Category: PR

Storytelling: show, don’t tell

One thing that I find people really struggle with is telling a story about what they are working on.

Sock puppet and toy giraffe
Simple stories are powerful. And stronger than asserting something or giving an opinion.

This is a shame because storytelling is powerful.

Alongside stats/facts, and quotes/endorsements, stories/anecdotes are the most powerful tools you have.

If you can tell a story to illustrate your point it helps people to understand – and it gives them some evidence (a situation and some action). And they can own the story and re-tell it to others.

So what?  What’s the “So what?” of what you’re saying?

If you can’t tell me in a sentence then it’s not a story.

Here’s a way of testing whether something is a story.

If you can fill in these headings it’s probably a story. (The added benefit is that your people will understand organising their thinking in this manner from STAR model interview prep.)

Situation
What was the background?

Task
What needed to happen?

Client
Who was the (internal) client?  Can we speak to them to get their perspective?

This is important because it’s someone else saying we made a difference – not us saying it about ourselves.  Even better if you can get some customer/end-user voice in it.

If you get stuck on this ask yourself “who benefits?”, and speak to them.

Action
What did you do?

Result
What was the result?

Give it a try…. but probably without the sock puppets 😉

What’s a Physics?

Thanks to Daily Mash for providing this pastiche of our week in Ofqual Comms:

CONCERNS have been raised over the standard of science teaching after it emerged thousands of GCSE pupils could not tell the difference between a microscope and a frog.

Image

Question Two: Which one is the frog and which one is the miocropscope?

 

Exam regulator Ofqual has demanded urgent action by ministers before a child suffers serious internal injuries from trying to drink a bag of carpet tacks.

Ofqual said the dumbing down of science teaching has led to children being awarded physics GCSEs for running head first into a wall, while the chemistry exam involves making a glass of Ribena without getting yourself or anyone else pregnant.

And according to Ofqual one child was awarded a ‘B’ grade after claiming that gravity was invented in 1994 by his Uncle Derek.

A spokesman said: “We risk creating a generation of adults who will not only lack vital 21st century skills, but who also risk electrocuting themselves while trying to release the tiny people trapped inside their television sets.”

Look at Me Being an Opinion Leader!

Someone has contacted me to ask me to encourage you to take part in a survey.  They say:

The study involves learning more about parents’ attitudes towards child nutrition, obesity and food choices offered to children at school.

This blog has been selected based on the overall content of your postings and the comments posted by your readers – so your readers’ participation would be very important. The survey findings will allow us to learn more about parents’ attitudes towards these important topics.

I’m quite excited by this!  Not since the Evening Standard contacted me in desperation has my help been sought…

My problem is that:

  1. the survey that they want you to fill in seems to relate to the American market
  2. it’s for a potato products manufacturer and although the intention seems unbiased I’m not sure

But, hey, it’s up to you: Kids & Food: What do You Think?  I’ve had a quick bimble through and if I qualified to fill it in then I would do (no kids so I can’t).

Not wishing to lead the jury, but I know what my response would be….  homemade packed lunches full of pretentious yummy mummy organics, no to school dinners until I can be sure that chips, mini pizzas, ‘chicken’ nuggets (or any kind of non free-range chicken) etc. are not on the menu.

Further than that:

  1. school dinner menus should be published a week in advance to help prevent clashes with home cooking (like they do in France)
  2. schools should not be allowed to purchase from food services companies such as brakes bros. etc.
  3. potatos would not count as a vegetable choice

However, I don’t think I’d go as far as banning jacket potatoes and am relieved to see that that this story was rubbish.

Although all of this is based on personal prejudice it’s not from a position of complete ignorance, my mum was a primary school bursar who had to outsource and then re-house school dinners and Himself works in the food service industry.

Breasts = Google Gold

Thanks to Laura Dewis for the mention:

And congratulations to vblogger of the month, Casey Leaver, for getting the most views in the video blog series on “What YouTube taught me” for Getting abreast of your health.

Wonder why videos with sperm and breasts in the title got the most attention?

Although, I am rather partial to CK’s Rugby & Seabass and Guy’s Trains.

And just wait til you see the snails and children that we filmed yesterday for Evolution Megalab.

Our Panel Said

Follow up to https://caseyleaver.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/what-would-i-watch-a-video-on/

Well, first things first, I needn’t have worried in the least about the attitude of our focus group attendees.  Those that managed to make it were the nicest group imaginable.  So a big thanks to them for that!

What were the results of our extremely unscientific, back of a fag packet, group?

What do they see/go to when they first log on?

  • MSN
  • Email
  • MySpace
  • Facebook
  • You Tube – but they don’t have accounts
  • Not blogs – except on MySpace
  • BBC – esp. for news (easier than papers)
  • NOT Piczo or Bebo*

(*Himself points out that this might be a localised thing, what are your school friends/ swimming club members/ orchestra band mates on.  Possible.  I know, for example that Bebo is huge with some Irish late teens.)

What films did they show us?

What do they like?

  • Short (2 mins, 5 mins is too long)
  • Something famous or some point of common reference
  • Good music, catchy tune or music that everyone knows or music “that you thought you’d forgotten” (Amarillo)
  • Things that make us laugh
  • Slightly wierd
  • Dancing professors in lab coats and goggles
  • Famous people: sports personalities
  • Unexpected twists
  • Things out of context
  • Dare Devil stunts (jumping on the back of a cow)

What they don’t like

  • Depressing things – unless there’s a big message and even then it should be levened with humour like Comic Relief
  • Don’t err on the side of the preachy
  • Bad quality – a bit annoying
  • Too good quality – a bit annoying

What topics are interesting?

  • Truth about food
  • Fairtrade
  • Making money out of ethical trade
  • The size 0 debate
  • 60 year olds in a wind tunnel
  • Decorated snail experiuments
  • CCTV/ Surveillance Society – Mosquito noise, speaking cameras, giving teens a bad name, knife crime

What style do they like?

  • Top Gear
  • Real Science
  • Braniac
  • BBC Blast
  • Mimickery/DIY style

How do they pass films on?

By email, but preferably in person so they can watch the person’s reactions (i.e. at a PC “Have you seen this one?”)

And finally a plug for Himself’s friend the lovely Alistair Robertson who was partly responsible for this wonder years ago.

What would I watch a video on?

Writing about https://caseyleaver.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/summer-project/

So – a short list of potentially visual stuff:

Also – a list of stuff I’d like to know:

  • What causes a double rainbow?
  • How do those machines that work out calories work? Like on Cook Yourself Thin
  • Why do cows lie down when it rains?
  • …….

Summer Project

This summer we asked everyone in the team to pitch ideas for quick, finite, projects.  They had to:

  1. Support at least one of the org’s strategic aims
  2. “Change, create and innovate” (Ian likes a nice cheesy slogan.)

Which is why I am currently pulling together a focus group of 14-17 year olds so that we can consult them on what is cool.

Probably not the word ‘cool’ as another colleague has already pointed out.

The idea is to showcase academic knowledge and expertise, thus proving that we are a ‘proper university’ through quick and dirty films to upload on You Tube.

So far, so good.  The info has to be visual, that’s a given.  But it also has to be something forwardable, blogable, viral.  And that’s where our teen consultants will hopefully come in (we are sweetening the deal by offering training and participation in production if they are interested).

We want the films to be facebooked, myspaced, bebo-ed, forwarded and whatever else they get up to.  But they have to be good enough – otherwise we look like a try-too-hard uncle.

Doing well on recruitment – but borderline terrified about what to do with 10-15 teens when I get them here.  So – this is a brainstorm.

  1. Get them to show us the best that are currently doing the rounds and explain why they are good.
  2. Present them with a set of suggestions and allow them to sneer at them.
  3. Ask them to check out the closest competition – Warwick iCast / Research-TV / OU on You Tube and spot trends
  4. Try and come up with a recipe
    1. Subject matter
    2. Style of filming
    3. USP: Funny/ shocking/ gross?
  5. Find out what tools they use – build a list
  6. Find out their interests – build a list
  7. What courses they’d be potentially interested in studying – build a list

And – a vital top tip have a chat to myt friends with teenagers – find out the best way of getting the best out of them.

Matt – over to you?

Edit: 12:35, 11/8/08

Mat says:

I think the list is mostly right.  I’d also like to know

 

·         How they browse – what’s the first thing they log into?   How long do they spend on certain sites?

·         What’s the most popular system/sites amongst their friends? 

·         Do they care about quality?

·         Coming from different places/schools, do they have the same browsing trends and expectations across the board?   

·         Do things appeal more to boys or girls?  Do we have an even split of boys and girls attending?

 

I’d like suggestions from them based on topics we give them. 

So, it looks like the focus group will be Wed 20th or Wed 27th….

You Tube: My Contribution

My breast examination video on You Tube!

The Open University has launched a YouTubeTM Channel with over 300 videos to extend its commitment to broadening access to education. YouTube is the leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos.

OUView went live yesterday [Thursday]. Video taken from OU courses is available on the OULearn Channel and features household names such as broadcaster Sir David Attenborough and inventor James Dyson. Videos cover subjects from arts and history to science and nature, in bite-sized chunks of 2-3 minutes each.

OULife is a channel for the OU’s staff and students to upload their own videos – from graduation ceremonies to video blogs. The launch includes a series of video blogs where OU staff and students talk about what they’ve learnt from YouTube.

Here is my contribution “Wot I learnt from YouTube”.

Thinking of you Grandma.

What is News?

This is something that is crystal clear to most people who work in communications – yet a lot of people tend to forget it when thinking about their intranets.

This post is really about getting the basics right.

It’s easy to default to “Sticking it on the intranet” and (a) imagine that you are communicating, and (b) imagine that it is relevant to enough people to put up as news.  Both of these are easy traps to fall into but because you’ve fallen into them through lazy thinking they are quite hard to extricate yourself from.

I like to draw a distinction between intranet news content and what I think of as intranet notices (this is something that is second nature to me thanks to Varsha) but it is very difficult to explain my taxonomy of thinking to others.

Another distinction that needs drawing here is between News content and event publicity.  Where I work at the moment a lot of the information that people submit to the intranet is events publicity: research seminars, training courses, staff sports clubs etc. Because the intranet has not really been actively managed before they are in the habit of submitting this infoprmatioin as news and having it posted as such. 

The end result of this is that genuine news of organisational imprtance and relevance gets lost amidst the flow of events and notices.

At the moment I am trying to work out a series of questions to help my colleagues work to a set of defined types of News & Events content:

  1. News
  2. Notices
  3. People
  4. Events

The aim is to have a consistent editorial approach.

Continue reading “What is News?”