I recently presented to New York students (in London) on UK public sector PR. We looked at how to communicate when your audience is everyone. I’ll post up some of the key points below. My biggest challenge was talking to an audience from a country which I have never done PR in and who know little about our PR and our public sector. It was a long but fun 2 and a half hours… lots of two-way conversations and practical exercises.
How to Eat an Elephant: communicating when your audience is everyone (In this case ‘UK residents’)
- Do be realistic about expectations
- Do focus on the highest possible circulation (eg national news)
- Do segment your work into themes and audiences eg: motoring or women’s press; we targeted agony aunts with great success
- Do plan ahead 6mths or 12mths
- Do work with other departments to share/reuse/recycle info and ideas
- Do be innovative and don’t be discouraged
- Don’t forget to do your research:
what works? what customer research already exists?
- Don’t forget who your customer is (and undertake or refer back to stakeholder research)
- Don’t be afraid to piggyback on other people’s stories
- Don’t get sidetracked but DO be flexible
- Don’t allow tedious sign-off procedures to get in the way of creativity and big ideas
- Be accountable…keep your communications trails
- Be aware of data protection laws, propriety rules and guidelines (eg purdah) and procurement processes
- Factor in lengthy sign-off times
- Check all your facts…twice
These are some of the key points from our discussions. Someone pointed out that ‘purdah’ may be offensive to some people as it has religious meaning but I have not yet found another word to describe the period between when the election is called and election day, during which external communications almost shut down. If anyone has another word let me know and I’ll update future presentations.
HJB