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Australia's Media Team is a charity which offers media training and resources to charities. Their website is excellent and has some online resources which work equally well for UK organisations. http://www.mediateam.com.au/OnlineTools.aspx
I particularly recommend the Strategic Communications Plan Generator and the Communications Audit for Organisations.
At the fantastic Charity Communications Conference last week there was a session on shock advertising. One of the charities featured was c.a.l.m, a tiny charity which campaigns to prevent the high rate of suicide among young men. It does an amazing publicity job, given scant resources and a reluctance to play the case study game. The charity has only one paid employee yet has managed to run an impactful media campaign. Their adverts aimed at raising awareness are shocking - comparing the number of young British service men killed in Iraq with the number who commit suicide in Britain at the same time. The latter is much greater. The charity managed to persuade an ad agency to design the ads for free and got free poster sites and airtime on MTV. I take my hat off to them for this, but am not convinced they shouldn't try the PR route. I realise providing case studies must be extremely difficult in the case of suicide but I still think some parents/friends would be willing to talk (and provide a photo of the person who committed suicide) as long as the journalist was sensitive and responsible. If I was c.a.l.m I might try the case study route by offering a good story as an exclusive to a carefully chosen journalist.
Yesterday, at the second Charity Communications Conference, Nick Cater, a freelance journalist who writes for Third Sector and broadsheets, said the press release was dead. Vivienne Parry, columnist for the Times agreed. Only David Brindle of the Guardian was less sure. Vivienne and Nick said they got nearly all their story ideas as a result of personal approaches and ignored most of the press releases they got. They recommended the old fashionned hand written letter as an effective way of getting their attention.
I read about this in the excellent Voluntary News http://http://www.voluntarynews.org.uk/wp/
The toolkit is pretty drily presented and is designed for public sector not voluntary sector organisations, but looks extremely useful as a reminder of the steps to go through to ensure you are communicating effectively with the public http://www.nao.org.uk/effective_communication_toolkit/index.htm
Anyone interested in learning the basics of how to campaign and lobby government should watch BBC2's new series Power to the People. Last night's first episode followed a Cornish village's campaign to try and keep their village school open. The 'campaign expert' who presents the series is Tim Samuels. He is not a hardened campaigner, he's not an old school protester. In fact he's an ex-BBC investigative journalist who is media savvy, persistent without being agressive and knows the power of a good stunt. Last night he secured the village school campaign media coverage by persuading the Cornish community to take over a small green in Islington (cows and all). He showed how to organise a stunt and how to get the community involved. He then showed how to manipulate and get the attention of local councillors and the Department of Education. It was great to see him at work, with a photo printed off the internet of the councillors he wanted to speak to, he camped outside the council offices and waited to catch them going into their office. The school campaign failed - but what the programme did show was the importance of bringing a community together, how it boosted their morale and got them working together. Great TV for any budding campaign groups: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/power_to_the_people/
This issue is causing controversy amongst children's and family charities. Some have been concerned by programmes like the Baby Borrowers (where teenagers were lent babies to look after), House of Tiny Tearaways.and I smack and I'm proud, Charities are concerned on the impact on the children of appearing on TV - that whatever the age of the child, it is seldom in their best interests to be paraded on TV. After their appearance, a child might be bullied, or stigmatised and could never stop the programme being repeated. Some charities appear to want to ban the use of real children but others are not so sure, including us. If you ban the use of real children, children real voices will not be heard. Surely this curtails their right to self expression? Watch this space because Ofcom are considering revising their guidance on the use of children in TV programmes.
In September an outrageous request from a freelancer for "photogenic war widows" hit the media pages. The Editor of Glamour said the freelancer had got her views wrong. But I still get told regularly of editors (not of Glamour) who insist that their interviewees should be good looking and will not accept a case study without a photograph. I was ashamed to hear the other day about an incident relating to askCHARITY. A charity called a freelancer who had put out a case study request. He offered a client as an interviewee but the first question to him was "is she pretty?". The charity PR was offended by the question and declined to help. I hear such stories all the time and the poor freelancers are only doing their commissioning editors' bidding. Linda Jones, a freelancer writes in her blog "If you’ve ever had an anorexic case study turned down by an editor because she wasn’t ‘skeletal’ enough then you’ll already know how demanding women’s magazines can be. Ask many a staff or freelance writer and they can quote you chapter and verse on women’s glossies rejecting case studies or even whole features because of what the subjects look like". http://www.freelancewritingtips.com/2007/04/too_fat_to_feat.html None of the freelancers who comment like "looks screening" and charities equally have little power to change the dynamic. If they complain to the freelancer they will say it's the editor. If they complain to the Editor they will probably deny they only accept attractive case studies....