Brushing Up On The Floss

Image: Epic Games

Last weekend found me on the edge of a football pitch, wrapped up warm, the nerves slightly on edge. It was the second round of the Cup competition for my son’s football team. The pressure was on. The kids were excited. The whistle was about to blow. And there’s my son standing on the left wing…doing the Floss!

Disclaimer: I can’t do the Floss. Don’t ask me to try.

Look around any playground and there will be loads of kids flossing. Listen into any playground conversation (or eavesdrop into any family dinner conversation around the country) and there will most likely be discussion about Fortnite – the free-to-play Battle Royale game.

It’s the latest computer game craze and the popularity of the game has grown massively in just a few months. If you want to find out more here is an interesting BBC Radio 5 Live feature on Fortnite.

What interests me most about the game is how it has created such a following and what goes into making it so popular. And what might we learn about communications and engagement from the experience.

1)    You can make it personal – you can create your own character in the game (for a fee – which is where the company makes it money from). From dinosaur heads, to disco spacemen, to medieval knights with the latest headphones on – you can be who you want to be in the game.

2)    It’s funny and quirky – you can purchase little dances for your character to do. Before the game loads you spend a couple of minutes in a holding pen (waiting for other users to join before the game commences). Here everyone is running up to each other and showing off their dance moves and trying to impress the other users.

3)    You can play with your friends. You can team up in groups of 2 or 4 and play the game with your friends – talking with them over headsets and enjoying the experience together.

4)    You can watch other people playing it – Fortnite is one of the most watched games on YouTube and Twitch with millions of views every week. There are popular influencers like Ali A who advocate the game and command a huge, loyal following.

5)    There is a steady flow of new content to retain interest in the game. The challenge with anything like this is that users will get bored and find another game to play. Fortnite seems to have judged the release of new content just right to give players enough to get excited about but not too much that they run out of new ideas. New ‘limited edition’ game modes or weapons or moves keep it feeling fresh even if the basic game play never changes.

While there are some general lessons here for PR and Communications around engaging with influencers, fresh content and customisation of messages or platforms, the biggest lesson I can see from the Fortnite phenomenon is around the importance of engaging their gaming community.

Listening and responding to the community who play a computer game is key. It makes or breaks a game. A company that is seen to listen and acts to improve the user experience creates a positive momentum that is then spread across social media. It means you can make a few slip ups or when something goes wrong (like a server issue) you are given the benefit of the doubt. And when you add or introduce a new product or feature it rapidly infiltrates the community and becomes adopted.

Yes, you need a good game. Yes, being able to Floss helps. But more than that – listen to your audience, show that you are acting on what you have heard and the potential is limitless.

Do the dance - get the t shirt! https://polozatee.com/product/do-the-floss-dance-instructional-t-shirt-pl/

"Fish aren't allowed plastic. So stop using straws." Lessons in behaviour change from a six-year old

A few weeks ago my six year old daughter had her flu vaccination at school. She came home telling me how she was a “Flu Hero” and showed me a leaflet she’d been given. The leaflet explained, in language a six-year old can understand, how by having the vaccine she was not only protecting herself but also her whole family from getting the flu this year. It really struck me how powerful that simple communication could be. By explaining WHY she had the vaccination she will grow up understanding how important it is and that will be something that will stay with her for the rest of her life and her own children’s lives. This is a stark difference to how my generation was educated at her age – focusing on developing skills as opposed to encouraging a deeper understanding of the world.

Much of what we do in the communications world aims to change people’s behaviour. That’s a tough brief, when you consider the complexity of the network of beliefs that underpin the choices we make. Getting an adult to change the habits of a lifetime can be extremely hard, whether that be changing what they eat, taking exercise, or giving up smoking. But kids are different. They are sponges for new information, and they are only just forming those beliefs that will inform their behaviour as adults.

This gave us the stimulus for an idea we presented to a client recently. We wanted to find a way to get people more engaged in recycling plastic. It’s a valuable material and in 2017 it’s a travesty that so much plastic still goes to landfill. The Blue Planet II series has once again brought this issue to people’s attention. So I asked my daughter what she thought about it and what her message would be to get people to behave differently. She thought for a few seconds and confidently said “Plastic is invading the sea. Stop using straws. Because fish aren’t allowed plastic.” I wonder what people across the country would do if all the six-year olds in the UK came home with that message? I’d be willing to bet it would have more impact than dull leaflets from the council, or even Sir David Attenborough’s personal appeals for action. It worked for me - in the last week, every time I have put a piece of plastic in the bin I have questioned myself. 

If you want to change something for the future – get a 6-year old to tell you how to do it. The way they communicate is so clear, simple, uncluttered by noise and our adult need to rationalise a gut decision. They have this innate passion for things they believe in. And they make choices with their heart.

Listening and paying attention to people around us can be the stimulus for a great idea. Open your ears – and listen to what your kids are telling you. You’ll probably learn something.

Courtesy of Ella, aged 6. All copyrights reserved (although negotiable for the cost of some Haribo)

The Great Cookery Storytellers

Source: Antonio-carluccio.co.uk 

I was sad to read of the passing of Antonio Carluccio yesterday. For keen amateur chefs and mushroom lovers he was well known for his cookery programmes and books. For ‘people who lunch’ he was known through his chain of restaurants.

For me, he was a great story teller and someone who could make the daunting world of European cookery accessible to an 11 year old Somerset boy watching cookery shows on his Mum’s portable telly.

Carluccio and Keith Floyd (who I was fortunate to meet on a cookery course just a few days before he died) are two of my heroes. From an early age I used to enjoy watching cookery shows. Floyd on France, Floyd on Spain, Food & Drink and a whole host of cookery shows provided access to a world of food and culture otherwise inaccessible to your average Brit. Carluccio added a taste of the exotic to BBC’s Food & Drink show – and I remember him inspiring the first dish I ever cooked myself from scratch – mushroom scrambled eggs.

What was great about Carluccio and Floyd was their ability to make the complicated simple and to tell a good story about the dishes they were cooking. They didn’t bore you with the history of the dish, rather they would talk personally and passionately about what the dish conjured up for them in terms of memories, emotions or experiences.

These are the ingredients that make a good story. Whether your audience is an amateur cook or someone living with a chronic condition or a healthcare professional - we can learn a lot from these TV chef masters about bringing a message to life, making the message personal and being yourself. Companies don’t have to flavour everything with vanilla – they can create robust, tasty, exotic messages delivered with passion and heart that inspires people to do something they would not have done before.

Thanks for the ideas, inspiration and recipes Antonio and Keith – I hope you are enjoying a glass of wine somewhere.

Source: bbc.co.uk 

Origin Stories

Every superhero needs an origin story – where they came from, the life events that turned them into the (super) human person they are today.

It’s the same for every PR – there’s an origin story. The thing that showed you were destined for a career in communications.

So on the day of the launch of Mearns & Pike we thought why not share ours (movie rights available on request).

Jon

I thought my origin story was going to be dull – about me blagging my way onto the Shire Health graduate scheme. But when I told a good friend of mine, James, about our new business he reminded me that I’d always been a ‘PR man’ even back at school.

So my origin story goes all the way back to 1990. It’s Red Nose Day and my friends and I have decided that in order to helping starving kids in Africa (and in an attempt to impress the female half of the school) we would spend our break times serenading girls and either get paid for our efforts or get paid to go away. The plan to make it Red Nosey was to sing into a rubber chicken. Unfortunately the local joke shop was out of rubber chickens so we had to improvise and one of the guys stopped at a local butcher on the way to school and purchased a string of sausages.

In the meantime, I had sent off some details about our escapades to the Red Nose Press Office – essentially, that was my first ever press release although I didn’t know what a press release was at the time – and they got in touch to see if we would be willing to do a breakfast interview on BBC Somerset Sound. The PR-machine kicked into gear and I spent the evening coordinating with mates and their mums to get them to the radio studio for early the next morning.

Our radio interview went well – I was nominated as the spokesperson and managed to get a few key messages across with limited nervous giggles. And we thought that was that.

Later in the day I was summoned to the Headmaster’s office. The local BBC TV planners had been in touch wanting to arrange an interview with us. The Headmaster (it was a stuffy private school) was not convinced that the publicity was a good thing – so I gave my first ‘pitch’ and with a few promises about not missing lessons etc convinced him to go for it. Next came the project plan – we needed to find a location for filming, someone to meet-and-greet the film crew, permission to bunk off some of the lesson from our teacher (the headmaster didn’t need to know this bit) and to make sure the sausages (the real talent) were well cared for.

The plan was executed perfectly and at 18:21 there was a 30 second clip of us murdering ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ on local telly with a lovely backdrop and mention of the school.

And a PR man was born (even if the girls were less impressed than hoped for).

Kirsty

My story is a little more political in nature and, unlike Jon’s first foray into the media, had a serious intent behind it (those of you who know me would expect nothing less!). Aged 12 I attended the local comprehensive school in the small town of Denny, somewhere roughly in the middle of the Scottish Central belt. On a particular cold, miserable day I decided that I would like to wear trousers to school rather than the standard issue black skirt. I knew this would not be approved of, and that it was pretty likely I’d get into trouble. So my lobbying began.

I got a few friends on board, some motivated by teenage feminist opinions, others by a desire to stir things up a little. Together we rallied a small group of girls to stage a short sit down protest in one of the main corridors of the school. It was quickly dissipated by the deputy head, but the movement had started. The next day we did it again, this time with more girls joining us. Then the next day we were there again, and now girls were actually coming to school in trousers. There were enough of us involved now to have safety in numbers – the establishment couldn’t punish every single one of us.

On the fourth day of our campaigning the papers came. I can’t take credit for calling them. In fact to this day I have no idea how they found out. But they came and the result was a photo on the front page of the local paper – 100 or so girls photographed outside the main school block. The following week the Scottish Sun ran the story with the headline “School girls get skirty”. Needless to say the school was not happy about the publicity, and neither was the local authority. The Director of Education informed the head teacher that in fact he had no right to prevent girls from wearing trousers and the rule was overturned.

That week I went to school wearing trousers. That deputy head who had broken up our protest on day one sent me to the head. When I walked into his office he took one look at me and sent me back to class. We had won.

So maybe that first taste of grassroots campaigning was what gave me the motivation to work in PR. Or more likely it is my natural desire to challenge injustice and inequality that makes me good at what I do. Somewhere in there that 12-year old anarchist is just dying to get out. 

Hanging Up The Chinos

Hanging up the Corporate Cleats

I’m a fan of the NFL (American Football) and there seems to be a trend for retiring players to put a photo of their boots hanging from a peg when they are retiring from the game. I’m not exactly retiring from the game but I am hanging up the must-wear ‘fashion’ item of the corporate office – the khaki chino.

While the chinos gather dust in the cupboard, I am going to be embarking on a new adventure with my partner Kirsty as we launch our own marketing & PR agency.

I have had a brilliant time at Medtronic over the past 9 years and am really grateful to the awesome people I have worked with and the supportive bosses I have had during my time with the company. The people who work at Medtronic are passionate about what they do and about helping the people whose lives are touched by the products they make. Even though it is a massive global company, I have been lucky enough to have the autonomy and trust to work on projects or suggest ideas that I believe will work, even if they have not been tried before.

Among the highlights for me has been organising, planning and presenting nine annual Kick Off Meetings, getting more and more adventurous and creative each time – from ‘experimenting’ with a 3-minute facts and stats video nine years ago all the way up to the most recent This Morning-style ‘Live TV show’ experience, complete with ad breaks filmed by different teams. I am proud of the free PR workshops we put on for hospital press teams and patient organisations, and all the campaigns over the years that have shown how medical technology can make a difference to the lives of patients. 

There have been a few projects recently in Medtronic that reminded me what I love about communications (particularly our awareness campaign on mechanical thrombectomy for stroke patients) and that has given me the passion to start a new business with Kirsty working on projects that make a difference – whether it is supporting start-ups to get their message out there, helping someone figure out what they want to say, or launching something cool that really benefits patients. We want people to love working with us and to be proud of what we achieve together. 

If you are interested in finding out more about the chino-free, next chapter then please get in touch.

Jon@mearnsandpike.com

Be More Ostrich

Yesterday I saw this advert. It stopped me in my tracks. It made me feel excited, uplifted; I wanted to share it with people, because I wanted to share that feeling. Working in communications it got me thinking about how a 90 second advert could make me feel like that?

The message is simple. “Do what you can’t”. It speaks to you. It’s something which nearly everyone can relate to in some way. That feeling of wanting to overcome the impossible; achieve something that others think you can’t; believing in it even when at first you fail. As humans we are pioneers, inventors – a species which is on a never-ending journey of exploration. It is in our nature. The most effective campaigns are ones that connect with a fundamental human insight. Something which transcends cultures and language. 

In that 90 seconds Samsung aren’t selling us a phone; they are showing us how they can help humanity to achieve the unachievable. So simple. So beautifully executed. 

#WorkILove

The Five-A-Day Approach to Meetings

Want a healthy discussion in your meeting? Try the five-a-day approach.

I tried something new last week when I was facilitating a workshop – and it involved vegetables. Not real ones, badly drawn ones on pieces of card as any talent I have for ideas dwarfs my non-existent talent for drawing. The idea – taken from the Agile approach to project management – was to estimate the size of a task or activity so that we could see if it needed to be broken down into component parts or if it could be tackled as it was. 

We had peas, carrots, potatoes, aubergines, cauliflowers and pumpkins. Each team member had their own set of vegetables. I would read out a task and the group would hold up a vegetable that indicated how much work they thought would be involved in completing that task. A pea was easy – a simple phone call or setting up a meeting – and a pumpkin indicated a massive, chunky piece of work that was either reliant on many things coming together or would involve a lot of moving parts. 

It was a quick way to see if everyone was thinking along the same lines - and if there were some outliers it gave them a chance to share why they thought something would be easier or trickier than the rest of the group. We rattled through 30 tasks in about 30 minutes. 

The approach is one I read about in Jeff Sutherland’s book Scrum – which extols the value of an agile approach to project management. The beauty of the book is that you don’t have to buy into the whole Scrum approach. There are tips and tricks that can help any project stay on track and that you can take into a workshop to help move a project along.

“Don’t estimate in absolute terms like hours, it’s been proven that humans are terrible at that.”

— Jeff Sutherland, Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice The Work in Half the Time

In the book, Sutherland suggests sizing tasks by dogs – but seeing as I am not a dog lover and ducks (I do love ducks) don’t come in a wide enough variety of sizes I went for vegetables.

The result was a quick-fire approach to what might have been a painful exercise. And yes, I know there were six vegetables, not five – none of which were harmed in the writing of this blog.