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Sometimes comms is about thinking on your feet and being creative. Even when a boyband member quits.
When you think of One Direction, the flashing blue lights of a London ambulance cruising through the night taking a seriously ill patient to hospital doesn’t spring to mind. Unless the patient they’re taking is one of the boyband’s billion fans worldwide.
In a set period before an election tight restrictions come into force on what comms teams in the public sector can and can't do. The Local Government Association have written a rather fab guide from a local government perspective. Follow the link in the blog to the download.
The countdown for local and national elections has started and communications teams in councils around the country are working out what this means for them. In response to requests for guidance, we recently produced a short guide to the publicity restrictions during the run-up to an election. Nearly 5,000 downloads later, even I’ve been surprised by the level of interest.
The term ‘purdah’ has come into popular use in both central and local government to describe the time immediately before elections and referendums when, amongst other things, particular care must be taken in the way communications teams operate.
The Homes for Britain campaign held the biggest housing rally ever in the heart of Westminster to get the housing crisis firmly onto the general election radar – and on the national news agenda. What's the comms story?
By Anne Arnold
It used to irritate me that the housing crisis wasn’t in the news more. House prices sure, but not the housing crisis. That sinking feeling when you realise you’ll never be able to afford to buy near your family, not now, not ever.
Couples delaying having babies because they’re forking out half of their wages to live in a flat the size of a shoe box, graduates bunked up back in their childhood bedrooms, people having to move further and further out of the cities and towns where the jobs are, commuting for hours each day to get to work.
It's an interesting dilemma for a comms professional - is it best to specialise or to generalise? Or do you need to be a generalist with some specialisms?
by Nicky Speed
‘Press Officer needed to manage the media and write lively copy’ the job advert headline read. Really, is that all you’re asking for? Do those jobs actually exist anymore? To have the luxury of having such a big communications team to be able to specialise sounds great in theory – but in the digital age and more demands placed on communications people, is that realistic?
No can be the hardest word. But often the kindest. Here's a cut and out and keep guide to saying no when you really do need to politely shake your head at someone you work with...
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One of our key reasons for setting up comms2point back in the day was to share and to encourage sharing across comms and digital folk. And we said that the ultimate outcome for us would be to help someone find a job no matter how small that bit of help might have been. Well what do you know...
by Ant Gale
I’m trying to remember how I first came across comms2point0. I think it was a random retweet I scrolled across during a work break.
Little bit of back-story on me – I had been working at Sainsbury’s since graduating with a Media Technology degree in 2012 (shout out De Montfort University) and I was doing one day a week work experience at Staffordshire County Council.
Just recently, the CIPR annual State of the Profession report put stress as a major issue. It regularly comes in the top two of most stressful jobs in the UK. Journalist is the most stressed. But what can we do? We asked a Buddhist book publisher for some thoughts and advice. It makes for fascinating reading.
1. How did the Buddha communicate?
The Buddha was a master communicator. He gave talks to masses of people as well as individuals over a period of forty-five years. His words, delivered approximately 2,550 years ago, were remembered and recorded, and have become what we today call ‘Buddhism’.
It is not about how successful the Buddha was at transmitting his message, however, that is the issue here; it is the message itself which we might find useful in our lives and in our work.
There was a tremendous response to Emma Rodgers' blog when it was first posted. A room 101 of comms. A room where you could send all the things you really don't like. After a slew of responses here is the second part.
by Emma Rodgers
Some great Room 101 tweets and comments were shared when this blog post was published. I wanted to include them so captured below is what they said. Thanks to everyone for taking part in the banishing. If only it was that easy. But my oh my that cleansing feels good.
I'd love a chance to appear on the TV Show Room 101, although I'd struggle to narrow it down to just five choices. But what would your 'Comms 101' choices be?
by GUEST EDITOR Emma Rodgers 
I have been lucky recently to get to a couple of top-notch learning events – the LG Communications Digital seminar in Coventry and the comms2point0 Campaign Masterclass in Birmingham.
Instead of doing a blog on all the things I learnt from the event (of which there were many), I’ve instead opted for a post that will hopefully act as a little bit of therapy for comms peeps. It certainly did for us anyway at the time.
I’m all for sharing and while I’m generally always focussed on what the good things are to share. This time when pitching on both days, I was keen to take a different tact. It was a sharing, cathartic session whereby anyone who came along could get it out as to what was annoying them the most to do with digital at the LG Comms session, and what was annoying them most to do with campaigns at the masterclass event.
We really enjoyed our first Masterclass event last week. But what did other attendees think...
by Nicky Speed
I had the great pleasure of spending the day with lots of creative peeps at the comms2point0 Campaigning Masterclass. It’s probably worth saying at this point that I almost didn’t make it after being rudely woken at 3.30am by a collapsed ceiling in my kitchen due to a leak and having to phone the fire brigade (yes, bizarre I know!) to come to the rescue.
#ourcouncilday is the second, bigger and better instalment of #MyDCCDay, our first attempt in Ireland of using Twitter to show the work we do on a typical day and to engage with the public. If you speak Irish you can also follow #ÁrLáSaChomhairle.
by Zaira Rivera
At some stage in 2013 a colleague and I in The Studio heard about #ourday in the UK and thought to ourselves “that could work very well here!” so we put a team together, started spreading the word and #MyDCCDay happened in February 2014.
We staged a campaigns masterclass last week. We learned loads ourselves. But what is much greater is when people who come learn. The first step is to get out of the rut and get out of the office.
I don't know about you, but I sometimes find it all too easy to avoid getting out of the office for training or for an interesting-looking event (assuming the budget allows, of course...) That looks great, I think - but we've got so much on at the moment. We're just too busy. I'll never catch up.
Last week's @comms2point0 #uncampaign masterclass - on the art of running an effective campaign - reminded me how important it is to fight against that instinct.
Every year SOCITM publish their Better Connected report into how local government websites are faring. Spending all your effort on your homepage?
by John Fox
The way that website visitors are led to the tasks they require is fundamental to achieving a successful website design. Better connected 2015, published today by Socitm Insight, includes an analysis of the effectiveness of council website home and landing pages.
To mark St David's Day we thought that it would be rather good to have a Welsh post and a Welsh guest editor. Over to you, Nat Corney...
by GUEST EDITOR Natalie Corney 
Please indulge me here, I wrote this for St David’s Day. Yes, there is some stereotyping, yes, it could apply to other countries and areas etc., but go with it – I think it has some important points...
1.Be proud
Welsh people are incredibly proud of where they come from – and not just the country – their actual town or village. There is a great affinity to home. Whether people still live there or whether they’ve moved somewhere else in the world, Wales is still home. It doesn’t matter if it’s the smallest village or the biggest city.
It was a book that many people were a bit intrigued by. It then became a film that many people were intrigued by. Fifty Shades of Grey promised to be a rather racy film that could lead to some people experimenting with handcuffs and all sorts. So, what better place for a fearless fire service comms team to cut loose.
by Rob McTaggart
Should you jump into bed with Fifty Shades of Grey? That’s what lots of PRs will have wondered ahead of the world launch of the film - how can we get involved?
We’ve a good track record for newsjacking and thought we could successfully resurface our #FiftyShadesofRed campaign.
Every sector has challenges that it needs to overcome. Housing is no different.
I’ve worked in communications for Community Housing Cymru for seven years, ever since I was a fresh faced graduate. Although my role has developed and progressed significantly during this time, some challenges have remained the same throughout.
Comms2point0 recently asked me to blog about six challenges faced by housing comms people. Let me know if you agree.
It's often the most badly handled part of PR. The phone call to sell-in a story to a journalist. Done badly it ends with the phone slammed down. Done well and it can help you hit the bullseye. Here are some thoughts from a master of the craft.
Call me old fashioned, but I still love the cut and thrust of the ‘pitch’ to journalists.
Admittedly, I seem to be a rather shrinking breed if recent articles and twitter conjecture is anything to go by.
And I know from experience, a lot of younger PRs view picking up the phone as appealing a prospect as relying on a London Midland train to get you to your appointment on time.
Don’t get me wrong I can understand the apprehension. I’ve been given many a ‘short shrift’ by experienced hacks, been embroiled in heated exchanges when an embargo has been broken and been left exasperated at the choice of photo the picture editor chose to be a bit ‘different’.
Campaigning. It’ll be one of the most talked about comms activities over the next few months in the run up to the general election. Battle lines will be drawn and those with the smartest, best executed campaign stand a chance of coming out on top in what is a tight and hard to call contest. Mastering the art of delivering great campaigns is a key skill in the armoury of any communicator.
No matter how much digital has changed the comms and media landscape, the importance of a well-planned and effectively targeted campaign is still hugely important to communicators across all sectors.
That is why we are really rather excited to be hosting our first ever Campaigns Masterclass this month so that we can learn more – first hand – from six organisations who have deliver memorable and effective campaigns which have changed behaviours, created an impact and won some awards along the way.
If you’re in comms, PR, or marketing, you shouldn’t be asking that question...
By Rachel Moss
The media landscape is changing. It’s something I blogged about last year in a post called ‘Regional News is Dead’. And, as a former TV news broadcaster, turned PR pro, I find it absolutely fascinating.
Well established local newspapers, radio stations and TV newsrooms, are being axed or cut right back to the bone.
Meanwhile, 100’s of nubile little hyper-locals are springing up all over the place, eagerly plugging the gaps to give local communities the info they so desperately need and want.
It’s a riptide of cross currents that, as comms professionals, we really need to dive into.
Adding digital skills to the comms team is the long term ambition of many. But one authority is making it a reality.
by Clare Yau
Considering what digital skills and types of digital roles we needed was a key issue in both planning and delivering our ambitious Digital First project, to transform our website, online customer journeys, use of social media, staff intranet and more.
From the outset, we knew that the critical issue – after getting organisational approval and backing for the project - was ensuring we had the right people with the right mix of skills.
So, we set about researching what types of digital expertise and roles were out there. We found some interesting results.
Our research included participating in a Digital Leaders webinar on digital talent, reading Smart Insights information on structuring a digital team and considering Government Digital Service’s range of digital job descriptions.
