The new identity had its first outing at the Citizen Power: Peterborough launch on Monday 19 July at Peterborough’s Norman Foster designed Thomas Deacon Academy.

The new identity had its first outing at the Citizen Power: Peterborough launch on Monday 19 July at Peterborough’s Norman Foster designed Thomas Deacon Academy.

Thirdperson has been working with the RSA to help develop its thinking, messaging and brand language around the programme, which will now be applied to a range of innovative local engagement tools.

“The Citizen Power Peterborough programme is all about giving local people the power to shape the future of their city. But we had a big problem: we were finding it tough to turn big ideas like these into communications that people can understand and actually inspire them to get involved. Thirdperson are our solution. I wouldn’t go to any other business doing what they do. First class in every respect”.

Sam McLean, Director of Public Participation, Head of Citizen Power programme RSA Projects

Links
http://www.citizenpower.co.uk/
http://www.thersa.org/projects/citizen-power

We’re not trying to teach anyone to suck eggs, but we live and breathe this stuff, so here are some of the marcomms issues that we come across all the time. And how to deal with them.

Before you get started

First and foremost, always think about things from the reader’s point of view, not yours. As a quick mental checklist, think about who, what, why, how, when and where the reader is affected. Do your articles give readers all the relevant answers? This is where you can show empathy, add to the reader’s understanding and provide some context.

There’s a hierarchy to good comms. Your stories usually don’t have equal weight. Make it obvious what’s most important. Some readers may not get past the lead story, so make sure it’s your best.

People like reading about other people, so it’s worth thinking about a bit of human interest. So consider case studies, examples and personal profiles to demonstrate “how does this affect me?”.

And remember, it’s not “thought leadership” if everyone else is doing it. Read your competitors’ output and do better – or at least put a new spin on it. Don’t forget there are things out there called newspapers that are apparently quite popular! You can’t compete with these guys on news, but your newsletter is your big chance to show off in your specialist subject, so go deeper and do some analysis.

Finding the right words

Headlines are the heroes of your comms. What, in a nutshell, is the story about? Let your reader grasp the crux of your story from the headline and stand-first. Get them interested, but don’t be too clever or oblique as to annoy the reader – make clear what the story is about so the reader can quickly decide whether it’s relevant to them or not.

It might sound obvious, but don’t bury the most interesting stuff at the bottom of your articles or e-shots – put it right at the top. Make your ‘conclusion’ work as a ‘summary’ at the start of your articles and you’re usually halfway there.

Remember to divide up dense copy and mix up long and short sentences. Like this. Junk the jargon and axe the acronyms; instead, use everyday words that you would feel comfortable saying out loud.

And always get someone else to cast a third eye over your work before you go to press or hit the send button.

Design and imagery

Make sure you have access to someone with the design skills to create an engaging layout, with a consistent grid, style sheet and colour palette, but with enough flexibility to allow for creative thinking and layout options to give the reader some visual variety and a satisfying reading experience.

Less is often more: give your copy a breather every now and again in your page layout – you don’t have to fill up every inch of space on the page. Spice things up a bit with appropriate signposting and lay-out techniques to break up your articles into bite-sized chunks to help the skim reader – try stand-firsts, back-story side panels, key facts and figures, pull-out quotes, etc.

Take a leaf out of the popular press and give your stories a human face with decent photography and imagery – but avoid last minute snaps with your mobile phone! Image selection is a skill, rather than a bit of fun at the end once you’ve done all the difficult stuff. Pictures should enhance and support your copy, not distract the reader. There’s a lot of free or very cheap imagery out there, but watch out for cliché.

I’m interested, what do I do next?

Finally, make sure, if possible, that you identify clear calls to action for the reader – what to do next, who to contact, etc. For example, if you’ve got this far, why not e-mail stevesmith@thirdperson.co.uk and tell us what you think?

How we can help

We have loads of experience of establishing an appropriate visual and written tone of voice for client communication, making complex subjects accessible to a range of business and consumer audiences.

If this strikes a chord, we can help you produce high quality print and online comms that your audience will value, through creative content and delicious design services. Or, talk to us about a complete outsourced marketing communications package.

You’ll get the benefit of our writing and design skills, business knowledge and experience to help ensure that your efforts don’t go straight in the bin. We hope this doesn’t.

For further information, please contact: Steve Smith

The brief was to compile a simple-to-follow and easy-to-read document to help teachers understand all the different ways A New Direction can work with them. They offer a broad range of learning opportunities with creative partners to London’s children and young people – including their flagship enquiry school programmes, the Arts Award and their alumni network.

The brochure asks teachers and head teachers to take just a few minutes of time to discover, explore and choose A New Direction. We designed a vibrant colour coded tabular system to divide the sections and invite readers to explore further. We condensed and organised information from numerous internal sources into relevant sections and rewrote the copy using a consistent tone of voice to create this teacher-focused and benefit-led brochure.

It also featured a pullout booklet detailing the enquiry school programmes offered by the 14 creative partners working with A New Direction. The quality and length of the programme summaries varied considerably. So we reduced each one to fit a page, rewrote them in a consistent style, removed jargon and highlighted key points of interest to help teachers decide which programme would be best suited to their young people.

Creative learning opportunities from Tim Reed on Vimeo.

We’ve just completed this brochure for our client A New Direction. Aimed at headmasters and teachers designed to ask them to take a little time to discover, explore and choose discover-explore-choose.