Global Insights Magazine Issue 5 - Edited by Recommended Finland 2012
Calling all citizens
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Stay eagle-eyed on the zebra crossing!
Fresh perspectives on public sector communication
e3 insights 2 4 6 7 Six challenges for public sector
They don’t need no education?
Challenging preconceptions
Starting points for a new era in communication
Lessons learned in inspiring kids to embrace democracy
An edgy awareness campaign in support of worker diversity
Zebra crossings guarded by Angry Birds
You have an important message that the whole nation needs to hear. Borrowed Interest – the concept of using somene else’s fame – enables you to harness star power to maximise awareness. Liikenneturva, the central organisation for traffic safety in Finland, aims to improve people’s traffic behaviour through communication, education and training. For decades, it has campaigned on issues such as wearing safety belts, reflectors and cycling helmets as well as the dangers of drinking and driving. Traditionally August, when legions of new first-graders embark on their journeys to school, is the time to turn the spotlight to zebra crossing safety. Recommended Finland’s job was to help Liikenneturva first grab people’s attention, then guide their traffic behaviour. Attention! When you really want to make heads turn, Borrowed Interest can offer a very effective solution. Luckily, the Finnish game developer Rovio Entertainment was happy to lend Angry Birds, its globe-conquering characters, to drum up publicity for a good cause. So why use these characters to advertise zebra crossing safety? Because they can get an important message across to as many people as possible.
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What’s more, the appeal of Angry Birds to both kids and adults made them ideal spokescharacters. After all, the task was not only to urge pedestrians to stay alert when crossing the road but also remind motorists to respect the zebra crossing. Implementation! The campaign kicked off with roadside displays, back window stickers on buses and street wash advertising (see the sidebar). Red Bird and a flock of Blue Birds soon joined the action, appearing on ads, posters, desktop wallpapers and class schedule templates. Further coverage was secured with drivetime radio spots and a tour of shopping centres, where children could have their photo taken with the Mighty Eagle and a Bad Piggy – but only after having practiced using the zebra crossing with the characters. Angry Birds have undoubtedly helped lift the profile of traffic safety. If you’re given a chance to tap into star power to make yourself heard, don’t be shy. •
Facebook banner, class schedule template and poster for primary schools.
Streets are awash with messages The zebra crossing campaign got down to street level with street wash advertising – stencilled messages pressure-washed onto streets and sidewalks. A wash will stay visible for a few weeks before wearing off by itself. Twelve Finnish cities received 3–7 washes each along busy streets, on parking lots and near primary schools.
If you’re given a chance to tap into star power to make yourself heard, don’t be shy.
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Your mission, should you choose to accept it:
communication challenges for the public sector
Fundamental changes are afoot in public sector communication. Governmental, municipal and other organisations need to respond to societal shifts by learning to navigate multiple channels, to not only communicate but also engage – to make themselves heard in an increasingly noisy world. How to inspire people to tackle the vital issues of our time? How to communicate openly and interactively without losing control of the message? We present a few starting points – now put on your thinking caps.
1. Clearly define goals to ensure effective communication OUT: sending a press release out into the world to fend for itself. IN: communication plans with carefully thought-out target audiences, key messages, delivery channels and phases of actions. Detailed planning has self-evident benefits such as ensuring the consistency and continuity of communication.
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However, what might be even more important is that it encourages public sector clients to rethink their communication philosophy. Instead of commissioning a brochure out of old habit, they are led to ponder the truly essential questions: What do we actually want to achieve with communication? What is the most effective way to do that? How do we measure success?
OUT: sending a press release out into the world to fend for itself. 2. Explore new ways to serve and engage citizens Governmental and municipal budget cuts are not just a feature of uncertain economic times. As the dependency ratio – the amount of people of nonworking age compared to the number of those of working age – gets higher, the public sector must find permanent solutions to doing more with less. In many countries e-services have already made a lot of headway, saving countless (wo)man-hours of work and offering a time- and place-independent way to both get and submit information. The main challenges for the next generation of e-services will be to offer a better user experience and interconnectivity between public sector databases. Concurrently there is a small revolution happening: using digital channels to enable interaction between the public and its servants and to make governance more transparent and accountable. The active and the curious among us will take to the new services like fish to water, but for e-democracy to live up to its name, the public sector needs to find a way to sell online civic participation to the masses. 3. Use internal communication to turn strategy to action The public sector produces reams of strategies and programs in view of not just correcting societal problems but also improving its own operations. Not unlike in the private sector, it often proves difficult to translate the thinking in the initiatives to daily realities, especially when profound changes to the accustomed way of doing things are required. How to keep a strategy from becoming just another stack of paper to be quietly filed away? Public sector organisations need to be able to motivate each
and every employee to commit themselves to the objectives. Their internal communication must reach beyond delivery of documents and inspire people to become agents of change.
Spreading the good word via onand offline social networks demands special consideration. After all, happy civil servants are the best advertisement for their employers.
4. Talk across the fence to synchronise efforts Ministries and other public organisations have a tendency to operate in isolation from each other even though the objectives of their programs often overlap. Open communication across boundaries would enable them to swap best practices, synchronise efforts and eliminate duplication. In external communication, the organisations working towards similar goals would all benefit from having a shared core message, which they could complement to suit their particular purposes. Co-ordinated and harmonised communication makes it easier for citizens to perceive the big picture – the vision the governing bodies have for their country.
6. Encourage innovation to improve public services and economy Finding ways to deliver public services – especially social and healthcare services – more efficiently has become a priority in many societies. In order to succeed, the public sector needs to persuade the private and third sectors to join in the task. The communication challenge is to change attitudes by putting a positive spin on the situation instead of gloomand doom-mongering – to make entrepreneurs see social and healthcare services as potentially profitable business to which they should commit resources. Innovative services, products and methods create a win-win situation: people get proper care despite tightening purse strings and the economy gets a boost. •
5. Enhance employer image to secure a workforce for the future As populations are ageing all over the world, the competition for qualified personnel gets increasingly intense. Public employers are waking up to the fact that, just like businesses, they need to boost their efforts to make themselves look attractive as employers. Public sector organisations often fail to see employer branding as a contin- uous, long-term process, instead splashing out on ad hoc recruitment campaigns. Much work is also to be done with issues such as identifying distinctive and credible selling points for potential employees, tailoring messages for different target groups and determining the recruitment channels with the best return on investment.
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Democracy for kids
They don’t need no education? What to do when you need to teach rather than sell? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the principles of communication remain much the same. If you want to talk about political decision-making, people aged 15 to 17 are probably not the most immediately receptive audience. Some of them might be cynical beyond their years, others fail to see what difference it makes to their existence. Also, none of them are allowed to vote yet. Recommended Finland was chosen by the Parliament of Finland to tackle the challenge. The brief was to create a website that would function as an inspiring tool for the teaching of Finnish parliamentary democracy in schools. Here are some of the things we learned.
clarify Make it understandable and digestible There is no getting around the fact that law-making, the primary task of the Parliament, is a complicated process. However, there are ways to make it easier to absorb without cutting corners or trivialising the subject matter. The usual tricks of the trade – clear and concise language, informative graphics, breaking down the content into digestible chunks – provide a good start, but we also wanted to anchor the process to reality. That is why the steps of the legislative procedure and the birth of an actual law are shown side by side in the “How a law is made” section. You can also watch live streams from the plenary sessions and video clips on parliamentary work by tuning into “EeTuubi” (“ParliamentTube”).
demystify Show a connection to life as we know it Dry legalese can cloud the fact that laws directly affect our lives as well as reflect the values of our times. We wanted to build a connection between parliamentary democracy and our everyday experiences. For example, the “See how laws evolve” application uses a timeline to show how legislation on issues such as animal rights or shopping hours has shifted along the years in response to changes in the society and the political culture. Applying a human face to an abstract concept helps get a grip on it. The “Everyday work in the Parliament” section introduces the people working in the Parliament buildings – not only Members of Parliament but also the Speakers, the assistants, the civil servants and the journalists – and describes what they actually do in their working lives.
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activate Enable learning by doing Some people find it easy to assimilate new information by reading or listening. Others learn better by doing, which is why the website also offers interactive features. The most popular of these has turned out to be “Make your own election poster”, a simple application that encourages you to think about the societal issues that are important to you and how to best communicate your views to other people. Thousands of posters have been created by budding politicos (and, inevitably, a few jokers). For those who get the bug, links to online channels of activism are provided.
BBC puts Flemish Government on the right track
listen Get feedback from the target group The process of creating the website once again confirmed our view that you can’t communicate effectively from an ivory tower. Feedback from people belonging to the target group was elemental in helping us fine-tune the verbal and visual style of the website. For example, the name initially proposed for the website – which the whole project committee was very enthusiastic about – got a scathing reception from a test group, who thought it was the kind of name adults imagined teenagers would find “cool”. The lesson: don’t underestimate or patronise, but listen and learn. •
CHALLENGING PRECONCEPTIONS TO SUPPORT DIVERSITY Nathalie may be blind, but she always keeps track of work. Kristoff is in a wheelchair, but as a lawyer he holds his own ground. These people work successfully for the Flemish government. That’s something to be proud of. Because the government is working on diversity. This is the campaign claim that the Belgian E3 agency BBC developed for the Flemish Emancipation Affairs Department. A controversial awareness campaign. In the leading role The Emancipation Affairs Department wants to achieve a change of mentality in the workplace with respect to people from disadvantaged groups. BBC’s assignment: work out an internal communication strategy for 50,000 civil servants. The approach was a testimony campaign, featuring people from disadvantaged groups who actually work for the Flemish Government. An appeal was launched to employees who wanted to be featured in the campaign. Eighty people voluteered to be profiled in the campaign. Six ‘models’ eventually gave the poster campaign a face in all Flemish Government buildings. Organisations that support disadvantaged groups in the labour market were also involved in the campaign.
“Too bad about his colour.”
Talent and respect The focus of the campaign is on the talents and skills of individual employees from disadvantaged groups. They act as role models. In a first series of posters, the campaign focuses on employees from ethnic minorities and with disabilities or chronic illness. Challenge: restructuring the – often loaded – equal opportunities theme into a surprising and sympathetic campaign. “Too bad he’s short-handed.” Too bad about his colour Rachid sits full of confidence at his drawing board. He is described as one helluva good draftsman. The headline: ‘Too bad about his colour.’ In combination with the image, this headline evokes clichés about foreign people. The reader is misled, but the body copy places the header in the right context. Rachid’s qualities are highlighted. And then the wink: Too bad about his colour. He could wear something other than black ;-)
www.nuorteneduskunta.fi
Too bad he’s short-handed That’s the headline on the poster which shows Willem. As a helpdesk employee, he’s the helping hand at the Service line of the VDAB. Employees or employers with questions? They can always count on him.
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Bodycopy: Too bad that he’s shorthanded. But then at the Service line the telephone just doesn’t stop. Next steps Following the first poster series, the Emancipation Affairs Department decided to continue the campaign with gays (plus transgenders) and over-50s in the leading role. •
Adsmith / China Advertigo / Romania Aloft Group / USA Ansel-Möllers / Germany Audacity / USA Base One / UK BBC / Belgium Bernstein / Germany BMLab / Russia Bruketa & Žinić OM / Croatia C&COM Advertising / Czech Republic Café Design / Hungary DAG Communication / Italy Epoka / Poland Igriega / Spain Kirnauskis 2.0 / Finland Maitri Advertising Works / India Mandate / Singapore Media Consulting / Portugal Netural / Austria Preferendum / France Quarry / Canada Recommended / Finland Recommended / Sweden SPS Marketing / Austria SanderWerbung / Germany Schindler Parent / Germany TANGRAM / Liechtenstein TANGRAM / Switzerland Truly Deeply / Australia Van Heertum Design VHD / Netherlands
E3 NETWORK
E3 network The E3 Agency Network is a closely integrated coalition of independent brand strategy and marketing communications firms from around the world. With access to this wide pool of talent, E3 agencies give clients a real chance to make an impact nationally and internationally. Find out how the E3 perspective can help you. www.e3network.com Administration: veerle@e3network.com
Calling all citizens Within the E3 network there is plenty of expertise and interest in creating effective communication solutions for the public sector. Please contact us if you want to talk about out how your organization can benefit from this international know-how: public@e3network.com
Recommended Finland This issue of E3 Global Insight Magazine has been edited by Recommended Finland. For more information, please contact salla.halme@recommended.fi or tero.heittola@recommended.fi. Recommended Finland Töölönkatu 11 A, FI-00100 Helsinki Tel. +358 9 4154 2211, www.recommended.fi