Charity Communications: I'll Tell You What I Want

The panel of journalists and producers spoke candidly about what kind of stories they’re interested in and revealed exactly what they need for a news or feature story.

On the panel were:

• Andy Smith, editor, BBC Radio 4 You and Yours
• Sara Ward, deputy editor, Take a Break magazine
• Vikki Cook, executive producer, Sky News
• Emma Tucker, editor, Times2

What makes a good pitch?

Andy Smith:

• Don't ring between 12 and 1 when the programme is on air!
• Ensure the pitch has a human interest
• Helps if public policy is involved in some way
• The story must stand up journalistically, e.g. make an interesting news piece
• Know you story - hates it when he asks questions and the PR can't answer them
• Avoid spin, e.g. fake survey
• Phone the appropriate journalist

Sara Ward:

• Look at our magazine and what we write about
• There are no celebrities on the magazine so don't offer us celebrities!
• Call in the afternoon - as a newsroom they're busy in the morning
• Thursday at 3:30pm is the best time to call as they have just put the previous issue to press
• Find out when a publication goes to print and contact them straight after that
• Offer an interesting 'life story' rather than a boring case study

Emma Tucker:

• Doesn't read press releases (!)
• Know the section you're pitching to
• Target the appropriate section editor
• "I've got a great idea for this column on this day"
• Try approaching freelancers, as they will often have a relationship with editors and therefore have more of a way in

Vikki Cook:

• For TV, it is critical that you have good case studies
• Have a great story - if you can't sell it to me then I can't sell it to our viewers
• A good spokesperson must really know their stuff and think of 2/3 key quotes that can be used as soundbites
• Those key quotes will be used across all platforms - Web, TV, Radio, Print
• Ask for the charity's details to be included in the piece - if you don't ask, you don't get!
• But not for radio, as listeners don't have time to write down a website

Charity Communications: Soundbite Session - Kids Company

Camila Batmanghelidjh, Founder and Chief Executive of Kids Company, is an award-winning campaigner who was here to tell us all about how she uses media coverage to lobby government and represent children's issue to an audience who would not otherwise hear about them.

Kids Company has 220 paid workers, 3000 volunteers and around 100 clinical consultants.

It is very important to speak to journalists as kids have no voice to call their service providers to account. But it is important not to have a media agenda focussed on promoting the charity, but rather make all media coverage about the kids the charity is helping.

The Government needed to understand that young people can be reached. Without media coverage, the charity wouldn't have got their Government grant. Not that the Government had ill will, but they didn't think about the issues that the charity was addressing and they needed to think about those issues. The Government changed its financial structure, resulting in 90 charities applying for the new grants, with 5 receiving funding in the end.

The charity finds opportunities to bring the experiences of the kids to the public. They are 'bridging experiences'. The public won't go to a crack den, so the charity has to get the kids to bring a version of a crack den to the public through exhibitions, events, etc.

Their first motto is 'The kids come first'. As such, they won;t put any kids forward to speak to the media as a case study if they are vulnerable.

"Love and respect is a better surveillance camera than a surveillance camera itself."

Why do the media concentrate on Batmanghelidjh rather than the charity?

Firstly, she is fat and colourful (her words!). Secondly, she is prepared to be attached to an sensitive issue and is prepared to stand by what she says.

How do kids find the charity?

97% is through self-referral. These 'menaces to society' are talking to each other about the chairty and helping each other take advantage of the services it offers.

"If you can get the service right, the customer always comes."

Charity Communications: Changing Attitudes

The first session of the day at Charity Communications 08 was called 'Changing Attitudes' and was based around the following questions:

• Can a high profile media campaign change the way we think and live?
• What are the next big issues facing charities?
• From AIDS campaigns of the 1990s to the recent smoking and drink driving campaigns - Is the media the right place to be educating the nation?

The panel consisted of the following:

• Jean Collingwood, chief executive, The Drinkaware Trust
• Kate Stringer, communications officer, Moving People
• Clare Hutchinson, head of planning, WCRS

The session started by showing the British Heart Foundation's 'Pick Up The Beat' advert:

Does this advert work? Who does it work for?

Jean Collingwood spoke about truthaboutbooze.com, which works with other charities who share alcohol related issues. She argued that charities need authentic engagement with their audiences - such as Myspace, Bebo, Facebook, etc - two-way mechanisms that will create a conversation,

What they found from their research was that young people were more savvy about alcohol then they gave them credit for. The messages that charities were giving them were very patronizing.

Having got this information about attitudes, is there a way of changing behaviour?

Kate Stringer spoke about the Moving People campaign, which aimed to reduce negative attitudes towards people with learning disabilities by 5%. The stigma towards mental illness comes from ignorance. People with learning disabilities feel that their illness is the 'last taboo.' The campaign needed to reach 75% of the population to change attitudes and the media was a key to achieving this.

Before the campaign even started, the organisation spent 2 years researching attitudes towards people with learning disabilities. Once the campaign started, the ad campaign was backed up by a local media campaign around the UK.

Claire Hutchinson spoke about the 'Don't Make Children Breathe Your Smoke' campaign:

When smoking was banned from pubs and clubs, its prevalence dropped significantly. But many smokers, particularly from low income families, were unaware of the damage second hand smoke caused to others. After the campaign, there was a shift in people making their homes smoke free.

The campaign was part of a collective effort to help people stop smoking. In 2000, 8% of people said anti-smoking adverts were the trigger to quit smoking. In 2004, this percentage rose to 30%.

This was achieved through the right adverts used in the right ways in the right locations. But it was agreed that it takes a long time to change public attitudes towards a subject. For example, it too 25 years to change attitudes towards drink driving.

But the media is often the first attitude that needs changing as they are key to the public changing their attitudes.

PR is essential to changing attitudes, as its strongest point is its 'realness' - truth penetrates much better through PR than advertising.

PR Event: Charity Communications 08

Today I attended the Charity Communications 08 conference, which took place at Friends House in Euston, London. I was there representing Camp Quality UK, who I am on the board of as Secretary and as a trustee.

The charity has been improving its communications practices in recent months, with a rebranding and social media programme the most notable improvements.

I hoped that the conference would give us plenty of advice and expertise on how our charity can communicate with its stakeholders, the media, and the general public.

I took notes on most of the sessions and will be writing a post on each one, but for the moment the full programme is below:

Changing Attitudes
Can a high profile media campaign change the way we think and live? What are the next big issues facing charities? From AIDS campaigns of the 1990s to the recent smoking and drink driving campaigns. Is the media the right place to be educating the nation?
• Jean Collingwood, chief executive, The Drinkaware Trust
• Kate Stringer, communications officer, Moving People
• Clare Hutchinson, head of planning, WCRS

View the write up to this session here.

The Soundbite Session
Camila Batmanghelidjh, chief executive, Kids Company
The award-winning campaigner and founder of Kids Company tells all about how she uses media coverage to lobby government and represent children's issue to an audience who would not otherwise hear about them.

View the write up to this session here.

I’ll tell you what I want
Our panel of journalists and producers speak candidly about what kind of stories they’re interested in. The panel will reveal exactly what they need for a news or feature story, and delegates will have the opportunity to ‘pitch’ their story.

• Andy Smith, editor, BBC Radio 4 You and Yours
• Sara Ward, deputy editor, Take a Break magazine
• Vikki Cook, executive producer, Sky News
• Emma Tucker, editor, Times2

View the write up to this session here.

Keynote Q&A
• Kelvin MacKenzie, former Sun editor and tabloid expert.

Brave New World
An interactive and entertaining session about the opportunities new media offers to charities, for communications and fundraising. A particularly innovative format; inspiring and a little outrageous.
• Russell Davies, internet marketing guru and columnist, Campaign magazine.

View the write up to this session here.

What’s the worst that could happen?
How to survive a PR disaster or media crisis. Get advice from communications experts who’ve seen it all and from charities who have survived. This session will be packed with info for charities about how to plan for the worst.
• Brendan Paddy, media manager, Age Concern England
• David Cowdrey, head of press and media relations, WWF
• Sue Stapely, crisis communications consultant

The Soundbite Session: Charities Take Control
Charities have voted to hear from the communications campaign they’ve most admired in the last year. The session will be presented by Sarah Fitzgerald, head of communications at Motor Neurone Disease Association, the winning organisation.

The Big Interview
Nick Davies, award winning journalist and author of controversial new book Flat Earth News: Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media, will talk about how charities can find a way through media misrepresentation to get their stories told fairly.
Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and author, will be asking the questions and sharing her own experiences.

Link Love - 4 May 2008

Since I've been in Manchester for the last few days - attending Futuresonic 2008, taking in the sights, and catching up with friends - I haven't had a chance to catch up with the various bits and bobs that have happened on t'internet in the past few days.

I managed to sit myself in front of a computer for an hour or two this morning and get through my RSS feed reader. There's lots of interesting / exciting / important stuff happening right now (even in the space of a few days), so I thought I'd put up all the various things that caught my eye.

Enjoy!

• The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited - Stuntdubl - SEO Consultant

Is it linkbaiting? Or is it just a way of ensuring the content you provide is useful?
(Via Brendan Cooper)

• YouTube - FaceBook In Reality - from www.idiotsofants.com

Fantastic parody of Facebook if it were *real* (you know what I mean…)
(Via Dominic Campbell)

• Everyone needs Twitter! (Well, those that are interested in using it properly)

Applying Twitter to the masses.

• Six Sentences

What can you say in six sentences?
(Via B.L. Ochman)

• Three Ways to Mitigate the Attention Crash, Yet Still Feel Informed

Essential reading for those feeling overwhelmed by information overload.

• Web 2.0 from the communicator's viewpoint

Great, quick introduction or refresher article on Web 1.0/2.0/3.0

• Where we find time.

The internet's replacing TV and things are getting done - hooray!

• BBC Exposes Facebook Flaw

There's a privacy storm brewing on the horizon...

Probably The Best Powerpoint Presentation In The World

This one's doing the rounds at the moment, but I thought it was worth putting up here in case you missed it:

Futuresonic 2008: Aleks Krotoski

Aleks Krotoski (@Aleksk), an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity, is speaking about gaming and play on the internet.

She argues that the Brain Training game was the sole reason for the extraordinary sales of the Nintendo DS, sold on the promise that it will make you smarter ("Reduce your brain age!"). But it is ultimately a selfish game, you play it on your own.

World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies, on the other hand, are communities where collaboration is essential. If you destroy a relationship with another player in the game, you will 'lose' or make the game harder for yourself.

Aleks is now showing us her Facebook wheel, which shows the connections between Aleks and her friends, and Aleks' friends with each other. From this, she is unable to tell the varying levels of relationships with her 'friends'. Only by breaking it down to a person by person level can you truly see the relationship between two 'friends'.

Second Life creates more meaningful relationships. The 3D aspect of the environment enables a more subtle interplay of relationships which is writ large because other users can see this interaction happen in front of them.

What is essential in all of these connected spaces is that how we play in the future will influence how we learn and interact with those around us.

Virtual worlds and social networks are more real in so many ways than sitting on a train with a load of commuters. In these spaces, we have the opportunity to learn, adapt and collaborate - and all of that is through play.