How can charities, with limited communications and marketing budgets, get cut-through in today’s competitive environment?
This was the question tackled by Niall Cowley, Managing Director of Bright Young Things Communications, at a recent CharityComms conference.
Cowley gave delegates seven key starting points for their communications work:
1. Identify your target audience. Those people whose attitudes and behaviour you want to change. Try to be as specific as possible.
2. Identify who influences your target audience, and direct your communications to them. “This could be anything from the media to industry bodies, teachers, or even cab drivers... This model of communication is infinitely more credible [than advertising].”
3. Set specific targets. “This makes measuring the success of any communications activity infinitely easier, which then, perhaps, allows you to apply for more funding.”
4. Get your key messages right from the start. “PR campaigns live or die by their key messages.”
5. Whittle down your communications ‘asks’ to three sound bites. “And throughout your campaign you must repeat these until you’re blue in the face.”
6. “Mine your own work” for natural news stories and seek opportunities to proactively create news pegs. “I’ve yet to meet a charity that doesn’t create its own news in some ways through the on-the-ground work that it does. The reasons for a charity’s very existence can itself be interesting to journalists.”
7. Get senior internal buy-in. “Get them involved, and pander to their egos...it’s good to have an advocate for communications that hold the purse strings.”
Top tips
Cowley outlined some low cost, profile-raising techniques available to charities. Here are some of the methods he advocated, including bags of top tips on how to use them:
Conduct a survey
Try to get media coverage with survey results. Surveys don’t have to be expensive. If you’re going for a representative sample then use Omnibus. Or why not survey your beneficiaries and supporters? This may not make the national press, but could make the trade and regional media. To do this, use low cost web-based surveys such as Survey Monkey, Cowley recommended.
Reports
Reports can get massive media attention. Cowley explained: “Beatbullying recently launched one on cyber bullying which was actually a rouse to get media attention for a new Beatbullying service.
“There’s no reason why charities can’t work with the media to define and come up with reports. Beatbullying was successful in getting lots of media coverage in the News of the World, with this technique.”
Piggybacking
Piggybacking can be a very cost effective way for charities to get media coverage, Cowley said. Piggybacking involves linking your story to an existing media story. He advised PROS to monitor the news daily and set up Google Alerts to know what people are saying about them, their competitors and relevant issues.
“If your competitor has released a comment on something, there’s no reason why you can’t give your own opinion in a short statement, if it adds something to the story - particularly if it’s an online story,” Cowley said. He also recommended keeping statements referenced by topic, to help with consistency of messages later.
Predictions
Where possible, try to predict what topics will come up in the media. Contact media outlets to see what they have coming up. Look at what campaigns your competitors have coming up. Then offer your comments and case studies to journalists.
Celebrities
“Celebrities amplify your message but they are not in themselves the story,” argued Cowley. “Never pay for their time. I’ve never paid for a celebrity. A commercial arrangement completely undermines the sincerity of their support.”
Finding a celebrity’s details is not always easy. According to Cowley, it’s worth investing in a celebrity contacts database such as the Red Pages. If you can’t afford this then ask around all of your contacts or send a touching letter to their fan mail box.
One top tip from Cowley was to look at HMV’s website for a list of forthcoming releases, to find who’s on the promotional trail and therefore who’ll be more likely to help you.
Before contacting a celebrity have your ‘asks’ in mind. This could be as fundamental as a statement of support or getting a photo of them supporting your cause. Try to be creative and avoid the ‘T-shirt shot’, Cowley urged. “For example, for Shelter’s This is The Time campaign, we got celebrities to pose with clocks, which gave the pictures more interest and made them more poignant: the media have loved it,” he said.
Once you’ve found your celebrity you need to be honest with them about their role. “Insist they agree to media time right at the beginning with a line by line agreement of what media you want them to do,” Cowley said. “If a celebrity refuses to do this, give them no special communications time with the comms team, they should go through to the supporter office.”
And finally, keep the relationship going and if there is an opportunity to do this without their agent, jump at it.
To see what other techniques Cowley covered in his session, download his presentation here.