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Wednesday, February 3, 2016 
Communicating sensitive subjects will be an issue for all communicators at some point in their roles. For some it's a regular issue to manage and manage effectively. Follow these top tips and it might make it easier the next time you're called into action.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015 
An NHS choir are making themselves heard through song. It's a campaign to show timely support. There's plenty to learn from this.
Over recent weeks I’ve been watching as word has spread about the campaign to make ‘Bridge Over You’ sung by the choir from Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust the Christmas number 1.
It’s a simple enough message – show your support for something you believe in and help others by downloading the song. It doesn’t cost much and you will feel good afterwards. What’s not to like?
Saturday, November 7, 2015 
It's hard to avoid the new John Lewis TV advert. In fact, you are far more likely to see it not by watching TV at all. Pick up a newspaper, magazine or go online and you'll come across it.
by Dan Slee
Well, I wasn't going to. And I didn't seek it out but the new John Lewis TV ad gives a perfect lesson for where comms is right now.
You may know it. It's a two minute film of a little girl spotting the man on the moon looking sad and sending him a present to cheer him up at Christmas time. An old Oasis b-side has been re-recorded for the music.
Not watching much television I wasn't aware of it. But of course, I remember the penguin TV ad from last year. But I didn't have to watch TV to find out about the new TV ad. It was being discussed on BBC Radio 5 on the way home and all over Twitter.
Sunday, July 19, 2015 
Sometimes it's not the direct things that wins people over. It can be the BBC. Or Bollywood. As a talented comms officer from Tunisia who worked for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office reveals.
by Kacem Jlidi
Picture this: a 16 year old boy from Morocco going to the hairdresser to get a 'David Beckham' haircut or doodling all sorts of tattoo shapes on his textbook while in class.
Imagine this South African 48 year old lady spending her evenings binge-watching Bollywood movies and gasping at the sight of her favourite Indian actor’s dancing.
Wouldn’t you agree that those are basic examples of successful brand engagement – ones that went beyond geographical limits?
Friday, March 20, 2015 
The Homes for Britain campaign held the biggest housing rally ever in the heart of Westminster to get the housing crisis firmly onto the general election radar – and on the national news agenda. What's the comms story?
By Anne Arnold
It used to irritate me that the housing crisis wasn’t in the news more. House prices sure, but not the housing crisis. That sinking feeling when you realise you’ll never be able to afford to buy near your family, not now, not ever.
Couples delaying having babies because they’re forking out half of their wages to live in a flat the size of a shoe box, graduates bunked up back in their childhood bedrooms, people having to move further and further out of the cities and towns where the jobs are, commuting for hours each day to get to work.
Sunday, March 8, 2015 
I'd love a chance to appear on the TV Show Room 101, although I'd struggle to narrow it down to just five choices. But what would your 'Comms 101' choices be?
by GUEST EDITOR Emma Rodgers 
I have been lucky recently to get to a couple of top-notch learning events – the LG Communications Digital seminar in Coventry and the comms2point0 Campaign Masterclass in Birmingham.
Instead of doing a blog on all the things I learnt from the event (of which there were many), I’ve instead opted for a post that will hopefully act as a little bit of therapy for comms peeps. It certainly did for us anyway at the time.
I’m all for sharing and while I’m generally always focussed on what the good things are to share. This time when pitching on both days, I was keen to take a different tact. It was a sharing, cathartic session whereby anyone who came along could get it out as to what was annoying them the most to do with digital at the LG Comms session, and what was annoying them most to do with campaigns at the masterclass event.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015 
Campaigning. It’ll be one of the most talked about comms activities over the next few months in the run up to the general election. Battle lines will be drawn and those with the smartest, best executed campaign stand a chance of coming out on top in what is a tight and hard to call contest. Mastering the art of delivering great campaigns is a key skill in the armoury of any communicator.
No matter how much digital has changed the comms and media landscape, the importance of a well-planned and effectively targeted campaign is still hugely important to communicators across all sectors.
That is why we are really rather excited to be hosting our first ever Campaigns Masterclass this month so that we can learn more – first hand – from six organisations who have deliver memorable and effective campaigns which have changed behaviours, created an impact and won some awards along the way.
Sunday, February 8, 2015 
Some people and things in life just punch way above their weight. Orkney Islands are one. They never ceases to amaze with their greatness - like the Spartans of the comms world. Here's another example to show why...
Coming from a remote island community you get used to the good humoured “League of Gentlemen” comparisons – this is a local shop, for local people and all that. But from a local government communications perspective, how much truth is there in that kind of statement? Is local best?
In late 2013, local councils across the UK were in the midst of encouraging their residents to nominate their community heroes to be ‘baton bearers’ for the Commonwealth Games Queen’s Baton Relay. It was a challenge, not least in Orkney where Orcadians, although renowned for their immense community spirit and pride, are notoriously reticent to put themselves in the limelight. This coupled with a tendency towards a laid-back last-minute attitude to these processes led to a worried phone call from the Glasgow 2014 relay team concerned over the lack of nominations coming in from Orkney.
A well-meaning PR bod from the relay team ‘doon sooth’ suggested that perhaps they could send us a nice picture of Clyde, the Games mascot, standing (over 300 miles away) next to the Clyde in Glasgow for distribution to our local media.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Friday, January 23, 2015 
There has never been more pressure on comms people to deliver and prove they've delivered. Our event will help you create and execute better campaigns.
by Dan Slee
For a while now I’ve had a growing feeling that unless comms people in the public sector can look finance square in the eye then they may not be long for this world.
“So what,” they will ask “difference do you make?”
If the answer is that you helped save the organisation by better communicating with people by working with the contact centre better or some channel shift then you’ve got a chance. If you know you saved £500k through that campaign on recruiting foster carers even better.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015 
When Sport England launched a campaign 'This Girl Can' aimed at women some loved it. Some hated it. But what do comms people think? We asked a volleyballing head of comms.
by Emma Rodgers
A new Sport England campaign called ‘This girl can’ was launched last week. The campaign claims to be the first of its kind to feature all shapes, sizes and sporting abilities that sweat and jiggle as they exercise.
As Sport England sets out “It seeks to tell the real story of women who exercise and play sport by using images that are the complete opposite of the idealised and stylised images of women we are now used to seeing.”
When Dan asked me if I’d write a blog post on it, I was more than happy to. As a woman who has always exercised or played sport, I was keen to really have a think about what it meant to me both as a comms professional and as an individual who is far from the stick thin woman that is often portrayed doing sport in the media. I’d also watched the video, which has had over 6 million views online already, as it had been shared by many of my female friends on social media before I even knew it was part of a specific campaign. If you haven’t seen the advert yet, you can check it out here.
Monday, June 9, 2014 
We first came across Caerphilly Council's innovative use of social media in 2011. And they're still going great guns with it three years on.
by Emily Worthington and Jayne Catherall
Why do local authorities embrace social media? Because everyone is doing it? At Caerphilly County Borough Council we might use a cartoon sheep ‘Nev’ to encourage people to follow us, but don’t confuse us with the fluffy creatures.
Monday, June 9, 2014 
It's always fascinating seeing how comms challenges stack up for other people. Take colleges. Not just colleges but specialist colleges...
by Dan Slee
I recently found myself delivering a couple of sessions on effective use of social media for the Association of National Specialist Colleges (or Natspec).
What are specialist colleges? They're colleges across the country that help students with specific special needs. The Royal National College for the Blind - or RNC - for example, in Hereford is a residential college for young people who are visually impaired. They can get an education with far greater levels of support than they would in what's called 'mainstream' education.
Friday, June 6, 2014 
Reputation. It's a key element of any communications campaign. But as an outcome, reputation enhancement alone is not going to cut the mustard with residents.
by GUEST EDITOR Julie Waddicor
As foot soldiers and officers, we stand surveying the battlefield. Through no fault of our own, we seem to have lost the fight for reputation.
Our successful campaigns lie strewn in the mud, some effective in their time but forgotten now. The war around us has moved on, focusing on changing how residents relate to us and the relationship we have with them.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 
You have a message to deliver but sometimes you need a good copywriter to cut through the noise and help you deliver it. This is why.
The main obstacles that face anyone trying to communicate with lots of people boil down to a single uncomfortable truth:
Just because what you have to say is important doesn’t mean people will listen.
People are busy, easily distracted and lazy.
Saturday, December 7, 2013 
I was listening to Public Enemy’s ‘Harder than you think’ recently, and it took me straight back to the summer of 2012.
‘Harder than you think’ was the iconic song used by Channel 4 for its ‘Meet the Superhumans’ campaign for the Paralympics. Now, that was a truly outstanding bit of marketing. Yes, they had huge budgets and yes, they had blanket TV coverage, the like of which we in local government can only dream of. But fundamentally, some bright spark had the creative vision to identify the people taking part in the Paralympics as super-human, rather than defined by their disability, and to use a song with the line ‘Thank you for letting us be ourselves’.
