Taking the BS out of the Big Society

After a lack of interest the first time around, the Big Society was finally launched to the consumer today.

The anticipation was immense - the Twittersphere was groaning under the #bigsociety trend and the months of preparation and planning by Big Society agitators was finally to pay off.

Except it still hasn't. Not really.

It remains a rushed through, badly communicated initiative and ended up with the #bigsociety trend being turned into #bigcon or even #bs.

But I actually think the Big Society is one of the most exciting, revolutionary and potentially lasting (positive) legacies of the Cameron government.

However, today started badly.

PR Week figures showed that over half of people had little idea of what the Big Society stood for and a third had never heard of it (despite previous launch attempts before the general election and in mid-May at Number 10).
 

And as the day wore on, it became clearer that the failure at the other launches of not having a single clear message to communicate was being repeated.

Yes it's about creating an army of volunteers, empowering communities to look after their own services and taking on responsibility for what councils or government used to do. But then, it's also about local accountability for police services, setting up schools, national movements, like Martha Lane Fox's Race Online, and (despite protestations) it's also about downsizing government and cutting government subsidies (if you listen to Boris, it's also about fat people).

But as much as the message was confused, so too was Labour's response.  

Tessa Jowell went on the airwaves to claim the Big Society was just "a brass-necked rebranding of programmes already put in place by a Labour government."  But it soon became clear that a better line to take was Unison's, who claimed it would lead to cuts (the leadership candidates were either silent or, like Ed Miliband, latched onto a charity line).

In fact, what the left said didn't matter as official opposition was led by charities, some of whom got their attack in over the weekend. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations said any cuts mustn't "scupper the chances of achieving the Big Society," while the Muscular Dystrophy campaign said "it is not acceptable that financing of essential services is reliant on charitable funding."

And with further opposition from the Twittersphere and comments on news websites, this was not the glorious launch Cameron had hoped for.

There are five things the Government needs to do to better communicate the Big Society (and it certainly shouldn't attempt another re-launch):
1 - Ditch the jargon (see my PR Week comment).
 
2 - Simplify the message. Make it either about volunteering and local services (as the Big Society Network seems to think) and then evolve it nationally, or be honest and make it about delivering more for less. 


3 - Unite your influencers and source real examples.  Getting to a point where NCVO and charities (who should be enthusiastic supporters) were so negative was a huge mistake and a communications failure.  These groups should be providing the real examples of successful delivery, so the government didn't have to use speculative examples from pet-councils.  


4 - Be clear on the call to action and don't try too many at once.  If you want the public to get involved, give them one way to get involved - then again, grow their enthusiasm.
 
5 - Identify the real barriers to taking up this call to action and address them through targeted communications.  There are many barriers, but in time, effective communications working with wider civil society could break these down. 

Do this and the #bs factor will start to be removed and the real, positive, impact of the Big Society may begin to be realised.

Worrying times for marketing

Continuing my commentary on how the marketing industry is doing (yes I know I said I was going to stop doing this and stick to great work), the latest Bellwether Report is being spun in various directions by the competing factions within marketing.

Perhaps bizarrely, PR Week come closest to just printing the findings, so we can see for ourselves (well done Gemma O'Reilly).

It starts to show quite clearly the impact of the freeze on marketing spend by the government (see blogs passim).  This factor is obviously not accountable for the whole downturn (although even in events and sales promotion there is still an impact), but it certainly explains the downturn in media (despite this being World Cup season) and in PR (which can often be immediately canceled with no penalty clauses).

Yet, the good news according to industry experts is that PR is going to emerge triumphant from this period of uncertainty... well, that's ok then!

What public relations does next...

It's been exactly two months since the last Rambling... and things are very different now.

So it seems like a good time to look again at the threats and opportunities to the PR industry under the new government.

As I warned in my last posts (and as the PRCA confirmed), the worst news for the media industry would be a victory for the party which pledges to cut the deepest. 

In recent days, the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition has reaffirmed it's consideration of 40 per cent cuts in departmental savings.  In fact, for marketing this is largely academic as there has been a 100 per cent cut in immediate budgets - with a freeze on marketing activity until it has been approved by the Cabinet Office's Efficiency and Reform Group (how the government's advisor on architecture's love your caretaker competition got through this process though I don't know).

But add to this cut the closing or downscaling of many quangos and, while many may not be too upset by the principles of smaller government, the effects on jobs in the public and private sector are starting to be felt.

Already there are freezes on recruitment of marketing professionals in most government-funded organisations.  And the cuts are starting to bite into the private sector too.  Last week, one regional marketing agency went under - taking 11 jobs, a major publicly funded event and a supply chain's cash with it.  The market leader in public sector PR - Kindred - is also looking at a major restructure if rumours are to be believed.

In fact, with cuts now spreading in all directions, it's becoming worryingly easy to see how the impact of public sector cuts will be felt on the private sector.  And given the new government hopes many public sector redundancies will be offset by private sector growth, the plan to stimulate this growth is not only unclear, but seemingly based solely on a stable tax environment and is certainly poorly communicated.

But this last point hints at the opportunities...

The government is still communicating.  But is it communicating effectively?

It seems that most government communications is coming direct from press offices - such as the glut of 'world cup tie in' stories like this one from the Department for Communities and Local Government.  While the best press officers in the business are based in government, they are more used to briefings, issuing news stories, policy announcements and crisis management, rather than implementing ongoing activity which works alongside other marketing disciplines to deliver behavioural change.

And that is what many of the new government's programmes are looking for.  From the Big Society, to the expansion of Teach First, through to encouraging a more entrepreneurial culture, communications can play a vital part in the success of the new government's programme.

 

Delivering these changes and ensuring success is where communications agencies can play an important role.  Driven (as good agencies are) by a thirst for creativity and measured by client targets and performance indicators, agencies can make a difference.

So this is what the industry - led by the PRCA, Chartered Institute of Marketing and other bodies, including the government's own Central Office of Information (COI), need to be celebrating: our creativity, our passion for using communications for good and our effectiveness in delivering tangible behavioural change.

If we don't, a vacuum will develop and marketing will be forgotten. 

Yet the industry seems strangely silent.  Maybe it is worried about rocking the new government's boat.  Maybe there is lots of behind the scenes discussions going on.  Or maybe it is feeling guilty for the excesses of communications during the New Labour years.

No-one doubts that there were some excesses and the old government was too quick to issue a marketing brief just to generate media coverage or get a message out into the public domain. But it's time to move on.

We need to celebrate how accountable communications can help deliver a real public benefit - and have a positive impact on implementing government policy. But we need to do it quickly before the skills and expertise in public sector communications are all diverted into work for the private sector - or are lost to the industry altogether.

So that's what this blog will do from now on... less politics, more examples of good (and bad) PR!