There’s nothing I look forward to more at the start of a new year than a fresh diary in which to write. Whether you have an actual diary or a digital one, January is the time to look ahead and think about what’s coming up in the months that follow.
by Joanne Cochrane
Anyone working in local government communications, and other parts of the public sector, will certainly be familiar with the awareness days and weeks that proliferate our annual calendars.
There are awareness days for everything these days, or so it seems. In January alone, you’ve got Houseplant Week, Kiss a Ginger Day and National Peanut Butter Day (24 January if you want to stock up now).
Ok, these are some of the sillier ones that are being used as marketing tools rather than informing the public about serious issues. They’re definitely not ones that we in local government will be wasting our resources communicating.
But it does feel that sometimes even the more serious ones – and there are plenty of worthy awareness days, weeks and months – don’t get the attention they deserve because they aren’t really thought through.
When there’s an awareness event coming up, the conversation in our office usually goes something like this:
Operational colleague to comms team: “National XXX Awareness Week is coming up. We need to do something about it.”
Comms team: “Ok, what are you planning on doing to mark it?”
Operational colleague: “Erm, not sure, I don’t think we’ve really got anything planned. I think the national association is doing some social posts. Can we share them?”
Comms team: “Well we can but we’re not really adding anything to the conversation or getting local people involved. What can we do locally to engage with people on this subject?”
And this is often where the conversation grinds to a halt.
Do awareness events really matter to people? And is it a local authority’s job to bring them to the public’s attention anyway, particularly when we have so many other demands on our time?
A lot of fatigue set in during the Covid pandemic, when social posts were constantly encouraging people to get vaccinated. These messages were coming from national government and the NHS, so when local councils started amplifying the message too, it ended up becoming too much for many people. ‘Why is my local council telling me to get vaccinated?’ people cried. This is certainly what some of the comments were on our posts.
There were plenty of social messages going out from other channels – what value were we adding?
And it’s a bit like that with awareness events.
While nobody is disputing the importance of raising awareness of diseases or bullying, for example, to make a real impact, councils need to show what we are doing at a local level. What are we bringing to the party?
First and foremost, awareness days should link to any strategic objectives.
A few months back, we had a request to do something for World Heart Day. This tied in nicely with the launch of our Director of Public Health’s annual report which was focusing on cardiovascular disease.
We were organising an engagement event on that day and took it a step further and gave it a public health theme. We offered the chance for residents to have a free blood pressure check.
We could state at the outset how many people we wanted to see through the door, giving us measurable targets. It also provided us with an opportunity to push any other health or non-health related messaging to residents.
When service plans are being put together, we now try and get agreement from leadership which ones the council will promote – and once they are decided corporately, no more can be added (although a few do slip in occasionally.)
Awareness Days won’t go away anytime soon but I think communications teams can show their worth by prompting and challenging colleagues a bit more and encouraging them to make the awareness event relevant for their communities.
Joanne Cochrane is engagement and communications officer with Torbay Council
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