A simple creative exercise inspired by Christoph Niemann. Nine images drawn around tonight’s moon.
Five reminders for PRs from this awful election campaign
This has been an awful general election campaign. There’s been little positivity. And there’s a certain amount of election fatigue. Bluntly, the public have loathed it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it. There has been some innovation and there have also been some useful reminders of core skills.
Variations on a theme
We often spend ages painstakingly crafting the perfect set of words. The most elegant, flowy, engaging words. But why? Why don’t we produce 5 variations on a theme? Or 50? Or 500?
In the past, when PRs were drafting press releases to try and get their key messages through a journalist and a sub-editor and into print, it made sense to put together something taut and purposeful. But even back in those days, a release that was tailored to its target was always more successful.
With social media you create as many variations on a theme as you like, target them as you wish, see the performance data and adjust as necessary. This is not to say the you should produce the comic sans eyesores the Conservatives have pushed out. You should, however, go back to the PR mindset that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work. It wasn’t effective with press releases, it’s not effective with content.
Message discipline
While embracing variation is good, losing discipline is not. The Conservatives have relentlessly bashed on about getting Brexit done. They’ve given their campaign a single focus and whether you agree with them or not, you unambiguously know what they stand for.
Meanwhile, Labour have been equally clear that they are for the many, not the few. It’s an unapologetically clear call to change the way our economy works. Again, whether you agree or disagree, you know what they stand for. The choice is clear.
This is classic comms. Stand for something. Be clear about what it is. Stick with it. Hammer the same message home in a million different ways. Be relentless. Above all, be consistent. Don’t let the message jump around.
Synonyms for good and bad
This one is something most people intuitively know but few formalise it. Some things are good and some things are bad. And if you’re associated with good things, you are good too.
If you can create an association with something good, there is a reputational halo to be gained.
In this country, to most people, the NHS is good. That’s why political parties scrap over it like there’s no tomorrow. Being the party who’ll protect the NHS, makes you a good party. It’s the same with schools (good), police officers (good), fire fighters (good) and tax cuts for the average person (good).
A poor understanding of this relationship is why so much CSR is ineffective. Like politicians chasing votes, companies throw a lot of resource at supporting good causes in the hope that some of the good will rub off on their reputations. It rarely works. BP, for example, have supported the arts for decades and for little reputational bounce, albeit they have facilitated the creation of some amazing art.
The effort must go deeper because the prize is a valuable one. If you can create an association with something good, there is a reputational halo to be gained. The catch is that you probably have to be good, as well as building the association, for it to really work. There are no quick wins here.
You can’t get off the rollercoaster
This topic probably deserves an article all to itself. It is about the speed communication and our insatiable desire for it. Perhaps controversially, I believe the fault lies with us, not technology.
For centuries, people have clamoured for gossip and tried to be the first to receive the news. The Economist’s Tom Standage provides a glimpse into our addiction and the varied pace and style of information sharing through the ages in Writing on the Wall. I highly recommend reading it.
Journalists used to joke that Sky News was “not wrong for long”
That innate desire for speedy news has also been conditioned by the same news media who now struggle to keep up with social media. In the UK, for decades the BBC was the only real game in town when it came to broadcast news. When Sky News launched in the 1990s it had a strategic challenge: how do you beat the authoritative news source? The answer was that if you couldn’t be more accurate than the BBC, you had to be faster than it. Sky was “first for breaking news”. Journalists used to joke that Sky News was “not wrong for long” as it ran with whatever information it had and then backfilled facts as they came through.
The other thing that came along with Sky in the 1990s was 24 hour rolling news. So along with the push for speed, there was now a need to always have something to report.
We had near enough two decades of constant bombardment with information that was corrected as more facts became available. That was pretty good market building for social media.
Speed isn’t going away. PRs will need to continue to adapt.
Old habits die hard
One of the recurring themes of this election has been the importance of tactical voting. The UK is seeing record levels of people considering switching their vote from the last election. According to Ipsos Mori, around two in five people (40%) might vote differently to how they usually would.
This is a powerful reminder of the power of habit, of repetition, of doing things because that’s just how you’ve always done them. These norms and defaults are hard to break. It has taken a divisive referendum and two quite nasty general elections for just two in five Brits to consider changing the way they vote; something they only do every few years or so.
How much harder is it for companies to change longstanding consumer patterns? It is a timely reminder that winning over customers or shifting opinion is hard graft and you need to play the long game in order to achieve it.
Variations on a theme (1): Tax Freedom Day
Once someone stumbles on a good idea, copycats are inevitable. This could be because effective ideas are hard to come by. But it’s also because most creative ideas, when distilled back to their core elements, can be applied across a range of ideas.
In this post, I’ve come up with 11 variations on the theme of Tax Freedom Day.
What is Tax Freedom Day?
Tax Freedom Day, calculated in the UK by free market think tank the Adam Smith Institute, is the theoretical calendar day when a country’s national income is reaches its tax take. It works on the idea that every penny earned up to that point is paid in taxes, and any money the nation earns after that, it keeps.
The idea is simple: it’s just taking a proportion of one thing and applying the same proportion to the calendar year.
It’s been replicated by others. The High Pay Centre think tank calculates Fat Cat Pay Day, which is how many days it takes a FTSE 100 chief executive to earn the UK’s national average wage (usually about four days if you’re interested).
Variations on the theme
So how else can this idea be applied? Here are 11 variations.
- Fuel Freedom Day
- Vin Liberte Day
- Proper Pint Day
- Full Measures Day
- Zero Hours Free Pay Day
- First Penny Earned Day
- Teetotal Day
- Fasting Day
- Cost of Basics Day
- Emergency Services Day
- Overservicing Day
When you’ve paid a year’s worth of petrol/diesel taxes. From here on you’re only paying for the actual fuel.
When you’ve paid the duties on bottles of wine. From here on you’re just paying for fermented grape juice.
Like the wine, but on your pint.
Like the pint, but on your scotch or vodka or gin or…
When those on zero hours contracts have earned money equivalent to the standard benefits and entitlements of those on permanent contracts.
When the average worker has earned the monetary equivalent of all the unpaid overtime British workers put in.
When the average Brit has drunk a year’s worth of recommended units of alcohol.
When the average Brit has consumer a year’s equivalent of daily calorie allowance.
The day when the average British person has earned enough to pay for gas, electricity, water, broadband and their phone.
The day when national income reaches the point where we’ve earned enough to pay for the police, fire and ambulance services. I suspect this day would fall much earlier in the year than many realise.
Finally, one for the consultants out there, the day when consultancies have billed the equivalent of all the overservicing they put in on client accounts.
Stop comparing oranges with oranges
You’re about to give a presentation. Everyone’s talking. No one’s paying attention. You stand up. A hush descends. You look around the room.
Take a deep breath.
And, loudly say, “Orange.”
Half the room thinks you’re talking about a colour, the other half thinks about a fruit. No one thinks they’ve misunderstood you. But you’re referring to a phone company.
If that example feels overly simple, let’s look take a different word: brand.
Talk to marketers about brand and some people cannot think beyond logotypes and icons, colour palettes and straplines. While others will think of something deeper, a promise to be delivered.
Or if brand is not your thing, let’s talk about integrated campaigns. It’s an odds-on bet that whichever marcomms discipline you specialise in, you think integrated campaigns are ones where other specialisms support your campaign.
In all of these examples, people are using the same words but they mean different things.
There two examples look at fairly mainstream terms. What happens when we’re talking about more technical terms like optimisation, measurement and efficiency?
The truth is that, despite being in the business of communication, there are probably a significant number of conversations that digital folk and PRs and marketers have everyday where they do not understand one another without knowing it.
How to achieve clarity
I coach minis rugby on weekends and one of the techniques that I’ve taken from the rugby pitch into the office is asking people if they understand what I mean. It’s amazing how useful this can because it forces me to explain something in a simpler way. It’s massively helpful because, more often than not, this simplified explanation can be used when discussing the same topic with other people in the future.
If you’re producing written documents, a useful technique can be to define key terms in a glossary. This is particularly helpful when sending documents to people who do not work in communications connected industries, but I’d argue it’s just as helpful when sending documents to your peers.
So the next time you’re discussing a topic, take a moment to make sure everyone’s on the same page.
How to foster a creative culture
Digital marketing is incredibly data-driven. We’re constantly trying to refine how we identify potential customers, how we target and retarget them. The obsession with numbers can sometimes lead to a lack of focus on creativity.
Now, we all know that how you say something matters as much as saying it at the right time. As such, it’s important to ensure that the value of creativity isn’t underweighted. But that creativity should stretch to the data too. People using the same tools in the same way everyday often fall into a pattern of just going through the motions. This is great in accounts payable – you definitely don’t want people toying with those numbers – but in marketing you want to relentlessly push forward.
So how do you foster a creative culture in digital teams?
Mind set
The primary focus, for me at least, is to focus on encouraging people’s curiosity. This is easier said than done. In fact, I’ve known people who believe you either have an inquisitive mind or you don’t. I disagree.
Questions that start with the words “how might we…?” can be really useful.
I think you can encourage people’s latent curiosity but you can only do it by giving them work that is challenging, that stretches the mind and where the process is uncertain.
Uncertainty, in particular, is crucial. Working on things that might not succeed, or lead to a dead end, these are the tasks that encourage investigation.
Questions that start with the words “how might we…?” can be really useful. For example, you could ask: “How might we approximate purchase intent using Facebook’s demographic targeting?” The answer is uncertain but so is the process. How do you go about working this out?
Safety net
Setting tasks that are innately uncertain is all well and good, but it only works if there’s a safety net. Do your team trust that you aren’t setting them up to fail? Or that if they do fail, you’re not going to get mad? Do they think you’re setting them challenging work because you want to produce great work or do they just think you’re massively unreasonable?
So a creative culture has to be one where people are able to fail. And when they do, they shouldn’t get hurt.
Start small. Test things out. Scale up what works. Above all, if a project is steeped in uncertainty, your expectations need to be curbed. You cannot ask for the moon on a stick.
Craft
The third element in fostering creativity, that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to, is an appreciation of craft. Do people appreciate the difference between something that’s been done well and something that’s just ok?
Writing is not a specialism. Copywriting is a specialism.
Writing, for me, is the obvious example. Marketing is not short of writers. Everyone’s a “wordsmith” or they “do words” or they “scribble”. And yet, none of that is particularly useful. Writing is not a specialism. Copywriting is a specialism. Writing words that sell is massively useful.
So encourage an understanding of the craft of selling. Is that ad good? Why is it good? What elements work? How could it be stronger? And go beyond the ads and content. How was your experience in that shop or restaurant or hotel? Did anything make you spend more than you planned? Are you likely to go back? What’s the draw?
Workplace culture is notoriously difficult to change or manage. However, I think managers can never spend enough time on it because it is critical to achieving goals and targets. These three areas are where I’ve got to so far in thinking about building creativity into a team’s culture, but I’d love to know what you think. Do you agree or stridently disagree? What am I missing? Where should I be bolder?