At the UnAwards Winners’ Masterclass, last year’s champs shared their paths to glory – and there were some welcome signs that communications teams are finally being let into top tier decision-making.
by Karen Pagett
The UnAwards Winners’ Masterclass is one of the best learning opportunities for public sector communications professionals each year (pandemics permitting). And it’s free for participants, who eagerly snap up the 140 available tickets at Glastonbury-like speed.
As one of the sponsors, three of Team CAN were lucky enough to get automatic entry to the Everyman Theatre in Birmingham for the event on 19 April and were blown away by the winners’ presentations. Every one of them displayed true innovation, creativity, and bloody-minded determination (sometimes with a side serving of cunning!) to see projects through in a way that stayed true to their vision and integrity.
What pleased us the most was the number of times winners said they felt senior managers and members trusted them to do the right thing, without the need to micro-manage or second-guess public opinion.
And – not always, but more often than previously – reported they now had a seat at the table for project-planning. That the top tier was coming to realise the importance of having a professional comms perspective early on and not as an afterthought.
When Cristian Marcucci, Assistant Director for Communications at Staffordshire County Council – who won the public vote for best comms team in last year’s UnAwards – presented the top five tips he’d recommend to his peers, “get a seat at the top table” was first on his list. Not only so you find out first hand the priorities of senior leaders and have a chance to shape how they are communicated, but so you can be your own PR – emphasising again and again the value you add.
Fortune favours the brave
Hannah Bryan and Alex Porritt of Durham Constabulary presented at the masterclass event after picking up UnAwards for both best low-cost comms and best video for the powerful “Three Lives Lost and One Changed Forever”.
The video title refers to a motorway incident caused by an HGV driver using a mobile phone at the wheel and boldly included all of the following: on-the-day police bodycam footage, dashcam footage from private cars at the scene, vehicles shown mangled and on fire, an interview with the jailed driver from prison, and coppers swearing!
But the trust placed in the comms team to know what they were doing lead to 5.6 million views on social media, features on BBC News and the channel’s own documentary, overwhelmingly positive reactions (“I’ve been guilty of this. Never again.”) and the video’s use in road haulage training.
Hannah and Alex said that trust in comms to try new and bold ideas has grown further since this success. Their advice to public sector bosses: “Don’t hire talented people and then tell them what to do.” Their advice to comms professionals is not to overthink what the audience reaction might be in advance but use your own internal compass instead.
Scottish Water’s Clare Smith and Andrew Walker explained how and why they were emboldened to position best-creative-comms-winning Nature Calls as a wholesale “movement” instead of just a regular campaign. They tackled a massive behaviour change point for residents (getting people to understand the impact of flushing the 90% of wipes that contain plastic) and encouraged a range of other stakeholders to get on board with a call to change legislation to ban these products.
Tracy-Lee Lewis of South Wales Police explained how the comms team was knocked back at first when they sought official permission to launch a TikTok account (they’d already set it up anyway!). But the eventual winner of best social media account persisted as the team knew none of the channels they were using reached 18-24s for whom they had important issues to address, like knife crime.
And their gutsy approach carries on when creating content for TikTok. They understand that it’s a fast-moving platform and you must jump on trends quickly, so having a rigid strategy doesn’t help much. Unlike many platforms, it’s better not to stand out from the crowd but fit in with the content around you. And the team is happy to come back at criticism levelled at the officers who put themselves forward to appear on TikTok – only deleting comments as a last resort.
A great by-product of the enthusiasm with which South Wales Police eventually embraced TikTok is the 17% of applications for police constable posts that now come in via the channel. Who would have thought it?
Tips for when you’re at the top
Working with over 120 public sector organisations on their digital campaigns, we have a pretty good overview of what communications teams regularly need but often don’t get.
Since the start of this year we’ve been trying to do some work “behind the scenes” to support public sector comms teams by speaking with heads of services directly to suggest ways in which they can “help comms to help them”. One of our main suggestions has always been to involve comms early. It’s your expertise and experience as a comms pro that can make sure they avoid common pitfalls and increase their chances of a successful outcome.
And when you have that place at the planning table, here are a few more things you might find you’re brave enough to request:
Keeping it simple: Ask senior managers for measurable objectives that directly correlate with their desired outcomes. Evaluations will make more sense for them and you.
Owning channels: Website, poster sites, email, social media – communications teams are best placed to decide how best to use all these channels to amplify organisational priorities and should feel empowered to control these assets.
Realistic budgets and timeframes: What is the value of achieving the objective you’re discussing to your organisation? What are senior managers willing to invest to achieve it? Comms pros can work miracles with very little but ask for the time and resources you actually need.
Permission to experiment: As demonstrated by the 2022 UnAwards winners if senior managers trust their comms teams to try new ways of creating and delivering content, it can enhance an organisation’s reputation and lead to surprising results.
Time to enter the UnAwards! Rob McCleary of Gedling Borough Council – winner of small team of the year – said in the masterclass wrap-up Q&A that an award speaks volumes to senior leaders. He makes sure the comms2point0 logo is on everything he presents to SLT. Notably on his comms quarterly performance reports. This is one great way to gain that extra trust to be consulted early on major projects. Rob himself now has a place on SLT. Go Rob!
UnAwards 2023 will be open to entries from September. Have a think between now and then about which aspect of your work you’d like to highlight to be in with a chance of winning. Check out Comms:Files – an online treasure trove of public sector campaigns including all the entrants from 2022 who gave their permission to be included – for free inspiration.
You can connect with CAN Digital by following them on Twitter @counciladnet, on LinkedIn, signing up for their monthly ebulletin, or just emailing a question about anything you think they might be able to help you with to connect@can-digital.net
Karen Pagett is communications and marketing manager at CAN Digital
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