{"id":40359,"date":"2018-05-11T10:36:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T14:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/blog\/keep-it-real-with-creativity-and-humour-in-communications\/"},"modified":"2024-02-22T09:48:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T14:48:38","slug":"keep-it-real-with-creativity-and-humour-in-communications","status":"publish","type":"blog_posts","link":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/blog\/keep-it-real-with-creativity-and-humour-in-communications\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep it real with creativity and humour in 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LOTS of ideas<\/h3>\n<p>As I\u2019ve been known to say, quantity has a quality all of its own. Rare are the times when the first idea is the best \u2013 Edison tested over 6,000 different materials for his lightbulb patent (including ginger beard hair) before settling on the best solution. If you have one idea, no matter how good, you are missing out on others that may be even better.<\/p>\n<p>Come up with loads of ideas, from the boring to the fantastical, and don\u2019t be limited at the start by practicalities or budgets. Sometimes those crazy ideas can later be refined and fitted to available resources, but if you start thinking from within constraints then you\u2019ll never truly free your thoughts.<\/p>\n<h3>Keep it local<\/h3>\n<p>Just like everywhere else, your area is different. The folks where you are think differently, act differently and talk differently. So why stick to the same standardised language and tropes as everyone else when that\u2019s not going to resonate with anyone?<\/p>\n<p>If you are from Yorkshire, use Yorkshire phrases. Don\u2019t say \u201cit\u2019s going to be 5 degrees Celsius out so be prepared for colder weather\u201d; tell your followers \u201cby eck it\u2019s cold!\u201d If you\u2019re from London, how about \u201cit\u2019s brass monkeys out there\u201d? Use the phrases and images which resonate with local people; they, after all, are the people you want to engage with.<\/p>\n<h3>Simple ideas are the best<\/h3>\n<p>We all get it. Coordinated, major communications campaigns are wonderful things, incorporating several strands of intricately planned activity and carrying both subtext and overtly stated messaging to drive action and behaviour change in measurable and impactful ways.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes, simply sending a duck into space has a bigger impact.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what Stoke-On-Trent learned when running a campaign to be named the UK City of Culture 2021. For very little cost, they strapped a rubber duck to a board, tied it and a camera to a massive weather balloon and sent it into space. As you do. The simple stunt garnered huge attention within the city as well as around the world, and demonstrated that sometimes simple ideas work better than complex ones.<\/p>\n<p>(The fate of the duck, however, has not yet been publicly confirmed\u2026)<\/p>\n<h3>Humanise with humour<\/h3>\n<p>There\u2019s something about a corporate machine that makes it a target for attack and abuse. It\u2019s an organisation. It has no feelings. It won\u2019t be upset by the language and diatribe thrown at it when something goes wrong and people feel a need to vent.<\/p>\n<p>Only, an organisation is made up of people. Real people, with emotions and thoughts which can definitely be affected by such words.<\/p>\n<p>Humanising your organisation goes a long, long way towards making people feel more accountable for their words and actions, and there is little that humanises more than humour. You are not a robot; you are able to be witty and amusing, and in doing so will challenge the wrong but oft-held opinions that public sector staff are bureaucrats and pen pushers.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously this takes a little judgement, but wherever possible throw some humour into your responses to people who get in touch with you. The goodwill it generates is huge, and sometimes it can even garner wider positive public attention. The Science Museum and the Natural History Museum both got involved in a hilarious <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/editors-blog\/the-science-museum-and-the-natural-history-museum-are-fighting-on-twitter-and-its-amazing\/\">Twitter war recently<\/a>, being respectful of each other but using humour to promote themselves brilliantly.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s nothing stopping you (after checking offline first, of course) starting a similar online rivalry with one of your local peers, or commenting on something in the news from your own local and positive perspective. Real people are funny. If you are funny too then people will relate to the organisation you represent and wonderful things will happen.<\/p>\n<p>Though, admittedly, having robot dinosaurs to hand would give you an advantage in almost any battle\u2026<\/p>\n<p><em>Join us in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2I9KcJW\">London on 20 September<\/a> for a chance to collaborate and learn from hundreds of communicators and digital transformation professionals.<\/em><\/p>\n","button":""}}]},"posts_slider_group":{"show_section":true,"posts_slider":[{"add_anchor":false,"anchor_name":"","background_color":"green","slider_subhead":"","slider_headline":"Discover More Blogs","slider_text":"","slider_type":"blog_posts","manual_resources":false,"slider_resource_tax":"recent","add_additional_filters":false,"department_filter":false,"market_filter":false,"outcome_filter":false,"product_filter":false,"region_filter":false,"solution_filter":false,"topic_filter":false,"slider_link":{"title":"View All Resources","url":"\/uk\/learning-center\/","target":""},"slider_link_icon":false}]},"centered_layout_builder_clone":{"flexible_page_builder_group":{"flexible_page_builder_fields":[{"acf_fc_layout":"wysiwyg","add_menu_anchor":false,"anchor_menu_text":"","wysiwyg_group":{"show_section":true,"alignment":"left","subhead":"","headline":"","wysiwyg":"<p>I once asked a sculptor how they were so good at sculpting. \u201cI take a block of stone\u201d, came their reply, \u201cwork out what it should look like and then get rid of all the bits that don\u2019t look like that\u201d. 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Whilst my meagre words won\u2019t do justice to the awesomeness of the session, here are just a few things I took away myself.<\/p>\n<h3>Dedicate some time to be creative (with colleagues)<\/h3>\n<p>We are all busy people (though, weirdly, no-one is ever too busy to go into excruciating detail as to just how busy they are\u2026), so it\u2019s easy to get sucked into the day job and go for the simplest option you think of first.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t do this.<\/p>\n<p>At the start of any project is the time to be creative and see where your wildest thoughts take you. Make sure you plan time into any schedule to get together with your colleagues and throw some ideas around. Sitting down with other people and coming up with ideas together rather than on your own means you can build off each other\u2019s thoughts and see things from different points of views. Collaboration is the key to great creativity.<\/p>\n<h3>Come up with ideas. LOTS of ideas<\/h3>\n<p>As I\u2019ve been known to say, quantity has a quality all of its own. Rare are the times when the first idea is the best \u2013 Edison tested over 6,000 different materials for his lightbulb patent (including ginger beard hair) before settling on the best solution. If you have one idea, no matter how good, you are missing out on others that may be even better.<\/p>\n<p>Come up with loads of ideas, from the boring to the fantastical, and don\u2019t be limited at the start by practicalities or budgets. Sometimes those crazy ideas can later be refined and fitted to available resources, but if you start thinking from within constraints then you\u2019ll never truly free your thoughts.<\/p>\n<h3>Keep it local<\/h3>\n<p>Just like everywhere else, your area is different. The folks where you are think differently, act differently and talk differently. So why stick to the same standardised language and tropes as everyone else when that\u2019s not going to resonate with anyone?<\/p>\n<p>If you are from Yorkshire, use Yorkshire phrases. Don\u2019t say \u201cit\u2019s going to be 5 degrees Celsius out so be prepared for colder weather\u201d; tell your followers \u201cby eck it\u2019s cold!\u201d If you\u2019re from London, how about \u201cit\u2019s brass monkeys out there\u201d? Use the phrases and images which resonate with local people; they, after all, are the people you want to engage with.<\/p>\n<h3>Simple ideas are the best<\/h3>\n<p>We all get it. Coordinated, major communications campaigns are wonderful things, incorporating several strands of intricately planned activity and carrying both subtext and overtly stated messaging to drive action and behaviour change in measurable and impactful ways.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes, simply sending a duck into space has a bigger impact.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what Stoke-On-Trent learned when running a campaign to be named the UK City of Culture 2021. For very little cost, they strapped a rubber duck to a board, tied it and a camera to a massive weather balloon and sent it into space. As you do. The simple stunt garnered huge attention within the city as well as around the world, and demonstrated that sometimes simple ideas work better than complex ones.<\/p>\n<p>(The fate of the duck, however, has not yet been publicly confirmed\u2026)<\/p>\n<h3>Humanise with humour<\/h3>\n<p>There\u2019s something about a corporate machine that makes it a target for attack and abuse. It\u2019s an organisation. It has no feelings. It won\u2019t be upset by the language and diatribe thrown at it when something goes wrong and people feel a need to vent.<\/p>\n<p>Only, an organisation is made up of people. Real people, with emotions and thoughts which can definitely be affected by such words.<\/p>\n<p>Humanising your organisation goes a long, long way towards making people feel more accountable for their words and actions, and there is little that humanises more than humour. You are not a robot; you are able to be witty and amusing, and in doing so will challenge the wrong but oft-held opinions that public sector staff are bureaucrats and pen pushers.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously this takes a little judgement, but wherever possible throw some humour into your responses to people who get in touch with you. The goodwill it generates is huge, and sometimes it can even garner wider positive public attention. The Science Museum and the Natural History Museum both got involved in a hilarious <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/editors-blog\/the-science-museum-and-the-natural-history-museum-are-fighting-on-twitter-and-its-amazing\/\">Twitter war recently<\/a>, being respectful of each other but using humour to promote themselves brilliantly.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s nothing stopping you (after checking offline first, of course) starting a similar online rivalry with one of your local peers, or commenting on something in the news from your own local and positive perspective. Real people are funny. If you are funny too then people will relate to the organisation you represent and wonderful things will happen.<\/p>\n<p>Though, admittedly, having robot dinosaurs to hand would give you an advantage in almost any battle\u2026<\/p>\n<p><em>Join us in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2I9KcJW\">London on 20 September<\/a> for a chance to collaborate and learn from hundreds of communicators and digital transformation professionals.<\/em><\/p>\n","button":""}}]}},"post_slider_clone":{"posts_slider_group":{"show_section":true,"posts_slider":[{"add_anchor":false,"anchor_name":"","background_color":"green","slider_subhead":"","slider_headline":"Discover More Blogs","slider_text":"","slider_type":"blog_posts","manual_resources":false,"slider_resource_tax":"recent","add_additional_filters":false,"department_filter":false,"market_filter":false,"outcome_filter":false,"product_filter":false,"region_filter":false,"solution_filter":false,"topic_filter":false,"slider_link":{"title":"View All Resources","url":"\/uk\/learning-center\/","target":""},"slider_link_icon":false}]}},"call_to_action":{"hide_call_to_action":false,"color":"red","custom_cta":false,"custom_subhead":"","custom_headline":"","custom_description":"","custom_link":null,"custom_image":false}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog_posts\/40359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog_posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog_posts"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_market","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_market?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_dept","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_dept?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_type?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_region?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_outcomes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_outcomes?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_topic?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_products","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_products?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_solutions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_solutions?post=40359"},{"taxonomy":"resource_tax_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granicus.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_tax_services?post=40359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}