Sunday, April 19, 2015 message to comms people: stop being hopeless at telling your own story
A fightback has begun over what local government comms people do. It's good to see. But you can play your part too. It starts with you on the rooftops shouting.
by Dan Slee
An elderly American came up with the line about if the PR person becomes the news, then it’s probably not good.
Think images of spin doctors Alastair Campbell or Andy Coulson being pursued by a Press pack down the street and there's some truth in it. The aim is to be behind-the-scenes, surely?
Trouble is that line is now wrapped like a noose around public sector PR and communications people. None more so than in local government.
Three times in the last week council communications staff got a kicking. By the far right Tax Payers Alliance, the Press Gazette and then by UKIP. The theme was constant: there's too many of them and they're a waste of money.
What was really refreshing about these past few days was that local government comms people started to fight back.
The NUJ started the fight-back with a fesity defence and LGComms' Cormac Smith added to it. Julie Waddicor added to it.
Without local government comms teams you won't know if your bin day has changed, if you should recycle more, why that road is being build or how to sign-up to be a foster carer. There are 700 services that councils provide and each one affects the lives of real people. Each needs to tell its story. If it doesn't it costs time, money and resources because of poor communications.
It's high time that all comms people - not just local government - stopped being hopeless at telling their own story.
Work with people. Tell their story. Help deliver change. Then for heaven's sake go and bloody tell people the role you played. Internally, go and shout what you've bloody well done, the money you've helped save and the lives you've had an impact on. Tell the story outside the organisation too.
Stop being so bloody reticent. People will only know the value of what you do if you tell people the difference you have made. Tell the chief executive. Tell the elected members and the executive directors. Stop being so bloody shy.
To be blunt, if you don't, don't be surprised if your job disappears. After all, if people don't know the value you've brought, can you actually blame them?
Dan Slee is co-founder of comms2point0.
Reader Comments (2)
Totally agree with this. Communications can help the spread of quality improvement in healthcare much more rapidly - saving organisations tons of money.
An example is a campaign around catheter care. Urinary infections caused by catheters cost around £1,300 to treat if a patient is in hospital. A campaign that cost £10,000 only had to help prevent 10 infections to make its money back. Comms pros need to get better at working out the ROI and the savings they are delivering to the organisation.
In the bin example, how much more efficient is it to have bins put out on the right day? Can people track the difference having a comms campaign can make to encouraging correct use? e.g. do the number of calls to the council about waste drop after a campaign? The data will be there and can be interpreted into money. E.g. if a call out because someone puts their waste out on the wrong day costs c.£300 and the number of call outs drops by 30 a week that's £9,000 a week. Alternatively if each call out takes an hour, that's an additional 30 hours staff can spend on other duties - the equivalent of 4 days extra work which can also be costed.
The beauty of this message is its simplicity - because it really is that simple! There's no point in doing comms if you can't measure and share how effective it was. So the key is to evaluate, evaluate and then evaluate. Then take that evaluation which shows how awesome and full of impact your work was and place it in luminous ink with flashing arrows pointing at in front of everyone.
I've moved from the council world to Environment Agency comms now but Dan's words are no less relevant - we're all great at promoting services and messages so let's not forget to promote ourselves. Think of it as showing a job well done, influencing the next one. Think of the job satisfaction. Think of the job.