Building, Construction News and the ICE offer their 10 great tips for lobbying campaigns

This week I was delighted to hand over the reins as Chair of CAPSIG to my successor, Phil Morgan, head of external and public affairs at the Civil Engineering Contractors Association.

CAPSIG is the construction and property special interest group of my professional institute, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. It's a group of 250 or more bright minds in PR working in property, architecture, construction and related sectors, who meet four or five times a year to network and share ideas on best practice in PR. I have had the privilege of chairing the group for more than four years, so it was high time that someone else took over the role. I've no doubt Phil will do a great job... Although not too good, please Phil... ;-)

The official election of the new Chair for CAPSIG was also marked by an excellent event on lobbying campaigns in construction. (I shall put the link to the presentations from this event as soon as it's available).

We looked at three recent campaigns that have aimed to influence political support and policy for the construction industry and that are, to varying degrees, still active now:

• Nick Edwards, Editor of Construction News, talked about CN's Vote for Construction campaign *
• Sarah Richardson, Deputy Editor of Building, talked about Building's Charter 284 *
• Lionel Zetter, one of the PR industry's most distinguished consultants, talked about the campaign for a National Infrastructure Investment Bank (NIIB) run by the Institution of Civil Engineers.

(* sorry, the links to CN and Building may only be helpful if you are a subscriber to these publications - their websites now have paywalls).

Each campaign has clearly enjoyed some success so far, although I got the sense that (much like the rest of us) they are facing a much harder task now if they still want to lobby a coalition Government.

But it was particularly fascinating to hear how and why industry magazines choose to run their own campaigns. Like professional institutes and trade associations, these titles see themselves in much the same light as membership bodies - lobbying on behalf of their readers in order to build loyalty, to be seen to be 'giving something back', and to position themselves as leaders in the industry.

Phil asked each of the speakers for their views on what makes a successful campaign. Here are the 10 great tips they offered:

1. Have clear aims - this is where I think both Building and the ICE campaigns were particularly strong. CN had a broad message that could be adapted to different local needs, but the others had the edge simply because they had set out much more specific and measurable actions they wanted to see. Obviously, the more targeted and detailed you can be in your aims, the more focus, impact and success you are likely to achieve. 
   
   
2. Don't campaign against your own readers/members - cue an interesting discussion about whether CN would ever run a campaign on tackling health and safety failures in the industry... but that, as they say, is another story...
   
   
3. Commission research first - Building used the LEK report, the ICE commissioned its own research and discussion paper on the feasibility of the NIIB (see link above), and CN tapped into the political insights and resources offered by its sister company DeHavilland. This research gives a strong factual foundation to any lobbying or PR campaign and means it will be taken more seriously.
   
   
4. Make it memorable - via a catchy name, striking logo, publicity stunt etc. This is where Building made a huge impact. The agitprop graphics created by Group Production Editor David Rogers were awesome, and created a strong visual brand for the campaign that Building used over the six weeks on the run-up to the Election.
   
   
5. Aim to make a difference - and, if I may add something here, make sure you claim the success afterwards. There's no point going to all the effort of lobbying for change if no one knows about it. As Sarah said at the CAPSIG event: it pays to be "shouty and intelligent".
   
   
6. Offer solutions - this is particularly important in the current climate. A campaign cannot just be a whinge.
   
   
7. Align with Government - or, in other words, don't be stubborn and try to push water uphill. And forget any special pleading for the sector. Know what the Government's aims are, and propose a clever, low cost way they can meet those aims.
   
   
8. Forge alliances with others - something I believe is absolutely critical if you aim to achieve thought leadership (here's an earlier blog post on this). But there was no chance of Building and CN cuddling up together on a joint campaign, I was told - no matter how great the threat to the industry. This is where the ICE and other professional institutes can take the lead. Interestingly, Building pre-tested its campaign with several industry groups and then made many phone calls over a couple of weeks to ensure they could sign up key people and organisations to the cause. Even they knew it would not be enough to put the Charter on the front cover and expect everyone to respond - the team had to get out there, be proactive and work hard to recruit the campaign's supporters. One thing I particularly liked about CN's campaign was the way it provided readers with information on prospective parliamentary candidates in their area, plus other information that would allow supporters to localise the messages behind the campaign.
   
   
9. Be realistic about what you can achieve - all three campaigns demonstrated this modesty and realism, and this plays well with Government and readers/members alike.
   
   
10. Have patience - oh, how true! Campaigns may only run at full throttle for a short time, but the real success comes from sustained, long-term effort. Like the ICE's campaign, think in terms of several years and - assuming it's worth doing - make the commitment to see it through to the end.

So what else would you say is essential for a successful lobbying campaign?

And what campaigns should UK construction be running now, faced as we are with many new political, economic, social and technological challenges? Participants at the CAPSIG event suggested campaigns on energy security, respect for people/employees, support for SMEs, recruiting new talent into the industry and improvements to the public procurement process. What would you add to that list?

As part of BrightTalk's Green Week, I tuned in yesterday to an interesting webcast by Lucy Shea, CEO of Futerra on 'Green Messaging and Marketing'.

Futerra are specialists in behaviour change communications and long-time advisers to Governments around the world on their climate change campaigns. I love their work.

In the webcast Lucy took the opportunity to remind everyone of the overwhelming importance of setting clear, measurable, strategic and tactical objectives before launching into any sort of communications campaign, before explaining again two areas of Futerra's work which I'd like to mention here.

The first is a very simple but helpful way of beginning to segment audiences.

It's no substitute for proper market research, but this sort of segmentation can help kickstart your communications planning by helping you to understand the range of potential reactions to your green messages.

Futerra has taken inspiration from the work of Cultural Dynamics (CDSM) and CDSM's concept of 'Values Modes'. The Values Modes categorise people into 12 discrete psychographic types within three general groups ('Settlers', 'Pioneers' and 'Prospectors').

Sounds a bit dry and academic I know, but bear with me - it's marketing dynamite.

Understanding these types of people and their motivations is very important to anyone who wants to sell stuff or create a communications campaign that raises awareness, changes hearts and minds and effects behavioural change. As CDSM explains:

"The Values Modes help to explain WHY people do the things and make the choices that they do."

As I heard the Futerra folk explain at Ecobuild, and as Lucy reinforced yesterday, Futerra has used this work to create its own catchy set of marketing groups:

• They start by describing what they call the 'Brick Wedge' (CDSM's 'Settlers'). These are the 'small world thinkers', people who care passionately about local community issues (parks, neighbours, dog fouling etc.) and work hard at making better environments for themselves and others. They probably don't think they have much, if any, impact on the global scene for good or ill. They want answers, not more questions. They tend to be suspect of change, think things were better in the past, and care about being good home-makers. And it's not just a middle class tendency - disadvantaged kids in inner city estates are often brick wedgers.

• At the other end of the spectrum is the 'Green Wedge' (CDSM's 'Pioneers'). These are the 'big world thinkers', people who are deeply concerned with the big global issues of environmental sustainability. They are more likely to worry about the impact of glacial retreat than the state of the local park. They were the first into recycling - they're now cutting consumption and composting. Driven by a strong moral imperative, the cost of green makes very little difference to them - they do it because it's the right thing to do. They are suspect of cool and anything too commercial (witness the Deep Greenies' grumbles about this year's Ecobuild exhibition).

• Potentially most interesting of all is the 'Gold Wedge' (CDSM's 'Prospectors'). These are the 'outer directed' folk, ultimately motivated most by what other people will think of them (although they would never admit or articulate it like that). They are optimistic, ambitious and savvy. They like change because it's cool, but it has to be visibly cool, desirable and high status (on their terms, not yours). Needless to say, they tend to be the high spenders.

The key point to remember here is that messages for one group will not cross over to another.

This explains why PR campaigns by sustainability experts (very often the green 'pioneers') don't seem to have much impact on builders (very often 'settlers' in outlook). It explains why your communications need to be targeted. Or, if you want mass market business, need to appeal to all.

Lucy also gave some good pointers for green messages that succeed better than others. To paraphrase her advice:

1. Keep messages positive and high status.
2. Keep language very simple, and make clear and direct requests ("walk on the path" rather than "help respect your environment").
3. Balance your message - the scale of the green solution you offer has to be proportionate to the scale of the problem (that's why turning down a thermostat doesn't seem to sound credible advice when you've told people it's to help tackle global climate change).
4. Use pictures and case studies to create empathy and emotion, both very powerful tools.
5. Remember: seeing is believing. Make it tangible, show the evidence.

In passing, Lucy made an interesting point about why so many energy efficiency campaigns tend to fail - they breach the golden rule that we must never use messaging that attacks home or family. It's a huge turn-off. Those advertisements of unhappy houses with "my owners don't care about me or my energy use" type messages are not likely to get us on side.

Finally, Lucy took the opportunity to plug Futerra's report 'Sell the Sizzle' - and I'm doing the same now! It's a document I have sent as recommended reading to all our clients interested in sustainability communications. (Download a PDF of 'Sell the Sizzle' here).

In a nutshell, the report makes a very simple point. If you want to achieve emotional buy-in to green messages, you must first sell the sizzle - show people the exciting, positive vision of how things could be different, the benefits they could enjoy, the way life could be better. Only then can you explain the issues/problems, and the choices that people have to make on the road to achieving this vision.

But I admit this is a very simplistic overview, so I shall explain more about Sizzle in a later blog post.

For now I recommend Lucy's webcast and welcome your thoughts on the Values Modes. By the way, apparently I'm a 'Transcender' which sounds rather nice. You can check out your own personal Values Mode by taking this quick test on CDSM's website.

I was asked by an editor to give some thought to what makes for good marketing and business in the face of another year of hardship in the building and construction industry. So below are my 5 Tell-Tale Signs of what, in my humble opinion and my experience of two severe industry recessions, mark out the winners from the losers.

You can also read our 'Seven Day Plan' (top tips for a week's worth of things companies can do to improve their marketing and communications) in today's TTJ magazine - see page 22.

What would you add to this list? Please do drop me a comment below.

1.  Winners invest in relationships
… and they invest in the people who forge these relationships. They listen closely to the sales team and front line staff, and are passionate about little things that make a big difference.  They find time for real conversations. 

2.  Winners wear their customers’ socks
They keep looking outwards, eyes firmly on the horizon.  They actually know more about their customers’ businesses than they know about their competitors (never the other way around). They prioritise market research and market intelligence, have a powerful contacts database or CRM system, and they could make spookily well-informed guesses about the issues that will be discussed at their customers’ next Board meetings.  They sell solutions, not materials with a mark-up.

3.  Winners don’t let the stress show
In recessions, customers need a lot of reassurance.  Winners always stay true to their corporate values and keep communicating.  They remain easy to do business with. They are seen to treat people well.  They pay on time. They bring their best suppliers much closer to the business so that people are more willing to go that extra mile for them.  Word soon gets out that this is a confident company that you want on your side in rocky times.

4.  Winners keep their heads above the parapet
A big part of building confidence is about maintaining visibility – particularly through cost-effective tools like PR, awards, networking events, online communications and social media.  They don’t spend loads but are highly targeted and focused and they integrate all these marketing activities very tightly together so they squeeze out every ounce of value.

5.  Winners just get on with it
Recessions don’t last forever – this time next year the market will be entirely different, and to be honest the most successful clients we are working with today have been vigorously lobbying, meeting journalists, manoeuvring into position and shaping that market since last January. They are much more likely to say “we never waste a good crisis” than “let’s put that on hold until we see what happens after the election”.

A recent phone call to my office prompted me to do some digging for Footings.

The style of the call might be familiar to you if you work for a trade association or membership organisation of any sort, and particularly if you're part of the construction industry. We get these calls about once a month:

"Hi, how are you?! [Gushing enthusiasm from stranger on phone].

"I've been talking to your colleague Jim and he really wanted me to give you a call. We publish a very high quality journal that goes to all the key decision makers in the construction industry and my editor really wants to run a big feature on your Association. What issues are of most concern to you at the moment? Zero carbon agenda? Building Regulations? Health and safety must be a big one.... [Blah, blah]

"Well, we can offer you a full page/two pages/six pages of free editorial.... No cost to your Association, but great coverage in a glossy quarterly that's read by 40,000 senior decision makers - all the top specifiers, housebuilders, RSLs, housing associations, local authorities, major contractors, special sub-contractors, architects, QSs, surveyors, structural, mechanical and civil engineers, government agencies, public utilities, materials manufacturers...." [Blah, blah]

If you're anything like me, major alarm bells are ringing by now.

• I've never heard of this publication before (it has one of those generic titles like UK Construction World, Building National, Property Now etc).
• I've never heard of the publisher either.
• It's claiming a circulation well in excess of what we'd expect, covering pretty much the WHOLE industry and all its diverse disciplines.
• It's not got an ABC certificate of course.
• Oh, and guess what, they want to promote the fact that you're "collaborating" with them on this "exciting feature" to all the Association's members in order to invite them to advertise. They may even want a list of your members in exchange for this "great opportunity".

Welcome to the trade mag version of vanity publishing, and its close cousin 'support advertising' features.

Fed up with these calls and curious about what was going on with this particular rogue publication (which has recently changed its title again), last week I had a really helpful chat with a bone fide publisher who knew the set-up. He explained that these tactics tend to cluster around three types of features:

1. Project features about a particular building project, where the developer writes some blurb about the project and all the companies, contractors and suppliers involved on the project are invited to place advertising saying how pleased they are to be associated with Building X and its developer.
2. Event features about a major exhibition like Interbuild, Ecobuild or a conference, where the event organiser writes the blurb and all the exhibitors are approached to advertise in support.
3. Trade association/membership organisation features, where the Association writes some blurb and all the members are encouraged to advertise in support.

You get the picture.

As a publishing model, it can occasionally work well for all parties, he told me. Sometimes.

BUT there are major dangers:

• If the sales team can't sell enough advertising around the feature, it won't get published at all, so you've wasted your time.
• There is usually very little information about who receives these publications, and readership numbers are not the same as actual copies distributed (assume a standard multiplier of x 4).
• The quality of the content can be shockingly bad.
• The ad sales techniques can get very pushy, which is also bad news if the Association then receives complaints from its members. They may feel obligated or bullied into advertising in a magazine where they would or should not spend their money.
• And there are (allegedly) cases where a publisher has simply taken the advertising revenue, published enough copies of the magazine to give one to each of the advertisers, and pocketed the rest of the cash. Illegal, immoral and pretty much invisible fraud.

I'm afraid our sector has its fair share of these sorts of publishers. If you call me, I'll give you the names of our prime suspects.

So here's the bottom line: No up-to-date ABC certificate, no editorial and certainly no list of our clients' members. Sorry.

About 10 years ago, at the height of the success of the big city PR agencies (one of whom I worked for at the time), almost every proposal document promised the potential new client the opportunity to gain a glistening new reputation and acres of media coverage for its ‘thought leadership’ on one issue or another. I can’t tell you how many new business pitches that won for us.

Thought leadership was all about being the undisputed clever clogs in your niche market. As commentators at the Henley Management College put it: "with intellectual capital at a premium, being recognised for the highest levels of knowledge and expertise is the holy grail of many professions."

Even since, whenever I came across something really exciting and new that I thought could reframe the way the media or industry looks on something, I still tended to use the phrase to explore with clients about what might be possible.

But my enthusiasm for standard 'thought leadership PR’ is definitely waning.

First, it’s awfully easy to over-promise. Don't get me wrong: we're fortunate to have no shortage of clients with original ideas and expertise by the bucket-load. But genuine thought leadership – genuine leadership, in fact – is not something easily created through the use of PR.

My suspicions were reinforced by an FT article I spotted late last year:

“The phrase ought to be banned, and anyone caught using it locked away and left to reflect on the stupidity of their actions. Not everyone can be a leader. It follows that not everyone can be a thought leader either. But that does not stop many professional services firms from claiming that they (alone) offer thought leadership on certain issues…”

And that may also explain why increasingly I think the standard thought leadership PR approach may actually not work very well.

The traditional view among many PR folk is that a thought leadership campaign requires:

• A thought (ideally a new one that can be branded)
• Clarity of communications (and lots of it, ie. big budgets)
• And authenticity (it’s got to ring true with the key stakeholders)

It is trumpeted using every tool in the PR toolkit with the aim of transforming an organisation's reputation, ensuring its expertise is well known and so attracting commercial reward and recognition galore.

Standard thought leadership PR is also usually focused on the personal - implemented through boosting the profile of one or two company spokespeople (preferably chairmen or CEOs) who take to the podium and claim credit for the Big Idea. Much of the media love this too, as it provides an entertaining source of strong personalities with strong views (or “any old fool in possession of an ego and a blog”, as Lucy Kellaway would say).

For some people this approach also links well with the ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's book 'The Tipping Point', and his 'Law of the Few' - the idea that a small group of influencers can spark a much bigger change or social phenomenon. In short, perceived thought leadership and high level influence leading to fundamental change in the business or social environment.

But the reality is that a lot of effort goes into thought leadership PR that actually achieves not very much at all - certainly not the sort of change that we would all like to claim. I suspect there are a lot of companies out there that are rather disappointed by the long-term impact of their so-called 'thought leadership' campaigns.

Obviously you cannot claim to be thought leaders simply by virtue of being the first, biggest or longest-established firm in your sector. (In my experience, the most original thought often comes from the sharp sightedness of the new kids on the block, or from the initial creative and often confrontational juxtaposition of teams that might not otherwise work together.)

Nor is it enough to offer an expert opinion on, say, water efficiency or waste management in construction, back it up with a survey among a client group and a White Paper to download from your website, hold an event and claim to be the thought leaders on this aspect of environmental sustainability.

It’s certainly not about coming up with a new piece of jargon, a nice logo or fancy graphic to package ideas differently.

Like the best leaders generally, genuine thought leaders do something beyond showing off their cleverness or marketing wizardry. They change the world by bringing others with them, forming collaborations and partnerships to bring their vision alive and to make it real. 

Corporate reputations are changed through having new ideas, yes, but not by concentrating it all around a couple of corporate celebrities. It is about a generosity of spirit, allowing those ideas to be tested in the real world, sharing the lessons learned and utilising a communications strategy that is much more open and devolved (ie. less centrally controlled by the boss).

My view is therefore growing that it's not just the intellectual capital that matters, but an organisation's overall connectedness.

Let's take a look at one aspect of this...

Remarkable research findings reported in the New Scientist last month show that our emotions and behaviours may be more heavily influenced by others than we previously thought – even by people we have never even met or heard of. To summarise, it suggests that:

"...we are beholden to the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends - people three degrees of separation away from us whom we have never met, but whose disposition can pass through our social network like a virus."

The effects of 'empathetic mimicry' are thought to explain how happiness or depression can be 'caught' from others not in our immediate social circle. Looking at the ways social norms are spread is also helping scientists to understand how to change the behaviours of whole communities, such as tackling smoking or obesity (maybe even one day triggering a mass epiphany for one planet living?).

One part of the New Scientist article caught my eye in particular, quoting the controversial work of Duncan Watts at Columbia University. It shows that "seeding localised social groups with certain ideas or behaviours can lead to the ideas cascading across entire global networks."

As the article points out:

"This contradicts the notion - promoted by the author Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point and others - that social epidemics depend on a few key influential individuals from whom everyone else takes their cue. It doesn't ring true, argues Watts, because such 'influentials' typically interact with only a few people. The key for the spread of anything, he says... is a critical mass of interconnected individuals who influence one another."

If this is true, the role of Web 2.0 in an organisation's communications activities also becomes incredibly important.

Admittedly, the research has not yet been done into whether actions or feelings can spread via the digital world as powerfully as they do in physical communities. I suspect it would probably be much easier to measure this contagion in a consumer market than in a construction industry group.

But if it is possible to seed new ideas and achieve widespread attitudinal or behavioural change through social media, then it’s time to dust off that company policy on Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools and take a fresh look at what people are allowed and encouraged to do.

It may be that each of your people's individual relationships, social networks and their online conversations on Twitter, through blogs, discussion boards and the like could be a much more effective route for your organisation to achieve genuine thought leader status and tangible results than the old PR approach.