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.

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!

How the media should vote tomorrow

What a mixed bag for the media this election has been.

It's demonstrated dramatically how style can triumph over substance, how poor presentation can lose audiences and how the most persuasive messages are simple and positive.  It’s also shown that social media may not be able to deliver knock out blows, but is vital in creating advocacy for campaigns.

All good news for us marketing disciples.

But less documented is the damaging impact a Conservative government could have on the industry itself.

Let me explain…

It was to be the social media election.  We would all decide our votes based on Twitter, Facebook and maybe even Foursquare.

Well not quite but it has been influential.

Social media has been more of a bystander and commentator rather than leaders of the news or advocacy, but it hasn’t lost its purpose. 

DemocracyUK, the Slapometer and even #labourcakepuns have all helped engage voters and the social media sphere has done what it does best – enabling people to have conversations.

So while it will be interesting to see the outcome of planned research into how social media (or rather what you and your friends discussed on social media) influenced voting behaviour, I personally hope that the more campaigning side to social media returns.

In fact, there have been a couple of examples of where social media has (at least tried to) set the agenda. Kerry4MP’s blunder and #phlipastroud have been notable examples.

Which brings me onto how I’ll be voting…

As a colleague pointed out, one example doesn’t make a whole party nasty.  But, sadly for every Margot James, there is a Philipa Stroud.

Similarly, for every Dianne Abbot or Tom Watson there is a Bob Blizzard (i.e. an MP who will trudge through the voting lobbies on behalf of his party). And for every hard working Lib Dem, like Lynne Featherstone, there is a quirky colleague – Lembit Opik or Anna Arrowsmith for your MP anyone?!

There is no substitute for a good local candidate.  But, in many, many constituencies less than 50 per cent of the electorate vote for the winning candidate.  This is unfair. And the expenses scandal has shown just what our politicians can get up to if not held in check – and simply saying people have a right to recall MPs just isn’t enough.

Simply put, the politicians are more accountable if every vote counts. And the best way to ensure better, more accountable candidates is voting reform.  The list system is not the way forward, as we do need to protect the need for local candidates linked to their constituency – which makes me favour single transferable vote or alternative vote systems.

And the best way to guarantee this reform is a hung parliament.

I don’t buy the fact that Britain’s economy will suffer with a hung Parliament – credit agencies don’t have a problem with it, nor does the City and, according to the FT, neither should it impact on sterling.  In fact, people now seem to be lining up to say it will benefit everyone from young people to the Scots.

So my decision comes down to which sort of coalition government would I prefer? And let’s be clear, a deal struck between parties to ensure a stable coalition will need to happen – a minority government would not be a good idea.

Well, my own fears about what the Tories would do for gay rights and civil liberties aside, the decision has to be fundamentally economic.  How far do I want the cuts to go – and when?

Which brings me back to marketing.

Set aside the disturbing impact that immediate, savage spending cuts will make on the lives of everyday families, not to mention the deflating impact on our economy, the marketing sector – now a significant slice of UK plc – is simply not ready to see cuts of 40 per cent in public sector spending on marketing and communications in 2010/20111. 

When the Conservatives make fun of government waste, they include marketing budgets in this.

The Conservative pledge is to reduce Central Office of Information spending alone back to 1997 levels.  While marketing agencies need to continue to make strides in evaluating their work, proving the impact of their campaigns and reducing their reliance on the public sector overall, the replacement for his government spending from the private sector isn’t there yet.

The reality of implementing such cuts is that they are applied with a blanket approach – every £1 of marketing spend should be reduced to 60p (and just because one segment of the industry says it is more effective than another won’t mean it is safe).

This won’t just affect agencies and mean job losses in public sector communications departments, but it will have an impact on the wider media industry. 

With an annual budget of £208m spent on advertising space by the government, cutting this to £124m will leave huge holes in newspaper, online and TV advertising schedules – and the latest Institute of Practitioners in Advertising report showed a very mixed picture for the industry in 2010, with almost as many marketing directors saying they will cut budgets as will increase them. 

With the majority of any increased advertising spend likely to be online and a reapportioning of budgets away from TV and print, it is ironic that those media outlets who celebrate cutting waste are in many ways turkeys voting for Christmas.

The private sector just isn’t ready to fill the hole which would be left by 40% cuts in public sector spending this year – the cuts need to be made, but need to be less severe and less immediate than the Conservatives propose.

It really is the economy that matters – the country can’t take a chance with the recovery and I can’t vote for cuts now.

Vote Labour (or Lib Dem depending where you live).

Mydavidcameron vs the real thing... who wins?

The recent media storm around Tory campaign funding jogged a promise I made to try and answer a big question about the importance of social media on the outcome of the election.

Just how effective will a poster campaign be for the Tories? And is it possible that more people would see Labour’s spoofs of Tory posters than the real thing?

The news media traditionally cast outdoor advertising as almost the be all and end all of campaigns - and true enough Saatchi’s ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ campaign from the late 70s is memorable and in 1997, Labour’s attack ads on the Tories generated 60% awareness.

But how many people can the Tories claim to have reached with the latest wave of posters - and how many of those reached will be positively influenced by the posters?

Effectiveness figures on marketing campaigns are a closely guarded secret, but using industry averages we can start to come to an answer.

These industry figures suggest a 29% recall of a poster / billboard campaign (CASI via www.posterscope.co.uk). BUT given the sites chosen for political campaigns tend to be those that are more visible - but which only deliver exposure of message for 3 seconds, the recall decreases dramatically to just over 4% (based on calculations made using stats from the 2007 paper “Total Recall: advertising exposure and engagement.”)

And there is another downside to such short-term recall - the actual impact of these sites could be reduced further as 29% who saw posters for 3 seconds said it had no effect on them.

This means a real impact on just 1.2% of the population - or under three quarters of a million people.

So – to the second part of the original challenge: how many people might have seen the unofficial Labour spoof campaigns?

The popularisation of www.mydavidcameron.com, was led by Labour supporters on Twitter which has 10,355 followers. On average each Twitter user has 300 followers according to Hubspot.  Which means that if everyone of the followers Tweeted out a spoof poster it could reach 3,106,500 people.  Even allowing for a lower average Twitter following of 100 (which Hubspot seems to advocate doing), a concerted campaign by all members could reach more people than a poster campaign.

The problem with Twitter, of course, is that people tend to only follow those in similar 'crowds' so such a campaign will not reach the general public or people who don't share their views (apart from via resulting media coverage of mydavidcameron).  So instead perhaps we should look at Facebook as a medium / distribution tool.  Here Labour have 5,834 fans, but with each Facebook fan having an average of 130 friends - often established through more natural networks - a single post by all members could reach 758,420 people.

There are obviously other factors which should be taken into account, for example, not all fans/followers will join in a campaign and the coverage of the original Tory posters in the mainstream news media adds to their reach.  But hopefully this short analysis gives some backing to the argument that social media networks will be vital in the 2010 election – with the potential to generate more awareness in a few clicks by followers than would be achieved through an expensive poster campaign.

And it is also possible, that more people saw a mydavidcameron spoof than the original Conservative poster.