The Social Communicator's posterous http://thesocialcommunicator.posterous.com Most recent posts at The Social Communicator's posterous posterous.com Sun, 10 Apr 2011 15:38:00 -0700 Back from EuroComm 2011 (Part I): The Power of Impact http://thesocialcommunicator.posterous.com/back-from-eurocomm-2011-part-i-the-power-of-i-0 http://thesocialcommunicator.posterous.com/back-from-eurocomm-2011-part-i-the-power-of-i-0

Stephanedujurric

It was hot: in every sense! EuroComm 2011, the IABC two-yearly regional conference, took place in sunny and warm Turin, Italy last week, with a 30°C unexpected temperature heating up the discussions! Hot speakers flocked in from global locations, and over 100 international communications professionals listened carefully and exchanged views.

 Keynote speaker Stephane Dujarric, United Nations Director of News and Media, opened the floor on Thursday, April 7th, describing how he has been dealing creatively with increasingly smaller budgets by bartering for effective communications. The UN brings to the table its global outreach and goodwill aura in exchange of 4 main currencies:

  

  1. Participatory media

Recognizing that “the power of traditional mass communication vehicles remains very strong despite new and social media outlets,” Dujarric described how the UN reaches out to content creators in the entertainment industry to integrate its key messages in films scripts, whether it’s Hollywood, Bollywood or Nollywood (Nigeria’s film making hub).The objective is “to reach an unusual audience with important messages,” as in the case of  the US TV series Ugly Betty’s episode shot on the UN’ campus and dealing with the theme of malaria, a subject not so popular among the under 30 demographic segment.

 

     2.  Advocacy journalism

The UN is not a traditional news organization, however, it has identified an opportunity to create content  by supporting large networks with limited presence outside their countries in gathering local footage internationally,

Web based news platforms need to be filled and updated constantly, this generate lots of video footage demand: the networks need the video from global locations but don’t have the staff to produce it locally.

The relaxing of publishing standards provided an opportunity: “10 years ago ABC would not air content not produced by ABC. Nowadays editing and curation has softened,” claimed Dujarrac. The UN approached the manufacturers of the FlipCam™, now part of Cisco, and bartered 40 of their cameras in exchange of the affiliation with UN. Cameras were sent to 40 countries, not just to the UN communications officers, but were given to innovative Project Managers who could capture images form the field to illustrate the real impact that ongoing projects had on real lives. “You need to help the people who do the work EXPLAIN their job!” explained Dujarric. “The objective was to gather human centric stories, about the impact that the UN programs were having on actual people,” he said, underlying one of the main recurring themes of the conference: the increasing need for communicators to demonstrating the impact of their activities.

Media from the countries were given access to these stories (e.g. Indonesia elections) and videos were then repurposed on Youtube channels and on FB. “With just a 50$ camera the reach was tremendous,” added Dujarric, stating that the UN has become just like a journalist, a news content providers for real news outlets.

 

     3.   Hybrid journalism

The UN Development Program is headed by Helen Clarck (New Zealand ex prime minister). She was featured in a video interview staged with a BBC correspondent in NY, hired to moderate the conversation with Helen. These video were called “Facebook conversations.” Questions were sought among FB fans beforehand and then integrated in the interview, and allowed for a humanization of Mrs. Clarck’s image.

“We thought the procedure had a journalistic legitimacy into a global communication PR effort,” explained Dujarric. The video collected had 10K views.

 

4.  Celebrity

“Stars just love working for free!” Dujarric said. Celebrities are ideal goodwill ambassadors from different fields (royal families, sports stars, actors etc)

UNDP has been mostly associated with sports figures, such as Zidane and Ronaldo. They do field visits and lend their image for posters and ads. Zidane insists that the whole supply chain of the Public Service Announcement is on a pro bono basis to be truly effective.

Dujarric explained how the Millennium Development Goals have been an important tool for UNDP and illustrated their ‘8 goals to kick out poverty’ campaign, where a wide array partners converged to produce a compelling video featuring soccer legends Zidane and   Drogba to highlight some of these goals.

The clip was then shown on 45 networks, but was also picked up by unusual media outlets such as Thai airways and the LA County buses!

 

“The key to the success of these programs has been honesty and integrity,” said Dujarric. “Always put the issue before the logo: the issues are more important. The audiences we deal with are much sophisticated today, people sniff out the bull! This system of partnership and bartering has worked well: the actual result is that, by partnering, you create a network of goodwill. You have to nurture the long term proposition and make sure all parties involved get a share and walk away with a sense of satisfaction,” he concluded.

 

Dujarric recognizes that new technology is making communicators’ job spin: the choice of platform in an ever-changing environment can be truly challenging.

The UN is very top down bureaucratic organization, where it is not easy to introduce new communications vehicles and peer to peer and participatory media. Commenting on the recent Spring of Arab World he underlined the subtle yet significant difference between a revolution vs. a regime change. He reminded the audience that the importance of social media outlets lies in the conversations that sparked within the networks, and international organizations have to spark those conversations that will hopefully lead to positive change.

Concerning social media and the different technological platforms available, he advised to let the dust settle, before embarking in costly and complex programs.

He stressed the risk of DIY communications on these platforms (employees, non professional communicators) and the importance of an internal toolkit and guidelines, to anticipate the chance of delicate information leaked out inappropriately, even if communicated on a personal capacity

Stephane Dujarric left a captured audience with three key advices, for successfully moving onto the next phase of communications:

1. Always tell a compelling human story: people do not want to hear from companies, but from people. Make the start of the story about people.

 2. Hire smart people and get out of their way! Impossible to stay on top of all the tech changes. Give them the strategic framework, and let them do what they are experts at

3. Always be good to your interns!! 20 something’s are knowledgeable and might turn out to be your peers of bosses very fast!

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http://posterous.com/images/profile/missing-user-75.png http://posterous.com/users/heOujM3YMLOem Claudia Vaccarone The social communicator Claudia Vaccarone