Think Tanks & Video

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THINK THANKS & VIDEO edited by Erika Perez-Leon

The most effective policy videos take the viewer behind the research, offering them a first hand look at the stories and images that define the issue being discussed.

MICHAEL KLEIMAN

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New researchers should be expected to have the capacity to make strategic choices about how to use the various channels and tools at their disposal.

ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL

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In this series:

“An organisation’s voice should be defined- the audience should always know who the message is coming from. A video, a report, an infographic, a newsletter, a tweet… basically ANYTHING meant to reach an external audience has to have an organisation’s stamp on it.”

ERIKA PEREZ-LEON Editor, Think Tanks & Video Series

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Think Tanks & Video: When thinking about communications for Think Tanks, are videos an important and effective way to communicate research? What are the tools available for researchers to share their work?

What is the best way to reach target audiences? Do videos always require a big budget? What role do videos play in a communications strategy? In this series, you will find some great advice from communication experts on identifying if a video is what you need to communicate your research, along with helpful tips on how to produce one (with and without a budget) and broadcast it on the most appropriate digital platform. On Think Tanks resources appear at the bottom of the page.

ARTICLES IN THE SERIES: Think tanks and videos: are they an effective tool to communicate research?

by Erika Perez-Leon Communications as an orchestra

by Enrique Mendizabal The year in WonkComms: 13 tools think tank communicators should use in 2014

by Leonora Merry, Nick Scott, Richard Darlington Responding to digital disruption of traditional communications: ‘reusing the wheel’

by Nick Scott Using digital communications to connect at a human level for maximum impact

by Florencia Durán Selecting different ways to reach audiences: a strategically ongoing effort

by Vanesa Weyrauch Video and data visualisation examples for think tanks, from the Igarape Institute

by Andrea Moncada How to make compelling policy video: a production guide for think tanks

by Michael Kleiman Video for think tanks: shooting like a pro (on a shoestring)

by Diego Velasquez ODI’s award-winning online strategy explained

by Nick Scott The future of researchers

by Enrique Mendizabal Finding the stories behind the numbers

by Michael Kleiman

This publication has been made possible thanks to the generous support of the Hewlett Foundation.

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THE SCENARIO “Not all the tools are appropriate for all think tanks or centres.

Each organisation must choose the most appropriate mix.

Similarly, not all tools will be useful for all projects or initiatives of the centre. The right mix must be chosen in this case, too.”

ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL

THE OPPORTUNITY “Just as the printing process accelerated the free flow of ideas through Europe in the 15th Century, today, video, along with new communication technologies can help spread knowledge through every part of the world and to everyone who wants to watch and listen. One of the reasons why video has become so popular in different sectors is that we now (almost) all carry a camera with us. And apps let you film, edit and share.”

DIEGO VELASQUEZ

WHAT TO DO “Videos can include the scores of stories and images that researchers have access to. Interviews used for research can be filmed, allowing the subjects and locations referred to in a report to literally jump off the page and giving the viewer/reader an opportunity to engage with the material in a more intimate way.”

MICHAEL KLEIMAN

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Research has to be communicated, that is not even up for debate anymore. The range of digital platforms we have available to share this research can be overwhelming. Nevertheless, identifying the correct platform is imperative.

ERIKA PEREZ-LEON

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Think tanks and videos: are they an effective tool to communicate research?

BY ERIKA PEREZ-LEON

Erika Perez-Leon is the editor of the series Think Tanks & Video, edited in March 2016.

I (very) recently joined the On Think Tanks team as an editorial manager. One my first set of tasks was to create a series about Think Tanks and Videos from content that was already on the site.

The first step was obvious: a broad search and bookmarking of all relevant posts. Let me state the obvious (again): there were a lot of relevant pieces on the site. I skimmed through all the bookmarked articles, interviews, videos, how-to’s, opinion pieces, etc. and picked out the ones that specifically mentioned videos, even if just in passing. As a communicator, I knew a decision had to be made: who is this series for? I know the demographics of the audiences of On Think Tanks, and that’s exactly it: it’s audiences vs audience. So I asked myself the same question the roundabout way: what is this series for? Is it a resource, is it informative or is advocating for the use of videos? Once this question was answered, I could move on to actually editing the series and presenting it.

I share this with you because it is the very basic process that everyone should go through when they are thinking about creating a communications piece: • research the tools available (what is out there and what is affordable in terms of money and time?), • choose the most appropriate one, • identify the target audience or the intention of the product, • produce a piece that will best reach them, and • have a dissemination plan.

For instance: I should not decide to do a video to publish on Vimeo if my target audience is a group of researchers doing field work in the middle of the Amazonian jungle and my intention is to have someone upload raw footage captured on a West African river bank for

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someone to download and edit here… and I have no money. Be realistic in your pursuitsometimes keeping it simple and accessible, ensuring continuity, and creating a simple communications tool is the best way about it.

Hence, this series follows my own thinking process as I explored On Think Tanks and attempted to piece together a story.

A good starting point of the series is Enrique Mendizabal’s article on Communications as an Orchestra, in which he talks about the importance of not only having a communications strategy, but also of choosing the right outlets according to the organisation’s capacity, budget, team availability, commitment, and assigning responsibilities.

While still in the process of making decisions, three communication experts and cofounders at WonkComms, Leonora Mary, Nick Scott and Richard Darlington offer thirteen tools think tank communicators should use in 2014. This article was published over two years ago, but the information is still current. Numbers three, four and five are specific to videos, and also serve as comparative resources. An animation will probably require some kind of budget for talent (an illustrator, animator, motion graphics, etc), a budget for a video will depend on what kind of video you want to produce, and a vine is free. This article offers thirteen possible tools to pick from, of which ten do not include any kind of videography presentation. Again, it is all about the audience and what is the best tool to reach them.

Once you have decided what kind of communications tool to create, there are some budget decisions to make. A while ago, a colleague and I were preparing a pitch for a small grant for a short film we wanted to make. On the terms of reference provided by the grantors, they asked for a breakdown of the costs and included a little tip: “don’t tell us you will spend our money on websites and marketing stuff when you can get that stuff free online.” I was initially appalled, feeling this was the kind of attitude that was putting designers and web programmers out of jobs and infesting the world with ugly template designs. I quickly found out that is hardly the case, as these “free” resources are often created by those very professionals themselves. If you have a bit of time, are internet savvy and have the patience to learn something new, then the internet is your world to go shopping for free. On Responding to Digital Disruption of Traditional Communications: Reusing the Wheel, Nick Scott lists more than ten free online resources that can aid in fulfilling your communication needs, including training manuals and videos.

There should be a synergy between every communications piece that is created not only on a subject or theme, but also from an organisation as a whole. An organisation’s voice should be defined- the audience should always know who the message is coming from.

A video, a report, an infographic, a newsletter, a tweet… basically ANYTHING meant to reach an external audience, has to have an organisation’s stamp on it. This has always been something I have advocated for- branding is not about a logo, it is about what an organisation stands for and how that is represented. I have seen organisations with

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terrible logos do superb external communications pieces that reflect their company values and motivations. Likewise, I’ve seen companies with amazing graphic and visual identities produce pieces of external communications that say absolutely nothing about their value as an organisation. Communications have to be integrated, especially in a time where we have a number of digital platforms to share information from.

Florencia Durón, writes about the use of digital communications:

(…) communicating, at the end of the day, means connecting with other people; not just informing.

That’s exactly what digital platforms offer us; the opportunity to interact with people anywhere that share our same interests. Florencia offers very helpful insights to keep in mind when producing communication tools as part of a communications strategy, such as videos. I suggest we step into this topic with an overarching view on how important it is to reach an specific audience and what can be done to achieve that.

Vanesa Weyrauch focuses on identifying the best way to reach an audience and shares some hints on how to do this. Bear in mind that videos are not for everyone: you first have to identify the nature of your research and who its biggest impact should be on. Once the audience is identified, Vanesa offers guides to identify which tool is best and what the hierarchy of the products produced should be according to the main audiences. There is no point in investing time, effort and money on producing a tool that will be missed by the very people the research is intended for. Vanesa identifies social media and videos most successful amongst the general public, specially other organisations, university students/young people and the media.

It is not complicated to produce a video, but they require a level of commitment. There are a number of (free) tools available and there is also a lot of talent in the world looking for the opportunity to do expand their portfolio. If you decide a video is the best way to communicate your research to an audience, you should ask yourself these three things: who will be the lead of the project? how much money and time will I spend on it? how will I distribute it? The smaller details tend to fall into the subquestions of these: the length will depend on how much time (and money) is spent on it, the production team will depend on how much money is spent as well as who will be leading the project, the content should have been solved when deciding on a video as the best outlet, the quality and imagery will depend again on budgets, etc. Once all of this has fallen into place, we have some great resources for you: In this article from 2012, you will find a compilation of different types of videos think tanks can use for several purposes. Most of these can be produced by yourself, with simple (free) online resources. This is a great place to see some examples and start analysing what kind of video you want to produce.

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Also from 2012 is Andrea Moncada’s article on Video and Data Visualisation Examples for think tanks from the Igarape Institute. Here you will find a more complex production, which obviously involved not only a budget, but also collaboration with filmmakers and photographers. This piece was intended to generate awareness and also to serve as an advocacy tool for a large network of partners.

In his article on how to make a compelling policy video, Michael Kleiman, poses the problem and possible solutions to the role of videos in think tanks. He identifies a lack of popularity for videos amongst think tankers and policy makers, proposes reasons to this, followed by steps that can be taken to solve it. He also offers hints on how to produce better videos to reach appropriate audiences and insight on dissemination platforms (twitter vs. facebook). He suggests partnerships when creating larger video productions to help with funding and concludes:

As a filmmaker with a deep passion for public policy, I believe very strongly in the ability that video has to shape the way people think about urgent policy issues and grapple with the competing ideas as to how to solve those problems.

Building on helpful hints for DIY video productions, Diego Velasquez offers some great practical tips to shooting a video on your own. Something I have learned through my career is that not having a budget to produce a flashy video or visual piece is not a reason to not produce anything at all. You may not be able to bring a professional videographer to your event and pay for filming and editing days, but that does not mean you should not document it. Diego offers some great tips on how to shoot with your smartphone and create a good product following some simple guidelines.

And if money is really scarce, Jeff Knezovich put together a great presentation on Vines, Twitter’s video app. Although only six seconds long, Vines can carry a message across and are a great resource to create a series of short videos with straight to the point messaging.

To conclude with practical tips on how to produce a video, On Think Tanks has several resources that offer advice on how to make a “talking head” video, which can be a powerful tool to convey important messages, give some variety to a blog, or to have an influential person deliver the message themselves. Talking head videos are often low-cost and can be easy to produce. This article offers advice on planning, setting up, editing and preparing to share.

Research has to be communicated, that is not even up for debate anymore. The range of digital platforms we have available to share this research can be overwhelming.

Nevertheless, identifying the correct platform is imperative. For the very old school like myself, the dream would be to produce a short video with a filmmaking crew and have it screened as part of the opening shorts to a feature film that speaks to the same cause (an independent film of course). However, we are in 2016 and a) the current budget for

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research activities often does not include high-end cinematographic productions and b) the world revolves around a digital space. If we are talking about viewing your video on a big(ger) screen, the best case scenario is that your film will be screened at a conference where your peers will watch it together and then discuss. Most likely though, your video, with or without a budget, will be viewed on the same device people use to snap a picture of their breakfast (or to watch cats and cucumbers). If it catches their interest, they will look it up again on their laptops. Whatever you produce- video, print or audio- you have to think of it for a digital platform. This isn’t bad- it means you can quantify the number of views, you can wage people’s reactions, you can share it easily, etc.

I have produced a number of videos in the past, some for flashy NGOs and others as advocacy pieces for issues that deserve attention. At the completion of some of these, I realised that the client had no dissemination plan. That is, at the least, a waste of money and time. A video’s grand finale is not supposed to be a long life in a pen drive in your drawer. There has to be a plan, and in a world where people like watching cats and cucumbers videos daily, you have to make some buzz around them. Embrace the digital world, challenge it, and use it to its full potential to benefit you.

Nick Scott explains ODI’s award-winning online strategy, and how the team of researchers at ODI has championed online ways of working and communicating.

I want to end this series with an article by Enrique Mendizabal on the future of researchers where he highlights the importance of researchers also being good communicators.

Enrique makes a point of communication not being exclusively on a communications team’s turf, but also on that of the researchers. He talks about identifying the available channels and tools, choosing those that best fit the needs of the research, and the pros of cons of digital dissemination. He stresses the need for research organisations to keep with the times, and change as funding models and research cultures change. This is relevant when we talk about videos and think tanks because it brings it back to organisations making an effort to communicate their research and use all the available tools available.

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Think tanks need to keep their public (the audience) engaged for prolonged periods of time (...) They must keep journalists coming for more, reporting on their ideas and recommendations; policymakers engaged in policy discussions over several policy cycles until the right policy window opens; other researchers involved in debates, etc.

ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL

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Communications as an orchestra

BY ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL

Enrique Mendizabal is the founder of On Think Tanks A few years ago I wrote about communications channels and tools for think tanks. The list was not exhaustive but it presented a rather broad set of options for think tanks to consider.

One of the most interesting elements of this way of looking at communications was that, rather than being focused on a specific policy objective and developing a strategy to achieve it, the implication was that think tanks ought to keep the thing going, ever ready to jump at any opportunities to make a difference.

John Young at ODI used to call it ‘strategic opportunism’. Somehow this concept, which we used quite a lot in the ’00s at ODI got lost in the ’10s. We started to focus a lot more on strategic planning, theories of change, SMART objectives, etc.

But this concept is worth considering once again. Rather than obsess with detailed communication strategies I suggest: • Focusing on developing the ‘right’ portfolio for your think tank; • Building the appropriate (and most competent) team possible; and • Being ready.

This recommendation made me think of an Orchestra. I first tried this idea on a group of communicators at a workshop in Dhaka a year ago. I imagined the head of communications like the orchestra’s conductor. Conductors have to make sure that all the musicians in follow the partitures but he or she can also control the intensity, volume, and rhythms of the piece (I think this is how it works, music is not really my strength).

The conductor also has to ‘read’ the audience and call for small changes in the way the piece is being played: more violines, more percussion, less winds, more winds, etc.. The conductor must make the best use of the human resources and the instruments he has sitting before him.

Every time the orchestra plays, it also practices. Each musician practices, too. As part of a team and on their own. They have to be at the top of their game individually and as a team.

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The same is true for communication teams. Think tanks need to keep their public (the audience) engaged for prolonged periods of time. It is not good enough to get their attention once, at a press release or an event, never to engage with them again. They must keep journalists coming for more, reporting on their ideas and recommendations; policymakers engaged in policy discussions over several policy cycles until the right policy window opens; other researchers involved in debates; etc. Their ideas have a greater chance of informing policy if they remain relevant and on the agenda for longer.

Heads of communications (and in fact the think tank as a whole), therefore, need their musicians to keep playing. To keep producing excellent communication outputs that they can combine to make great music -engaging music, popular music, interesting music.

Back in 2008 I had the chance to lead a programme that looked at poverty and trade in Latin America. We called it COPLA (Comercio y Pobreza en Latino América). The name, COPLA, came from the word copla, in Spanish, the couplets of popular songs. We imagined that influence was similar to the effect that catchy couplets have on audiences who join in and sign along with the band.

The objective of a think tanks is similar. It want others to ‘sing their songs’ and make them their own.

How does orchestra communications work?

First, we must stop worrying about strategy and strategic documents. We must set aside log-frames and theories of chance (the tool, I mean; not the theories of how change happens: like here or here). Rather, we must develop three things: • A portfolio of communications channels and tools; • A communication team -with clear ownership over each one of the channels; and • Tactics or rules to use these resources.

What comes first? I do not know. There has to be a negotiation between all. The choice of channels and tools will certainly define the final composition of the team. But the team can have an effect on the channels, tools and tactics in the long run.

Of course, the think tank’s resources will play a role, too. The answer to the question: how much is the think tank willing to allocate to communications? will be critical in this process.

And, certainly, this process will need a leader, a head of communications, a conductor.

Developing a strategy before having a head of communications is never, in my view, a good idea.

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The portfolio The portfolio is the universe of communication tools (for each channel: publications, media, events, and digital) -aside from direct personal communications- that the think tank is willing and able to use. Of course, think tanks won’t -and shouldn’t- use all of them all the time. This is just the potential set of tools that could be used. I wrote about this before: Not all the tools are appropriate for all think tanks or centres. Each organisation must choose the most appropriate mix. Similarly, not all tools will be useful for all projects or initiatives of the centre. The right mix must be chosen in this case, too. The following questions can guide this process: • Does the centre have the resources to effectively deploy all the chosen tools? For example: Does it have media skills to deal with an important media strategy? How many events can it organise in a week? Does it have reliable access to the internet?

Does it have resources for printing its publications?

• Are the tools sufficient to reach all of the centre’s main audiences? Are any not being reached through the choice of tools and channels?

• Do they offer the right balance between content and outreach? In other words, is it all repackaging or is there sufficient original material to carry the argument for a significant period of time?

• What will be the best way of keeping the centre’s arguments and ideas on the public agenda for longer?

• Are the tools linked to and supporting each other or are they being deployed independently and in isolation?

Each tool needs to be described in detail so that anyone (not just the communicators) can figure out how to produce and use them. Remember that most think tanks won’t have dedicated communications team and some of their researchers will have to do some of the communications work. This is a good format (summary version): Name: Policy Brief • Description and use: A policy brief focuses on providing actionable recommendations to its main audiences drawing from research presented in working papers, research reports, etc –as well as other third-party sources.

• Audience and style: It is aimed at the specific policy audiences it targets and so should be written taking into account their own characteristics (level of knowledge/agreement on the issue, organisational culture, policy opportunities, stages in the policy cycle, etc.).

• Format: A policy brief should be about 2 to 4 pages long. It should include text boxes and graphics and a relevant image for the cover.

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• Peer review and quality control: Policy briefs should be peer reviewed by members of senior management and possibly include inputs from members of the target audience. They should be signed-off by senior management.

Intranets are very useful for this. They make it possible for anyone in the think tank to find this information as well as examples of the tools and templates to use.

For excellent ideas of the channels and tools you may want to use visit WonkComms and its LinkedIn Group or my post on channels and tools that has a fairly extensive list. The Dhaka workshop posts also include examples from Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The team My advice is that every channel requires an owner. This does not mean that every communications team needs to have a minimum of 4 members. Or that a think tank will necessary have to have dedicated comms staff -this may simply not be possible for some.

But it does means that each channel should have a name next to it.

There are potential combinations to consider: • Events and media can go well together so could be managed by the same person.

• Digital and publications could work, too, as more and more publications are produced in digital form.

• Directors or heads of communications are frequently drawn from the media and so they often take on the media channel • Even some researchers and administrators for the much smaller think tanks could take ownership over some channels. Office administrators could manage events, for instance.

Why is this important?

First of all, the think tank, and the head of communications more specifically, the conductor, needs to know that the pipelines for each of the channels are being carefully managed. When a window of opportunity has been identified (e.g. a budget statement or an election -usually with a set date; or a catastrophe or crisis -which may create opportunities to join or lead a debate) the think tank wants to make sure it can get there with all the communication tools it needs to make the biggest and more prolonged impact. It cannot just say: oops, we missed that one, well, maybe we’ll have the publication for next week, but thanks for coming to our event.

Secondly, owning a channel gives a person the chance to practice. Some think tanks prefer to have communication officers (or staff charged with communications) at the project level. This means that this person might get to do one or two reports, maybe two events, possibly tweet a bit, a blog post or two, at most, in one year. There may be 3 or 4 people ‘working on comms’ at the think tank but none focusing on it or any one channel enough to get good at it.

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Instead, centralising (to a decent workload) the communication function or at least assigning responsibility of each channel on an individual, gives them the chance to practice, learn and excel. They can even make a career out of it. An events manager/ officer can find him or herself in pretty high demand after a few successful event series.

And a digital communications manager can, more and more, find him or herself sought after other think tanks to lead their communications teams.

Finally, ownership over a channel gives the head of comms and the researchers a focal point with whom to work. It is clear to all who is in charge of the website, or publications, or events. It makes it easier to work across sectors, levels, and timelines. It also gives providers a focal point. Most think tanks will use copy-editors, designers, publishers and other services providers. It helps if one person in the think tank manages the organisation’s relationship with them.

Tactics and rules The tactics and rules help at two levels. First, they help with the auto-pilot mode that the think tank needs to have. For most projects and research work, the think tank needs to get on with business as usual. The comms team should not need to strategise much for most of what a think tank is doing at any given time. So all researchers should know that, for instance: • You cannot publish a paper without an accompanying blog post; • Or that you cannot have an event that is not web-streamed, does not have a webpage with all the materials online before the event, and does not include an event report within 24-48 hours; and • Or that media appearances need to be accompanied with a Tweet of the upcoming interview, a Tweet while it’s on aid and one linking to the recording, video, o printed version.

Rules can also help think tanks at more strategic levels. There will always be a few (there should not be too many) policy issues, ideas, or even policy windows that should focus think tanks’ attention. These need to be targeted with special tactics to be deployed over prolonged periods of time to achieve certain specific objectives. For these, the comms director and others (including the comms team and researchers) need to think about the best way of using the think tank’s communication portfolio -its entire orchestra.

Having rules that are used all the time will come in handy when it comes to asking ‘what works’. Rules help us test and learn. I wrote about this after a workshop in Dhaka: Rules make it possible to test new tools. From set to set [e.g. from event to event or from publication to publication], the think tank can make small changes –introduce or remove tools- to see what they effects are. It can, for instance, organise an event using EventBrite and see if it makes a difference; or try to contact journalists via Twitter instead of email and see if more show up.

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Examples of rules to be tested are: • Working paper(s) and policy brief(s) • Event and Twitter and blog • Research Report and blog and interview and event • Event and video and Twitter and Event Report (why not on Storify?) and interviews and publications

Reaching the top of the charts Think tanks are in the business of popularising ideas. Their purpose is to encourage other to adopt their ideas or the ideas of others that they agree with. They compete with many other think tanks but also with other organisations with very clear advantages over them: • The media can reach many more people than think tanks -in fact, think tanks need the media; • Political parties can reach positions of power and ultimately set the agenda and make policy decisions -think tanks need them; • Businesses and business lobbies do not need to worry too much about the ‘evidence’ when it comes to advocating for their interests -and think tanks need their money; • NGOs are much better at mobilising people and running far-reaching campaigns that think tanks can be -and NGOs can certainly help to mobilise people around a think tank’s idea; and • Universities have, whether they deserve it or not, a certain aura of credibility that can open many doors while think tanks are often seen with suspicion -and think tanks need universities’ ideas, spaces, and graduates to survive.

So think tanks best chances are in getting their ideas and their researchers into the right places and onto the right agendas for as long as possible. Communications as an Orchestra should help.

Once way of achieving this is to ‘write and publish music’ for maximum impact. And to do this we need to pay a great deal of attention to how we resource, organise, and use each of the tools we have at out disposal to achieve the objectives we’ve set for the think tank.

This is not the same as having a theory of change for your influencing efforts; it has little to do with the length of your communications strategy document; and certainly nothing to do with the number of workshops you attend to learn how to communicate research.

There are three elements I have gathered over the years that I think can get as close as anything to guaranteeing that you will be doing all you could do:

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• Get the right people: Over the last year alone I’ve listened to many think tank directors and leaders complain that it is impossible to find the right people to lead (or work in) their communications departments. They argue that the people they have are either not skilled enough or do not understand the content of their work or the politics of their sectors enough. Of course, ideally they’d like tohirea50 year old PhD former professor who decided to switch careers and become a communicator. There are two main flaws with this: • Somehow, businesses far more complex than theirs manage to hire communicators and PR firms all the time. Bioengineering firms have to communicate to the public and to financial markets all the time and they manage to do so through consultancies and staff. So there must be perfectly capable communications professionals who could easily manage the communication channels and teams of organisations dealing with issues of public interest.

• Finding them is possible only if they give up their usual networks and opt, instead, for more formal, open, and professional recruitment channels. Last year, ACET for Africa in Ghana launched a call for a new head of communications and interviewed candidates across Africa and as far as the UK. • Get your channels, tools, and rules in order: This is what John Young advocated for: be ready. This means having your portfolios and rules sorted out and a team of people ready to use them. Spending time on this is crucial for success. If you are ready then the right team will be able to take advantage of any opportunities that emerge -and even create opportunities. But to do their job properly, the think tank need to…

• Learn to prioritise (or, from a different point of view, accept that not everything is a priority): Prioritising is a very difficult thing for think tanks -especially those who are large and cover a great deal of topics. Other industries do it much better.

If you were a record label you would not try to get all the records you produce to the very top of the charts. You would not even try to make all the tracks in a record a #1. This is why they release singles or why they plan the releases of the records they produce through the year. The same is true for film studies who release films strategically for maximum box-office revenue. They may even sacrifice revenue in favour of Oscar Glory and release the film just before the cut-off date betting on nominations to attract moviegoers.

Prioritising A final note on prioritising.

We can think of prioritising in terms of the opportunities we seek as well as the objectives we aim for. We cannot do everything all the time.

One useful way of looking at this is to focus on policy windows or policy processes. A single think tank cannot possibly try to be present in every single space available. It has

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to focus its attention on those it considers to have the largest impact and those on which they, themselves, may have the largest impact.

A policy window approach demands that think tanks plan their rules and tactics around the opportunities presented by these -and not driven primarily by what researchers may want. Policy windows allow think tanks to plan in advance: to develop the right content and the tools and tactics to be used in advance, to warn their target audiences and even prepare them in advance, and to practice, even, if the situation demands it.

Prioritising demands that think tanks have: • Clear roles and responsibilities along the management structure. It does not work well when too many people have a say over this. Heads of Comms (or someone else, the director, possibly) must have a ‘final say’ and should be accountable to this.

• Dialogue. Think tanks sometimes organise weekly prospect meetings during which communications teams get together to discuss past and future policy windows, plans, and pipelines. According to Lawrence MacDonald, when he was at CGD in Washington, these were held in ‘public’ to encourage anyone to join. At ODI, these were help in private but with the participation of programme level comms officers (who worked for the programmes and ‘represented them’ at these meetings).

Prospect meetings can be supported by frequent (weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly) formal and informal meetings of senior management (including communications) and the staff. Conflicts are less likely to emerge if there are plenty of opportunities to dialogue.

• Strategic, long-term, priorities: Think tank themselves can set out their own policy influencing priorities. These can act as a hierarchy to guide prioritising which issues, projects, teams, or researchers get more or less support from the communications team and its resources.

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Throughout the process of understanding complex ideas, communicating them creatively, and listening to our audience, a final communication issue that is often lost is showing researchers’ and the organisation’s personality.

FLORENCIA DURÓN Author, Using digital communications to connect at a human level for maximum impact.

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This year think tanks showed us that video is about more than keeping a record of events, from the Nuffield Trust’s short interviews with experts and opinion formers for the 65th birthday of the NHS, to IPPR’s ‘Voices of Britain’ video blog.

LEONORA MERRY, NICK SCOTT & RICHARD DARLINGTON

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The year in WonkComms: 13 tools think tank communicators should use in 2014

BY LEONORA MERRY, NICK SCOTT, RICHARD DARLINGTON Leonora Merry and Richard Darlington are think tank communications experts and co-founders at WonkComms. Nick Scott is the digital communications expert and cofounder at WonkComms.

Leonora Merry, Richard Darlington and Nick Scott have published a great post on 13 tools they (and other WonkCommers) used in 2013.

On Think Tanks followers have given us quite a few gems with their awesome data visualisations, too. The list below illustrates and contributes to the many resources that have been shared in this blog during 2013. Think tank communications, I think you will all agree, must be taken serious but can also be fun. Thinktanking, after all, demands, I believe, that we do not take ourselves too seriously -all the time.

So the challenge from WonkComms: have you tried these in 2013? will you try these in 2014?

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Here is the WonkComms post:

Infographics Using infographics to make complex data more accessible is fast becoming an essential item in the WonkComms toolbox. Think tanks visualised in droves this year: NatCen did it in style with their fantastic microsite for the 30th British Social Attitudes Survey, and the North-South Institute used static graphics to form a nifty visual executive summary to their report on Canada’s Development Footprint. And for the sheer size of it, Policy Exchange’s mega-visualisation looking at their impact on policy over the last ten years deserves a special mention. How about making a screen-friendly version of it next year, guys? A Prezi perhaps?

Prezi WonkCommers showed us that this zooming presentation tool is much more than just a fancy version of PowerPoint. The King’s Fund led the way last year with their great timeline of the Health and Social Care Act. This year Nesta showed us how it’s done in this fantastic example to launch their ‘Rethinking Parks’ campaign. And the Social Market Foundation got creative with Prezi for their all-singing all-dancing look at the history of housing policy since 1918 Warning: contains cheesy music. Bob the Builder, anyone?

Animation Let’s face it folks, much of the material we have to communicate is lengthy, complex and – dare we say it – sometimes pretty dry. But often the subjects we’re dealing with are exactly the issues that get people animated down at the pub on a Friday night. So, as the ODI’s Katy Harrisexplained on our blog, animation is a natural tool for WonkCommers to use to spread the word. There were some brilliant examples of think tank animation in 2013 – from the Centre for Policy Studies’ stylish look at competition in rail, to JRF’s neat explanation of work incentives under the Universal Credit, to NIESR’s informative ten minutes on the Scottish currency conundrum.

Video Getting views and opinion directly from the horse’s mouth helps validate think tank research, so video is a great WonkComms tool. This year think tanks showed us that video is about more than keeping a record of events, from the Nuffield Trust’s short interviews with experts and opinion formers for the 65th birthday of the NHS, to IPPR’s ‘Voices of Britain’ video blog. And, though they’re not strictly a think tank, Shelter’s fantastic ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ film showed the creative potential for video at its best.

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Vine Sometimes, when time is really short, and attention spans are even shorter, we might only have a few seconds to get our points across. 2013 saw micro-video app Vine really take off. And, as many of us discovered, Vine is perfect for wonkcomms – there’s even a name for our type of Vines: datavines. The Chartered Institute of Housing made great use of datavines earlier this year to launch their study on the impact of the benefit cap in Haringey, as Louise Fisher wrote in her blog for us. And the Kings Fund made us all wish we’d thought of it first when they put together 24 individually brilliant clips for their Vine advent calendar.

Blogs Blogging has been around since the early days of the internet and placing blogs and opinion pieces has become a ubiquitous activity for think tank communicators. 2013 was no exception and think tanks utilised their own, and other blogs widely in ways too numerous to mention. Our own blog saw an incredible 41 posts and over 25,000 views this year, thanks to all our brilliant contributors. Let us know if you want to contribute in 2014!

Buzzfeed If there’s one thing we learnt this year, it’s that we human beings like lists. Especially lists that involve animated GIFs. And if cats are involved too, well that’s just LOL. Buzzfeed took the web by storm in 2013, and think tank communicators lapped it up.

Inspired by Daniel Knowles’s excellent Buzzfeed on the housing market, the Social Market Foundation took the plunge first, with this great example on energy policy. This was closely followed by JRF on poverty and IPPR on youth jobs. The SMF’s Sean O’Brien then went all meta on us and wrote up his experience for us as a Buzzfeed about doing a Buzzfeed. Postmodern.

Gamification And if animated GIFs and Lolcatz weren’t fun enough for you, then think tanks harnessed our competitive streaks this year by using games to get attention to their work. Demos led the way at party conference season with the inspired Fantasy Politics game, which pitted politicos against each other to identify their political ‘dream team’. The ODI opted for a more crafty game when they launched their report on fossil fuel subsidies and climate change, bringing back the addictive origami folding game. And at the Autumn Statement, nef had everyone glued to their TVs with their George Osborne bingo. Game, set and match.

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Twitter With Twitter continuing to make and break news in 2013, the microblogging site remained an essential tool for think tanks to communicate with their audiences. The Resolution Foundation’s James Plunkett kept the econogeeks satisfied with his trademark tweeting of choice graphs about the labour market. JRF made us all envious as they broke the 50,000-follower mark (read James Grant’s account of how they did it on our blog).

And one-woman think tank Caroline Criado-Perezbecame the news story for days in the summer with her #takebacktwitter campaign against online abuse.

Storify In a fast-moving online communications environment, it’s a constant challenge to keep a clear narrative flowing through think tank work. This year think tanks made great use of Storify to help them bring these together, telling the story of a report launch or event series. Policy Exchange made excellent use of the aggregation site back in August to tell the story of their ‘Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger’ launch and NPC used it to bring their impact conference to a wider audience back in October. Sofie Jenkinson preserved our own launch event with this fantastic Storify back in April.

Email With so many online tools at our disposal, it’s easy to overlook the importance of email communications in getting our findings into people’s consciousness. Think tanks made good use of email communications in 2013. Great examples include Reform’s daily media digest and weekly round-up, including ‘reformer’ and ‘reactionary’ of the week, and Centreforum’s regular email identifying the liberal ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ of the week.

Embargoed press release The 00.01 embargo is dead. Long live the 00.01 embargo. Although 24 hour media has led many of us to question the point of the minute-past-midnight embargo, pretty much every think tank utilised it this year. And, as a result, think tank research continued to dominate newspaper reports and broadcast media once again. IPPR’s ‘Christmas Hamper’ of six embargoed stories over the Christmas period showed us that the WonkCommer never rests. And think tanks from the Resolution Foundation to Policy Exchange made front page news with their embargoed stories.

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Good old fashioned research report Do we risk the communications tool wagging the research dog? That was the question many of us were pondering in WonkComms events, team meetings and on Twitter this year. The answer, it seems, is a resounding no – provided communicators understand research, and researchers understand communications. So as a communications tool, the power of the good old-fashioned research report remained a vital one in 2013. The IFS Green Budget is perhaps the best example of this, with the lengthy document continuing to dominate discussion of the public finances.

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If a think tank needs to step outside their niche, perhaps in producing films, it is worth partnering with others who have the necessary experience and skills. These kinds of partnerships can make the end product better and create more persuasive content for telling the policy story.

NICK SCOTT

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Responding to digital disruption of traditional communications: ‘reusing the wheel’

BY NICK SCOTT

In earlier articles, I’ve discussed one of the biggest challenges for think tanks in using the Internet: the amount of information out there that is competing for attention. As well as being a challenge, however, this also offers an opportunity. For it is this mass of content – and the tools that ‘netizens’ and companies have created to be able to produce more of it – that can be used by think tanks to produce better communications products with less investment. This can be done in two ways: • Using content being made freely available by others that can help to improve the look, feel and usefulness of their communications; and • Employing free or very cheap consumer tools and solutions that don’t require an IT department’s support, and therefore save time and money in the process.

Reusing content that is freely accessible By connecting people from across the world, the Internet has provided insights into diverse lives and interests at the click of a button. Humans are a talented species, and the Internet is full of examples to prove it, where people have uploaded content that does, or says, something better than you or I could ever do/say it. For example, on the Internet you can find: • Online photo galleries like Flickr or Google Picasa Web Albums, where amateurs and professionals upload their images of diverse topics. There are huge ranges of photos, including whole galleries of photos by organisations like the World Bank.

ODI sources almost all photos used in our website or publications from Flickr.

• Drawings, maps and other imagery uploaded by designers and enthusiasts to Wikimedia Commons. In terms of maps, there are particularly useful blank maps that can be useful for adding in colour to highlight particular geographic points and then used in publications.

• Statistics and visualisations of common national or global datasets, as well as sector-specific data. For example, in the international development arena you

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can find data and visualisations that can be used in presentations from Gapminder (statistics from the UNDP Human Development Reports, see example of Hans Rosling using these below), the World Bank, Google Public Data Explorer or Climate Funds Update (this last site was created by ODI).

• Training manuals and videos to explain key concepts or tools. You can get information and step-by step instructions on many different topics that can be used in workshops or guidance materials for example. I’ve used CommonCraft videos regularly to explain how to use a number of online tools.

• Online archives that range from historical snapshots of the web produced by institutions like the Internet Archive (a US not-for-profit organisation) and the British Library, to archives of books and content in Google Books or Project Gutenberg. These can be used to access free information that might otherwise not be available or be paid for content.

The great thing is that, often, access to this content is also more open than you’d imagine.

Many individuals will be happy for think tanks and not-for-profit organisations to use their content and ideas to further a message, or improve a piece of communication. They can either signal this unofficially, perhaps by noting it down on a website or in response to an email request, or officially through use of the ‘Creative Commons’ licence. Creative Commons is an alternative to copyright that enables content to be labelled as ‘some rights reserved’ rather than ‘all rights reserved’. The video below explains the different rights you can reserve. The most important thing for think tanks – as they are generally notfor-profit institutions – is that under this licence, most content is usable in some way by them. And they simply have to provide attribution of the source, which they should be good at given their background in referenced research.

Taking advantage of online consumer tools and solutions Alongside the mass of content that Creative Commons and the sharing culture of the Internet makes available for think tanks to use in their communications, there are also a number of tools and products that think tanks can quickly and cheaply use to produce their communications outputs: • Online website builders like Google Sites, WordPress or SquareSpace can allow you to create small but professional sites. These simple hosted solutions can provide functionality that might take a developer a lot of time and effort to produce otherwise, such as signing up to mailing lists, or including forums, blogs or maps.

ODI has used these primarily to produce first-phase websites for larger projects, which creat a professional-looking site quickly and easily and allow for breathing room in the development of detailed criteria for a second-phase site (which may be produced more traditionally by developers).

• For storing and sharing details of useful resources, social bookmarking tools like Delicious can replace the favourites/bookmarks in someone’s browser, and online

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reference management tools like Connotea or Citeulike can replace reference tools.

These can then offer easily accessible bibliographies and resource libraries for others to browse.

• Google Groups offers a great way to create mailing lists that like-minded people can use to discuss issues. Teams at ODI have used these during bids for projects, and to discuss and prepare papers or other materials.

• If you’re holding events and want to register people, EventBrite and Upcoming can do this for you, and even allow you to sell tickets. There are also numerous free and cheap webinar solutions. Finally, if you want to stream meetings online, you can do this through Ustream, Justin.tv or Livestream with adverts. After years of trials with each of these free tools, ODI recently upgraded to a paid version of Livestream to allow for ad-free viewing.

• To create documents or presentations you don’t need to invest in expensive copies of Microsoft Office – Google Docs can perform the majority of the same functions and then produce PDFs or even Microsoft Word copies of your work.

For presentations you can take things a step further than Powerpoint using Prezi, an online tool that changes the way in which presentations are structured and displayed to great effect – I’ve used it in workshops to cover some of the issues outlined in these blogs. Or, if you’re happy with Powerpoint but want to make a presentation available for quick browsing online and maybe add audio to it, SlideShare allows you to do just that. There are even image editing alternatives to Adobe Photoshop – like Pixlr – and some attempts at video makers too. At various points ODI has used a number of these tools to work on documents collaboratively, share our outputs to small groups in workshops or training sessions or make them public, and to open them up for discussion and commenting by others.

• There are a number of options for storing datasets and creating data visualisations.

At ODI we’ve used Zoho Creator as a database tool and linked that to the Zoho Reports charts and visualisation tool to power the graphs on Climate Funds Update (the website itself is delivered through Google Sites, by the way). However, if you don’t mind importing data as it changes from Google Docs, Excel or whatever database application you’re using (as opposed to having a live link to the data), other options for visualisations include Google Fusion Tables, or IBM Many Eyes.

• If you want to track mentions of your organisation in the media, the blogosphere or social networks, there are a number of cheap tools. These include Google Alerts, Social Media Alerts, BackType and Technorati. These can save a lot of money spent developing keyword lists with traditional media monitoring services, and often find exactly the same content.

• For books and publications you can publish good-looking versions for browsing online using Issuu or Scribd, allow people to print books on demand through Lulu, and sell copies of e-books or hard copies through the Amazon Marketplace, Google Checkout or Google ebookstore.

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Some rules for ‘reusing the wheel’ Though there are many different tools and content sites listed above, this is just a small portion of the whole. New tools are being added every day to carry out new functions, or replace functionality previously carried out on a desktop computer with an equivalent powered by servers in the cloud. With each one comes new and engaging content.

The most important aspect of these ‘wheels’ is that they are generally easy to use: tools are made with a novice consumer user in mind, and have video demonstrations and tutorials available to guide you through. The content you’ve created can also be copied or embedded elsewhere at the click of a button.

So, if ease-of-use isn’t a problem, what else should you consider when ‘reusing a wheel’?

• Choose the right tools or content for the task. With many different variations on the same tools and content available, understanding the differences between one and the other can be essential. When comparing two similar tools, you can even ‘reuse the wheel’ to make the task easier, as someone will probably have written a blog or article on the differences and experiences already.

• Be prepared for change. Tools evolve constantly, and content gets updated. Some tools are even shut down. So be ready for this. If you’re using a specific tool to produce a paper that is incredibly important to your think tank, use one made by a large company like Google or that you’re sure is not going to be shut down. If you’re reusing content created by someone else, make sure you reference the date in which you accessed it and, if possible, keep a local copy in case it gets taken down in the future (or link to an archive copy on the internet archive, which should never go missing).

• Be realistic about what is and isn’t possible in your organisation. Some of the tools listed above can bypass steps on the ‘pyramid of online communications methods’ I mentioned in the first article in this series. But most of the tools outlined above rely on constant internet connectivity, and often higher bandwidth connections, so if you work in a low-bandwidth environment these are not going to be sensible tools to employ.

• If you want people to use new tools in their daily work, find tools that provide maximum benefits with minimum additional input. Social bookmarking is a good example: it replaces an existing tool (favourites or bookmarks) so carries no extra effort to use, but can allow for sharing of links and resource libraries (a public good) and make it easy for a user to keep their bookmarks with them wherever they go, even if they change or lose their computer (a personal good). You are much more likely to succeed in getting people to take up new tools if you can work them into existing business processes.

• Don’t just take – contribute! As Enrique Mendizabal has explained elsewhere on this blog, open innovation is a solution think tanks can use not just to benefit from, but also to participate in, the sharing of knowledge online. Consider publishing

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papers with Creative Commons licences rather than copyright, as there are lots of advantages to allowing freer use of your ideas. Shakespeare didn’t have copyright to stop his material being reused, and look where that got him: one of the most influential writers ever known.

• Exploit your content niche. With so many people producing content worldwide, think tanks should stick to producing the kinds of content they are good at, which often means publications and events. If a think tank needs to step outside their niche, perhaps in producing films, it is worth partnering with others who have the necessary experience and skills. These kinds of partnerships can make the end product better and create more persuasive content for telling the policy story.

That’s it! These are the three strands to ODI’s strategy to respond to the ‘digital disruption’ of traditional communications that I outlined in my first blog. I think that, taken together, they tell a useful story about how this response can be about more than just adjustment to change, but instead point to ways and means in which think tanks like ODI could, over the coming years, be able to take advantage of change.

In writing these four blogs, there have been a few areas that I’ve left aside for later discussion. At some point in the coming months, I plan to write more about some of the questions and issues raised by these three strategic goals. I have at least one blog in my mind on the long-term conclusions one could come to through a reading of ODI’s strategy: the demise of the traditional corporate website and IT team. I also think there is a lot to say about how to monitor and evaluate digital communications based on this strategy, and will return to this soon.

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If both researcher and communicator are on the same page, the messages’ narrative will be clearer and more interesting.

FLORENCIA DURÓN

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Using digital communications to connect at a human level for maximum impact

BY FLORENCIA DURÓN

Florencia works as communication manager for a Mexican think tank on economic and budgetary research.

When I first joined the Centro de Investigación Económica y Presupuestaria (CIEP), I noticed they were having a hard time getting their audiences to engage with them -and I don’t blame them. It is not easy to communicate technical knowledge in a way that will keep your audiences interested. We’ve worked on different kinds of approaches to achieve this and, along the way, we have discovered elements that have transformed our communications into a more attractive and authentic offer. The purpose of this article is to share these elements.

Throughout the process of understanding complex ideas, communicating them creatively, and listening to our audience, a final communication issue that is often lost is showing researchers’ and the organisation’s personality –that is, reflecting the people behind the think tank outputs: their voices, their ideas, their jokes, their faces, and their interests.

This element is crucial, since communicating, at the end of the day, means connecting with other people; not just informing. Our Research Centre already had a personality (how could it not, if it’s made up of people); we simply did a better job at projecting it.

The following elements are not marketing strategies or propaganda to attract new followers: they are projections of what we do as humans to connect with others, and what we respond to in our regular life. They helped us to engage with more people, while transmitting complex information in the process.

The final results of this effort include an increase of 4 times the number of visitors to our webpage (from 15,941 visitors (2013-2014) to 66,602 visitors (2014-2015)) and social

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media (average reach changed from 250 per post and 222 new likes in one year (20132014), to an average reach of 1000 per post and 758 new likes in one year (2014-2015)) -but most importantly- more interactions with our audiences. These interactions are very valuable because they actually tell us if people understand our ideas, and if they find our communication engaging.

So, while asking ourselves “how can we connect as a think tank with our audience”, here are 8 recommendations to improve our narrative and make our communication more real and human: • An attractive communication is based on team work. Hence,the communication between the researchers and the communication manager is very important. I can’t emphasise this enough. We first noticed this when CIEP was preparing a study on zero-based budgeting for the Mexican context. Researchers and communication managers attended budgeting forums together and shared previous analysis on the subject. Clearly, these interactions helped the communications manager to understand more fully the implications and the background of the subject.

But something else happened. The level of trust and complicity between the researchers and communicator increased.

Communicators often experience the difficulty of communicating ideas that are not necessarily their own; somehow, the level of involvement can result in a good level of emotion being present in every message, and a lack of involvement can easily translate into robotic-like messages. But when a communication manager plunges into a subject he/she almost feels it like his/her own –in other words, feels passionate about it– and this greatly improves the narrative of the messages they can help develop. This results in less complex language, deeper understanding, and a more passionate tone in the messages (particularly in our podcasts) produced by the centre. If both researcher and communicator are on the same page, the messages’ narrative will be clearer and more interesting.

• Don’t forget you’re talking to people. Regardless of how much someone knows about a given subject, their age, their gender, or their level of education, one thing is true: they are all people. And people like to connect with others.

At CIEP, our followers respond incredibly well to photos of team meetings or photos of a regular day’s work; in other words, when we show the people behind our centre and its publications. We link the photos to something related to work, like an upcoming document, for example, and the audience responds with more comments than usual -we are connecting with them through images.

While the comments on the photos are mainly congratulations for the Centre’s work, this is stimulating for all members of the think tank. And it serves another purpose, too: a picture posted on CIEP’s Facebook page has an average reach of 1,000 people, and sometimes more than half of them are not –yet- CIEP’s fans. So it has also expanded our reach.

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• Show personality! Even on Twitter, where you’re supposed to share only specific information, the audience responds better to fresh thinking that is communicated passionately, not mechanically. The fact is: tweeting pure data and facts is boring.

• Be concrete. Pick one or two main messages and work on them -no matter what channel you’re using. It’s easy to spill and spill information, but by doing so, it is less likely a message will stick.

• Make it easier for them. Animated videos, podcasts, graphs, data visualisations, and any kind of editorial material that explains complex subjects in an easier way is always appreciated. This kind of content accompanies nicely any digital campaign and you can re-use it later. Plus, it’s a great chance to get creative!

• Dare to be different. Occasionally on Fridays, we post comics. We find them funny and laughter is another great way to connect with people. Of course, we are very careful to make sure that the tone of the joke/comic goes along with our values and ideas. Keep in mind that when you dare to be original, you’re also daring to be memorable.

• Internal communication is just as important. Digital campaigns have to start somewhere: inside the think tank is a good place to start. I’ve found that the more relaxed we are as a team, the more personality we reflect on everything we do –even on the most technical of researches. So if there is a problem with your external communication, you might want to start by analysing your think tank from the inside.

• Observe their reactions. We start and we finish with your audience. As time goes by we increase our understanding of them –what they like, or don’t, and why? Was the language different? Was it the content? If you look for a pattern, you can start understanding your audience and improving your content. Do surveys if necessary, but make sure you know who you are talking to and what they think of your content. Understanding their behaviour is more important than an increase of the number of visitors, since this can simply be a natural result to an increase of web users.

These are elements that you might already be applying to your own social media presence and every-day life in the hope of being engaging. A think tank shouldn’t be different.

What makes communication real and honest is the human aspect of it; the actions that make us connect with other people with whom we share similar interests and values.

Whatever we communicate, there should be a balance between our rational thinking and our emotional thinking. Forcing messages will not work: communication should be authentic; otherwise it’s missing its purpose.

So remember to keep your messages simple and clear; to reflect the people working at your think tank, and most importantly – to have fun in the process.

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Efforts are made by several think tanks to ensure that they are good at receiving and using feedback about the effect of their channels and communications practices in a systematic way. Through a trial-and-error approach, they notice the ways to adjust their communication products, or detect the need to innovate or stop the use of certain tools.

VANESA WEYRAUCH

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Selecting different ways to reach audiences: a strategically ongoing effort

BY VANESA WEYRAUCH

Vanesa Weyrauch is a co-founder of Politics&Ideas and Director of the On Think Tanks School In a previous post about how think tanks are segmenting communications to reach different audiences we shared some findings of this study, mainly centred in the levels and tools with which these organisations go around segmentation. One of the main ones is the stakeholder mapping/analysis, which was also analysed in that post.

What do think tanks usually do after defining their priority stakeholders? Many of them compare these maps map with their existing offer in terms of content and communications channels. In doing so, they usually face some of the following situations: • Almost all their existing channels reach the different audiences making no distinction among them; • There are issues that are attractive to only a few prioritised stakeholders; • There are relevant stakeholders that they don’t reach with their areas of interest or adequate channels (for example, university students that could be engaged through Twitter); and • There are existing channels with enough flexibility as to reach different stakeholders in diverse specific ways (i.e. an annual dinner can help convince donors about the contributions of the think tanks but also to show policymakers the kind of support that they could provide to them).

Consequently, and depending on the available resources, they need to decide which communication channels will be reinforced, modified or cancelled and which ones should be added to the current set.

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In this regard, the following table presents the type of channels and tools used by think tanks that have been more successful for reaching specific stakeholders: Type of channel/tool

Stakeholder

External newsletter Peer organisations Donors Social media Videos

General public, specially other organisations and university students/young people and media

Forums/Seminars/ Open events

UniversitiesCentral Government Civil servants with whom there is a close relationship

Internal newsletter Executives Contributors Policy briefs Subnational and local governments Legislators

Decision makers Candidates Publications (books, research outputs, essays about and specific issue)

More stable civil servants/ technocrats

Personal meetings/ Politicians with whom there is less proximity/ less close events developed bonds

Politicians with whom you work confidential or delicate issues Journalists Training/Debates Journalists

Future civil servants Candidates Exclusive/outlined information

Journalists

Networking opportunities or visibility and recognition (events/ bi or multilateral meetings)

Politicians Donors

Inventory of publications and research

Universities University students Future decision makers

Press (specially columns and opinion editorials)

Civil servantsPoliticians Donors Journalists/ media persons

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However, whatever mix of channels and tools is deployed, interviewees have stressed the need for continuous improvement and fine-tuning based on evaluating and learning about what is working better (which may be why IIED has a person focused on this issue).

Indeed, segmentation is not a job that is done once; even during a project’s lifecycle it is possible that the organisation could include a stakeholder or a group of new stakeholders (for example, when opposition legislators request help for the design of a draft legislation), or detect a specific communications format that is not useful (for example, when a blog doesn’t have followers or comments).

Being dynamic is crucial. Think tanks should try to avoid getting stuck within categories.

There is always the risk that categories identified through segmentation become ends in themselves, losing sight of the purpose of the research, the opportunities that emerge in the external context and the real needs of the end users.

Therefore, efforts are made by several think tanks to ensure that they are good at receiving and using feedback about the effect of their channels and communications practices in a very systematic way. Through trial-and-error approach they notice the ways to adjust their communication products, or detect the need to innovate or stop the use of certain tools.

So, is segmentation a good investment for think tanks? Our preliminary response would be yes, but as long as it does not become a rigid skeleton that constrains both the organisation and its stakeholders but a vibrant and dynamic way of thinking to promote effective interaction between what happens within the think tank and outside its walls.

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The purpose of the film was to generate awareness among senior level policy makers, and to serve as a campaigning and advocacy tool for a large network of partners working in multiple languages.

Igarape deliberately kept the messages very simple and straight-forward and drew on data and statistics generated with partners such as Small Arms Survey and WHO. ANDREA MONCADA

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Video and data visualisation examples for think tanks, from the Igarape Institute

BY ANDREA MONCADA

Andrea Moncada is a journalist at Semana EconĂłmica in Peru.

In response to our previous post listing examples of videos that think tanks can use to communicate to their audiences, Robert Muggah of the Igarape Institute, a think tank based in Rio de Janeiro that focuses on thematic priorities such as drug policy, violence reduction and international cooperation, wrote to us about a couple of projects that we feel are a useful addition to our list. This article is largely based on a draft he wrote.

The first project is a short documentary called Faces of Violence – a Non Fiction Story, which highlights the many connections between violence and development. It was developed in cooperation with a local film company, Conspiracao, and in partnership with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was launched at a Ministerial Summit organised by the Norwegian and Swiss governments in 2010 as well as at the UN General Assembly later that year.

The purpose of the film was first to generate awareness among senior level policy makers, but also to serve as a campaigning and advocacy tool for a large network of partners working in multiple languages. Igarape deliberately kept the messages very simple and straight-forward and drew on data and statistics generated with partners such as Small Arms Survey and WHO. They also recruited photographers based in Rio de Janeiro and Juba to record the personal narratives of former perpetrators of violence, who in turn became victims of violence and champions of violence prevention.

The second project developed by Igarape is not a video but an application that supports big data visualisation, called the Mapping Arms Data (MAD) (only available using the Google Chrome browser). This was done by teaming up with Google Ideas and the Peace Research Institute Oslo to draw attention to the global arms trade. MAD is an interactive tool with more than a million data points and visualises authorized transfers since the

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early 1990s. It seeks to inject transparency into a debate that is often quite opaque and polemic.

The Institute and Google Ideas also prepared a short “lightening” panel to advertise the app and draw attention to wider issue of arms transfers during a summit sponsored by Google in July 2012. Some of the underlying data relating to the value of the arms trade featured in the presentation was drawn from the Small Arms Survey, as well as from the Peace Research Institute Oslo. The presentation is posted on Google’s official blog.

According to Robert:

The purpose of MAD was to make the arms trade issue more accessible to a wider audience. By presenting a large data-set in visually arresting and user-friendly manner, it has inspired an interesting debate among mainstream constituencies, but also people associated with tech and design industries, police and justice, humanitarian action and development, and beyond.

The collaboration has also reminded us at the Institute about how technology is not just an add-on, but increasingly a central part of our content development and our messaging. We also found that a combined dissemination strategy – in this came combining an application with a panel, Youtube video, blog posting and targeted outreach to conventional and new media – can be reasonably effective in reaching this wider audience.

For more information on other approaches to communication, we have also put together a list on communicating channels for think tanks.

We would like to thank Robert Muggah and the Igarape Institute for this very useful and interesting contribution.

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Before putting institutional time and resources into a video, it’s important to identify the larger goal you are trying to achieve. Here I don’t mean how many eyeballs you hope to get on the video or the amount of shares you want it to receive on social media, but rather the ultimate end you are trying to achieve.

MICHAEL KLEIMAN Author, How to make a compelling policy video: a production guide for think tanks

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By better understanding how to take advantage of such a powerful medium, think tanks can leverage the knowledge and analytical power that is their specialty and create palpable progress in tackling some of the most critical issues of our time.

MICHAEL KLEIMAN

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How to make a compelling policy video: a production guide for think tanks

BY MICHAEL KLEIMAN

Michael Kleiman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of MediaTank Productions – a full service production company that works with think tanks and advocacy organizations to create video content that engages policy makers and the general public on critical social issues.

Over the past ten years there has been an explosion in the amount of think tanks around the world that see the production of online video content as a critical part of their communications strategies. But is video an effective medium for accomplishing the missions of these organizations, namely to influence policy decisions and educate the public on critical policy issues? In an attempt to start answering that question, I interviewed fourteen communications executives at think tanks across the US, a half dozen policy makers in the legislative and executive branches of the US national government as well as representatives of production companies and online publications.

The research reveals important shortcomings in the success of think tank videos at influencing policy decisions and shaping public debate.

For starters, of the six policy makers interviewed, only one found think tank videos to be a helpful resource. Though looking at an admittedly small sample size, one can’t help but wonder, “Why do policy makers hate videos?”

Of course, the answer is they don’t. In fact, five out of the six policy makers interviewed said they watched at least one online video every single day, with several watching significantly more. What’s more, most of these videos – from sources like The New York Times and VICE – focus on policy issues. So the problem is not with the medium itself, but rather the specific videos that think tanks are creating. If done right, video can be an incredibly effective way for influencing the opinions of policy makers, their staffs and the general public.

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What follows is a list of best practices that encompasses the entire production process, from pre-production to dissemination. It should be noted that there is no precise formula for success in video production – or any creative endeavor for that matter. Nor is it necessary for a video to follow all of these best practices in order to be successful. Instead, this list should be seen as a guide to help think tanks identify proven strategies and alter their general thought processes around video production.

Step 1: What are your goals? Who is your audience?

Before putting institutional time and resources into a video, it’s important to identify the larger goal you are trying to achieve. Here I don’t mean how many eyeballs you hope to get on the video or the amount of shares you want it to receive on social media, but rather the ultimate end you are trying to achieve. If it’s policy change, are you hoping to move the needle on a specific proposal aimed at an issue that policy makers already see as urgent or do you first need to raise the level of importance given to the issue in the public consciousness? Perhaps policy change isn’t your goal at all and, like some think tanks I interviewed, you just want to train practitioners on new tools or strategies for your specific policy area. Whatever the goal, it’s critical that it is defined at the outset.

The goal one is trying to achieve will help delineate the specific audience(s) that a video should target. Again, it’s imperative that you’re clear on who you are trying to reach at the outset as the intended audience(s) has important implications for the message, content and style of the video being produced.

For example, policy makers and the public are not the same thing. They have wildly different levels of knowledge on issues and preferences for how they consume content.

In fact, many of the policy makers interviewed said that two of the primary reasons they don’t find think tank videos useful are that they don’t go deep enough into issues and that the data provided via motion graphics could be consumed far more efficiently via written reports.

Know your audience and think about what would be most helpful to them. In some cases you may decide to make several versions of a video, each geared toward different audiences.

In addition to helping inform the production process, defining a specific audience will be very helpful during the outreach process as well as in evaluating the project’s success later on. In fact, in my research I found that the organizations that were able to most specifically define their audience were the most confident in the success of their videos even if the overall viewership was rather modest. Knowing exactly who they were speaking to with their work allowed them to solicit feedback from their audience and receive firsthand testimony about how successful the videos were in achieving their stated goals.

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Step 2: Production Once you’ve determined your goals and your audience, it’s time to start thinking about the video itself. In doing so, remember that you’re using moving images to convey your message; you’re not writing a report. Video as a medium has a tremendous amount of advantages over the written word. However, a quick perusal of the thousands of think tank videos online shows that these strengths are all too often ignored.

Here’s a list of strategies for getting the most of out of video’s comparative advantages and creating content that has the greatest chance of success.

Tell A Compelling Story First and foremost, video is an incredibly effective medium for telling stories. A well-told story can put your audience in the shoes of those who are affected by the policy problem you are trying to solve or the solution you are trying to sell and allow them to understand its significance in a new light. And yet, stories with compelling characters are too often completely absent from policy videos.

The other great thing about stories is that policy makers are hungry for them. Policy makers are constantly in search of good stories and examples that illustrate an issue or a challenge that they can use in speeches or include in correspondence with constituents.

By focusing on stories, think tanks can not only help shed light on an issue and give voice to various stakeholders, they can offer policy makers a resource that is very useful to them.

Show, Don’t Tell Given the immense amount of information that policy makers and the general public have access to, video presents a unique opportunity to allow viewers to see the effects of an issue playing out rather than just hearing about it from an expert. By showing the experience of stakeholders affected by a given problem, video can incorporate new voices that are all too often absent from the public debate.

As one policy maker I interviewed put it, “Take me to the field. Videos that capture what things on the ground look like can be the catalyst for effective action. It doesn’t have to be incendiary or exploitative, but it does have to move me.”

A great example of a video that effectively takes its audience to the field is “Living Under Drones,” a video released in conjunction with a report of the same name by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic at NYU Law School. The video and report focus on US drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal areas. Interviews with survivors of drone strikes and family members of the deceased allow viewers to hear (and see) first hand testimony from those most affected by the issue. The video is also a great example of how production can be combined with the research process itself.

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The Importance of Emotion I vividly remember a piece of unsolicited advice I was given when I first started out as a filmmaker: “Film is a terrible medium for conveying information, but it’s the best we have for conveying emotion.”

While I do think there are ways to effectively convey information through video, if you want that information to really register and, ultimately lead to action, it must be accompanied by a healthy dose of emotion. In addition to improving the quality of the content itself, high emotionality has important consequences for the distribution of a video as online sharing is driven foremost by emotion.

Fortunately, emotion should not be hard to come by in the policy arena. No matter what issue you’re working on, you’re doing so because you believe that people’s welfare, livelihoods, and very existence hangs in the balance. There’s a lot of emotion there – find a way to convey that onscreen.

And don’t underestimate the power of humor, an important emotion that is all too often ignored in think tank videos. A great example of the use of humor to make an otherwise dull subject engaging, comes far outside the think tank world in the form of a Public Service Announcement (PSA) produced by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia. The video, entitled “Dumb Ways To Die” features animated characters singing a humorous song about foolish, albeit fatal, accidents. The video ends with a call to Australians to exercise caution while near train tracks. This PSA has been viewed over 100 million times since its online release in November 2012.

“Seriality” Just as companies like Netflix, HBO and Showtime have discovered the power of bingewatching, consistently successful online videos offer viewers repeated opportunities for new content around the same theme or set of characters. “Mainstream news and Hollywood have learned that viewers are attached to a host, guest, or powerful storytelling conceits,” said one communications executive I interviewed, yet many think tanks have failed to consider “personality-based programming.” Such content not only helps garner traffic, but builds up the stature of individual researchers and, by proxy, the institutions that house them.

“Seriality” takes advantage of another resource that think tanks have in great supply: experts on a wide range of subjects. By choosing experts who have a good on camera presence and creating a weekly “show” on a priority issue, think tanks can leverage their greatest resource to build up an audience and shape the public debate.

Several organizations have been playing with this serial model with great success.

American Enterprise Institute’s “The Factual Feminist” – a regular online series that features AEI Researcher, Christina Hoff Sommers – regularly receives tens of thousands of views and as many as 636,000 views (AEI’s most viewed video to date). The series is an

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important example of how consistently released video can take advantage of “star power” to build an audience.

Not only does serial content increase viewership, it can be a great option for think tanks that are limited in funds.

“If Wes Anderson Made A Video About ISIS, I’d Watch That” This comment, made in jest by a policy maker who otherwise expressed little interest in think tank (or any online) videos, highlights the importance of giving videos a sense of authorship and personality. Unfortunately, many think tank videos (though certainly not all!) are completely void of personality. Similarly styled animations are propelled forward by similar sounding music.

Like a good film, a good video offers viewers a sense that there is an actual person – an author – behind it. This sense of authorship can be achieved through a combination of tone, style and message. As they think about creating a full library of content, think tanks should think about a consistent institutional personality that comes through no matter what the subject matter.

Step 3: Outreach and Distribution In my research, the most common mistake that think tanks seem to make in the video production process, is thinking that they are finished once the final cut is locked. If anything, the battle is just halfway over. While it’s nearly impossible to make any given video “go viral,” by being strategic in the way they engage in outreach and distribution, think tanks can give each video the best chance of success.

Below are series of best practices related to how to most effectively get your finished video in front of the target audience you defined way back in pre-production.

Equal Resources to Production & Distribution Very few of the think tanks surveyed put serious thought into strategies around outreach and distribution. Even fewer allocated specific budgets to be spent on outreach. According to one think tank executive, “The biggest mistake organizations make is spending 95% of energy on development and far too little on promotion.” He noted that organizations should work at least as hard on outreach as they do on production. In addition to energy, organizations should allocate specific resources, namely funds, thought, and time, into developing and executing outreach and distribution strategies.

Video production can be expensive and in a world of limited resources it can be daunting – if not outright prohibitive – to think about budgeting even more funds to the outreach process. But without a well thought out and effectively executed outreach and distribution strategy, all of the work and resources that went into producing the video are likely to be wasted. If strapped for funds, think tanks should think about finding creative

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production strategies like some of the examples above in order to make sure they have enough resources left over for a robust outreach campaign.

Build Partnerships Many of the think tanks surveyed referred to the videos they create as “products.” A better way to think about videos is as a campaign. A campaign mentality means thinking of other organizations and individuals who share similar interests and may be willing to help share the video with their own email lists as well as social media networks.

More than simply creating one-off partnerships, like-minded organizations should consider working together in order to create content communities. By consistently sharing each other’s content, organizations can build a reputation for being steady content curators without bearing the full cost.

Facebook & Targeted Advertising While many think tanks expressed a preference for Twitter, Facebook has proven to be a far superior platform for video sharing. By design, Twitter feeds represent content that is shared in the moment. For that reason, Twitter posts can disappear from a user’s feed within a few moments of its initial posting. However, Facebook’s algorithm favors performance over temporality. High-performing content will therefore linger in users’ news feeds. In addition, in late 2014, Facebook shifted its algorithm to favor video content over text and photos making it an even better platform on which to share video.

Keep in mind, however, that Facebook’s new innate video feature means that you’ll need to upload a video directly to Facebook rather than embed it from a YouTube channel. This has important consequences for the way your content will be viewed. It’s fair to assume that the first few seconds of your video will be seen without audio as a potential viewer scrolls through her newsfeed. This form of distribution means that the first couple of seconds will be critical in determining whether someone decides to watch your video or not. It’s important that these opening moments are highly visual (remember, assume no sound!) and grab a viewer’s attention.

Facebook also offers highly effective targeted advertising capabilities that allow think tanks to market their videos directly to the audience they are trying to reach. With a small advertising budget, think tanks can target audiences based on location (for issues with local relevance), profession (i.e. anyone who works in Congress), or a wide range of other categories that can help them pin down a specific audience.

A Culture of Experimentation One of the most game changing ideas in the realm of content dissemination in recent years is a simple one: our instincts and assumptions about what entices people to watch a piece of content are often wrong. Online publications like Upworthy have created entire business models that center on using analytics and experimentation – A/B testing as it is called – to test assumptions and determine what is most effective at getting viewers to watch content, and watch all of it.

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By running pilot launches before officially launching videos, think tanks can target a small section of their audience and A/B test various titles and thumbnail images to see which are most effective. Using YouTube analytics, they can determine how long viewers are watching videos and when they are dropping off.

It’s surprising how few think tanks take advantage of such a wealth of data, given the premium that is placed on data in the research they are working to promote! Titles that perform poorly should be altered; videos with early drop off points should be edited in order to increase retention rates. Think of the video as a living document that can change as you receive feedback from your audience.

As a filmmaker with a deep passion for public policy, I believe very strongly in the ability that video has to shape the way people think about urgent policy issues and grapple with the competing ideas as to how to solve those problems. By better understanding how to take advantage of such a powerful medium, think tanks can leverage the knowledge and analytical power that is their specialty and create palpable progress in tackling some of the most critical issues of our time.

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A good video can help us deliver our message to people who for different reasons couldn’t be at our event, to policy makers who would otherwise be hard to reach, and to the general public.

DIEGO VELASQUEZ

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Video for think tanks: shooting like a pro (on a shoestring) DIEGO VELASQUEZ

Diego Velasquez from Makaco Producciones delivered a workshop for think tanks from Latin America and Africa as part of an effort to support the communication capacities of the Evidence and Lessons from Latin America (ELLA) programme.

As On Think Tanks has argued before, events should never be produced without some kind of recording. They should always be registered, not only because it is good to keep a record of what we do as a research centre but also because of the enormous possibilities that a video gives us to share and scale up the reach of our ideas.

Just as the printing process accelerated the free flow of ideas through Europe in the 15th Century, today, video, along with new communication technologies can help spread knowledge through every part of the world and to everyone who wants to watch and listen. One of the reasons why video has become so popular in different sectors is that we now (almost) all carry a camera with us. And apps let you film, edit and share.

A good video can help us deliver our message to people who for different reasons couldn’t be at our event, to policy makers who would otherwise be hard to reach, and to the general public.

But our video must be good, must have a good quality and be engaging and entertaining, otherwise it will be discarded, it will get lost in the vast and overwhelming sea of information that is directed at us every day.

This constant amount of near infinite information has brought one big problem: a reduced attention span. This is a very real problem and it affects almost everyone, so if something doesn’t engage the viewers in the first minute it is very likely they will click on to the next item in their feed.

So, how to engage people? How to make our video appealing? Where does the thin line between success and failure lies when producing a video?

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The basics: audio, light and image Surely it is not easy to name exactly what makes a video good, there will always be a measure of personal taste, but there are some things that every good video has:

Audio Some times, when producing videos we forget or neglect the great important of audio.

But just listen to a video with a badly recorded audio and you will very rapidly become frustrated, bored or annoyed. The importance of getting good audio is enormous. We could even have captured a bad image, poorly lit or shaky. But once we get to the editing room we can put another image in its place, we can use infographics o stock footage, and as long as we have a good audio the video will be watchable. Also.. with good audio you could have two outputs: a video and a podcast!

When recording audio we can have two methods. One is to capture de overall ambient audio. This will include the voices of our panelists or interviewees but also everything that happens in the background. Wind, nearby traffic or even low flying airplanes may be heard.

The other method is to use some kind of directional audio. This could be done through the use of clip-on mics, booms, or directional microphones made for cameras or phones.

I know this lecture is all about keeping your costs to the minimum but If you are planning to start producing videos for your organisations I really recommend making the effort and investing in audio equipment. And it doesn’t even have to be too expensive or specialised.

Something as simple as a directional microphone for your Iphone can greatly improve the audio you get when recording using your phone.

Of course, if you don’t have access to such equipment then, as always, good planning is what you must rely on. Try to keep the environment as controlled as you can. Avoid open areas with lots of wind or passing cars. If done indoors, look for spaces that don’t produce too much echo. Keep control of doors or equipment that could start to emit sounds in the middle of something important.

Lights come first We have all heard the shout of “Lights, Cameras, Action!” It is no coincidence that the lights are the first thing that need to be accounted for before shooting a scene.

Everything we see, we see it because the way light interacts with it. And I am not only talking in a physical way. Light has an amazing artistic and expressive power. Just look at how it has been used not only on the history of cinema but also in painting and theater.

The most basic array for lighting a shot is called 3 point lighting. It basically consist on 3 lights that have very specific roles.

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• The first is the KEY Light: It is the main light in our scene. We should usually try to point it in an angle to our main subject. It should never be directed straight to the camera as it would make everything else look dark.

• The second is the FILL. Usually set opposite to the key, in a way that it softens the shadows produced by the KEY. It also helps to add volume and information to those areas the KEY can’t get to.

• The third is the BACK, it is used to differentiate or cut out the subject from its background But what about us? What can we do if we don’t have dedicated lights? Well, we look for the lights we have and how can we use them to try to replicate the 3 point lights array.

• An open and big window could be our key light. Lets position our subject so it lights them in an angle.

• As a Fill light, we could use a big white board. It will bounce the light off the window and in to our subject side.

• Finally, if we have a lamp, we can put it in the ground, behind our character in order to use it as BACK

Framing When in doubt, I advice that you allow more information in. That means, avoid cropping your subject’s head or the background. A good frame conveys enough information for the viewer to understand what is going on (even if the film is paused). Make sure the frame lets the viewer understand what is going on at first glance: include background, a glimpse of an audience or the interviewer, etc.

Other good ideas to make it look profesional There are other “tricks” to make your video seem professional. These include: • Using a tripod, even a small one, or placing your camera or phone on a table or book or resting your arms on a fixed object will greatly increase te quality of your video.

• Depth of field can help you focus on a face or an object while everything else appears out of focus. This can help convey a professional feel to your film.

• Entertaining value: Some may have reservations about this. “We are serious researchers, we do not need to worry about banal thing such a keeping someone entertained” you could argue. And yes, surely your research carry the outmost importance, but a video is just a tool, no an end. A means to an end. The objetive of the video is to get the viewer interested in the theme. To challenge them and invite them to explore it. To guide them to our institutions, where they will find all the hard data and findings we have. Remember this: the Economist does not

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just publish important facts. They embed them in interesting analysis, personality driven articles, inforgraphics, etc. They want their readers to be entertained –while they are informed.

• Script and direct. It is very important to avoid chance. By developing a script and directing your players (interviewer, interviewees, panelists, audience, etc) you will avoid mistakes and ensure that you get the footage you need to edit a great video.

Just as in a good event, you need a good narrative and a good moderator to see it through.

This advice can go a long way towards making sure you get the best possible materials to work with in the editing room. Combine it with Michael Kleiman’s three steps to producing a video (planning, shooting and editing, and distribution) and you will be set to go.

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A video’s grand finale is not supposed to be a long life in a pen drive in your drawer.

There has to be a plan, and in a world where people like watching cats and cucumbers videos daily, you have to make some buzz around them.

Embrace the digital world, challenge it, and use it to its full potential to benefit you.

ERIKA PEREZ-LEON Editor, Video & Think Tanks Series

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(...) These are people who understand that online work isn’t about replacing old ways of working, it is about enriching their research.

Whatever it is about and wherever it takes place.

NICK SCOTT

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ODI’s award-winning online strategy explained

BY NICK SCOTT

The ODI digital strategy, which I first outlined in a series of blogs for onthinktanks.org, was awarded Online Strategy of the Year 2012 at the prestigious Digital Communications Awards, held in Berlin on Friday. ODI beat off competition from over 100 multinational corporations and specialist digital agencies to claim this major award.

The following article is based on the speech I gave to the jury and explains very succinctly what the strategy is and where/why it has worked. Massive thanks to Enrique Mendizabal at onthinktanks.org and Sophy Kershaw at ODI for their help in developing the speech. I couldn’t have done it without them.

Tony Blair’s policy adviser used to say that the ‘first thing you have to do is win the battle over the problem’. In other words, if Tony Blair doesn’t think there is a problem, then you’re not going to get backing for the solution.

A think tank works in the same way. You have to persuade the researchers that there is a problem before you can implement a solution. So what is the problem at ODI? We identified three major challenges, and three solutions that would help to tackle them.

Think tanks sell ideas. Ideas based on research. Ideas that aim to change the world.

But you can’t sell ideas in the same way as you would a car, or an iPhone. Apple and Ford sell their products to make money, but our ideas are free. So they will always be able to use their income to shout louder and harder.

Which means think tanks have to be clever, if their ideas are going to be heard.

Nowhere is this truer than in the online world. A world bursting at the seams with ideas.

Our response to this challenge was to return to first principles of communications. You wouldn’t create a radio station to reach the listeners of the BBC, so why did we create a new website for every project?

We wouldn’t. Instead we would follow an approach we called ‘being there’. We don’t expect people to come to our sites, instead we push information to them, through the online channels they already use.

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How does this work in practice?

• We try to post information to the most appropriate site. It could be The Guardian, or even the site of a competitor.

• We used Twitter and Facebook from day one.

• We aim to make everything available by email – it is the one tool everyone will check every day.

For a concrete example of the results, we can look to an event series we held a few years back, right at the start of this strategy.

In 2009, ODI was planning a series of lectures on how the private sector can help to reduce poverty. They were to be the first events where we streamed video live online.

Following the ‘being there’ approach, I suggested that ODI should partner with another site for the online portion of the events: Business Fights Poverty.

But the idea met cultural resistance. It was seen as losing control, because we would be directing all traffic through to another site and people would have register there.

Still, we agreed it would be worth a trial run. The results were dramatic. 150 people watched our first online event, coming from a much broader range of private sector companies than ODI had ever had on its’ contact books.

The event series remains one of the most successful we have ever held. Why? Because in our business, it isn’t about numbers reached or sales made. It is about the right people taking up an idea and acting on it. And we had people from KPMG, De Beers and other companies listening to us and taking the ideas back to their boardrooms. Both online and offline activities were creating a direct link between an idea and its target audience.

Empowering researchers is particularly tough online. Many researchers are by nature suspicious of new technology.

Our solution makes online activities central to the research, from start to finish, bolstering the reputation of the individual researchers, and that of ODI, at the same time. We call it ‘cradle to grey’.

First comes the cradle. This is the time in which research ideas are being developed.

Researchers can use wikis to work collaboratively; they can build resource libraries through tools like Delicious or Mendeley. These tools create networks of people interested in ideas.

Next comes the life. This is the time when research is complete. Now, a researcher can publish their work quickly and in multiple formats – a podcast, a video, a blog, an infographic.

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Finally, the grey. This is the lifespan of the research once it’s published. It is immortal.

It never goes to the grave. Amazon is known for this ‘long tail’ effect, and it holds for research too.

What’s more, researchers can grow their long tail. They can post their research to Wikipedia, they can upload their publications to archiving sites, they can release it all under a creative commons licence.

Here’s an example: in 2015 the United Nations millennium development goals will expire. ODI researchers are already among the thought leaders on the future of global development. But how could we best empower them and their work online?

Surprisingly, there was no existing channel for research on this subject. So, we set up a WordPress blog. Now, they have a platform for their ideas.

They need to gather views on what should be in the next set of goals. So, we are about to start a crowdsourcing initiative. Now they have an online research process.

They wanted to track the state of the negotiations. So, we created a Twitter account. Key figures such as the head of the United Nations Development Programme and Chief of Staff at the Department for International Development in the UK are following. Now they have a network to push their ideas to.

Together the quality of research, and the offline and online activities held around it, have led to recognition from the highest levels. A few months ago we received a letter from David Cameron. He says he appreciates the work we are doing and is listening to our messages.

ODI is a not for profit organisation, a charity. This means that every penny spent must be accounted for.

But online was seen as expensive for think tanks. They had spent tens of thousands of pounds on building websites for each new project.

There was no way we would get funding for our strategy if it cost too much. So we made it a point of principle that we wouldn’t spend money on something we could get for free.

We wouldn’t reinvent the wheel; we would reuse what we had wherever we could: • Commercial companies release free tools all the time. So why pay to recreate the functionality you can get from WordPress.com or Google Sites?

• Private individuals release vast quantities of content under Creative Commons Licenses. So why pay for photo libraries when you can use Flickr or Wikimedia?

• Our intranet already works on Microsoft Sharepoint. So why pay tens of thousands for a new content management system for our website unless it becomes necessary?

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This approach made it possible to deliver the whole strategy on less than €5,000 over the first two years, mainly spent on extensions to Sharepoint and subscriptions to a few cheap online tools. Nor did we spend much on staff: until last year we only had one full-time person working on online communications – me.

But by refusing to spend money on things we can get free and concentrating our efforts on impact and value for money, we have better sold the value of online communications to ODI. At last ODI has seen the importance of online communications – our researchers and management understand the problem we are trying to solve. We are growing the number of researchers who champion online ways of working and communicating.

But it isn’t just people in ODI that have taken notice. The sector is following us too. The three principles of our online strategy, “being there”, “cradle to grey” and “reusing the wheel”, are popping up in research strategies all over the world and I’m increasingly being invited to present this strategy to my peers.

These are people who understand that online work isn’t about replacing old ways of working, it is about enriching their research. Whatever it is about and wherever it takes place.

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Heads of communications (and in fact the think tank as a whole), therefore, need their musicians to keep playing.

To keep producing excellent communication outputs that they can combine to make great music -engaging music, popular music, interesting music.

ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL Author, Communications as an orchestra

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Digital research and communications are not separate things, anymore.

They are parts of the same whole. One can generate digital communication content while doing research (e.g. filming or recording interviews with informants).

And one can do research while doing communications (e.g. filming and streaming an event).

ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL

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The future of researchers

BY ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL

I was asked by the organiser of a forum on the Future of research in 21st Century to prepare a short presentation on:

How would a shift in research practice, applied in the social and digital environment, impact on the capabilities of researchers in the future? Applying holistic and analytical approaches, or mixed methodologies, in a digital age.

I prepared a short speech and a video since I was not going to be able to join the live sessions.

The new researcher needs at least three skills: • They must be good researchers –that is a given • They must be good managers –at least at the level of the research project • They must be good communicators – at least internally but increasingly towards their intended audiences Simon Maxwell, former Director of the Overseas Development Institute, would say that they also have to be great networkers and fixers –referring to the need understand and operate the political levers of change.

These two, however, I accept, can be harder for some people to master and could be beyond what a standard job description should expect from a researcher.

But good research, good management, and good communications should be, in my view, non-negotiable.

Being good communicators Lets focus on good communication for research.

There are three aspects to this issue:

First, researchers must have good interpersonal communication skills These are harder to master but can be taught and should be taught at university. Graduates should be able to develop and communicate their arguments clearly to their peers and to others who are not familiar with their work or with their subjects of study.

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In other words, they must be strong editors of their own work; ensuring that it is appropriate to the audiences they intend to reach.

These skills are crucial not only to influence others about the merits of our ideas but also to lead and work in teams –often with people with different interests and skills.

Second, researchers must have a good knowledge of all the communication channels and tools available as well as how to use them This does not mean that all researchers should have the same skills as a professional publications manager, an events manager, a media officer, or a digital communications manager. But they should know about and understand these roles and the tools that can be used in each of these communication channels.

They should, too, be able to produce and use some of the most basic ones under each channel. For instance, 1) a literature review, a policy brief, a working paper; 2) write a blog post, manage a twitter handle, produce static data visualisations using tools like infogr.am, and set-up a Google hangout to stream a workshop; 3) produce a public event and write its report; and 4) conduct a short interview for radio or tv or even record and edit a video or podcast.

This is not a message that my generation would like to hear but it is not far-fetched to expect that younger researchers –those entering the sector today- won’t have these skills already.

Third, new researchers should be expected to have the capacity to make strategic choices about hot to use the various channels and tools at their disposal Here is where the concept of communications as orchestra can be of help.

Ideally, a research centre will have a head of communications in charge of this. But in reality most communication activities are and will be conducted at the level of the research project and of researchers.

Researchers must know how to maximize the impact that various communications tools have by combining them –very much in the same way as a conductor does with an orchestra.

The objective is simple: to keep the audience engaged or, in terms more appropriate to us, keep our ideas on the public agenda for as long as possible in preparation for a possible (only possible, let’s be honest) window of opportunity.

This capacity to make strategic choices can be taught but is more likely to be developed through practice. And this means that research cannot be thought of as separate of communication.

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There is something about the disruptive role of digital channels and tools that affects this.

To achieve this, to maximize the exposure of our ideas, digital channels and tools offer opportunities that few researchers today take full advantage of.

Digital channels make it possible to structure this strategic combination of communication tools.

A simple (and free) Eventbrite page or a WordPress site can allow a small team of researchers –or even a single researcher- to bring together a range of publications, videos, engagement activities such as events, online discussions on Twitter or Facebook, and efforts to reach out to the media.

There are digital tools for almost every communication objective: organizing events, sending out invitations, writing and publishing, writing event reports, announcements, hosting events, monitoring the impact of our research, etc.

In fact, there are digital tools for almost every research and management objective, too. It is possible to run an entire research project online –even a research organisation.

But this will come at a cost to old and current research cultures.

I could talk for hours about this but I’ll focus on one aspect of this disruption, alone. This one relates to the capacity of researchers to take full advantage of all the instruments in the orchestra.

The new researcher has to be comfortable with criticism and even with being wrong.

Digital research and communications are not separate things, anymore. They are parts of the same whole. One can generate digital communication content while doing research (e.g. filming or recording interviews with informants). And one can do research while doing communications (e.g. filming and streaming an event).

Digital is ongoing, therefore. It forces the researcher to communicate right from the start: this is what I want to research should be one of the first “publications” of a research project.

Digital is also open. Research can no longer be done in private –away from the prying eyes of peers, funders, and their audiences.

Digital is reciprocal. The most popular digital tools punish broadcast-only users. They demand engagement. This culture extends to how people share data, ideas, and advice online. Researchers are now potential members of an infinite number of epistemic communities that can pop-up in response to a simple Tweet asking as question or for help.

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Digital is also flexible. We hear stories of cyber-bullying all the time. Of huge online fails that haunt people forever. But these are the exceptions to the rule. For the most part, digital allows researchers to engage with their audiences in a way that contributes to a cogeneration of new knowledge.

Generally, it allows researchers to share ideas and receive useful feedback. It lets them go back on their analysis and correct mistakes. Digital tools make it easier to access information invaluable for research.

To me, all this means that researchers need to be open to criticism. They must learn to take themselves and their community less seriously. And this is easier said that done.

Maybe the new generation of researchers will find this easier. They will have grown up using these tools and with a different experience of privacy.

They will know that it is possible to edit a blog post or add a note to clarify an earlier correction. They will know that asking for help publicly does not mean that their ideas will be stolen.

And it will be obvious to them that a Tweet with a link to a blog that has a link to a working paper is more effective that a working paper on its own.

As a way of concluding this short talk, I should say that all this has an implication on research organisations themselves.

Changes in the research culture will affect hiring practices, the roles and responsibilities of various members of staff, leadership roles in particular, and governance structures as a consequence.

If the research project output changes to reflect this digital first approach then the research project design and management will have to adapt. This will have consequences on how funding is sought, awarded and managed.

And if funding models change, inevitably, so will business models of research organisations.

Fun times ahead!

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Our solution makes online activities central to the research, from start to finish, bolstering the reputation of the individual researchers, and that of ODI, at the same time. We call it ‘cradle to grey’.

NICK SCOTT Author, ODI’s award-winning online strategy explained

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The ubiquity of video in the policy world is good news.

However, far too many think tanks are using video simply as another way of reporting numbers. Very few are taking advantage of the medium’s ability to tell stories that shed new light on an issue.

MICHAEL KLEIMAN

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Finding the stories behind the numbers

BY MICHAEL KLEIMAN

There’s a lot you can learn from numbers.

In the world of public policy, numbers allow you to track statistical trends, identify systematic problems and evaluate an initiative’s impact. Numbers can also serve as reference points to make important comparisons – a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in Japan, 6.5 million internally displaced in Syria, 4,863 cases of Zika in Brazil – and as a way of making predictions – Clinton +10.8 over Trump, +3.1 over Cruz.

Numbers are, in many ways, the currency of the public policy world. While this offers many benefits to policy makers and researchers, it may hinder our ability to influence the issues we care most about. The world of public policy is one of numbers and systems, but humans are inspired by stories and individuals.

Stories drive our empathy. In the words of Atticus Finch, they allow us to “climb inside the skin” of someone else and “walk around in it.” Numbers don’t necessarily get us amped up and ready to change, but compelling stories about fellow humans often do. In order to have a greater impact on the public’s understanding of an issue, think tanks have to become more effective at finding the stories behind the numbers indicated in their research.

As a filmmaker, I believe that film and video are incredibly powerful media for telling these stories. More and more think tanks seem to agree with this, and they are creating short videos to communicate their research findings. The ubiquity of video in the policy world is good news. However, far too many think tanks are using video simply as another way of reporting numbers. Very few are taking advantage of the medium’s ability to tell stories that shed new light on an issue.

This is not to say that film is a lousy way of conveying research. But just as a screenwriter must adapt a novel to make a compelling screenplay, a communications team must adapt a research report to make an effective video. This requires more than interviewing the researcher and drawing up flashy graphics. If a video doesn’t offer information that can’t be found in the executive summary, it’s a waste of the medium’s strength. The most effective policy videos take the viewer behind the research, offering them a first hand look at the stories and images that define the issue being discussed.

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This can sound like an overwhelming proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. It just requires asking yourself a different set of questions. As an example, here are the four simple questions that I go through when I try to adapt a research report into a video: • Who are the people this report is about? (i.e. who is affected by this problem, program, etc.?)

• What does their world look like?

• If I were living in their world, where would I experience the problem (or program, solution, etc.)?

• How can I show an audience that experience on screen?

Once I’ve answered these questions, I go to those worlds, find those people, see the problem as they see it, and document it.

This process does not have to be complicated or expensive. My favorite recent example is a 2014 video about street harassment released by the organization Hollaback!. The video – “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman” – follows a young woman as she walks around New York City for ten hours, documenting the many instances of street harassment she is forced to endure. This simple video, produced for a few hundred dollars, answers the four questions above, offering a first hand look at the problem of street harassment that could never be achieved in a written report.

The video was incredibly effective. To date, it has received over 40 million views on YouTube. According to Hollaback!, it helped garner more mainstream press hits related to street harassment in the two months after its release than in all of 2013. Many policy makers I have spoken with have cited the video as an important reference that shaped policy discussions within their offices.

This is an excellent reminder that effective videos do not always require large budgets.

What they do require are well-thought-out concepts that take advantage of the medium.

Combining Communications & Research When thinking about video and research, it strikes me that there is a great opportunity to combine the production process with the research process itself. Arming field researchers with cameras and storytelling skills or – ideally – pairing them with a production team, gets everyone thinking about how to incorporate video in the early stages of the process.

This allows for more time to think of strong concepts that can take full advantage of what the medium offers. It also means that videos can include the scores of stories and images that researchers have access to. Interviews used for research can be filmed, allowing the subjects and locations referred to in a report to literally jump off the page and giving the viewer/reader an opportunity to engage with the material in a more intimate way.

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Remember, don’t just film an interview with the subjects; document their world – “climb inside their skin” and “walk around in it” with a camera!

After the field research/production phase, there is a tremendous opportunity for collaboration as the research is written – in the language of numbers and systems – and the video is edited – focusing on the more intimate world of stories and individuals. The result of this collaboration is a multimedia piece that allows audiences to zoom in and out of an issue and develop a more in-depth understanding of the problem and what can be done to solve it.

Evidence grounded in hard numbers is critical to understanding the effects of policy problems and the efficacy of potential solutions. However, the importance of statistics should not blind those of us who seek to make a difference on important issues to the value of stories. Video is a great medium to discover and share stories that give a face and personality to the issues we care most about. These stories offer policy makers and the general public a more comfortable way of discussing an issue and explaining its importance to others. By making an effort to identify the lives and stories that lie at the heart of an issue, think tanks can have an impact on policy that extends far beyond the final frame of their videos.

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Top Tips From Diego Velasquez, to keep in mind when shooting: The Basics: Audio Lights come first Framing

From Enrique Mendizabal, on the new researcher: The new researcher needs at least three skills: 1- Researchers must have good interpersonal communication skills 2- Researchers must have a good knowledge of all the communication channels and tools available as well as how to use them 3- New researchers should be expected to have the capacity to make strategic choices about hot to use the various channels and tools at their disposal

From Michael Kleiman, on how to adapat a research report into a video: Here are the four simple questions that I go through when I try to adapt a research report into a video: 1- Who are the people this report is about? (i.e. who is affected by this problem, program, etc.?)

2- What does their world look like?

3- If I were living in their world, where would I experience the problem (or program, solution, etc.)?

4- How can I show an audience that experience on screen?

From Enrique Mendizabal, when thinking of communications: • Focus on developing the ‘right’ portfolio for your think tank; • Build the appropriate (and most competent) team possible; and • Be ready.

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“Remember, don’t just film an interview with the subjects; document their world – “climb inside their skin” and “walk around in it” with a camera!”

Michael Kleiman on filming interviews for greater impact

From Florencia Durón, on communication activities: • An attractive communication is based on team work • Don’t forget you’re talking to people.

• Show personality!

• Be concrete.

• Make it easier for them.

• Dare to be different.

• Internal communication is just as important.

• Observe their reactions.

From Michael Kleiman, when producing a video: Step 1: What are your goals? Who is your audience?

Step 2: Production

Tell A Compelling Story

Show, Don’t Tell

The Importance of Emotion

“Seriality”

“If Wes Anderson Made A Video About ISIS, I’d Watch That” Step 3: Outreach and Distribution

Equal Resources to Production & Distribution

Build Partnerships

Facebook & Targeted Advertising

A Culture of Experimentation

www.onthinktanks.org/series/think-tanks-and-video/

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READ THE SERIES AT: https://onthinktanks.org/series/think-tanks-and-video/

Design: Erika Perez-Leon