CREATIVITY LAB HEADLINERS ANNOUNCED: DONCASTER - COME ON DOWN

The special guests for the debut of Creativity Lab have been announced. And it’s the talented comms team at Doncaster Council.

by Darren Caveney

When I launched Creativity Lab I immediately knew who I wanted to approach to be the first guests: The team at Doncaster Council. And I say team because whilst they are now well know for their silky social media talents there’s much more to them and what they deliver.

Of course to be successful (and creative) it’s always a team effort. So Creativity Lab will feature a mix of comms pros from across their team.

I was really pleased when they said yes, and know it will make for a brilliant launch of Creativity Lab for everyone zooming in.

So, if you’re one of the 240 comms pros already signed up you’re in for a treat. Please note the first Creativity Lab is now SOLD OUT.

What is Creativity Lab?

Creativity Lab is where we’ll go underneath the bonnet to explore, dissect and learn from those in and around the comms industry delivering creative work we’re inspired by. We’ll take a look at who delivers creatively inspiring work and invite them into the Lab to talk about their work. I have some brilliant people lined up to join us in the Lab.

We’ll seek inspiration from across the sectors. We’ll have themed episodes too. There is learning to be found everywhere. And we’ll also look further afield to those pushing the boundaries of creativity to see what we can learn and apply to our work.

Time is precious so we’ll also want to seek ways in which we can create the time to be creative. We’ll uncover the tricks and tips and hacks to help.

So, in short, Creativity Lab is here to get our ideas fired up and to help us deliver our best possible work.

How will it work?

It will be via Zoom. Very interactive, fun and informal. But rich in learning at the same time.

When will the Lab launch?

The first Creativity Lab will drop in April. Lunchtime at 12pm on 20 April.

How much to attend?

Free. All free, baby.

Who is involved?

Led by comms2point0, and supported by ContentCal, we will invite people who inspire us to come and share their work, their insights and to take part in fun Q&As. You can also make suggestions for people we invite into the Lab. It’s all about collaboration, sharing and learning together.

How do I join up?

The first Creativity Lab is now SOLD OUT.

You can SIGN UP HERE (numbers will be limited to 300 maximum) *

*PLEASE NOTE THIS IS FOR IN-HOUSE COMMS PEOPLE NOT AGENCIES AND CONSULTANTS

Darren Caveney is the creator of comms2point0 and owner of specialist consultancy Creative Communicators Ltd. You can say hello on Twitter at @darrencaveney

AMAZON NEWS: A LESSON IN LEADERSHIP

I have to admit, I was a bit surprised to see a corporate "news" account that wasn't run by a fast food brand respond so brazenly to a sitting U.S. senator. Over the past few days, the Amazon corporate news account has suffered from an identity crisis that we all can probably relate to, one’s boss saying: “type this into tweeter.”  I think we all know who is doing the talking here for Amazon News.  

by Kathy Kyle Bonomini

Here we have a high-profile, public figure interacting with a brand persona. And upon review of the brand persona’s tweets, which have taken a turn recently, it looks like someone else is in the driver’s seat, perhaps the brand's leadership team, or members of it, have hijacked the platform because the corporation is embroiled in a legal or government relations battle. This is one of those situations where it would behoove the company to develop a CEO thought leadership programme that parallels and complements the official corporate news channel. This won’t happen for Amazon, but it is a good lesson in leadership, branding, and how we can once again learn how not to do it. The abrupt shift in tone actually triggered a security review by the company itself and upon further review, resulted in no further action. 

The platform and its audience deserve a brand identity and voice that is consistent and not combative. 

Inculcating a strong, consistent CEO social media presence increases trust among employees, shareholders, and your audience. Around 65% of US and 73% of UK employees feel it is important for our senior execs to actively communicate about their companies on social media, especially during times of crisis. It would bode well for tech giants - and all companies - to be transparent in times of crisis instead of anonymously hiding behind a twitter handle and lashing out at their critics. 

By engaging in a regular cadence of posting thought leadership, CEOs who share their wins, their losses, and demonstrate their resilience on social media create trust, establish relationships that can assist the company in managing a PR crisis. They can humanise their brand and ultimately grow their business. Not that this brand in particular needs to line their pockets; perhaps they could invest in more humane solutions for delivery drivers. (I’m just sayin.)

Here are some effective ways any organisation or company can complement their existing marketing efforts with a CEO thought leadership approach:

1. Publish and promote online biographies and spotlights on your website, in an organised press release campaign and in a social media campaign.

2. The PR and marketing team can send the CEO or Chief Exec related content to proactively respond to, as aligned to the marketing editorial calendar. This will provide the leadership team with regular content to provide an opinion on in their social media feeds.

3. Develop and execute a social media program on one (or more, as time permits and as relevant to the brand and audience) chosen channel for the CEO and the leadership team - LinkedIn can be used to complement overarching marketing campaigns as it is often overlooked. CEOs should work to actively engage shareholders, employees, and the public on a channel they feel comfortable with and do it authentically and consistently. Be sure to use visual assets like video, vlogs and photos to cultivate a genuine, engaging presence on social media.

4. Connected leaders post twice as frequently on digital channels. Content must be valuable, relatable and authentic. At DigiKind, we follow a rule of three: curate content that is relevant to your brand, post original content about your brand, and engage with followers. Easy!

5. Engage with your audience. Posting content is not enough; relatable, connected leaders also respond to and are in touch with their audience, engaging regularly to cultivate trust with shareholders, employees, clients, the media and prospects.

By experimenting with these strategies, an organisation or business can maintain a consistent brand identity for their audience and be more prepared for potential PR crises.

However, I would tell this particular reseller that Diane Von Furstenburg is definitely not a "small to mid-sized" women's brand - but that is advice for another day. 

Kathy Kyle Bonomini is an award-winning communications consultant who helps businesses, non-profits, BIDs and Councils reimagine the high street through community building and digital transformation. Get in touch at kathy@digikind.uk or @iamkathykyle.

A SHOT IN THE ARM FOR COUNCIL COVID CAMPAIGNS

Vaccine hesitancy across England’s communities is being tackled by bringing comms teams together to pool ideas, resources, insight, and data

by John-Paul Danon

Quite a few trends emerged during this past year of COVID that people now wonder if they might keep in their lives for good. Like working from home, knowing your neighbours, appreciating nature, and baking and eating a cake a day (NB you may need to kick that last one into touch).

Having been part of a lockdown campaign last year where groups of councils from the West Midlands and London used shared ideas and resources to communicate a common theme (recruiting social care workers), team CAN would heartily recommend this “council collective” working as another lockdown keeper.

And this year we’ve put it to good use for the COVID-19 communications challenge of vaccine hesitancy, teaming up with Westco (the agency founded on the comms expertise of Westminster Council) to come up with a campaign that any council can use to help drive uptake.

Four weeks since the campaign’s launch, we thought we’d share with the comms2point0 community the lessons being learnt by the councils taking part (and us) and how you too can tap into the resources free of charge.

Crafting the campaign

At the start of the year, Westco looked at the research available on COVID vaccine hesitancy and found that a sizable proportion of the UK population (as much as 15% in London) said they were not planning to take the vaccine. Demographically, people with a BAME background (58% in London) and in low socio-economic groups were more likely to be hesitant.

Vaccine hesitant, but not anti-vaxxers. The research showed those resistant are mostly just being cautious. Barriers to taking the vaccine included not trusting something developed and delivered at such speed, waiting until more people had it, and bad health care experiences in the past.

The Westco creative team came up with five concepts to address these barriers, including:

• Give us 10 seconds to change your mind: using the same tactics that draw people to misinformation on social media – that it’s easy to consume – vaccine facts are set out in a series of 10-second animations, each tackling a different myth.

• What getting it and not getting it looks like: pairs of images shot from the viewer’s perspective to show what life could be like if everyone takes the vaccine and what it will remain without it – missing friends, family, and freedoms.

• Calling all nans and pops: using the famous old RKO radio idents to symbolise “broadcasting” a callout to grandparents to spread the word that the vaccination is available and safe once they’ve had it.

The full suite of campaign creatives is available free for any council to use and adapt on their own channels as part of their local campaigns (the link is at the end of this blog).

We use programmatic advertising to amplify the creatives on websites and social media. It can reach up to 95% of any target group – when usually under 10% of council residents follow their local authority on social media. It also means we can closely monitor the campaign as it goes out live and optimise the creatives and channels working best for each council.

Learning and sharing

Over the first four weeks of the vaccine hesitancy campaign (up to 12 March) – with ten councils taking part – 15.3 million impressions and more than 190,000 clicks had been registered. The overall click-through rate (CTR) was an average 1.24% (for comparison, general ads get an average of 0.6%).

Across all councils taking part, the top performing campaign creatives (those clicked on by the most people) were those explaining vaccine facts in 10 seconds (especially a creative on side effects) and those describing what we’d miss out on without taking the vaccine (notably those on clubbing and holidays).

Weekly “working huddles” have been established for comms folk, to take them through the latest data and share what’s working and not for each council. “Armed” with detailed insight into how different demographics are responding week by week, comms teams can engage in a more informed way through further targeting and/or on the ground.

Discussions around the opinion survey are particularly interesting. This is pushed out to people in lower socio-economic and BAME groups – those identified as potentially “vaccine hesitant” – and has had more than 12,000 interactions. Of course “BAME” (not everybody’s favourite acronym) has a different meaning for every council area’s population.

Havering Council is running the survey in Eastern European languages. With a mainly white British population (around 80%) living in this Greater London borough, the largest other communities there are Lithuanian, Albanian, and Romanian. Of the 2,000 surveys completed in Havering, 104 people said they would reject the vaccine, with 52.3% citing safety concerns. Knowing this, the Havering can now focus on engaging with the rejectors through specific comms.

The London Borough of Haringey Council is targeting the area’s far wider spectrum of ethnic cultures with material translated into its many community languages. Videos are running as pre-roll clips that have been developed with faith and community leaders, council and NHS staff, and residents, expressing both personal and professional opinions: from Black Caribbean elders to a Ghanaian nurse, and from a Kurdish dentist to a mixed-race autism champion.

Oldham Council has worked with local Imams to take a lead in their communities by going public with their own vaccinations, while Milton Keynes Council has conducted video vox pops at vaccination centres in some BAME areas to share online.

If your council or NHS trust is planning vaccine comms over the next few weeks, here are three tips for issues coming down the line according to our huddle teams:

• Knowing who to reach out to. The most comprehensive population statistics used in research are still those from the decade-old 2011 Census. With the new Census only happening this month, find out if your council owns a more recent local population breakdown by ethnicity to inform your campaign. Some councils have been surprised by interaction rates with translations they’d not previously considered. Make full use of the content available in community languages from Public Health England, as well as the other helpful info videos they share from the British Liver Trust, Diabetes UK and other health charities.

• Start shaping messaging for younger people. As the vaccine rolls out down the age groups, early research is showing issues to consider include non-registration with a GP practice, staying home for the rest of lockdown and appropriate vaccination settings. Westco has been running focus groups with young people on these issues and this info will be available soon.

• Think about lower income groups of all ethnicities. The focus is most often on BAME vaccine hesitancy, but income and social groupings are also relevant. In our survey, those willing to take the vaccine across all lower income groups is currently 87% and for the BAME audience 90%.

And when all this is over…

This sort of sharing of resources and information between councils means not having to continually reinvent the wheel – saving time, money, and other resources.

Across the country most services councils deliver are the same: adults and children’s, waste and recycling, public health and so forth. And most of the problems faced delivering these services are the same: how to recruit new foster carers, how to encourage residents to reuse more and throw away less, how to get people to stop smoking.

With these challenges inevitably landing at the door of communications teams for solutions, it makes sense for resources to be shared and adapted like they have been for this vaccine hesitancy campaign. It would still leave room for individual teams to add their own local expertise.

Local government stock is high right now. Its handling of COVID-19 has had a positive impact on public perception. A recent survey conducted for the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) said public trust in local councils is nine times higher than for central Government. And senior managers and elected members are taking note of the role of comms in this. A poll of council communications staff found 87% thought the status of their team was higher than ever in their organisation.

It’s a good time to build for a future based on shared solutions.

• Take a look at the Westco vaccine hesitancy campaign creatives and download them to use free on your council channels from comms2point0’s COMMS:FILES. Just pop the word “Covid” into the search box.

• And watch the webinar recording of the launch of the vaccine hesitancy campaign featured in this blog, for lots of extra insight.

John-Paul Danon is sales director at CAN Digital You can say hello on Twitter at @jpdanon

Image via JayredS

MAKING READING TIME SEXY AGAIN: HOW THIS OVERLOOKED METRIC COULD UNLOCK HUGE COMMS SUCCESS

6 top tips to keep your audiences reading

by Hayat Rachi

We get it. 

You’ve just spent significant time crafting content that you believe will engage and inform readers beyond the heading. The content delves deep into the subject matter, answering an array of questions, meaning it could take several minutes to read and understand. You publish the piece, anticipate praise and positive feedback rolling in, only to be met with shocking bounce rates and low session lengths.

How long readers spend reading your content could be central to measuring the success of your communications efforts. But how do you know whether content is so clear that readers can dip in and out with ease, or so convoluted that they run away immediately? Keep reading to bust myths around bounce rate and learn how to keep your audiences engaged for the length of your webpage.

Bounce rates vs average time on page

A bounce is a single-page session on your site. Google explains that “these single-page sessions have a session duration of 0 seconds since there are no subsequent hits after the first one that would let Analytics calculate the length of the session”. Bounce rates, then, are only important if your success is measured by users hopping to another page.

However, if you have published a piece of content that you anticipate being around a minute to read, and the average page duration is falling way below that, you know you have a problem. Longer sessions indicate more engaged readers, whereas a shorter average time per page could hint that your reader hasn’t been able to find what they’re looking for and they’ve gone elsewhere.

How long do readers spend reading content?

If bounce rates are a vanity metric, then measuring them doesn’t tell you much about the success of your work. But teaming bounce rates up with the average time an audience spends on your specific page will reveal much more about the quality of your content, rather than merely the quantity of viewers landing there.

Only a tiny percentage of people get to the bottom of the articles that they’re reading. You may not even make it to the end of this one. More worrying, however, is if there were a piece of crucial information shoehorned at the end of an informative web page, far below the point at which a reader gives up searching for the content that they need.

In our research, we’ve found that the average reading time of a webpage across a range of sectors is 17.5 seconds, highlighting the real need to curate your content to suit the reading time of your average audience. As a communicator, this data may frustrate you. It takes a lot of time and energy to create content, only to find out that the average time spent on your pages is so low. But ask yourself, how much content do you read in full? 

Does read time differ per sector?

This is where it gets interesting. 

Not happy with delving into the average time readers spend on pages across the board, we wanted to unpick whether time reading differed per website sector. For example, whether trade union webpage audiences spent longer on average on each page compared to a local government or learning institution webpages.

We found that there were significant variations in reading time depending on the sector a page was published by. Check out our average reading time findings:

Variations per organisation are key, as these measurements can be used by comms teams to benchmark content performance. If the average reading time per page is significantly lower within governmental institutions than your average media organisation, there is no significance in comparing.

Is it important to keep the audience on pages for longer?

Beyond the obvious – that glancing at a page will not always provide the reader adequate time to harvest crucial content – we’ve also found, through our own research, that there is a trend between length of time spent reading an article and the likelihood that a reader will share content forward.

We’ve witnessed this trend particularly within trade unions and learning institutions. Check out the graphs below: 

Simply put, the longer you can keep a reader engaged, the wider external reach your content will have – and increased shares will gain kudos internally as well.

6 top tips to keep your audiences reading

Now that we’ve convinced you just how important read time is, here are some of our top tips to keep your audiences on your page for longer (if that’s what you need).

1.   Provide an estimated reading time

Feel like your readers aren’t getting below the header of your piece? If they know before they get stuck in that it will only take them a minute to read, they’re more likely to scroll through and find the information they need.

How? We’ve found a handy free tool to calculate the estimated reading time of your content with a simple copy and paste. Head to this link to get started!

2.   Create scannable content

We can all admit to scanning through an article and only cherry picking the nugget of information that we need. By using sections and subheadings, keeping it short and using bullet points readers won’t have to wade through information to get to the heart of what they need.

How? Break up your content into smaller, digestible pieces or employ drop down functions to make sure that the reader isn’t overwhelmed.

3.   Keep it accessible

We bang on about accessibility all the time, but audiences won’t linger on pages that they can’t understand or that have physical blockers to their capacity to read. Make sure your content meets all audiences needs by complying with web content accessibility guidelines, a readable font, and enough white space.

How? Get familiar with web content accessibility guidelines, and ensure that all of your tools are compliant too. Rest assured, React & Share is fully WCAG compliant.

4.   Incorporate visual elements

Images, infographics and video content (thanks, TikTok) all work wonders to draw and more importantly retain the attention of the audience.

How? Guide readers through lengthier informational content with eye catching visuals. There are plenty of websites to gather free stock imagery, however creating your own is always worth the investment. Infographics work well, and generating graphs around engaging data is a surefire way to hook a reader in.

5.   Cut it short

Yup, you saw it coming. If there is crucial content buried under heaps of fluff, strip it back to what the reader needs most. If you find that readers are dropping off 10 seconds into a hefty article, pull out the key contents that could be grabbed in that time.

How? Choosing your favourite content to keep can feel like choosing your favourite child. Be ruthless.

6.   Quality is Queen

If the quality of your content is bad, no one will want to hang around. Simple. Qualitative measuring, alongside quantitative, will allow you to sharpen up your content and hang onto those audiences.

How? Rather than just depending on Google Analytics to give you the numbers, use tools that provide actionable, page-specific insights to zone in on your lowest performing content. React & Share ranks your articles so that you can quickly prioritise the content that needs attention the quickest.

Now what?

Get started! Take a deep dive into your bounce rate, average session length and time spent per page across your website content and benchmark your data against your peers. Measuring is one small step for man; acting on the measurements is one giant leap for comms kind. 

Let us know how it goes by tweeting us at @reactandshare

*PLUS*

New kids on the block React & Share need some help. We're looking for a select few to join us for a demo and provide some feedback in exchange for a case of wine. If you'd be up for it, head here. 

Hayat Rachi is chief marketing officer at React and Share. You can say hello on Twitter at @HayatRachi

14 WEEKS. 14 WEEKS!

I was doing a little bit of prep for the latest Comms Unplugged podcast recently. It’s amazing what can emerge when you have time and space to let your mind take a little wander.

by Darren Caveney

It was during this quality thinking time that I got to thinking about the number of extra hours your average comms person worked during 2020.

So I crunched a few numbers.

We can assume that most full time in-house comms people are contracted for 37 hour weeks.

Most will work more than this, in reality.

But in a Covid year?

Based on the many comms teams and individuals I know and have spoken with we can conservatively say that they were averaging 50 hours a week in 2020.

Before you throw rotten fruit and your unwanted leftover coconut Quality Street my way, I know many of you have exceeded that figure. I regularly heard reports of 60-70 hour weeks.

Even on days off for leave many still logged into team calls, gold commands, leadership briefings and the like. I’ve also heard of people saying it’s not worth taking leave – because there’s not a lot to do and they will have to call into meetings and check their emails anyway.

But we’ll stick with 50 hours per weeks as a conservative and realistic average - that’s an additional 13 hours of work per week.

If we work back from Lockdown 1 until the end of 2020 that’s 40 weeks.

40 weeks x 13 hours = 520 hours.

Which equates to 14 weeks.

Which is over a quarter of a year.

That’s how much extra work you likely did in 2020.

So if you were feeling worn out at any point there are your 520 reasons why.

What’s my point?

Well the way 2021 is shaping up it’ll be no different for most comms people.

We can expect more of the same.

What can we do to counter this?

I’ve talked before about having a mental health and wellbeing checklist for comms teams. That’s easy to suggest, of course, but sometimes harder to achieve. And it’s easy to slip out of good habits and into poorer ones. We all do it.

So, we need to carry on working towards getting a better balance as we navigate Lockdown 3, however long this one will last.

But I do also think that these hours should be being reported. By which I mean in your monthly reports which get circulated internally.

Not in a showy ‘look at me’ way. But to keep on reminding people of the invaluable work and very long hours which are still being put in. Because people do forget, or never noticed in the first place.

Across your team – whether you’re a team of two or a team of 15 – this is highly significant extra work, pressure, stress and deliverables each week and month.

Comms doesn’t have an exclusive cartel on this, of course, but I am convinced that as a profession we do work longer hours than most of the other professional services in our organisations.

Is that your experience too?

So report back these figures each month and then when you turn down those lunchtime meeting requests (and you 100% should) you can remind people that you worked an extra quarter of a year last year as it is.

And that your lunchtime stroll is the most important part of your working day.

So there.

Darren Caveney is creator of comms2point0 and owner of specialist consultancy Creative Communicators Ltd

Image via SADSM Archives

BE FIERCE - WHAT OLIVER REED AND AXL ROSE TEACH US ABOUT BEING BRAVE

As good friends for years, the late, great Oliver Reed often liked to invite the equally late, great Keith Moon over for afternoon drinkypoos at his sprawling country estate. 

by Richard Elwell

In keeping with rock god status, Moon liked to travel by helicopter to Reed's imposingly grand Broome Hall. He'd land on the quad to be welcomed by the first of many lead crystal clad large ones (one would need to line their stomach ahead of drinks with those pair).

On hearing the approaching rotors, Reed would excitedly bound outside, raise his shotgun to the skies and attempt to rattle his airborne mucka by taking pot shots at the incoming craft as the downdraft blasted the heaps of rhododendron. 

'I'm shooting at the moon' boomed the celebrated film star as high velocity ball bearings buzzed the tail rotor and fuselage. Reed thought all this absolutely hilarious (he also once climbed the chimney of his local naked pretending to be Santa and got barred). Astonishingly, no actors or rock stars were harmed during this jovial discharge of lethal weaponry.

Perhaps that's what Reed meant when he mentioned having a few shots round at his.

From great actors to great bands.

At the height of Guns & Roses implosion with band members in court and millions of dollars in dispute, it's said that Axl Rose attempted to buy his own army. 

Yep, an army.

Growing ever more eccentric by the day and disillusioned by his band's demise, Axl's 'people' apparently rang several departments of defence around the world asking if they'd consider offloading a battalion or two - maybe chucking in a bit of artillery with the deal too. 

They'd be well paid and well equipped. A penchant for Rock & Roll was considered more important than fitness or stamina. General Rose needs you. Apply here.

Quite what Axl and his Defence Secretary elect planned to do with an army if they were successful in their bidding still remains unknown to this day.

Bigger Guns but same sized Roses. You can have that one. 

Truth is, the world needs the likes of Oli' and Axl. People talk of disruption nowadays because they tweaked a logo or sponsored a whole break instead of running the obligatory 30'.

That's just playing at it. After such a shitty year, agencies, brands and organisations should make a noise like never before in 2021. Do something that becomes folklore. Be famous. 

So, aim high and you can win the battle AND the war - but don't wait for others to pick up sticks. 

Richard Elwell is owner and creative partner at One Black Bear

Image via Silver Screen

WHY ENGAGING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE IS NO LONGER NEEDED BUT NECESSARY

We all felt the challenge of 2020 but for children and young people, last year could mark a generation.

by Rebecca Roberts

It’s always hard to picture your younger years through any perspective other than the one you experienced. It’s what makes speaking with youth audiences a tricky balance of effective audience engagement, ignoring pre-conceived assumptions on “young people today” and the avoidance of parent-dancing (perhaps dad-dancing should be replaced with ‘parent TikToks’ now…)

But whilst many of us want to improve our youth engagement within our work, when it comes to youth audiences it’s the default to ‘tell’ them, group them into a massive audience bracket and hope that some young people checking work will help us achieve a better tone. If anything can be learnt from the messaging to youth audiences during the pandemic it’s that this categorically does not empower young people or influence their behaviour.

Whilst many predicted the exponential impact on young people of stopping then restricting their normal school lives, limiting how they experienced further and higher education, shifting their social environment and then blaming them frequently in the media, COVID-19 has had a very real and widespread impact on every aspect of their lives and future prospects.

Lockdown Life of Young People 2020 – is a paper I’ve just put out drawing on some of the key data being shared about children and young people in the UK. What lockdown meant, the impact on their mental, emotional and physical wellbeing, the widening educational gap and undeniable social inequality that underpins all of this, plus some of the media habits as a result of learning at home and being cut off from wider friends and family.

As one guest on the Hear It Podcast told me recently – we know that young people find it a lot harder than adults to process living life in such a restricted way. They’re returning to school less active and with wider rates of mental health issues. And let’s not even start on how bleak the future economy may look to a graduate hoping to get a job, because youth unemployment rates are the highest they’ve ever been and graduate schemes were some of the first to be trimmed by large companies.

Some of the data coming out on how youth audiences see their future was some of the hardest to read doing this paper. Large proportions of young people are lowering their aspirations and expectations in life because of the pandemic. And younger children have been hardest hit in terms of their overall development at school, often regressing and struggling to cope.

Whilst the data highlights how bleak much of this picture looks, it’s something that is important to be conscious of as we pave a way to broader our conversation with younger audiences, in whatever aspect of our work. Not least due to the changing habits and ways in which their ecosystem has changed, some of which showing immense opportunity and shifts in expectations.

comms2point0 and Thread & Fable’s Youth Matters Workshop has had a refresh for 2021 - we’re really excited to have come up with a three-part virtual programme.

We’ll equip you with the tools, insights and practice needed to better engage young people within your work.

Sound useful? You can book your place HERE.

We’re offering reduced price tickets for public, third, charity and voluntary sector people.

Looking forward to seeing some of you there.

Rebecca Roberts is founder of Thread & Fable. You can say hello on Twitter at @rebecca7roberts

Image via Archivo Historico Sinaloa