the hidden secret to digital transformation

July 27, 2015 Darren Caveney

Every organisation is looking to transform what they are doing. There's a major role for good internal comms. Did you know?

by Kane Simms

There’s one thing that’ll guarantee digital transformation success… and it’s not what you think.

It’s not the:

Digital design
Integration
User centricity
UX design
Data and analysis
Agile methodology
Lean processing
And so on

Long lasting digital transformation hinges, like everything else in life, on people. It depends on your staff.

Your staff have the service area expertise needed to design epic digital services and their enthusiasm and involvement is critical to solutions being adopted. Without your staff’s investment, you’ll be short-cutting back to old habits quicker than Paul Gascoigne leaving rehab.

what has soft power taught me about campaigns?

July 19, 2015 Darren Caveney

Sometimes it's not the direct things that wins people over. It can be the BBC. Or Bollywood. As a talented comms officer from Tunisia who worked for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office reveals.

by Kacem Jlidi

Picture this: a 16 year old boy from Morocco going to the hairdresser to get a 'David Beckham' haircut or doodling all sorts of tattoo shapes on his textbook while in class.

Imagine this South African 48 year old lady spending her evenings binge-watching Bollywood movies and gasping at the sight of her favourite Indian actor’s dancing.

Wouldn’t you agree that those are basic examples of successful brand engagement – ones that went beyond geographical limits?

how london ambulance service ‘newsjacked’ zayn malik

March 29, 2015 Darren Caveney

Sometimes comms is about thinking on your feet and being creative. Even when a boyband member quits.

by D an Sutherland

When you think of One Direction, the flashing blue lights of a London ambulance cruising through the night taking a seriously ill patient to hospital doesn’t spring to mind. Unless the patient they’re taking is one of the boyband’s billion fans worldwide.

to specialise or not to specialise… that is the question

March 18, 2015 Darren Caveney

It's an interesting dilemma for a comms professional - is it best to specialise or to generalise? Or do you need to be a generalist with some specialisms?

by Nicky Speed

‘Press Officer needed to manage the media and write lively copy’ the job advert headline read. Really, is that all you’re asking for? Do those jobs actually exist anymore? To have the luxury of having such a big communications team to be able to specialise sounds great in theory – but in the digital age and more demands placed on communications people, is that realistic?

what's in your room 101 part two

March 11, 2015 Darren Caveney

There was a tremendous response to Emma Rodgers' blog when it was first posted. A room 101 of comms. A room where you could send all the things you really don't like. After a slew of responses here is the second part.

by Emma Rodgers

Some great Room 101 tweets and comments were shared when this blog post was published. I wanted to include them so captured below is what they said. Thanks to everyone for taking part in the banishing. If only it was that easy. But my oh my that cleansing feels good.

winning at the unawards

December 12, 2014 Darren Caveney

The inaugural comms2point0 UnAwards were a brilliant opportunity to showcase and celebrate the outstanding comms and digital work which takes place up and down the UK. And whilst you are all winners to us, here is the official winners roll of honour...

by Darren Caveney

Following an inbox-busting 202 entries from 150 organisations, our team of external, independent judges and comms industry experts had a fight on their hands to select the winners, But select they did.

And of course you played your part too in the public vote, which saw us receive almost 2,000 votes.

Social media was simply buzzing with UnAwards chat - in just seven days on Twitter the UnAwards reached 489k accounts with over 2.5m opportunities to see. Just statistcial outputs, of course, but impressive nonetheless.

Here's an UnAwards Storify courtesy of Emma Rodgers.

Huge thanks to everyone who played a part and supported the Unawards. We're keen to get your views on whether we should run them again in 2015 so do get in touch.

Here's the full list of winners:

grab yourself an ultimate unawards ticket

December 5, 2014 Darren Caveney

So you've seen the build-up, you've entered the unawards and you've even voted in one of the four public vote categories. Now you could have a chance of being at the first ever comms2point0 UnAwards, taking place next week.

By Emma Rodgers

It sees the culmination of hours of hard work, by both us and all the entrants and has seen some cracking stats so far...

the comms2point0 unawards: the story so far

November 28, 2014 Darren Caveney

The inaugural comms2point0 UnAwards take place in December in Birmingham. Here's a quick update on the story so far, and details of how you can get involved...

by Darren Caveney

First off, we wanted to repeat our huge and genuine thank you to everyone who has shown interest, entered awards, talked so positively and shared the love for the inaugural comms2point0 UnAwards.

We are very, very grateful.

As a result, it means that you have created the most popular comms industry awards in the UK this year*

using digital skills and a choir to shout about a charity

May 14, 2014 Darren Caveney

It's not writing a press release, it's creating content. And spotting stories to tell as this charity comms case study demonstrates brilliantly.

by Will Barker

Being part of a communications team for a charity in Wales can be difficult at times. Let’s be honest, being part of a communications team for any charity in the UK can be difficult.

We’ve all got great reasons to shout about the work we do and brilliant, inspiring stories to tell, but we don’t always have enough people to tell it to. More and more we are creating our own content and using our own channels as news sources to reach the people that matter to us, it’s not often that you get the opportunity to do both.

winston churchill and the art of knowing when to powerpoint

March 2, 2014 Darren Caveney

Never. In the field of human conflict. Has powerpoint. Badly deployed. Caused so much damage. Of course, Winston Churchill was a good leader. But he was never hindered by pie charts and bullet points on powerpoint. In this post look at where you need to tailor the approach.

by GUEST EDITOR Chris Bolton

Excellent News! Through extensive research* I’ve located a picture of Winston Churchill from June 1940, practicing his Powerpoint presentation of the ‘fight them on the beaches’ speech.

If you squint carefully (its an old picture) you can just make out the Pie Chart percentages of where the fighting will take place: Beaches 45%, Landing Grounds 20%, Fields 10% etc. Apparently Churchill was ready to deliver the carefully crafted presentation when, during a bombing raid the House of Commons projector bulb was shattered by some stray shrapnel. The result was the impromptu, unsupported speech to Parliament, and the rest is history.