The Pixel Project Wall of Support: Calling for An End to Violence Against Women

Mar 8
By benmatthews |
Posted in BrightOne News | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Pixel Project, a global Web 2.0-driven awareness and fund raising organisation working to end Violence Against Women (VAW), will launch The Pixel Project Wall of Support on 8 March 2010 to coincide with International Women’s Day. The Wall of Support will be a thought-provoking gallery of YouTube video endorsements from people from all walks of life who support The Pixel Project and its mission to inspire men and women to work together to prevent, stop and end VAW.

The Wall of Support is the latest innovation from The Pixel Project in a series of interactive and interconnected social media-based community initiatives intended to unite people from all walks of life to speak up against VAW. The video endorsements are uploaded to YouTube and displayed on the Wall of Support page in the Community Buzz section of The Pixel Project’s website (http://www.thepixelproject.net). Guidelines for making and submitting a video can be found on the website as well.

Read more on Bright One’s social media newsroom >>

7 tips for a successful anniversary campaign

Feb 28
By benmatthews |
Posted in BrightOne News | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

This is a guest post from Zoe Amar, a Bright One volunteer and Lasa’s Marketing and Business Development Manager. This article originally appeared on the CharityComms blog.


Lasa has just celebrated its 25th anniversary with a campaign that generated a return of investment (ROI) of 94:1; this means that for every £1 we spent on the campaign we earned £94. I’m going to talk about how we did it and the lessons I learnt along the way.

You can also use many of these tips to help create a successful relaunch or repositioning.

1. Be clear about why your organisation needs this campaign

Make sure that your reasons to celebrate your anniversary pass the ‘so what?’ test. Unless you are celebrating at least a centenary or more, there’s a risk that you could launch an expensive campaign for its own sake. You need to ask yourself: what’s in it for your audience?

For example, the ultimate aim of Lasa’s 25th anniversary campaign was to tell our stakeholders how our services could help them. To get to the stage where they were receptive to this message, we needed to use the initial phases of the 25th anniversary to:

  • rebuild our reputation after a recent restructure
  • demonstrate the business case for our services (in our case, increased need for advice about welfare benefits)
  • reach influential stakeholders in our market (e.g. Chief Executives and Directors in the charity and public sector organisations who use our services)
  • reposition ourselves as a leader in the fields we work in

2. Get buy-in

So, you’ve had a great idea for your anniversary/ relaunch/ repositioning. Now what? You’ll need to get buy-in and support from your board and directors. Make sure that you involve them early on in the planning stages. I found that even when budgets were tight, the board and directors were still supportive if I could show the business case for what I was trying to do.

3. Plan, plan, plan

Who are your target audiences? We invested time in thinking about who we were trying to reach with our 25th anniversary campaign: what kind of people were we targeting? You need to consider what their job titles are, what kinds of organisations they work in and what processes they go through when deciding whether or not to use your services. You also need to think about creating simple but effective key messages that will cut through the ‘clutter’ to reach your audience. What do you want them to do after they’ve experienced your campaign?

In my view, charities should be careful about how they use nostalgia in anniversary campaigns. Sure, what your charity has achieved is important and it’s made a big difference. Celebrating that will reward the loyalty of long term supporters. But keep the focus on what you’d like your audience to do now- e.g. donate or, in our case, fund or use our services. And build into the planning stage how you are going to track the success of your campaign. For example, you can suggest that a donations target should be hit.

4. Choose the best tools for the job

Once you’ve got a business case, buy-in and a broad plan for your campaign, you need to think about how you can find the best tools to reach your target audience. In Lasa’s case, we needed a low cost tool that our stakeholders trusted. We focused on PR, using a mix of press work, sponsorship and two carefully targeted events with speakers that we knew would attract our target audience. We planned the events so that they were as interactive as possible; for example, we launched a survey on the theme of the events a few weeks beforehand, and announced the results a few days before the final ‘flagship’ event.

5. Build the right team for the campaign

Whether you are using staff from your own marketing and communications teams, external suppliers or pro bono help, take the time to choose people who know the tools you want to use, and who can use them well. I was fortunate enough to work with Luica Mak of Bright One and Jo O’ Rourke of Keynote Consulting, both of whom have many years of experience in PR and events.

6. Keep a close eye on costs

With a big campaign, like an anniversary or a relaunch, costs – especially design – can spiral beyond your original estimates. It’s also easy to overlook VAT or other ‘hidden’ costs.

The main lesson I learnt from our 25th anniversary campaign was not to spend a penny of our budget without thinking about what the return on investment would be. As a result, our final campaign costs were less than 40% of our original estimate.

We also were fortunate to have some very good sponsorship opportunities, including from one of our funders, City Bridge Trust.

7. Measure your results

Looking at your original key performance indicators of success for your campaign, how did it perform? At Lasa we achieved some significant press coverage and, as direct result of some networking opportunities from our 25th anniversary event, also won a new contract with a government department.

Keeping these tips in mind, you should be able to generate successful return on investment from your anniversary campaign.

PR from a Journalist’s View

Feb 25
By nicolajones |
Posted in News | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

This is a guest post from Gerry Kiernan, a Bright One volunteer with eight years experience working at the BBC – namely the Radio Times. She has also worked as Deputy Editor of the BBC’s Ariel online and as a content producer on the BBC’s intranet. She now freelances and blogs about arts and culture at www.poptartlondon.com


“Having just started volunteering at Bright One on the Social Enterprise Mark campaign, I’d like to share some thoughts on my experience of PR in the hope that it will provide some useful tips for publicists to communicate better with journalists. I think there’s a lot we can learn from looking at things from each other’s perspectives.

As a journalist on a national magazine, publicists were always trying to get hold of me. But I was most likely to respond to approaches from those who…

  • Called or emailed to tell me (succinctly!) the outline of a story, why our readers would be interested, as well as the section of the magazine they thought it might suit.
  • If they also mentioned one or more unusual angles to the story then they’d be ahead of the game

The main mistakes PRs made when approaching me were:

  • Not knowing anything about the magazine or the readership. Just because a client thinks it would be great to get a story in x magazine/newspaper/website, it doesn’t mean a journalist will think it’s something their readers would enjoy.
  • If a journalist says the story isn’t suitable believe them, and move on. There’s nothing worse than being hassled daily by someone flogging a story that would not suit the publication.
  • Mass-mailing a press release that leaves questions unanswered. Be prepared to answer the six questions any good journo would ask – who, what, when, where, why, how? If a PR doesn’t have these basic facts at their fingertips, then I’m less likely to trust them and their story.

That said, if you do have a great story but just can’t seem to get journalists interested, don’t give up straight away..

  • Try to tailor the story to your target publication by pulling out an aspect that would interest their readers. Bear in mind that sometimes an ace story might still not suit every publication. For instance NME readers wouldn’t give a damn about Bill Gates learning the guitar for a solo gig even though your client might think otherwise. However, if a journalist says the story is great but there isn’t enough room in the magazine or newspaper, it’s definitely worth keeping in contact.
  • When stories drop out at the last minute, journalists are often casting around in desperation for a replacement to fill the page. And you just might happen to email or call at the right moment to save the day.

Finally I’d advise PRs to be creative. I think social media is definitely changing the relationship between journalists and PRs. Publicists have less control, certainly in the celebrity world, over what their clients post on Twitter and Facebook, unless their accounts are being closely managed or ghost-written. Journalists scan social media for stories or case studies, thereby cutting out publicists. Conversely, having been involved in a PR campaign using social media at Bright One, I’ve now seen how valuable social media can be for getting messages out in different ways from blogs to Facebook. I’d like to think that social media is an added extra for both PRs and journalists to make use of. And if the two camps befriend each other through it and swap information, so much the better.”

Searching for a Superhero

Feb 18
By benmatthews |
Posted in BrightOne News | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Bright One’s clients perform feats of amazing power every day and we’re behind them all the way. To help our teams of volunteers we’re looking for a Volunteer Manager, a special kind of person who will go the extra mile for our volunteers.

We’re putting the call out for a Superhero.

The Organisation

For those of you that weren’t aware, Bright One is a completely volunteer-run organisation. We have no paid staff and everyone who volunteers for Bright One does it in their spare time, often fitting it around full time job or their studies. Just like Superman and Spiderman.

Every day that Bright One progresses, we see the fantastic work that our volunteers do for their clients and for Bright One itself. In it’s first year of operation, Bright One’s volunteers donated over 1,500 hours of their time to help charitable organisations such as Refugee Week, The Pixel Project and Child’s i Foundation. This resulted in our clients being able to access the equivalent of over £180,000 of professional communications support and advice. A truly heroic effort.

You can read more about what we have achieved in our Annual Report.

The Challenge

This year, we want to help support more organisations with their communications needs. For that we’ll need more volunteers to work in teams and help these clients achieve their goals. But we also need to look after our current volunteers, as we want to make sure our current clients continue to get a fantastic level of service. And for that to happen we’ll need a Volunteer Manager to look after all of these superheroes.

The Opportunity

The Volunteer Manager is and always will be one of the most important roles for Bright One. Our volunteers are our greatest asset and we work hard to make sure they have the best volunteering expereince with us – from the moment they send us a message to enquire about a volunteer position until the moment they move on from Bright One for whatever reason.

Managing volunteers can be a challenging but rewarding experience. You’ll need to be friendly, sociable, highly organised, self-motivating and a pleasure to work with.

You don’t need to be able to fly, see through brick walls or read minds (though that may help). But you do need to be passionate about about the work of Bright One’s volunteers. You should be excited about the opportunities we are offering to volunteers and about the difference they will make. If you can get passionate about the volunteering opportunities Bright One offers, the possibilities of the difference we can make will increase immeasurably, to superhuman proportions.

The Special Power

What is even more special about this role is that you’ll be a ‘volunteer’ Volunteer Manager, which means that you’ll need to not be afraid of the challenge that this gives rise to, just as we’re not afraid to wait until we have found the perfect person for the job before filling the position.

Volunteers managing volunteers is a difficult relationship to balance and we’re working on making these relationships as smooth as possible through our daily work with Bright One’s various teams. You’ll need to use your Special Powers to work closely with the Bright One management team and come up with ways to make our volunteers work together effectively.

However, we are looking into funding options, so this may well turn into a paid position in the near future – but unfortunately in the current funding climate we can’t guarantee this.

The Role

A typical week will involve ‘meeting and greeting’ between 3 and 5 volunteers, finding out more about them and what causes they’re interested in, capturing their details on a volunteer database, and liaising with the Bright One management team to place the volunteers on to suitable accounts.

The role is expected to take around 4 hours each week and preferable you’ll be based in or around London as this is where the majority of our clients and volunteers are based.

You can view the formal role description here.

The Process

If this description is more exciting than scary, more inspiring than off-putting and you want to apply for the position, please send us your covering email with your CV attached to ben@brightone.org.uk.

We’d also like you to answer the following question to give us an idea about how you might fit into the role:

“What are the three super powers you have that will make you a Volunteer Manager of Superhero proportions?”

We’ll be waiting by the Bat Phone for your call.

Bright One Online

Jan 19
By nicolajones |
Posted in BrightOne News, News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

It’s fair to say that here at Bright One we’re fans of social media. It’s potential to aid third sector organisations to reach and communicate with the individuals who support them, as well as reach new people is vast. We use it a lot when it comes to working with our clients, but it is also a vital tool in our internal and external communications. We see it as a great way to bring together a team of volunteers working remotely, helping them to connect in much more dynamic ways which suit their lifestyles.

We thought that it’d be good to let you all know how we here at Bright One use the internet to reach out to people, so we’ve made the below Bright One Online guide(using the excellent online tool Prezi). It shows you where you can find and connect with all of Bright One on the internet, and keep up-to-date with what we are up to. To watch the guide you can either navigate through it manually (by clicking on the arrow which takes you through each point) or hover over it until you see “autoplay” and it will take you through it..

You can find the links to all our online presence below…don’t be shy, come and find us!

Twitter

fcbk

flickr

delicious

UWLogo

linkedin

youtube

Creating a PR Strategy

Jan 9
By benmatthews |
Posted in News | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments

strategy

Here at Bright One, we’re regularly approached by charities and not-for-profit organisations who are looking for tips and advice on how to put together a PR strategy.

They’re often aware of what PR is, how it works and the impact it can have on an organisation, but actually taking the first steps in creating a strategy to make this happen is a mystery to them. So just how do you go about creating a PR strategy for your organisation?

Well, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to help you do just that. And as an added bonus, we also got a few top tips sent in by Twitter!

Step 1: Draft your key messages
What is your organisation’s mission? What cause are you supporting? What is different about the way your organisation addresses those challenges? How will you change the world? Asking yourself these key questions and others will help you determine what messages you want to communicate to your audiences and help you to focus your PR strategy.

Step 2: Determine your audience
 How do you want to reach? Who will want to hear about the news you have? Who do you want to influence? For charities, this might be donors, government organisations, the general public, NGOs, volunteers, or other sources of support and funding. This may be a long list, but try and narrow it down to the key groups that you want to hear about your organisation’s activities.

Step 3: Find the best channels to your audience
 This tip was sent in by Stephen Waddington, Managing Director of Speed Communications. Make a list of all the publications in your target market area. These will most likely be national newspapers, local newspapers, freesheets (such as the Metro) and radio and TV stations. You might also want to create a list of news sites and blogs, or even bypass the media altogether and communicate directly with your target audience through social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Different channels will be more suitable for your organisation than others, so take time researching which are the most appropriate for you.

Step 4: Brainstorm PR topics
 Are you releasing a new product, making an announcement, communicating a change in employees or services, stating an opinion or launching a piece of research? Is your information newsworthy (timely, relevant, interesting)? If you can come up with 12 PR topics, that means you can send out one news announcement every month for a year, which is a very healthy news flow. Plot these into a timeline to see how your PR activity over the year plans out.

Step 5: Find your influencers
 This tip was sent in by Heidi Siefkas, a strategic PR professional based in Florida. Influencers are people who have a large following, either through traditional means such as holding a position of influence or in the online world if they have a large number of followers and fans. Influencers are important because if you manage to get them to spread the word about your organisation’s activities for you then you’ll be able to reach a larger audience who trust what those influencers say.

Step 6: Analyse your competitor’s success
 This tip was sent in by David Child, a PR at Lucre. What are your competitors doing to promote their own organisation and activities? Where are their messages appearing? Who is giving them attention and support? By watching what others around you are doing and emulating their approach, you’ll be more likely to achieve a similar success.

So that’s a few steps to creating a PR strategy, which should give a great start to any organisation looking to create their own plan. As you can see, most of them are around undertaking solid research. As Mark Pinsent,  a communications consultant based in France, says: “good strategies become obvious with the audience and market insights that research brings. Otherwise, you’re  guessing.”

What tips or advice would you add to those above? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll add them in!

Bright One & Third Sector PR Joint Xmas Drinks

Dec 19
By benmatthews |
Posted in BrightOne News | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

This is a guest post from Rob Dyson, PR Manager at UK charity Whizz-Kidz and founder of the Facebook Third Sector PR and Communications network. You can follow Rob on Twitter at @robmdyson or read his blog at www.robdyson.posterous.com.

Last night my Facebook Third Sector PR and Comms network hosted a joint Christmas knees-up with Bright One – the award winning volunteer-run communications agency – at the Roxy Bar and Screen in London Bridge.

And jolly good it was too. For all the tweeting and virtual networking we get up to, it’s really nice to find an excuse to have a good old fashioned party every now and again. It was great to meet people in reality to build on friendships formed online, flesh out ideas and opportunities for working together, and just sink a few for Christmas ;)

Seasons greetings from the Third Sector PR group and Bright One. And if you want to meet us for a drink sometime… tweet us at @thirdsectorPR or @brightonecomms!

Social Impact Camp

Dec 11
By nicolajones |
Posted in BrightOne News, News | Tagged , , , , | 36 Comments
What is Social Impact?
From Wikipedia: “In business and government policy, social impact refers to how the organisation’s actions affect the surrounding community.”
What is Social Impact Camp?
Social Impact Camp is a monthly meet up for people to discuss different ways of measuring social impact. We compare tactics, think of ways to improve it and wonder if there will ever be a standard set of metrics against which to judge success by.
We drink tea, sometimes we eat biscuits too. It’s a friendly place, we don’t try and sell to each other; instead we’re honest, pretty and will never wear name tags.
Social Impact Camp was setup by Bright One and inspired by MeasurementCamp, the leaders in measuring all things social media. The First Social Impact Camp is being run in partnership with UnLtdWorld.
First Social Impact Camp
Wednesday 20th January 2010, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
UnLtd
123 Whitecross Street
EC1Y 8JJ

Exciting times here at Bright One at the moment, with our Christmas Drinks (hosted jointly with Third Sector PR) next week (sign up here) and today we’re delighted to announce the launch of some new meetups that we’re setting up: Social Impact Camp.

Not sure about what Social Impact is? Well Wikipedia describes it as: “In business and government policy, social impact refers to how the organisation’s actions affect the surrounding community.”

Over recent weeks there has been a lot of discussion both on and offline about measuring social impact – check out Rob Greenland’s blog to see just one example of some of the debate that’s happening, and seeing some of the good work that MeasurementCamp does, we were inspired to set up Social Impact Camp.

Social Impact Camp is a monthly meet up for people to discuss different ways of measuring social impact. We compare tactics, think of ways to improve it and wonder if there will ever be a standard set of metrics against which to judge success by.

We drink tea, sometimes we eat biscuits too. It’s a friendly place, we don’t try and sell to each other; instead we’re honest, pretty and will never wear name tags.

We’ve set up a Social Impact Camp Wiki-Page here and you can sign up to attend the first Social Impact Camp at the events page here

The first Social Impact Camp is being run in partnership with UnLtdWorld – the social networking site that connects social entrepreneurs to the people, tools and information they need to change the world. Here are the details:

Date: Wednesday 20th January 2010

Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Location: UnLtd, 123 Whitecross Street, EC1Y 8JJ

We look forward to seeing you all there for some great conversations…and lots of biscuits.