The PR of Changing PMs

This past week has has been history making in Australian politics. In a late night party coup Kevin Rudd was dumped as Prime Minister and within 24 hours his deputy Julia Gillard became Australia's first female Prime Minister.

In public relations actions always speak louder than words, so it will be instructive to see the impact of these events in the minds and attitudes of ordinary citizens ... in the lead-up to the next election and beyond.

Most likely we will see self referential communications come into play.  For those who like Mr Rudd last week's events will be seen as dastardly and disloyal.  To those who support Ms  Gillard they will have been necessary actions to get the Government and Australia back on track. 

However the rest of us - the so called silent majority - may feel a little queasy about the way Mr Rudd met his fate.  Australians pride themselves on giving everyone a "fair go".  In the workplace or market place the treatment Mr Rudd received - instant dismissal - is usually  reserved for those who commit criminal offences or whose performance seriously endangers the safety of others.

In the long run and in public relations terms the "Rudd dismissal" may have more impact on shaping how people view the character of politicians than on any changes it causes in government.

Blogging Tips: 52 Different Ideas | The Fight Against Destructive Spin

http://www.spinsucks.com/social-media/blogging-tips-52-different-ideas/

Here Comes Everyone

I am half way through reading Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everyone.  This is a book well worth reading.  It was published two years ago and I'm uncertain if it achieved best seller status but neither fact detracts from its significance.

The book is about how social media empowers people to self organise around their issues and interests.  

In tightly argued prose it asserts that social media has collapsed the costs of communication and created an entirely communication ecosystem which is as historically significant as when printing presses first replaced the medieval scribe.

Today social media have smashed the economics of communication and the entry fee to create, manage and create content is negligible for most of us.  This has allowed the mass amateurisation of communications particularly in the traditional media process. As it embeds in our culture social media has moved the news cycle away from  publishers and producers towards individual citizens, consumers and communities.  
 

The professional class of editors, producers, reporters, photographers and film crews are no longer the gatekeepers of the information that reaches our communities. We now have other ways to learn about our world.

Yes I can hear the old guard saying that so much of the information that passes through social media channels is inane and banal.  

But doesn't that reflect more on the quality of our conversations than the intrinsic value of these exciting new tools? Although they give us opportunity they are only as worthwhile as we make them.

Thank You Notes Work

I'm a great believer in thank you notes as a communications tool.

So I was delighted to come across this article from the latest IABC Communications World.  It talks about about the power of thank you notes and when to use them 

SeeThanks and No-Thanks: Write letters that make a difference by Claire Meirowitz.

Three Tips For Not For Profit Advertising

We don't cover advertising much in this blog and many PR people shy

away from it. But it is one channel that should always be considered

and never overlooked in your advertising planning.

True advertising in the mainstream media can be expensive, but it
remains a partcularly powerful way to quickly raise awareness while
keeping total control over how your information is presented.

Three ways to contain what can otherwise be an expensive undertaking
are to:

• Consider working with smaller start up advertising agencies to
develop your creative copy. "Newbie" companies can often be leaner and
hungrier than their larger counterparts and more eager to make a name.
They are more likely to go the extra mile for your limited budget.
Alternatively work with advertising students who may need to bulk out
their post graduation resumes. These "juniors" can often surprise and
delight with the freshness and energy with which they approach your
issue.

• Most of us want our ads on the front page or at least in the
earlier section of a print publication. But specialist sections - such
as a motoring supplement or the school pages - often attract "rusted on" and loyal
readers. Although they may not be as obvious as the early general
news (ENG) option, at the end of the day they might be prove more
effective in reaching the people you need to engage.

• The advertising world is replete with all kinds of special deals
such as distress space, last minute offers and discounts for multiple
placements. So before handing over your cheque ensure you inquire
about the current deals on offer.

Advertising is among the more costly communication options available
to you but it can also be one of the most effective to create instant
impact.

Recording The Next 100 Years Of The ANZAC Legend

During his ANZAC Day speech at the Australian War Memorial Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the creation of a national commission to set up a program to commemorate the centenary of ANZAC Day in 2010.

The commission to be headed by former Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser will call for suggestions from communities, schools, veterans and other organisations.

Social media can play a key role both in the consultation process, recording the centenary activities and then preserving and enriching Australia's Gallipoli experience for the next 100 years.

Some early thoughts are:

• Could the Commission use online as well as other consultations to broaden its outreach to people in regional areas, younger people and the large numbers of Australians travelling or working overseas?

• For the first time a national wiki would allow us to link the stories of individual families and communities right across the country with the broader events in our military past.  Australia's network of councils and shires are well placed to carry the local coordination a project of this size and scope demands.

• We should continue efforts, already underway, to ensure we have a digital photograph of each of the 102 000 Australians who have died in conflict and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial. (Assuming of course these images still exist perhaps in old suitcases or in long forgotten packing cases in garages throughout the country.)

And at an early stage the Commission should engage with Australia's multicultural communities.  With over 25 per cent of Australians born overseas, people from different backgrounds need the chance to engage with and interpret the ANZAC legend in a meaningful way.

Twitter Etiquette for ANZAC Day

25

ANZAC Day is fast approaching - 25 April the day when Australians and New Zealanders commemorate their countrymen and women who died in conflict.

With the increasing popularity of Twitter many of us will be sharing our experiences online as we attend dawn services, parades and get togethers around the country. But when symbolic ceremonies meet new technologies a few simple protocols can help determine what is acceptable and what might cause offence.  

On ANZAC Day Twitter can be a powerful tool to:

• Share family ANZAC stories online. 
• Ask others about a particular campaign or research a loved one's service history (A good place to start is www.awm.gov.au).
• Swap details of the services, ceremonies and marches in your area.
• Arrange to meet with friends.
• Tweetpic our ANZAC images.
• Share recipes for gunfire breakfasts and ANZAC cookies.
• Tell mates where the Two Up is. 
• Report on veterans and their units as they march proudly through our towns, suburbs and cities.

But please leave your mobile in your purse or pocket and turn off the tweets during:

• The dawn service (between 5:30am and 6:00am on 25 April).  This is the time for quiet reflection on the deeds of those who stormed Gallipoli's beaches 95 years ago and the fallen who followed.  Tweeting is likely to annoy others if  the LCD screens of Blackberries and Iphone light up the pre-dawn skies.
• During the bugle calls of Last Post and Reveille.

This ANZAC Day please tweet in the spirit of Lest We Forget.

Communication Wisdom Can Lead Minds

My friend Geoff Kelly writes a regular online newsletter for leaders who want others to support their ideas. Go to http://www.kellystrategicinfluence.com.au and enter your name and email address in the subscription box.

We particularly like this month's post on leadership and communication. Thanks to Geoff for allowing it to be re-published here.

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“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people”  William Yates, Irish Poet

2,000 year old wisdom guides today’s top leaders and communicators.

Did you know that this is the most over-communicated and over-informed society in history? Information is doubling every three years. Human capacity to take in information is not.

The internet now has over a trillion (a million million) unique URLs and is adding several billion pages a day. That makes it several billion pages a day harder for leaders to get attention and buy-in for their key strategies. Several billion pages a day harder to get prospects to notice and buy their products and services. Several billion pages a day harder to get traction with staff, suppliers, Government, shareholders and community leaders.

So what’s that got to do with leaders winning hearts and minds? Everything.

People behave according to the way their world occurs to them. Faced with the same circumstances, two people will buy differently, vote differently, and act in every other way differently based on how their world occurs to them.

Leadership implies followership – you can’t be a leader unless someone follows you. To achieve this you must influence (hopefully for their good and not for their disadvantage) the way they see some part of their world and circumstances.

So to lead followers to action in any arena, leaders must first get their attention, engage them in some way about their idea or strategy, and convert them to commitment and action over time.

If you fail to get attention in today’s communication blizzard,you fail.

This is why corporate leaders struggle to gain the support they need. They're losing sales, time and money, and often fail to connect with the people who matter most to them.

One in three of the CEOs who leave the largest publicly traded corporations in the world are fired for performance failures. Failing to earn crucial support is a major factor in CEO performance failures.

This is why Government leaders struggle to achieve traction with the community on key policies and regulation change. Political support is more volatile, with election results routinely reporting major swings in voting results. And leaders in Government bureaucracies are less influential than ever before with their political masters.

For most leaders, gaining attention and converting support now costs more money, takes more time and is less certain than at any time in human history. That is because they are poorly advised and doing what they see what most others doing.

For example, the average corporate website has more than two self-references a sentence. These are words that refer to the organisation in some way, including its staff, products and services, processes and words like I, we, our. Go to your next cocktail party and talk about yourself as much as that. You'll see a space open around you like Moses parting the Red Sea.

So why does common sense fail when we leave the cocktail party and move into the world of communicating business and Government to mass and niche audiences?

Leaders would do better to adopt the 2,000 year old wisdom of a Roman statesman. Cicero said:”If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.” At the time Cicero was the most influential thinker in the most powerful civilization the world had known.

Who has the better chance of reframing the way someone sees his world – the modern day leader with his or her average self-centred web site and average self-centred communication program? Or the ancient orator who knew enough to think, feel

and speak from the perspective of his target audience?

Cicero knew he had to immerse himself in seeing the world as others saw it, so he could deeply understand what they really thought and how they really felt. Once he understood how they saw and felt about their world, he would craft his words and argument to reframe their world view. And he would use the language of his audience, because that was language that they understood.

As a highly educated Roman and a citizen of high rank, Cicero could have used any form of sophisticated language to express the most abstract concepts. However, he chose to understand his audience and communicate meaning and language that his audience would understand and relate to.

Great leaders throughout history have known the importance of winning hearts and minds to their cause. And they knew the secrets of how to do that. As do the best leaders today.So here is the surprising truth.

The most effective leaders communicate less and differently, rather than louder with more of the same. Less because they hit their target precisely.Differently because they resonate with more meaning, with more variety and with more credibility.

This is both a tragedy and an opportunity. Most leaders don’t get it, and until they do their influence and achievement in this world will be so much less than it might have been. The tragedy is that so many great ideas and achievements will die with them.

The opportunity is that it is all learnable. You can start where you are and learn and develop high level skills and achievements as a leader who can change your world by winning the hearts and minds of others to your strategy or idea.

Anyone can do this, but few will. That is the unfair advantage for the few who choose to be the change in their worlds.

Decide now to take this journey. The steps are simple, if not always easy. However the rewards that flow from becoming a high-impact leader are life-long.

Community Radio Can Be Powerful PR

Australia is rich in radio.  But community radio stations rarely feature in PR and media relations plans. And that's a pity because community radio covers a lot of territory and reaches a lot of people in this country.  

It is estimated more than 4.5 million adult Australians listen to community radio stations every week.  That makes them an effective way of channelling campaign messages to grassroots and often committed audiences.

Community radio caters for many interests including community, multicultural, Indigenous and religious broadcasters. And like its commercial cousin community programming includes a stew of  music, news, current affairs, lifestyle and local content.

Although bigger stations may have a full-time station or program manager, volunteer broadcasters who give a few hours of their time each week are the lifeblood of stations.  As well as their broadcasting value these volunteers are often activists in their own right who can provide word of mouth and other engagement opportunities beyond the reach of the station. 

Here are the websites of peak and other bodies where you can learn more about Australia’s community radio sector:

• Community Broadcasters Association of Australia
• National Ethnic Multicultural Broadcasters Council
• National Indigenous Radio Service
• Christian Broadcasters

Community stations even have their own news service. A small team of dedicated journalists run National Radio News from Bathurst in NSW supported by communications students at Charles Sturt University.  Their three minute news bulletins are syndicated to local stations across the country.

Many years ago I was a part-time community broadcaster.  That plus recent experience of working with a host of community stations has convinced me that volunteer radio can be an important medium in a PR project.

What has been your experience of community radio?

Facebook Guidelines for Parents, Students and Schools

I thought you would find this interesting:

Facebook Guidelines for Parents, Students and Schools - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wiredprworks/FkFt/~3/gCw0JhROIEM/

Shared from wiredPRworks, an iPhone app.

Open Government: The Canadian Way

Recently I met Canadian Chris Moore, the  Chief Information Officer for the City of Edmonton.

Chris is spearheading  efforts to deliver “Open Government” to the City’s citizens.  That means making the processes and data held by Edmonton's agencies more available to people …and in easily accessible forms.

The City of Edmonton is the fourth municipality in Canada with open government initiatives rooted in the IT department.  Chris’ measures include crowd sourcing new ideas and launching an Iphone app to allow citizens to easily report graffiti and potholes around the city to a municipal call centre. 

Chris has over 25 years of IT experience and has only been in his current job around 18 months.  Based on his experiences - which I’m sure have involved many bureaucratic struggles - he identifies three conditions as necessary in any efforts to make government more open.

• There must be support from the top which means political  and CEO backing.
• Administrative arrangements must support the move to change.
• There must be genuine community engagement with peers, staff and with residents.

Chris blogs Edmonton’s Open Government program here.

Follow the Australian Government’s progress on Open Government here.

Say It Loud

I have just started using Audio Boo, a new social media application that allows you to share audio files via the Internet.

Audioboo is an application for recording and sharing your voice with the world. The free version allows you to create audio up to 5 minutes in length and post that to an account on the web. You can add titles, tags, geolocation info and a photo to the recording before you upload it and all that will be saved with the file.

I recently "did a boo" especially for people who attended one of our workshops. A sort of enhanced word of mouth.   Listen here

Audioboo could be a good way to go if the people you need to reach, prefer to listen rather than read information.

Stories: The Key Ingredient for Successful Launches

A launch of a new product, service, idea or campaign can either be just another occasion or like the launch of a rocket heading to the moon it can be an opportunity to inspire.  Too often in the hurly burly of a campaign it is easy to overlook the power and importance of a launch and fail to draw maximum value from it.

A launch provides the chance to introduce new ideas, different ways of working or even to bring forward a new CEO or team.  It can start the telling of a corporate story or continue the telling of a necessary tale.  And it can be a golden opportunity to gather, energise and send forth key supporters to promote your issue.  

Of all the different types of events the launch is one that should be as impactful and emotional as you can possibly make it.  After all if you are not excited about your issue at the outset, then why should anyone else care?  And these days just having one speaker follow another - unless each delivers riveting presentations - is hardly likely to make the grade.  Today audiences expect something novel and compelling.

I have attended two launches in recent weeks - both on similar issues.  One used a standard format with a succession of VIPs speaking in generalities.  The other got real people to share with the audience their personal stories of tragedy, triumph, failure and achievement.   The first was scripted.  The other poured straight from the heart.

Perhaps there is an old lesson to re-learned.  The art and craft of embedding personal stories into a launch should take primetime over the logistics of invitations, catering and other things that can so easily overtake our pre-launch efforts.

 

32 Ways To Communicate A Construction Project

I have been looking at some recently completed community relations campaigns that have supported major developments in Australia.

Here’s some of the communications tools and strategies used by companies and government agencies to get community buy-in for large construction projects:

• Advertising.
• Blogs dedicated to the construction project.
• Complaint management systems to register and track complaints.
• Construction staff volunteering for local charities and events.
• Employing local people and buying from local suppliers.
• Conveniently placed information centres where residents can get information.
• Dedicated website or minisites.
• Demonstration projects.
• Displays at community events.
• Email channels for complaints or queries.
• Employing local communicators who understand affected communities.
• Fact sheets with specifc themes that can be mailed, emailed, downloaded or handed out.
• Information packs for businesses, schools and retailers.
• Interactive mobile kiosks in libraries, shopping and other high traffic areas.
• Leaving behind legacy projects after construction such as new roads, school improvements, parks and other recreational facilities.
• Media briefings on constructions sites.
• Media relations.
• One on one briefings with landholders and other key people.
• Operational changes based on community feedback such as scheduling work at night or during school holidays.
• Presentations to local groups on a one-off or regular basis.
• Print materials such as newsletters, bulletins, advisories, bulletins, posters.
• Transferring communications staff to live in the areas affected by construction.
• Research on audiences and attitudes before, during and after construction.
• Site tours and open days for the public.
• Specially equipped information buses that can travel around communities.
• Sponsoring organisations or events in areas affected by construction.
• Staff from diverse backgrounds tasked to communicate with multicultural communities.
• Stakeholder consultative bodies offering feedback on the effectiveness of communications.
• Thank you events once a project finishes.
• Toll free hot lines.

There was little use of social media in these constructions projects but this many change as more people use new digital platforms to get information on local developments.

Pollies Speak Plain English Please

 At the start of the year I invited PR people in Canberra to guest blog and discuss their communications concerns. My friend and senior Canberra PR consultant ,Nigel Catchlove, has taken up the the offer and here Nigel calls on politicians of all persuasions to speak plain English.  

The views below are entirely Nigel's.

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"Parliamentary question time is full of linguistic gymnastics performed by our elected officials so they may avoid answering a question.  Very little has changed with the change in Government although Kevin Rudd is a master when it comes to flapping his gums, gesticulating boldly and saying nothing.  In fact it’s not just during question time that our Prime Minister looks and sounds like he’s talking but isn’t making any sense. 

His press conference after the Major Economies Forum included a now famous gem; ‘It is highly unlikely that anything will emerge from the MEF in terms of detailed programmatic specificity.’ The use of an acronym such as MEF is also not unusual for this highly intelligent yet incomprehensible man.

Sir Isaac Newton surmised; ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’, and so it is in Australian politics.  The reaction to Kevin Rudd’s overuse of passive language is the emergence of the ‘say-it-how-it-is’ politician being jointly developed by Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce.

Using plain direct English allows for descriptions of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme as a ‘great big new tax’.  There’s not much depth to that statement but it was made in an environment where the government is unable to explain the intricacies of its policy and even the name is a truly awful piece of work.  Many would argue that carbon is not a pollutant and even more would point out that the scheme won’t reduce anything. 

But is plain English the way to go?  I think it is but like Aristotle suggested, ‘everything in moderation’.

The challenge comes when politicians don’t want to be cornered, don’t want to show their hand or simply want to obfuscate an issue.

This is all very easy for Kevin Rudd. Frankly, few can interpret what he says, so whether he is answering a question or is dancing around trying to avoid the issue, his speech is mostly white noise anyway.  His demeanour changes little as he speaks – always in control, always arrogant, always dismissive of anyone who dares question his wisdom. 

For the self-labelled plain speaking politician the challenge is a little different and carries a lot more risk.  If people are used to hearing Tony Abbot describe anthropogenic climate change as ‘absolute crap’ and Barnaby Joyce describing Labor as ‘having gone on a spending bender’, then they would have been confused to hear Barnaby try to avoid taking a position about the foreign investment review board and its approach to Chinese government owned enterprises buying Australian assets.

On Q&A on the ABC on 15 Feb, Lindsay Tanner played the all-knowing smarter-than-you politician very well coming across as articulate, perhaps arrogant but across his portfolio. Barnaby Joyce however looked decidedly uncomfortable and I was left at a loss when he changed demeanour, changed speaking style and tried to fudge his way out of a simple question that demanded a simple answer.

It is a refreshing change to hear a politician answer questions and speak succinctly rather than waffle endlessly without saying anything, however, consistency is the key.  Kevin Rudd may come across as a bland, intelligent uber-nerd but he does so most of the time. Barnaby Joyce changes depending on what he thinks will play best to the audience and reverts to the passive Orwellian speak we have all come to associate with politicians when the going gets a little tough. 

My advice is much like Aristotles – everything in moderation.  Politicians should use active voice but they just need to tone their rhetoric down a little."

Bob's Online Library

Recently we started an online library to bring together references that can help your PR and marketing.  Visit the library here.

(It is based on Posterous a free social bookmarking software).

Why Raising Awareness Is Poor PR

Recently I came across a very good blog post about raising awareness and why it is a poor goal for a PR or marketing campaign.

Often people talk loosely about the need to raise awareness of their issue, product or service.  Even when people know you exist that alone will not move the needle to make your organisation more successful.  

After all what do you do with awareness once you have raised it? 

Awareness alone does not translate into more income, volunteers, program take-up or involvement.  I may be aware of Ford Motor Company but I may choose to drive a General Motors car.  I know about Coke but may prefer to drink Pepsi.  I know about Telstra services but give my business to Optus (true).

The true goal is for the people you need to engage (audiences), to change either their attitude so they eventually support what you are trying to achieve.  Or to change a specific behaviour such as adopting a healthier lifestyle, buying something, registering to vote or using your services etc.

Achieving this often means:

• Continuous communications  and keeping in mind the PR maxim: just when you are sick of saying something, people are probably just starting to listen.
• Compelling content (centred on personal stories) that motivates people to change what they are currently doing.  
• An approach that grabs attention and propels your message through the communications clutter engulfing the average person.
• A repetitious mix of communications tactics so if one approach fails one time, another may succeed later.
  
  
  

The Business Reason To Tell Stories

Story telling is the universal language of the human camp.  We have been telling each other stories for 40 000 years.  We use them to motivate, amuse, warn and share information.

Stories are powerful.  Yet are you using them to communicate the good things your organisation does? If not why not?  A story is more powerful than a mission statement, annual report or policy document. 

I recently came across great advice from Alison Esse of the storytellers.com about how  companies can use stories and I thought it is worth sharing with you.  Thanks Alison.

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 The best way to pitch storytelling to your organisation is to position the argument as a 'winning  hearts and minds' one - creating an emotional connection to the  organisation, its objectives, goals, strategy and vision rather than  simply a rational one.

 Assuming that no business leader would argue that they didn't want to  create this level of connection, it would be fair then to suggest that  a storytelling approach is really one of the most effective ways of  achieving this.  Since mankind began we have used stories as a  powerful way to transfer knowledge and information, engage and inspire  people and to spark the emotions, stimulate actions or change  attitudes and behaviours. 

It's a necessary and vital part of human  bonding.  

We all tell and hear stories every day of our lives, in and outside the workplace, and harnessed to specific business messages you  can effect the most remarkable changes very swiftly.  The corporate  'story' or journey can be structured and told as a narrative which  makes it easy to understand and believe in (and corporate narratives  should be constructed in the same way as any story narrative), and  validated and nurtured with great stories about employees and  customers to keep it alive and to sustain interest.  Unless leaders  believe that 80-deck Powerpoint presentations can achieve the same  effect, it's a no-brainer!

 It may be a good idea to pitch the idea starting with a great story  about an employee who, faced with a particular dilemma (eg customer- related), took a particular course of action to win the day and make  something happen that has been truly inspiring or beneficial in some way to the business.

Branding for Not For Profits

Check out this SlideShare Presentation. It has some good insights into branding in the digital age.

Branding 2.0 für NGOs

View more presentations from Torsten Henning Hensel.

Free PR Workshops in 2010

This year we are running six free PR workshops for not for profit organisations.

They will be jointly run with Volunteering ACT and the Lions Club of Canberra Lake Burley Griffin and go from February to September 2010.

The workshops are open to any registered not for profit body. They are held in Canberra and last between two to four hours each.

• Workshop #1: Communicating to Community. Develop a 12-month PR plan that costs under $500 to carry out.

• Workshop #2: Social media for charities and other not for profits. How not for profit groups can use social media to reach the community.

• Workshop #3: Get Yourself PR Ready. Go behind the scenes to work out PR responsibilities, budgets and time-lines.

• Workshop #4: Sponsorship and fundraising. Get sponsorships and manage sponsors so they return next year and beyond.

• Workshop #5: Writing for the media. Learn to write media releases, media alerts and media backgrounders for mainstream and on-line media.

• Workshop #6: Event planning. Seven steps to holding great events.

We are settling the dates for these sessions with Volunteering ACT and will post dates and other details shortly.

This series follows our previous volunteer PR efforts. Since 2003 over 200 not for profits throughout Australia have attended similar free workshops.

Meanwhile what do you think we should cover in each session?

What information would be the most helpful?

And what other types of workshops would you like to see after this series?

Australia's Best Storyteller

On Australia Day I spent three hours with Australia's best storyteller.  I learned tales of struggle and war, romance and misfortune, separation and reunion and looked into the love affairs of millions.

I was visiting the Love and War exhibition at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra where plain words, imagery and everyday objects tell the wartime stories of Australian men and women.

Since 1922 the Memorial has become Australia's best storyteller.  It preserves the memory of 102 000 Australians who died in conflict through the tales of individual servicemen and women, their families, neighbours, workmates and friends. 

The Memorial is among Australia’s most loved institutions and it is simply impossible to just spend a single hour there because its content is so compelling and absorbs both time and total attention.   

The Memorial is unique for a government agency.  While most departments of state communicate through the formal language of bureaucracy, the Memorial let’s the "average bloke" or as Americans say the "ordinary Joe" become the storyteller.   Their letters, souvenirs, keepsakes and imagery provide personal testimony to past battles.  Today we live in an age of celebrity.  But the Memorial has no celebrities.  The most prized of its spaces is the tomb of a single Unknown Soldier rather than monument to any general or world leader and its most popular sculpture is a man and a donkey.


The Memorial holds a lesson for all communicators. Even the most complex communal stories are best told through the words, experiences and emotions of the individual.

(Disclaimer: I sometimes work on PR programs at the Memorial)

Improve Your PR Productivity

There are number of free software tools on the market to help improve your PR productivity.

The ones I'm currently using are:

• Evernote to clip and store material from the web including images, websites and documents.
• Drop Box to share files and folders between desktops, laptops and mobile phones.
• You Send It to email very large files such as videos and hi-res images.
• Audio Boo to record an audio file to the web and then distribute it.
• And of course, Facebook and Twitter to share ideas with other communications professionals.

So what are you using to save time and effort in your communications?

The PR of Climate Change

The threats posed to Earth by a changing climate are real and far reaching. 

So you would think it would be easy to tell people about the problems we face, what part they can play in helping the planet to adjust and then stand back and watch them take action.  If things were only that simple.

The recent Copenhagen Conference showed even governments armed with the latest, most compelling data cannot agree on what should be done. So what hope is there in convincing  Earth's six billion people to act for the common good.

Last month Columbia University's Centre for Research on Environmental Decisions released the Psychology of Climate Change Communications report. Meant for use by governments, scientists and environmental groups, it provides a framework to recognise the barriers to communicating climate change and recommends strategies and tools to convince people to act. These include:

• Know your audience and appreciate their current level of knowledge about climate change. If there are misconceptions in their mental frameworks, replace these with facts and fresh information.
• Get your audience's attention. Frame information in a manner that is comfortable for them and talk about the here and now rather than some abstract, imperilling future. People tend to discount environmental (and financial) consequences with every year they are delayed so add immediacy to the conversation and talk about the present.
• Put the dire global situation into a local context and bring the message close to home.  Most often local leads because people show more concern with events in their neighbourhood than in far-off places. Tap into the desire people have of avoiding losing something and make them aware of the potential for current (as well as future) losses if  we fail to act.
• Translate scientific data into concrete experiences, avoid using technical jargon and rely on simple language.  The goal for scientists should be to help their fellow citizens to quickly absorb information rather than spend time trying to decipher vocabulary.  Sure there is a place for charts, graphs and carefully worded text but these work far better when supported by vivid imagery, film, real world examples, personal case studies and simple analogies.
  
• Avoid overusing emotional appeals.  Continually trying to scare people into action strains  our finite capacity to worry about things.  Our minds concentrate on what concerns us right now and too much long term fear can lead to emotional numbing.
• Acknowledge the uncertainties surrounding climate change.  People will understand incomplete information better in a group where they have a chance to discuss it rather than as individuals trying to understand an issue alone.
• Tap into social affiliations. Appeal to the various roles a person plays (parent, farmer etc).  Focus communications on the small group rather than the larger body and use local messengers who are more likely to be listened to than some distant authority.
• Encourage participation because people are more likely to act if they have had a part in shaping an action.
• Make it easy to take action.  Give people simple things they can do in the first place  that can build into a more extensive program.  Offer incentives and default options individuals can easily accept. 
  

The Pyschology of Climate Change Communications is a must read for those involved in environmental issues, community relations and critical social behavioural issues.  

Download the full report.

Community Relations Will Be The Emerging PR Discipline in 2010

In 2010 and beyond our communities will face significant, planet altering issues. And the irony is that right now often we can't even agree on the causes of these issues let alone articulate their solutions.

Climate Change, the Global Financial Crisis, Terrorism and other problems demand an response now. Yet at the same time we know that their solution will involve all of us for generations to come.

That is why in 2010 we are likely to see community relations emerge as a distinct PR discipline similar to how investor relations emerged in the 1990s. Community relations is the art and craft of sharing information and talking to communities to solve problems that affect people with common interests. In the future it will involve:

• Actively listening to our communities through research, face to face discussion and what people say on social media platforms.
• Educating people on the key dimensions of issues because the ones we face invariably are complex and have more than one dimension.
• Presenting a vision for the future with a mix of facts, figures, case studies, projections and other data and communicating with logic and emotion in language and imagery that are easy to grasp.
  
• Adjusting corporate behaviours and responses when the wisdom of the crowd, the state of the economy and the health of our planet tells us that things plainly are not working.
• Persuading our organisations to have the courage to take a leadership position on the tough issues and continuously communicate what we must do with conviction and clarity.
  

This new breed of community relations is more than assembling media relations, social media, direct marketing and other traditional channels into yet another PR or marketing plan. Rather the new style community relations is likely to involve a whole new way of thinking, strategising, listening and delivering our communications.

Communicators hang on. Not only are the channels we use changing, the philosophy of what we do is about to undergo a tsunami-like shake-up.

Happy 2010

Happy 2010.

Best of success and every peace to you and your loved ones in the coming year.