CharityComms

Down a gravel track, deep inside the 110-acre Gilwell Park that is the Scout Association's heart and HQ, there's a ten-year-old girl standing at the top of a 40ft wooden pole.

She's about to abseil down and, from the ground, a handful of teenagers in neckerchiefs call out gentle encouragement, tightly grasping the climbing rope that will catch her if she falls.


It's a picture of modern Scouting that is a far cry from thick canvas tents, boys in shorts and old men in militaristic uniforms.


"We know what people associate us with, so whenever we're asked for a picture by a journalist, we always ensure there's a girl in the picture," says John Palmer. "It's one of the things we do that are all about myth busting."


Until recently, Scouting was never very good at telling the outside world what it was about. There's an almost underground network of Scout huts, camp sites, events and activity centres UK wide. Most of us were either members, or know people who were.


Yet, apart from the odd comedy show ‘Dyb Dyb Dyb' sketch, the Scouts are hardly the most visible of charities. Particularly considering the Association boasts nearly half-a-million young members UK wide, around 100,000 adult volunteers and enjoyed an income of over £30 million last year.


"We're the biggest best kept secret," says Palmer, who himself only became involved in a local scout group after he became the organisation's first ever head of marketing and communications. Palmer moved from Oxfam in 2005 with the aim of refreshing the organisation's brand, and telling its story better, ahead of its centenary this year. 


"The organisation was underperforming in terms of its brand and communications. There were elements of a communications and marketing department, but there was no comprehensive strategy; lots of willingness, but no clear vision."


Palmer began putting in place the tools he'd learned in a variety of marketing and communications positions at Oxfam, to take the organisation through a comprehensive nine-month rebranding process.


"We talked to people in a whole series of workshops, with young people, parents, leaders and trustees. We asked some very fundamental questions about what is Scouting about? What is it for? What messages are we trying to communicate?"


Within weeks, the ideals and values of Scouting as fundamentally about ‘Everyday Adventure' had presented themselves, along with the shape of a communication strategy.


"The key challenge for me was not going too fast. I knew within months what needed to be done, but in a big voluntary organisation, bringing everyone in takes time."


The rebrand was not about logos, or even straplines, but a fundamental examination of Scout's core values and approach.

Thousands of members, young and old were asked to fill in diagrams indicating the words they associated with Scouts, and those ideas that should be consigned to the dustbin.


Negative stereotypes are clearly an issue for the Scouts – all knobbly knees, nettle teas and adults with an unhealthy interest in young boys.


"We know we can't change 100 years of history over night, but the question we had to ask was what we could do. Fundamental was training up 385 young people to act as spokespeople for the organisation. When the scouts were invited to Downing Street to meet Tony Blair last week, it was an Asian young man and a white British young woman that went to show what was going on in Scouting.


"When a journalist meets a young woman that's been through Scouting, straight away all those typical questions he wanted to ask he can't ask. Then the coverage becomes all about the young people's stories."


The organisation was bound to get lots of media coverage this year, so the 100th anniversary of the organisation presented Palmer with the ideal opportunity to present a different face to the outside world.


"History is a big risk for us, because the danger is we would spend a whole year looking back," he says. Instead, the organisation split the centenary year into manageable chunks – using the 150th anniversary of founder Baden-Powell's birthday in February to do the history stuff, and "get it out of the way", before moving onto more forward looking ways of marking the 100th year.


In June, a one-day 'urban camp' was erected in Downing street, with 100 Scouts from across London doing everything from building campfires to climbing walls outside the Prime Minister's house, gaining massive press attention without a whiff of khaki shorts or saluting the flag.


In November, thousands of members will enjoy a huge party at the Millennium Dome. A set of Royal Mail stamps – none of which feature Baden-Powell – will be issued, and even a new 50p coin will be minted with the Fleur de Lee icon on the back.


"It's all about positioning; showing Scouting in an unexpected place. We've moved away from history to showing what Scouting is now."


But with any organisation that has so many people involved, surely the Association's members and volunteers are not only a great asset to the organisation. With local groups doing their own local press work, aren't they also a liability?


"We've put in place a voluntary position of media manager in local groups, for people with some experience in media and PR, and we offer them training, ready prepared media packs and press releases. They can call in to our weekly telephone broadcasts about the issues and stories that are going on in the country."


The biggest worry, says Palmer, is not that local groups might generate negative coverage for Scouts.


"Media managers are our strategy for reducing the silence. That's the biggest liability. When we've no media manager in an area, it's not that we get negative coverage, it's that we get no coverage at all."


But isn't there the ever present problem of things going wrong?With the sheer number of young people and adults put together, all doing adventurous activities weekend after weekend, accidents do happen. So does abuse.


"Things don't go that wrong that often," says Palmer. "We're a very safe organisation in terms of child protection and health and safety, they're our biggest priority. But we do have strategies. We have our press line that things should not go wrong, and we take it very seriously when they do, and we change our practices to ensure it doesn't happen again. My role as a communicator is to put out those messages."


In child abuse cases, for example, the Scouts have found that judges in particular – but also child protection agencies – are at pains not only to condemn the abuser for what they did, but also for letting the Scouting movement down.


"When it happens, our strategy is to build on that," says Palmer.


So, the rebrand and positioning is complete. After 2007, the highest profile events ever in the history of the organisation will have taken place. It will have included hundreds of newspaper articles, a handful of TV programmes, meeting with the PM, partnerships with Sainsbury's and 40,000 Scouts from every country in the world converging in Essex for the World Jamboree


How does any communications team follow that? "The challenge will be the expectation – externally and internally – that we can do this year after year. We're already putting in place things for 2008, so that when all this stuff is over, it doesn't suddenly go silent," says Palmer.


For example, Scouts are only now realising the public power that they have.


"We're doing public affairs and lobbying work for the very first time. We've realised we can call up the Prime Minister and he will meet us," says Palmer knowingly. He shows me a Gilwell Park activity site that ominously seems to overlook the whole of London from a green hill on the Essex borders.


After 100 years, the biggest best kept secret is unlikely to go back to being secret ever again.