Green Communicators NW Meeting

Date: Wednesday 17^th August 2011

Organised by: The Environment Agency NW

Venue: The Barn, Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester & North Merseyside, Preston

Post by: Rhiannon Davies, Communications Officer

Yesterday I attended the quarterly meeting of the Green Communicators Group, chaired by the Environment Agency NW. These meetings are great networking and learning opportunities for anyone working in communications for a third or public sector organisation in the North West, related in anyway to the environment.

This time the meeting was held at the Wildlife Trust’s office at Cuerden Valley Park, Preston, and the attendees were rather thin on the ground, probably due to the holiday season and some confusion over the venue, but otherwise it was a great meeting. I used this opportunity to flag up some of the heath and wellbeing benefits of projects that are involved with the environment, such as Target: Wellbeing’s Great Outdoors and Offshoots, as well as to let the group know about the tools we’ve been developing with the North West Public Health Observatory to evaluate the health and wellbeing benefits of projects of these kind.

Ben O’Brien, Director of Health & Society for the communications consultancy Kenyon Fraser had been invited to address the group and gave a very interesting presentation on Social Media. I’m always rather dubious when I see Social Media on an agenda, as it’s been the “hot topic” at meetings like these for about four years, and the conversation usually revolves around everyone saying you should do it, with very little discussion about how to do it, let alone, how to do it well! Paul’s presentation was great though, with tonnes of personal experience and some great examples of digital campaigns that have worked, such as Barnardos’ The Teens Speech and the RLNI’s Mystery Package.

Paul’s presentation also touched on Cause Related Marketing, which was a new term to me, though I’ve been aware of the growing trend for corporate organisations to use charities or green themes to help their brand gain a more positive slant, or in more extreme examples to “Green Wash”. An interesting discussion followed about the dangers for charities of accepting funding from corporate organisations with dubious motivations or activities, and where you draw the line. Some in the room felt this was a growing risk for organisations that are having to turn more and more to fundraising from the private sector as other funding pots have been cut.

Next the Environment Agency team told us about the Think Digital element of their internal CPD programme, which is, I think rather brilliantly, training non-comms people, as well as those for whom comms is the main part of their job, not only the logistics of Social Media, but also why it’s important and the different ways it can be used, for example for consultation or to engage with a specific community. This was really interesting for me, and I’m sure anyone who’s tried to engage their colleagues with creating Social Media content, which in my experience always results in a rather mixed bag!

Olivia Assheton also brought up next year’s Diamond Jubilee, which will give us an extra bank holiday over the weekend of 2^nd to 5^th June 2012. Everyone has got their thinking caps on as this provides a great opportunity for events.

Finally, some discussion was had about how to develop the group, extend the network, get new members and make it as useful for everyone involved as possible, so if you’d like to attend a future meeting contact Katy Barton at katy.barton@environment-agency.gov.uk