We’ve moved

Ideas Shop has moved our blog to our website. We’ve still got the same great ideas – you’ll just now find them here.

Brawn and Beauty Beats Brains

By Alice Taylor

When one of the world’s highest profile scientists comments that Kiwis seem to value brawn and beauty over brains – you have to sit up and take notice.

Lord Robert Winston, a BBC broadcaster and leading scientist, made this pertinent observation of our culture while in New Zealand speaking at a symposium recently.

I read his comments in the Dominion Post and, well, what a very sad reputation for us Kiwis to have – especially considering a) that there are plenty of us who certainly do not consider sports and celebrity status as the highest form of human development and b) we have plenty of brains and brilliance to celebrate!

Sad it may be, but probably Lord Winston has hit the nail on the head with his comments that New Zealand…” is a society which tends to be driven by sailing, by the All Blacks and by the Bledisloe Cup… celebrates attributes which really aren’t that important.”  (It’s amusing to note that our major dailies found it newsworthy to report that US movie star Susan Sarandon arrived at the Lovely Bones launch “without knickers or a bra beneath her frock”.

Cadbury lost the battle, but has won the war

By Amanda Woodbridge

Every chapter in the Cadbury Palm Oil saga has dominated the headlines – Cadbury adding palm oil; Cadbury taking out full page ads to justify its decision; consumers announcing a boycott; Cadbury backing down; and now, the relaunch of their palm oil-free chocolate.

At every stage, marketing and PR types have discussed the impact for Cadbury’s reputation (Ideas Shop included).

And now I’m adding my two cents’ worth… and I say “well done, Cadbury”.

Absolute Power, we are not

By Kirsty Fyfe

Spin doctors, PR trouts, agents of the dark side, brainwashers, spinmeisters; as communications consultants we’ve heard all the derogatory terms the media likes to throw at us.

Admittedly, like the mechanic whose own car has shonky brakes or the plumber whose house leaks, as comms people we are sometimes guilty of neglecting to practice our own expertise in our own backyard.

We probably don’t spend enough time dedicated to our own PR – to let people know that actual spin doctors are few and far between in this country.

I can understand reporters getting annoyed at PR people as they usually interpret our presence as getting in the way of them and the ‘real’ story. Oh, for life to be that exciting. Absolute Power, we are not.

Sometimes, we advise our clients on how to talk to the media, the messages they should focus on and occasionally what they should leave out. But any journalist worth their salt will push if they need to.

A picture paints a thousands words

By Patricia Thompson and Emma McCleary

There is a wonderful passage in Spike Milligan’s satirical novel Puckoon in which, having partitioned a town overnight, a motley crew of boundary commissioners pose for a commemorative photograph.

The photo session descends into chaos and one of their number suffers the indignity of being captured for posterity with a hat stand protruding from the top of his head.

Various obstacles sticking out of heads, strange shadows on walls, reflections in windows – all are fairly common mistakes in amateur photography.

Even professionals can fall into the trap. My chief bridesmaid – a Sunday school teacher – was snapped in front of a tree at our wedding with two protruding twigs giving her ‘devil’s horns’ resulting in her being permanently framed on our mantelpiece looking like something from a Hell Pizza advert.

Former premiership footballer Stan Collymore suffered a similar photographic faux pas after being pilloried in the UK media over his stormy relationship with TV personality Ulrika Jonssen. Shortly afterwards he signed for Leicester City, aka the Foxes, posed for press shots in front of the club logo featuring a pointy-eared fox head and a devilish looking image of him was promptly splashed all over the tabloids.

That howler was, however, an exception. Sub-editors are notoriously eagle-eyed and the more likely reaction will be some choice language and savage prodding of the ‘delete key’.

A picture speaks a thousands words – providing a good-quality photograph with a story, be it a sponsor’s presentation, company event or a portrait to accompany an opinion piece or appointment announcement, makes it more likely your story will be used – and used well.

Using Social Media in Campaigns

By Emma McCleary

On Tuesday 17 November I spoke at IABC’s Be Heard lunchtime forum about Using Social Media in Campaigns. Here are the notes from that meeting.

My presentation can be viewed on SlideShare.

Case studies I spoke about:

The Cancer Society Daffodil Day on Facebook. The Featherston Facebook group. Ideas Shop – active on Twitter. Billi Tees on Facebook. Ideas Shop on Twitter.

Social media tools to play with:

Facebook Bebo Wikipedia YouTube Blogger WordPress Wiki Spaces Twitter Flickr Picasa

Favourite social media tools to make life easier

Twitter Search (search things being talked about on Twitter)

Cli.gs (shorten and also follow clicks on URLs)

Tweet Later (schedule tweets to happen by themselves)

Customisation Tools

Static FBML (Facebook) Extended Info (Facebook) Twibbons (create a ribbon for your Twitter account)

Find me online

Facebook Twitter email

There’s room for both on the road

By Sam Halstead

I cycle regularly between my home and Ideas Shop.  Rather than joining the thousands of other commuters behind the wheel every morning, I find it’s a quicker and less frustrating mode of transport.

It’s hard to disagree with a 12 minute journey on two wheels from the front door to Ideas Shop in Marion Street.

Cycling to work also ties in nicely with the Ideas Shop philosophy of encouraging staff to walk or take the bus to meetings wherever practical.

Sustainable transport – on two wheels or two legs — is one of the reasons why Ideas Shop was a finalist in the Emerging Small Business of the Year category at the Sustainable Business Awards.

However, I’ve quickly realised the world view that New Zealanders are of an easy-going persuasion is a myth.

When a Kiwi gets behind the wheel, a red mist descends and cycling alongside such drivers is the equivalent of pedalling around Bathurst or Silverstone.

A split second delay at the traffic lights evidently results in a shrill beep of the horn and cyclists are regularly squeezed for space by impatient motorists.

Online communities

By Emma McCleary

In 2003 I worked as a Concept Developer for Te Papa putting together exhibitions. One of my assignments was an exhibition on Maori Showbands of the 1950s and 1960s. Given that it was largely a photographic and text show I lobbied for it to become Te Papa’s first online exhibition – a radical idea at the time.

The online exhibition was developed – and was incredibly successful, particularly among the Maori Showbands community. Many of the community were elderly, frail, or simply unable to afford a trip to Te Papa in Wellington to relive their halcyon days as New Zealand’s most famous pop acts. And by putting their stories online they could access the exhibition from home, with their whanau or from the local library. We received many comments about the group, ‘feeling young again’.

Read more about the exhibition and see images here.*

Communities of people are diverse and increasingly online and communicating. In terms of professional communication it’s an area that shouldn’t be overlooked or underestimated but one that is often done badly, forced or done only through astro-turfing.

Creating lasting relationships

By Anna Kominik

On 11 November, Central Government and NGOs will come together in Wellington for a forum on a proposed relationship agreement between the community and voluntary sector and government.

This is not the first attempt to build stronger and healthier relationships between the government and the sector, which provides services in health, sport and recreation, social service, education, culture, emergency response and conservation.

Under the previous Labour-led government, there was the appointment of a Minister with specific responsibility for the sector (1999), creation of the Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector (2003), and the Statement of Government Intentions for an Improved Community-Government Relationship (SOGI) in 2001, were moves towards a closer relationship.

The Statement reflected the aspirations of the Labour-led government at the time and was a response to widespread dissatisfaction among NGOs. The Statement was to give the community sector a clear signal that these new Ministers understood the need to significantly change the approach embedded from the late 1980s and which was not achieving the kind of outcomes needed at a community level.

Such a forceful Statement had the potential to give the leaders of government agencies, and other public bodies involved in relationships with the community sector, a clear focus and direction for leading this change. But the practical implementation of the SOGI framework has been largely true to its name – soggy.

While a number of government agencies established some mechanisms for building and developing relationships with non-profit organisations in their respective sectors, the nature of these relationships has varied greatly, impacting on the quality of delivery and value for taxpayer money.

The November forum will provide an opportunity for the sector, government officials, the Prime Minister and more than a dozen Ministers to discuss how the relationship needs to change – and what should replace SOGI.

The Sector is big business in New Zealand. Given our nation’s size, New Zealand has the seventh largest non-profit sector workforce in the world, with an unusually high share (67 percent) of the workforce provided by volunteers.  The sector contributes NZ$7.0 billion, or 4.9 percent of GDP and government funding is just part of the picture. Direct government support contributes some 25 percent of the income of the sector. Fees from the community contribute 55 percent, and philanthropy some 20 percent.

Slow on the blog

By Alice Taylor

Call me a bit slow to catch on – but when it comes to blogging, like many other things in life, it isn’t until one actually participates that the true benefits become clear.

Until earlier this year, when professional circumstances encouraged me to attempt my first blog, I’d considered this activity to be something geeks do, other geeks read and it all ends up as cyberspace trash.

However, I am now more inclined to see that indeed, blogging has its values.

For one, the initial process encouraged me to clarify and organise my views and then to indulge in writing them down in my own voice for others to read – as a writer of articles and columns, I am not accustomed to that luxury. And, in doing so I started to ‘think’ more about any other views that may be lurking in the depths of my mind and be of interest to others.

But more importantly, the fact that my blog posts have elicited responses has awakened me to that mass cyberspace community out there. What an exciting prospect that is to engage in a form of social interaction that encourages good honest opinion sharing without any need for the face-to-face niceties that so often inhibit us from saying what we really think.