is people. And people like to read about people.

Here are 15 differences

A yardstick of success. As a journalist, your measure is if you’ve got the front page. Failing that, it’s a healthy number of pageleads. As a comms person, it’s a number of things. Chiefly, being able to show the material difference your content has made. The number of foster carers recruited, for example.

Criticism. I say this with love, knowing journalists will take umbrage. There is nobody so thin skinned as a journalist. I knew this when I was one. I know it now too. As a comms person you are like a sniper in no man’s land. Under fire from all sides. Your organisation and those outside will throw things at you.

Professional regard. Journalists are special. Not trusted, especially. But special. They have a Press bench and a Press pass. Doors open. Comms people have a daily battle to have their opinion listened to. Solicitors? Planning inspectors? Doctors? Their word is law. But anyone with spell check and clipart thinks they are a comms person.

Audience. A journalist, in the words of a former colleague only half in jest ‘tries to make old people scared to leave their homes.’ They used to have one main channel. Like the printed newspaper or radio bulletin. Now they have to use more. A comms person needs to know as many of the 40 different skills as possible.

Skills. While the reporter needs more skills now than ever the PR or comms person needs to draw either individually or across a team up to 40 skills.

Diplomacy. A journalist can smile politely and ask why the chief executive has failed to build 100 homes on time. A comms person needs the tact to talk through the implications of how that failure will play out and suggest a course of action.

There are no jacks under it. As a journalist, I’d be encouraged to make a story a bit more exciting by ‘putting the jacks under it.’ Outrage, slam, row. As a comms person you play it straight. You stick to the facts which are always sacred.

Accuracy. Now, here’s a thing. I was more accurate as a PR person than a journalist. There. I’ve said it. The news desk request to write a story to fit a pre-determined idea is a thing. I’ve done it. In comms and PR you need to be certain of your ground or you become the story.

A difference. A journalist can try and make a difference by holding power to account. A comms person can make a difference by drawing up the right content in the right place at the right time.

Planning. Long term planning on newspapers was often tomorrow. The concept of a comms plan to work out the business priority, the audience and the channel is alien.

Obsolescence. The journalist suffers from being in an industry whose business model is being re-invented and as a result there are casualties. Comms as an area is developing.

Hours. Long hours to make sure the paper is filled are common on newspapers – who are often renamed media companies. Hours in comms and PR are long. But it’s rare to be stood outside a burning factory in Smethwick, I find.

Writing. Just because you can write for a newspaper doesn’t mean you can write for the web. Or Facebook or Snapchat.

Your employer and your ethics. You bat for your employer as  a PR person. But you bat for your ethics first. At times you have to know your ground and say a firm ‘no.’

Innovation. There can’t be a more exciting time to be a comms person than now. The internet has tipped up old certainties. The tools we can use are evolving and the guidebook on how to use them you can write yourself. How good is that?

Like many former journalists, I admire good journalism. But don’t anyone think that being a reporter and being a press officer or a PR person are remotely the same.

Picture credit: Mattiece David / Flickr

VIDEO LINK TOO: Incident video footage from firefighters’ body-worn cameras is as good as you think it’ll be

A few days ago I posted about how a straight forward car fire could play out as video.

You can read it here. It talks about the impact of some content shot on a smartphone and posted by a firefighter.

Following from that, a firefighter tweeted this YouTube footage that goes one better. It’s brilliant. It’s shot from a body camera worn by a watch commander. It shows them directing the response to the fire and the impact of the housefire.

It’s powerful as-live content. You can see it here:

As West Midlands Fire Service say, this pilot is becoming adopted service-wide in the New Year.

What’s the advantage? Brilliant content that captures an incident as it develops. As body camera footage this doesn’t get in the way. There is no issue of a firefighter breaking off from what they are doing just to film. There’s also the benefit of good quality footage that can be used for training and internally as well as shared online and on TV.

To a former journalist like myself, I’m fascinated at how the round of phone calls to fire stations is being replaced by a round of social media checks.

A downside? It’s possible that downloading the film, editing and uploading may prove fiddly. But do the benefits outweigh this? It would seem so.

Would this work elsewhere? It’s tricky to see how day-to-day police, NHS, housing or ambulance footage could be used if people were included on the content. Yet, this Oldham Council video with a Go-Pro does give a taste.

Class, be more like West Midlands Fire Service.

I can’t wait to see the content that emerges from it.

WRITE LINES: Of course poetry is good communications, it goes for the heart

3338010989_27dc5fd4d3_o

Poetry? In good communications?

There’s a few lines of verse I have to be careful with because when I read them my eyes always fill  with stinging tears. I can’t help myself.

You may know them. They are from AE Houseman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’. He was inspired to write them after climbing the Clent Hills in North Worcestershire and looking towards Shropshire in the distance.

They are lines filled with a sense of loss. Soldiers in the First World War often took them with them into the trenches. Wilfred Owen carried a copy with him.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

I was reminded by this by an unconference session at GCS North in Manchester earlier today. Poetry in communications was floated as a session idea almost as an afterthought. Feel a lump in the throat? I do.

Here are two surprising things. First, Houseman never knew Shropshire well. He was from Bromsgrove. He would see the hills in the far-off distance to him they were a place that were just out-of-reach. Second, Houseman for all the passion of those lines was outwardly a cold man. An academic of the Classics he was an unemotional fish. But he believed that poetry works best when it aimed at the heart and the emotions. I think he’s right.

All too often creativity is squeezed out of a comms job, one person remarked.

Yet, a piece of creative writing can – at times – connect better with people than the formal tone.

There is a tremendous video used to promote Dublin that marries spoken word poetry with images. It’s a powerful thing. You can see it here.

It goes back to the heart v head argument I’ve written about before.

But poetry can also serve to articulate something. One attendee at the session with a condition remarked that writing verse about his condition helped him articulate it in a way he couldn’t in conversation. Another said that a back-to-work colleague overcoming depression once communicated through a poem as she felt awkward talking about it.

If you are struggling to find the right words poetry to appeal to the heart could help you.

Picture credit: Mark Peate / Flickr

VIDEO LINK: A quick routine case study on why frontline fire content works

Why give frontline teams access to social media? Easy. Because they create the best content.

It’s long been a drum I’ve been banging and I find it odd that this hasn’t mushroomed faster.

What was the content?

Take Highgate Fire Station in the West Midlands, for example. They responded to an abandoned burning car on November 4 and posted a short video clip the next day. Just 21 seconds and features a firefighter in breathing aparatus extinguishing the blaze. They posted it to their station Twitter account. You can see the video here:

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In terms of resource, it took one firefighter less than five minutes to shoot, edit and post the content. It’s the kind of thing that back when I was a journalist the fire crew would barely mention. Why? Because they are routine to them. To the residents they serve they aren’t.

So who saw that video?

Tweetreach say that 39,000 accounts were reached by the tweet which was shared 13 times. Included in that number was the Birmingham Mail who ripped the video and created their own video which they posted on their own channels.

shot_2016-11-06_11-49-42

What equipment was needed?

A smartphone that can record video and some WiFi. That’s it.

What did it say?

On a basic level, it said that firefighters risk their lives to make the area they serve safer.  It also works to promote the work of the fire service and better connect with residents.

So, why wouldn’t fire and rescue services want more of this? In fact, why wouldn’t the rest of the public sector want to tell people about the job they are doing? And yet, so many oprganisations are still reluctant to invest and trust their staff.

STORY TELLING: How video can deliver a family’s story to help make a difference

You may know that for the past 18 months or so I’ve been helping to deliver video skills workshops via comms2point0. The aim is to give people the skills to plan, shoot, edit and post video using a smartphone or tablet.

They are a joy to deliver. Steve and Sophie who I deliver them with are good people to work with. I love doing them and seeing people go on a bit of a journey from unsure to taking their first steps. Then later on I may see them blossom into a sprinter and marathon runner who are travelling to amazing places.

One such blooming dropped into my Twitter timeline from Chris Bentley. Chris works at Acorns Hospice which is a hospice in the West Midlands that specialises in looking after childern.

He shot the following video here:

You don’t have to be a parent to get the humanity and dignity of this story. It’s beautifully told.

While you know I help deliver video skills workshops you may not know that I lost my own mother 12 years ago. She died in a hospice surrounded by many of her family. I don’t know how it feels to lose a child as the Harvey family have but I painfully know what it’s like to lose a loved one in a hospice. I wish that when it is time everyone has this.

I’m quietly proud that a workshop that I’ve been involved with may have played even a small part in delivering such an effective video. It’s a video that doesn’t stand alone. It is part of a fundraising campaign to carry on the hospice work. Good communications can seem cold. Find out the business objective. Tell stories and create content that helps that. Evaluate by seeing if the business objective has been reached. But for the coldness of this, what makes it work is the warmth of the storytelling as Chris has done here.

The truism that good PR and comms can make a real difference is never truer than it is here.  I can’t wait to see the results of the campaign and will be chipping in with a donation here.  I hope you, if you can, do too.

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

25085582765_e91823be8c_bI heard something this week… then read something that chimed with it.

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

A conversation that challenged

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

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

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

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

A paragraph that chimes

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

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

It’s that thing again.

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

Definitely developing new skills.