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Comms In Tight Times:
Ensuring Digital and Social Media Earn Their Keep
Nick Jones, Director of Interactive Services, COI
CIPR Summer Social. London, 8th September 2011

2. Our conversation today
• Who the heck is he?
• Just how tight is tight times?
• How dangerous is digital to the bottom line?
• Is it really different for digital now? How does it earn its
keep?
• What are the cost drivers?
• Any handy tips?
• Let’s keep the conversation going @nickjonesCOI
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3. Working with public sector clients and
industry suppliers from a zero budget
And many more
And about 85 more
Demand side >>> Broker of capabilities and capacity >>> Supply side
Client functions
• EComms
• Comms We’ll be shuttered by
• Marketing March 31st 2012.
• Procurement
• Strategy
•From Grassroots to Governance | Background
IT
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4. How tight is tight times?
Ask a Scotsman
• FY 2009-10 COI was one of UK’s biggest advertisers
• May 2010 Election and Coalition
• Followed by a freeze across all central government
marketing expenditure
• COI re-trenched from 750 staff to about 400
• March 2011 MCO announced savings of £133 million*
on marketing and advertising spending
*Source: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/new-government-spending-controls-deliver-billions-more-savings 02/03/11
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5. How dangerous is digital to the bottom line?
Digital as a business function bears three dangerous myths
• Hypnotic inevitability of ‘automagically’ generating profit
– It’s easy, isn’t it? Just stick it online.
– Bolt-on and the rising tide of a growing market
– Digital can haemorrhage money
• Digital can save money just as much as make money
– Most dangerous when substituting
– The crash dive for cash by reducing OpEx
• The low/no cost expectation
– Simples?
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6. Simples,
isn’t it?
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7. And, they
Source: Luma Partners don’t mean
Third sector!
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8. How dangerous is digital to the bottom line?
All resulting in…
• The corporate bear hug of accountability
– Welcome in from the cold empty white space of the org chart
– Everyone wants to be with you… or be you.
– Business as usual
• So much for boundary breaking
• Collaboration huddles
• Tearing up the rule book
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9. So, is it really different for digital now?
How can it earn its keep?
• Adapt to the new paradigm,
• Rebalance the channels and expectations
• Understand the cost drivers, someone’s bound to ask
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10. For us, yes. A new paradigm emerges
From To
Command and
Collaboration
control
The passive citizen Active participation
I invent I invite
I direct We invent
I do We / you do
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11. And paradigm shifts change fiscal structures
• Much less spend
“The last government thought
the answer to everything was • Broadcast to narrowcast
to launch an advertising • Supporting and enabling
campaign…we will look at
new, more efficient ways of
• More focussed, cogent and sparing
delivering government
communications”
• More disciplined planning
(Francis Maude, July 27th 2010)
• More targeted objectives
• New model assumptions
• VFM driven
Less marketing spend but
more marketing skill
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12. New pillars needed to reach outcomes
• Partnerships beyond government
• Behaviour change and Insight
• VFM / Accountability
• Digital interaction
• Channel mix – owned and earned
Transforming capabilities
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13. All requires a rebalancing
More Less
control control
Earned ? Outcome gap ?
Outcomes and expenditure
Owned ?
Earned
? Outcome
gap
Owned ?
?
Efficiencies
Purchased
Earned
Purchased
Owned
Current Reduce paid. Finite capability of owned and
Increase owned earned.
and earned
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Accept outcome shortfall ?13

14. Critical to understand the cost drivers
• Assume tradigital is understood
• Social media is like a good night out. You’ll want to
check your bank balance in the morning
• Think carefully about:
– The ask
– The coordination
– The re-skilling
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15. Be careful what you ask for
• Asking citizens to post, comment and
rate.
• Massive scale. YF: 500k+ visits, 400k+
visitors, 15k+ ideas, 73k comments, 38k
votes.
• Lot’s of ‘hands on deck’.
• Nature of the ask dictates level of effort
needed to subsequently service it
• “A lot of crowd-sourcing now feels a bit
like begging.. only lazier.”
Tom Smith, Collaborative Software Specialist
University of York
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16. Careful coordination and curation
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17. How’s your role evolving?
• Are we communicators?
• Are we content publishers?
• Are we coders?
• Or storytellers combining all three?
• Or catalysts?
• Or co-ordinators?
• Or hand-knitters?
• Can’t hire them all.
• Consider the cost of re-skilling
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18. Greenpeace VW Darkside: anatomy of an attack
 Incisive cut-through thanks to
inspired inversion of campaign
 Integrated across paid, owned
and earned channels to reach,
amplify and engage
 Internal expert knowledge
applied to make case, strategy
and planning
 Incredible execution using
five external agencies
 Inverted engagement wisdom
about cheap clicktivism
 179k have ‘joined the
rebellion’ c79k in first day.
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19. Tips
• Plan and actually evaluate
• Tap internal talent
• Burnish the branded content
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20. Build in evaluation and optimisation from
the start
COI evaluation model
Define Plan Implement Optimise and Innovate
1 Full story 2 3 4 5 6 7
(background,
context, Digital KPIs Tools Evaluati Monitor Feedbac
strategy) and and on and k and
Activiti Metrics techniqu plan Evaluate Optimis
es es (Operation e
al)
1
2 3 4 5 6 7
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21. RAF analytics upgraded to allow real time
data, monitoring and optimisation
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22. #RAFlive activated internal advocates to tell
the story in a low cost way
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23. RAF comms planning: doing ‘more for less’
• 2009/10 comms strategy – ‘be part of the story’
• Remember that freeze?
• For 2010/11 the comms strategy remained in place
• All ‘digital activity planning’ was led by the COI team
• Series of workshops with our RAF client and our partner agencies
• Between us we planned a series of digital activities for the full
financial year, with no charges, that aligned to the existing comms
strategy
• Agencies didn’t charge as the work we planned ultimately results
in them being paid
• Similar approach for social media
• said goodbye to the great external social media consultant who
was on a retainer.
• Developed the social media strategy and implementation plan in-
house Low cost, rapid idea development workshop featured.
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24. Leveraged relationship to provide dedicated
branded space for all RAF video content
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25. But we can still hope and dream. What was
the budget on this project?
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26. Thank you. Let’s keep talking
• Twitter @nickjonescoi
• Nick.jones@coi.gsi.gov.uk
• New COI guidance: Moderating Online Discussions
http://www.coi.gov.uk/guidance.php?page=380
• More standards and guidelines: e.g. social media, digital engagement, video etc
www.coi.gov.uk/webguidelines
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