Joe Barrell, The Eden Stanley Group Mission Critical: Crafting your communications strategy workshop www.charitycomms.org.uk/events

1. • Introduction: I’m Strategy Director and partner of Eden Stanley, an independent full-
service communications agency for the non-profit sector. Background in
communications management in UK charities. I have been Communication Director at
Save the Children, and had similar roles at ActionAid and Shelter. I’ve written
communication strategies for these organisations, and for some clients too.
• First – let’s agree a definition for ‘communications strategy’…
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2. There is often pressure in organisations to sound ‘smart’ and so people often wrap
things up in opaque language and call it ‘strategy’ – or worse, allow the idea of ‘strategy’
to distract them from tangible, actionable work. Let’s reject that definition.
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3. Your strategy should be tightly linked to your ‘business goals’, unique to you, and
enabling and motivating to your organisation.
So let’s use these three definitions.
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4. • Your organisational culture will need to shift if you want your strategy to be adopted.
• Involving your colleagues will help make that shift, and bring ideas and insights that
you hadn’t thought of.
• A good idea to use external help too, to demonstrate objectivity, and because there
can be a lot of specialist work involved.
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5. • Useful to start any strategy development process with a skeleton document. That is
headlines and scope notes.
• This can be the first major document you circulate in your organisation – it’s a good
way to get feedback, and also sets out very clearly the scope of your planned work.
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6. • If you Google ‘communications strategy’ you will find lots of examples. They’re all
slightly different, and for good reason. You will need to think through what is right for
your organisation.
• Typically, they will have at least the elements shown here.
• There is not time to go through all of these today, so we’ll focus on a few key areas.
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7. This was our first definition
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8. • This seems to be how communications is viewed in many organisations. Do you
recognise it? The idea that communications is a sort of narrative wrapper that we put
around an organisation. That’s why some people from outside the communications
function think that your role is to tell the world about the work they’re doing.
Communications can do so much more than that…
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9. • Communications can be core to delivering your aims
• This transition is the fundamental shift you need to try to make in your organisation.
• That is as much as a shift in mind-set as a change in strategy.
• That is why it’s so important to involve people in developing your strategy.
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10. • Most non-profit’s activities can be categorised into three broad areas.
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11. • When did you last take a proper look across these functions and ask yourself how
communications can help deliver their aims?
• That should be the starting point of strategy development
• Populating this chart is a process you could do through a planning workshop with
stakeholders across your organisation
• The examples here are very generic – you will think of more specific ideas that work
for you.
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12. • Once you’ve looked at all the possibilities – consider mapping them against cost and
impact.
• This will help you decide where to prioritise
• If you include this in your workshop, and involve stakeholders, they should be able to
help you make these assessments, and in doing so, think outside of their own
function.
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13. • You will need to decide together where to put the emphasis of your work
• In this example we’ve deliberately not chosen the strategies with the highest impact,
to demonstrate that this will be decided through negotiation, and the need for a
balance of activities.
• Strategy is about focus, but not necessarily to the exclusion of everything else.
• Perhaps these three priorities will take up 70% of your capacity.
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14. • Now our three priorities are displayed in a log-frame
• Note these are not communication objectives, they are organisation-level
objectives. (This is highly simplified – as there may be multiple objectives against
each function).
• If your objectives ARE organisational objectives, it should be much more
straightforward to make an investment case.
• Can you work together with other departments on your investment case? If you’re
achieving their objectives, there must be a financial value to what you do.
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15. • The greater the interdependence you can create across your organisation the better
you will link your work more tightly to core strategy, and create greater efficiencies.
• For example:
• Can you build brand by delivering an information service to beneficiaries?
• Can you acquire new supporters on a campaign ask, and convert to donors?
• Can you empower your service users by engaging them in lobbying?
• Certainly, my favourite projects have often delivered multiple objectives – and I’m not
a member of the ‘cult of the single objective’. Communications has the power to
unite!
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16. The second of our definitions
Now is the moment to do some research…
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17. • It’s important to look in these areas, because they are the hardest to change.
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18. • Not enough time to look at all of these methodologies. A few observations
• Link focus groups with opinion polling – to understand issue/brand awareness
and preference, and allow audiences to define their own frames.
• Then thinking about mass market, identify ‘bulls-eye audiences’ (through
demographic and attitudinal modelling) that you can realistically reach with
enough frequency to make an impact. Do you really know who they are and
how to reach them? Can you reach each of them at least ten times a year?
• Use low-cost online tools to map influencers and web traffic – it’s becoming
much cheaper now
• Ad spend analysis of your competitors is a very good way to build an
investment case, and project impact
• Do a SWOT analysis of your team – and involve them. It will help them
develop, and help them understand the rationale should you need to
restructure
• Look for hidden gems in your existing material. Is there anything you’re doing
small that you could be doing big?
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19. A tough balance.
I am a big believer in research-based strategy development, because I think it’s the best
way to bring new perspectives to bear. If you don’t research, you will just repeat
yourself. Research challenges us to be externally oriented and question some of our own
assumptions.
But
We’re also in the business of making change, so sometimes we have to swim against the
tide. Use research for insights into what will work, and to understand the barriers to
success. Don’t simply let it tell you what to do.
Also – the data isn’t enough. You need to work with it to drive consensus on what it is
telling you. Otherwise it will be used against you - another form of enslavement!
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20. The third of our definitions
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21. If you want your strategy to drill down further than the previous log-frame, you could
consider this.
This isn’t yet a communication plan. It is a framework to allow you and others to go
away and write project proposals. I’ve found these very useful, both at strategy level and
project level. It fits with our definition, because it is a framework that helps ensure
coherent aims.
But does it promote great work? Hmm…
It’s hard to think of a log-frame as a means of inspiring great work, and frameworks like
this are likely to produce fairly predictable results. These are useful, but you need
something else.
Your strategy is about change. So you need to create space for innovation.
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22. (By the way, it’s easy to fill up strategy papers and everybody’s heads with big ideas. You
need to be out in the world doing stuff – and most people understand communications
in tactical terms. Successful communicators usually got there because they’re creative or
good at selling, or both. So let them do that. Don’t let your strategy tie you in knots. Say
yes to project ideas. Push ahead. Embrace tactics!)
Anyhow – let’s look at innovation…
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23. With the time we have left, let’s discuss innovation – because it really is the missing
piece in so many strategies.
My input? This is something that I’ve grappled with in various contexts– and some of the
teams I’ve worked with have managed to engender a very creative and innovative
environment. It’s a very exciting place to be! Areas to look at are:
- Investment mechanisms that promote innovation while managing risk
- Training and capacity building to encourage new thinking
- Work on team culture to give permission to take risks
- Balanced recruitment that brings in some people from outside the sector
- Improving use of research and insight.
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