Hill+Knowlton Strategies

A sensible Daily Mail image

So one of the biggest drinks businesses around is paying for midwives to be trained to give advice about the dangers of drinking alcohol to pregnant women. The general response seems to be luke-warm – the vocabulary chosen by the Mail (always a fun litmus test) was mildly outraged, highlighting the potential irony of the story rather than blindly stoking up fire and brimstone: “Pregnant women will be LECTURED on the dangers of drinking alcohol – in a programme BANKROLLED by the world’s biggest spirits company.” (I might have put the capitals in.)

This is part of the Responsibility Deal - the Government’s initiative to get companies working with charities and public sector to help people lead healthier lives. In general, I think this is a good thing – the Government don’t have the money, charities don’t have the money… companies do and they also have a social responsibility. Diageo are providing the money but the training  will be run by the National Organisation for Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. They’re hardly going to recommend hitting the vodka bottle once the baby emerges are they?

If a company gets it right across the three key elements of issue, partner and activation, everyone stands to benefit. If that happens to include the company itself via its bottom-line, what’s wrong with that? Get it wrong and yes, it’s a deeply disturbing example of how cynical consumerism can infiltrate every part of society to the detriment of all… and that’s not good. But if a company does enter into these ‘deals’ lightly, they themselves will suffer the most.

Contrary to what you may have feared, I AM NOT DEAD! Put away your wreaths, unveil your faces and break out the bunting, for Web Curios is BACK (I just tried doing a Google Image search for Web Curios – beautifully, several of the initial results are pictures of The Man. Hello, The Man!). Admittedly it’s only back for a week, as I am on HOLIDAY next Friday, but frankly you should be grateful for whatever you’re given at this stage.

In my absence, webmongs, I have seen things of which you can only dream. I have seen Slough and a Tesco’s so large that approaching it is like that opening bit in the first Star Wars film with the massive spaceship that goes on and on and on and (Slough FACT: there’s a pun in Slough town centre called the Wernham Hogg, named after the fictional company in The Office (which was of course set in Slough); I can’t work out whether this is a brilliant piece of self-satirisation or actually one of the saddest things ever, though I know which way I intuitively lean). I have been to Barcelona on a stag party, accompanied (amongst others) by a charming man known as ‘Big Sam’ who was recently cleared of common assault after breaking a man’s jaw on the fotball pitch (needless to say Big Sam and I didn’t really have much in common), where I danced to techno like a teenager and was thrown out of a nightclub (I came back in again 5 minutes later though).  Oh, and I’ve done work as well, some of it actually not that bad.

Obviously, though, this is all utterly immaterial in the face of the world’s continued descent into what appears to be total chaos. Better people than me have written at length about everything that’s been going on over the past month (and worse people – check out this spectacular piece of ad placement from last week’s Metro), but can I suggest that you perhaps donate some money to the relief effort in Japan? Or if you prefer music, maybe buy tickets for this? Oh, and if you’re interested in the geopolitical upheaval sweeping the Middle East and its potential implications for China you could do worse than read this piece by Francis Fukuyama in the Wall Street Journal this week (don’t get smug, though, Franky – you were still totally wrong about the END OF HISTORY thing). Or, if you prefer your commentary a little more raw, there are few people more on the money about conflict than The War Nerd.

Oh, and one last thing before I wang on about the internet and cats and stuff. I was reminded this week about the way in which Facebook is used as a tribute site when people die, particularly in the case of the young. This is, of course, perfectly fine. As someone who relatively recently had to administer the page of someone young who died, though, can I please point out that WHAT YOU WRITE MATTERS. I don’t mean to come across as stuffy (HEAVEN FORFEND) but I’m not entirely convinced that the term ‘RIP’ benefits from an exclamation mark (hey, kids, punctuation changes emphasis. You idiots) or indeed that a sad smiley is an adequate response to death. Just saying, like.

Ahem. Oh, and one last thing – Web Curios this week contains no Rebecca Black whatsoever. You can thank me in the comments.

One of a series of posters designed to commemorate the Fukushima earthquake. Click for more.

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Finding the emotional connection… that link between the issue and the individual that inspires change and commitment to change… is key in communications. It’s always been the challenge when we talk about the environment. It seems so much easier to get that personal connection when you’re talking about children or disease.

Climate change started out with the polar bears. Over time, the focus has shifted as communicators decided that the issue was too big for us to get motivated by and we needed to focus on practical bite-sized chunks – bring in energy efficiency. Recently the trend has been to focus on the practical motivation – the ’saving money’ message associated with saving energy. No problem with that (and for some it’s the most effective motivator) and I absolutely agree that we need to save energy but it’s not exactly hearts and minds is it? 

Polar bear

Oxfam’s campaign clearly connects climate change with its human cost, calling it ‘first and foremost a human story.’ But why isn’t the cost to nature itself enough for us to do something about it? 

I’m about to wildly paraphrase Alberto Villoldo, an inspirational man (I hope my paraphrasing is not too wild and stays true to the original). In Western culture, we see Nature and the Earth as being here to serve us. Add the forced exodus from the Garden of Eden and we have a pretty messed up relationship with Nature and the Earth. In contrast, other cultures see our role as humans to be stewards and help take care of the Earth, rather than use and abuse it for our own purposes. All of which makes me wonder… is that why we struggle in finding the emotional connection that we need to when making the environment a hearts and minds issue? Does the way that we think about Nature need to change before we can really change our behaviour?

I don’t want to compound centuries of misquoting Marie Antoinette but when our charity committe said ‘let them eat cake’ yesterday it was a right royal bun fight.

The cake bake was in support of Kids Company, the charity we are working with this year.  Our budding bakers made – and sold – 365 cakes in all.  And delicious they were indeed. Sweeter still, this raised £199.00.

So that’s the cakes, what about the ‘wail’?  Well today sees the first rehearsal of Pitch Perfect, H&K’s answer to Glee.  We’ve never had a choir before, so here’s hoping it really takes off.

I’ve been limbering up my baritone and am looking forward to a good old singalong.  Watch out for further developments.

Here is a five minute case study from one of the top charities in the UK. Dogs Trust makes great use of all the different tools and platforms — from Twitter to Flickr and more — to connect their brand (and their dogs) with their audience. Alex, their Digital Marketing Officer, bravely did her first ever Pecha Kucha / Ignite presentation at Demystifying Digital to rousing applause. Clearly she also had the cutest visuals of the day.

Each year Hill & Knowlton staff donate their time to a worthy cause – not to write press releases and make media calls but to get our hands dirty. For instance last year we supported London Play and helped clean, paint and repair playgrounds around the Capital for a day.

This year we are donated 200-odd staff to children’s charity Kids Co.

In London there are over 650,000 children living in poverty (Evening Standard, 2010). For a city like London this is an absolute disgrace and charities like Kids Co. are looking to support those children by engaging them in activities across London such as sports days, art and cookery workshops, and skills and education classes.

We couldn’t think of a more worthy cause so on the 30th April H&K London will down tools and check in at the many Kids Co. events taking place and offer our help and support.

Obviously PR-power can only go so far and therefore to further support the activities on the day we needed to raise money to host the events.

So the challenge was set and £9,000 was the target.

The H&K Charity team sat down to come up with a way of raising the money. First port of call, Tony Stimpson (H&K London’s CFO) – “we’ll match anything you can raise” he says. Tony writes out one of those jumbo cheques you only see on TV (he actually uses them) and straight away our target is cut in half.

After much head scratching the words, “run”, “marathon”, “Soho” are uttered and before anyone can say “the only running I do is to Eat Cafe at lunchtime”, the event is set – we will run a marathon around Soho Square. Not 26.2 miles is no small order and with the time we had to pull it off the sensible decision was made to run the marathon in relay – we’d all take turns running the square and tag the next person in who would continue the run. The combined distance would need to beat the marathon standard which equated to about 200 laps.

At some point during this conversation someone managed to sneak wigs into the minutes so true to our word the Charity Team braved the balmy weather of Soho on Thursday 18th March in our finest leggings, shorts, t-shirts and wigs to undertake the Soho Square Marathon.

It was tough. The first few laps were a breeze but after a good hour the heavy concrete underfoot and ginger afros started taking their toll. Backs were aching, feet were blistering and sweat was dripping but we persevered – “do it for the kids” was the cry as we jogged on well into the second hour.

As we ran, H&Kers would come down to the square to shout their support. Even CEO Richard Millar took time out from his busy schedule to don a ginger wig join in the fun.

In between the running he held money tins out for any passers-by to donate to the cause and if anyone doubts the generosity of Londoners then I would invite you down to Soho Square. People were giving us £5 notes, all the pound coins they had on them, and more. It really was great to see so many people get behind the cause.

As we past the 2nd hour, the finishing line was in sight. Eight or so runners all gathered for the final lap – it was a slow lap but the motivation from staff and strangers was enough to get us round. 200 laps. Done!

The team were elated but the question remained, how much money had we raised with the run.

Well will staff and client donations, plus the on-the-ground fundraising we managed to raise a massive £8,385.93, shattering our target of £4,500 and making sure the 2010 Charity Day will be one to remember for the hundreds of children we will be helping on the 30th April.

A big thank you has to go out to everyone who supported the run with their donations and time. If you would still like to show you support and make a small donation you still can by visiting http://www.justgiving.com/hillandknowltonuk.

For more information about Kids Co. please visit their website at http://www.kidsco.org.uk.

A re-brand is a bit like Marmite - you either love it or hate it… but without the love it part. In difficult financial times, it’s even harder to get it right – and harder still for a charity. There needs to be a lot of communication both internally and externally to make sure you take people with you on the ‘journey’ (sorry about that) – and, just as any other communication strategy, it needs to be integrated and consistent across all channels, whether traditional or digital. So it’s been interesting to see how the re-branding of the Parkinson’s Disease Society into Parkinson’s UK has gone down.

Not too well if the responses on the charity’s website forum are anything to go by. And that seems to have caused a whole new set of problems. The charity suggested an open meeting online so they could share their strategy on the re-brand. Nice idea … although it turns out though you have to pre-register and there are rumours on the forum that it will be pre-moderated. 

The shiny world of social media is causing a few problems for charities but really it’s just another channel. Apply the same level of understanding and preparation and it won’t catch you out. Embrace it if it’s right for your audience – otherwise,  save it for another day. 

And Marmite – love it.

Golden boys!

Following on from our launch of the Golden Pants campaign for Prostate UK, a big thank you to Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Really Useful Theatre Company for letting the lovely ushers at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane don their golden pants in support. Enjoy!

Some champagne, sir?

 

Afternoon, world (note the hubris – ‘afternoon, handful of bored webmongs’ would almost certainly be more accurate). Once again, Web Curios (no movement on the title situation as yet) comes to you on a Thursday, due to my once more taking solace in the comfort of the 4-day week. I used to have a permanent 4-day week in my old job. It was amazing (the 4-day week, not the job; the job was a bit pony), and I miss it very much. I think that going back to a 4-day week would make me much happier and more productive.

ARE YOU READING THIS, BOSSMAN RICHARD MILLER? Eh? Oh. *sulks*

Ahem. Anyway, without further ado, to business!

A Smart Perspective On BBC Cuts – The big story of the week, at least amongst generic media types in the UK (yes, yes, like me), has been over the BBC Strategy Review, published on Tuesday, which recommended a whole raft of cuts to the Corporation’s output to cut costs – most notably the axing of BBC 6Music and the BBC Asian Network, as well as a scaling back of non-programme related content on the BBC website as a whole. Lots has been written on this already, but the above blog post by Adrian Hon is a thought-provoking summary of why the ’savings’ in terms of BBC Online are a nonsense.

Foursquare Partners with Vodafone UK – not massive news, but interesting as an example of how savvy Foursquare are being in linking up with media partners. This is exactly the sort of deal that (they hope) will take them from being the current darling of the early-adopter set to something that normal people know, like and use on a regular basis.

‘Dr’ Neil ‘Foxy’ Fox IN A PAIR OF GOLDEN PANTS - promoting Prostate UK’s Pants in the Park fundraising run:

A minor celebrity wearing humiliating underwear, yesterday.

The US Air Force’s ‘Rules of Engagement’ for Blogging – You know that people are taking digital seriously when the US Air Force starts publishing guidelines for its employees as to when they should / shouldn’t respond to blogs or forum comments on the organisation. What’s even more surprising is how measured and sensible the recommendations are – all organisations should have something similar if they are engaging with audiences online. FACT.

Probably the Coolest iPhone App To Date – watch for yourself. Turn your iPhone into an audio looping system. Almost inevitably this will end up with you turning into an annoying git who believes themselves to be the saviour of UK beatmaking – but that’s not the technology’s fault, it’s YOU. Or you could turn out to be the next Beardyman, which would be good.

The Best Website Takeover Animation Yet – there have been lots of these over the past year (most notably this one for Nintendo), but the latest (for a US brand of chips and salsa) is particularly good. Wonderful way to add an extra layer of interest to your online videos.

World Bank Launches Alternate Reality Game – I’ve been saying for years that Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) – basically a fancy way of saying big, interactive stories – are going to be huge. I’ve continually been proved wrong, with a few notable exceptions. Nontheless, Evoke – just launched, commissioned by the World Bank Institute and built by legendary game designer Jane McGonigal, the game is designed to “help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems”. This is part of a trend that I think we will see more of in the coming years – people, including Governments, increasingly trying to use fun as an agent of educational and behavioural change. Although hopefully not like this

A few videos to finish…

1) Tokyo Glow – just a gorgous film / animation of Tokyo by night

2) Song of the Week – in honour of the gig I am not going to tomorrow, here’s Madvillain (MF Doom & Madlib) with Strange Ways

3) This has been all over the place this week – a gorgeous Olivo Barbieri-inspired video of a day in New York which looks like it’s been recreated in miniature. Just watch it:

4) Finally a plug for the new spoken word show by the amazingly talented Polar Bear – he’s doing a whole film in spoken word. Hard to explain, but check out the below and, if you like it, take a punt on the tickets. You won’t be disappointed.