LGC’s special report on communications
Introduction
TAKING COMMS TO THE NEXT LEVEL
LGC brings together expert opinion from communications professionals ahead of the LGcomms and Government Communication Service Academy
Simon Jones
Simon jones
Simon Jones, chair, LGcommunications, and assistant director of communications, Haringey LBC
This year’s LGcomms and Government Communication Service Public Sector Academy is shaping up to be the most important ever.
Personally, it feels like local government communications is coming up to a watershed moment as we define our role in the changing world around us.
With devolution and public service reform dismantling our traditional boundaries, we have to move with the times. My council, Haringey, is one of a growing number that has removed the word ‘council’ from its identity. It’s more that a symbolic gesture, it underlines that we are not here as mouthpieces for the bureaucracies that we represent, we are here as champions for the people and place we serve. And to that effectively requires a whole new mindset, forming new partnerships and galvanising all available resources.
That is why the big theme of this year’s Academy is collaboration and how we can work with others to improve what we do.
I have been pretty clear in the past that the true test for communications is proving that investment in us has a direct return when it comes to improving lives, using the power of language and imagery to help people make the most of what’s around them.
This year’s Academy will shine a light on the best thinking from across the public sector and how we can work together more effectively to achieve that goal.
Simon Jones, chair, LGcommunications and assistant director of communications, Haringey LBC
The Public Sector Communications Academy (http://www.lgcomms.org.uk/the-academy/academy-2016) will be held on 1 – 2 November at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, priced at £198 for two full days for LGcomms members. LGC is the event’s media partner. Register at www.lgcomms.org.uk
Alex Aiken
Alex aiken
Alex Aiken, executive director, Government Communications
My role as head of profession for the Government Communication Service is to bring all our professional practice up to the standard of the best campaigns.
The Comms Academy is an opportunity for local and central government communicators to debate, identify and agree the ways that we can use communication as a powerful tool to improve public service.
Effective public service communication should inform, inspire and enhance the lives of our communities. In a social, networked world where trust is often in short supply every authority must work hard to retain public confidence and draw a compelling vision of the future in their area for the people we serve. There are examples of where this is achieved, evinced by high public opinion ratings in many individual local authorities and government agencies. But the success of many bodies means that there is a model that others can follow to improve their reputation, enhance their standing and galvanise the public behind their goals.
In a social, networked world where trust is often in short supply every authority must work hard to retain public confidence and draw a compelling vision of the future in their area
First-class communication teams should use their professional skill to constructively challenge the policy prescription and service arrangements that they are asked to communicate. When this constructive conversation happens it helps produce success like the GREAT Britain campaign, which brings together the best of British marketing to promote the UK around the world. This is effective because it utilises a great creative concept, rigorous evaluation, collaboration across departments and agencies and high-quality implementation. It has delivered a return of about £2bn in terms of trade, tourism and education benefit for an investment of around £100m.
There is a wealth of well-researched, practical material that shows how global campaigns like GREAT are scaleable for local government. From the joint campaign toolkit developed by LGcomms and the GCS to the Objectives, Audience, Strategy, Implementation, Sustainment (OASIS) campaign model, Modern Communication Operating Model, Evaluation Framework and guides to social marketing, we know what brilliant public communication can achieve: changing lives for the better. This is evident from Public Health England’s Change for Life, the NHS BT Missing Type initiative and the current ‘Get in Go Far’ Apprenticeship campaign.
I know that the Academy will inspire communicators, build co-operation and enhance professional practice. I hope that the professionalism, case studies and toolkits on show in Liverpool will be utilised by policy directors, chief officers and leaders across local government to improve service delivery.
Alex Aiken, executive director, Government Communications
David Holdstock
TOWARDS A COMBINED PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS FUNCTION
This year’s LGcomms and Government Communication Service Public Sector Communications Academy is a real opportunity for us all to look at whether the way we currently deliver communications will see us through the huge changes that we are all are facing.
David holdstock
David Holdstock, director of communications, Local Government Association
Brexit, devolution, re-engaging with our communities and a digital agenda that is moving at ever-increasing speeds are just some of the challenges we need meet to ensure public sector communications are fit for the future.
Earlier this year, as part of the LGA’s improvement and support offer to councils, we took our ‘devo comms’ roadshow out on tour. Hosting a series of roundtables around the country, we gathered together communicators who are at all stages of all the devolution life-cycle, from done deals to no deals. It was clear that while there is already a lot of great work going on, there is still much to do.
The absolute key to delivering effective communication is that it is based on strategy and driven by the political and managerial leadership
The absolute key to delivering effective communication is that it is based on strategy and driven by the political and managerial leadership. This should come as no surprise and yet there are still organisations dealing in the tactics of issuing press releases and random tweeting. In the ever-more complex world of combined authorities, which involves working across organisation and geographical boundaries, strategy is critical. It’s our job as communication professionals to shape that strategy and demonstrate that leadership for our organisations.
If we are going to adapt to the changing public services landscape we also need to think about how communications teams will adapt to new ways of working. I have said for the last few years to anyone who has cared to listen (thank you to all of you have kindly done so) that we are heading towards the creation of locally based public service communications hubs. While the model may not exactly match that, we will need to continue to develop our partnership working. Those partnerships need to span our local council partners, local public sector partners such as health, the police and fire services, charities and the voluntary sector, local businesses and central government. That’s quite a list, which may even need to grow, but it is important to ensure we re-engage our communities in local issues and local decisions.
David Holdstock, director of communications, Local Government Association
Paul Masterman
COMMS IN A ‘POST-TRUTH’ WORLD
Each era of communications has its own instructive fall from grace that should be a warning to all of us working in local government comms.
Paul masterman
Paul Masterman, independent consultant
At the start of the 20th century the father of PR, Edwards Bernays, unleashed the power of the Freudian id to create the dark arts of propaganda and manipulation.
In the 1980s Thatcherite minister Alan Clark boasted about being economical with the actualité in handling questions on dodgy arms trading. In a later decade Alastair Campbell allowed a smart and professional party comms operation to be turned into a machine of spin when in power.
Now, amid the continuing chaos and confusion of Brexit, we are told we are living in a ‘post-truth’ society where appeals to emotion and reliance on assertion trump (or should that be Trump?) mere fact.
Local government and its communicators have failed to learn the lessons of behavioural psychology by telling a human story that engages real people emotionally in their work
The real truth of the excruciating referendum campaign is that both sides ran dreadful communications operations that would have ruined careers if they had been attempted in the best councils.
The post-truth truth is that one side relied on half-truths and lies, and the other on scaremongering and relentless bullying by the great and the good. But wherever you stand on post-truth, there are lessons here for local government.
The new wave of behavioural psychology uses those pesky facts via proper scientific research to show us that people behave like flawed human beings when making any decision, let alone one as significant as whether we should stay in the EU. The human brain does not allow facts to get in the way of a good story when bias, guesswork or lazy thinking will do instead.
Local government bombards residents with facts, business cases and reasonable explanations for everything it does but few people understand what local government delivers and no-one has ever loved their local council, even if they do trust it more than central government.
Most of the time we don’t help ourselves. Our large, complex organisations remain mysterious and bureaucratic to an outsider. We carry on swimming in a sea of jargon and management-speak. We are still scared of letting frontline staff speak ‘human’ to residents or of giving them access to tools like Twitter to let them get on with the job.
Above all, local government and its communicators have failed to learn the lessons of behavioural psychology by telling a human story that engages real people emotionally in their work. Local councils touch everyone’s life, mostly for the good, and that’s a story worth telling.
The post-post-truth truth is that communications will always succeed when they are based on real insight and understanding and talk to people where they live and work, and in a way the appeals to them as individual humans and not as a community of consumers.
Paul Masterman, independent consultant
Eleri Roberts
FROM DEFENSIVE TO PROACTIVE COMMS
I’ve recently had my new job described as the local government equivalent of the England football manager’s role.
It is an impossible job with massive expectations; sometimes unrealistic. I’m told Graham Taylor’s advice to his successor was “don’t lose” and six weeks in post and I have to repeat this phrase to myself, but I add on “focus”.
Eleri roberts
Eleri Roberts, assistant director of communications, Birmingham City Council
It was suggested that I describe in this column “the strategy you employ for building up the reputation of a place that has had a few negative headlines in the past” but actually that is only part of the challenge of working in the largest unitary council, which has suffered a few issues.
The damage done by many negative headlines goes deeper than just rebuilding reputation; it is moving the organisation from a defensive, reactive communications position to a proactive one.
Chief executives and senior officers should be looking to their communications teams to not only get messages out but to engage and build trust
We are moving people from seeing communications as the final component that produces a press release, a poster and maybe a blog, to a tool that actually can change behaviour, manage down demand and show real return on investment. Evaluation is the real challenge.
This has meant reacquainting myself with the basics of campaign planning, and explaining how a vision needs to shape the priorities of a communications team and that everything should build a narrative and support the authority in delivering quality services. It also meant that now, more than ever, we need to justify to taxpayers how communications is working for every penny spent. It is scary how much money can be spent to produce very minor (if any) outcomes if there isn’t the transparency, governance and strategy in place.
“Communications is a science, not an art”, to quote former LGcomms chairman Cormac Smith and as we move towards tighter budgets, we need to scrutinise every piece of activity. Just producing a poster, leaflet and blog doesn’t change behaviour or manage down demand, and this is where the communications team of any organisation needs the respect it requires at the top table in order to help meet financial challenges.
Chief executives and senior officers should be looking to their communications teams to not only get messages out but to engage and build trust. At the start of every piece of activity, the question needs to be asked: what are we trying to achieve by doing this? My challenge is to not lose focus on that question and to last another 30 days, to beat the 67 Sam Allardyce managed.
Eleri Roberts, assistant director of communications, Birmingham City Council
Neil Wholey
COMMS IS A FRONTLINE SERVICE
Since the Government Communication Service launched its evaluation framework last year, it has never been easier to assess the impact of communications.
Wholey neil
Neil Wholey, head of evaluation and performance, Westminster City Council; chair, Local Area Research & Intelligence Association
The framework uses the common language and approach of project evaluation, which is familiar to researchers across the world. It is designed to be used by communication professionals directly, as evaluation is a core competency for anyone working in the sector. Those designing and implementing communication activities need to build in evaluation from the very beginning, but organisations also need to support them in three ways.
First, there need to be clear, common objectives across the organisation. Communications is a frontline service. It is at the heart of delivering behavioural change, building social value and campaigning for resources and influence. There should be a proven net return on investment. The GCS evaluation framework gathers evidence together to tell the story of how the activities undertaken lead to a clear set of outcomes that have an organisational impact. Communications evaluation should be fully integrated with understanding how the organisation is delivering, not just focus on the outcome of individual activities or campaigns.
Communications is at the heart of delivering behavioural change, building social value and campaigning for resources and influence
Second, communication teams need to have access to all the research and intelligence an organisation holds. At Westminster City Council we have a centralised team which brings together communications evaluation with, amongst other things, the performance framework, community engagement and business intelligence (big data). We also have a wider insight network that invites others outside our team, not just researchers, to share their knowledge. If communication teams gather evidence in isolation they might just have a few stats from Twitter, media monitoring counts and some questionnaires left at an event.
Finally there needs to be space for new ideas. Evaluation done badly makes an organisation risk-averse with a reluctance to do anything unless it has worked before. Evaluation done well supports risk-takers and encourages innovation. You can set tough objectives, establish an agreed plan, monitor progress and provide evidence on whether something has worked. It helps you learn from experience and use that insight to innovate further.
At the Academy in November we will be discussing the lessons learned from good evaluation and how to use the framework. We will also be learning from each other about the frontline impact communication teams are delivering across the country.
Neil Wholey, head of evaluation and performance, Westminster City Council and chair, Local Area Research and Intelligence Association
Darren Caveney
STRATEGY IS KEY TO SOCIAL MEDIA USE
Almost all UK councils have a Twitter and Facebook account. The argument over whether to use social media across local government has largely passed.
Darren caveney
Darren Caveney, creator, comms2point0; director, Creative Communicators
The priority now is to use social media more strategically to ensure good engagement with residents and better customer service.
To do this well, social media needs to be taken seriously within organisations with support given to those officers on the digital front line.
Twitter and Facebook – ‘traditional’ social media
Feedback from some local government communications teams is that they still face concerns internally about the legitimacy of using social media.
Let’s keep it in context; social media is not a silver bullet to solve every communications issue. But Twitter and Facebook have been around for over a decade and are established channels. Take a look at Leeds City Council’s dedicated Twitter account for customer services, with more than 21,000 followers, if you’re still in any doubt.
Many UK media outlets now ignore traditional press releases in favour of picking up their stories online and via social media, so urging your comms team to send out more and more of the former isn’t the answer to nailing effective communications.
The numbers don’t lie
The latest Ofcom communications market report tells us that, in the UK, 41 million of us use YouTube, 39 million use Facebook, 21 million use Twitter and 16 million use Instagram. Those are big numbers.
However, it’s important to understand the metrics. This can be done but only by investing time in analysing the data and mapping out our own landscapes to understand where organisations should prioritise their resources.
Social media can be the biggest time-suck there is, so it’s important to have a clear plan that is well resourced in order to get the most from it.
Help is at hand
The Local Government Association, working comms2point0, has created an all-new online resource to help organisations lift the lid on how to use social media more strategically.
The new resource offers a mix of top tips and case studies to showcase good practice. When is it right to open a new account or close an underperforming one and what factors should be evaluated when considering using channels such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat?
Case studies will include examples of how to promote events and campaigns on social media, through to using social media for internal communications and customer services. It’s one of the joys of the public sector, and local government in particular, that we can freely share and learn collectively.
- The Social Media 2.0+ resource will be launched at a special LGcomms Academy session hosted by the LGA and comms2point0 in Liverpool on 2 November. It will also be available online via the LGA’s website under its ‘Digital Councils’ web pages.
Darren Caveney, creator, comms2point0 and director, Creative Communicators
Emma Rodgers
WE MUST USE THE RIGHT TOOLS TO MEASURE OUR PERFORMANCE
Local government in 2016 is tough. Scratch that, the public sector in 2016 is tough full stop: fewer resources, enormous savings to be made, sky high expectations and a complete change in how people engage with public organisations.
Emma rodgers
Emma Rodgers, strategic manager – communications and marketing, Stoke-on-Trent City Council; vice-chair, LGcomms
With so many challenges to meet, it’s hard to prioritise and can be even more difficult to not just fire-fight. For communications professionals, there’s never been a more critical time to prove our worth.
We need to be demonstrating the value we bring at every step. This means evaluating what we do effectively and efficiently and using the results to inform our approach. It’s not just an add-on; it’s a must-have.
When I first started out in PR more than 20 years ago, working for the largest tour operator in the UK at the time, proving what you did felt easy. Advertising value equivalents (where you say editorial you’ve achieved for an organisation would have cost £x if you paid for it as advertising) were the norm with results, which often ran into millions of pounds, bandied about like sweets.
But not anymore. The approach was thankfully officially banished with the introduction of the Barcelona Principles in 2010. If you’re in communications and not familiar this, then shame on you. Others soon followed, like Jim Macnamara’s model of measurement and evaluation, the Valid Metrics Framework by the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communications.
Sadly, even with the introduction of these tools and principles to help us make the case for effective communications more easily, I still see on a regular basis measurement metrics being used which mean diddly squat. No call to action, AVE touted, a lack of clarity around the difference a campaign has made. I’ve even had stand-up rows over it. Unfortunately it seems that PR and comms professionals can be like elephants, with long memories of learnt behaviours that are still being upheld as good practice.
I understand that it can be hard to measure what you do but my view is that without good evaluation and measuring return on investment, we may as well be watching what little resources we have go up in flames.
If you’re a comms professional in the public sector, make evaluation your number one priority for the year ahead – and the year after that and the year after that. Find the metrics that prove you’re making a difference to the people you serve, whether it’s by recruiting foster carers, increasing footfall in a city centre, persuading communities to pay their council tax online, signing up volunteers or helping people to stop smoking. Make clear the return on investment in what we do. I guarantee you’ll be pleased you did – and your leadership team will be too.
Emma Rodgers, strategic manager – communications and marketing, Stoke-on-Trent City Council; vice-chair, LGcomms
Matthew Patrick
CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS WITH CITIZENS RELIES ON GOOD COMMS
Nearly ten years ago a piece of Local Government Association research, Key Drivers of Resident Satisfaction with Councils, confirmed the link between residents feeling satisfied and feeling informed about the services they access.
Matthew patrick
Matthew Patrick (Lab), cabinet member for community engagement, Wirral MBC
Second only to being seen to provide value for money, information is king. How do you demonstrate you are providing value for money? With effective communication.
In Wirral, we had always taken for granted that communications were about telling people what the council was doing and why. In reality, we have to go deeper than that. Communications have to have community engagement at their heart and engagement is a two-way process. We have to start talking about what the community is doing as well.
Since the economic crisis, we have become obsessed with consultations and referenda but too much information can be disorientating. As we saw during the EU referendum, building from a solid base of evidence is more important than ever.
In 2015, we commissioned Ipsos Mori to undertake a major piece of market research, looking at our residents’ attitudes towards their communities and the council and their level of awareness of what was going on locally.
On the whole, people in Wirral felt a strong affinity with the area. Seventy-eight percent said they were satisfied with their neighbourhood as a place to live. Satisfaction with the council was in line with comparable authorities.
Residents were worried about anti-social behaviour and street cleanliness. Different communities identified different priorities, but more people said they trusted the council and were satisfied with what we were doing than not.
But only 42% of respondents said the council kept them adequately informed about services and benefits – significantly lower than comparable authorities. In June 2016, the LGA’s own research put the average figure across the country at 63%, itself almost a historic low.
Being aware also means being engaged. Around a quarter of respondents said they regularly participated in community groups or organisations, while half said they might if they knew what was available.
Then there’s the question of ways and means. We know that those more likely to feel uninformed include women and young people, and that these are also those most likely to use social media including Twitter and Facebook to make contact. Our challenge was to be more effective at developing and utilising the resources we have to inform our communities.
When people use the buzzword ‘place’ this is what they’re really talking about; the harnessing of local voices to create and safeguard a successful community.
Putting this focus on communications and engagement highlighted the need for a new role within our political leadership: the cabinet member for community engagement. I am lucky enough to lead this work.
Everything we do follows from our Wirral Plan: 20 pledges that will improve the lives of Wirral people by 2020. Our stakeholder and engagement strategy challenges the Wirral Partnership, comprising all of our public sector partners and the local Chamber of Commerce and community groups, to change our relationship with residents.
We have five strategic campaigns, based around the things residents have told us are their priorities. These campaigns support access to leisure opportunities, the improvement of health outcomes, safeguarding and empowering the young and old and driving business growth and regeneration. We have restructured our marketing and communications function to reflect this new focus.
Local government has been changing its relationship with residents to become enablers, rather than providers. This means bringing more community organisations in to support and own our campaigning activities and in return making use of our networks and resources to promote their activities.
One high-profile addition to our communications activities will be a new monthly publication, the first edition of which will be delivered to all households and businesses in October. It’s a bold step, and only one part of our plan. It is also crucial to helping us honour our commitment to reach those who are not online.
Effective communication goes hand-in-hand with people feeling happy and engaged with their communities. It’s heartening that 90% of those we surveyed said that they would be willing to get more involved in their neighbourhood if they knew more about what was available. We’re working to make that connection.
Matthew Patrick (Lab), cabinet member for community engagement, Wirral MBC
