How do we win hearts and minds?

Winning over clients, communities and developers is integral to the profession’s ability to grow, influence and thrive.

How do we best bring ideas to life from the page and the drawing? What nuances do we need to evolve to speak the language of the developer and how do we communicate clearly, concisely and creatively?

Communications expert Jane Bevan gives some pointers ...

Whatever size of landscape project you are delivering, be it a high-profile complex commission, or one in a smaller, domestic setting, it is very easy to focus exclusively on the delivery of the job in hand. And just as easy to ignore the potential to tell the wider story of what it takes to make a project happen; the wider benefits the project delivers to the community, as well as the environment.

The ability to communicate ideas and win hearts and minds is integral to the profession’s ability to grow, influence and thrive. Having worked in communications for over 30 years, experience tells me that – like many other organisations – the landscape profession is not alone in underplaying its manifest achievements. Yet the same cannot be said about your more high-profile sibling – architecture in the built environment. There is work to be done.

A good starting point for communicating what you do is to look at your business as whole, before zeroing in on specific audiences you want to address. How do you position what you do to the outside world? Who are your key audiences – your current clients, potential new clients, the media, or the local communities you are working in? No matter what the size of your company, it is important to think about a mission and vision that encapsulates what you are doing. That guides the direction you want to take the business in. It is also useful to ask the question – is this something that all your staff are signed up to?

Having a set of values about how you operate as a company is vital. It will help you articulate what motivates you as a company and an individual, creating an appreciation of what role you have to play in making a difference to people’s lives.

Top communication tips

• Good communications starts from the top – make it a priority

• Create a framework for your communications and make it part of everyone’s remit

• Tone of voice – think about your audience: who are you talking to? Use language they’ll understand

• Look for the human interest angle

• Focus on outcomes and impact

• Avoid tech-speak and jargon

• Use stories across all your platforms

• Make the wider case for the landscape profession

Working with the Landscape Institute, one of the things we have been looking at is how to make the case for what you do as a profession. We all need to make a stronger case – not only to help with recruitment, but also so that developers, planners and the wider public understand the value that good landscape planning can bring to society. Well-designed public spaces improve health and wellbeing and strengthen communities.

So how can you go about this? Valuing and counting communications as an integral part of your business is a good starting point. Successful companies are good at this – make it part of someone’s job description to think about communications in its widest sense, not just what the developer needs in technical terms. But don’t just leave this responsibility to one person – the whole team needs to make a contribution, so that your messaging and the overarching narrative is consistent and coherent.

Start with ‘why?’ What are the benefits and outcomes of the project? How has it enabled change, facilitated community use or spearheaded regeneration? What impact has it had on people’s lives, or the way they work? These are the stories we remember, and understand.

Look at the language you use – make sure you avoid jargon and industry tech-speak. Can you explain the human or environmental impact the project delivers? It is not just cold facts and figures that demonstrate success, but – owing to the crosscutting nature of what the landscape profession spans – you have a powerful underlying narrative to convey.

Using case studies to illustrate your approach is important, as well as highlighting the wider issues that are being tackled within the project. Once you have developed a case study, look at how you can use it across a range of communication platforms – on your website, social media, with the local and sector media and with developers in your tenders and presentations. Always think about what developers (or other specific audiences) want to see – can your experience on a particular project help them achieve their wider objectives?

Until we all make the case for the benefits of the landscape profession to developers – as well as to wider audiences – it is easier to disregard your contribution, when cost-cutting calls. On both a personal and industrywide level, can you all afford not to invest in improving your communication with the outside world?

Jane Bevan was head of PR at the Natural History Museum before setting up Firebird PR.