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”.

So knickerless celebrities aside, what do Kiwis celebrate and how do you gauge that? Well, if television news is to be seen as a barometer of what Kiwis consider to be important, then we really are in trouble. This prime time slot ideally should present us with a daily perspective on important events in our country and the world. We get a large chunk covering sports and sports celebrities, followed by the hard-hitting investigative Johnny Campbell and Mark Sainsbury with pre-recorded interviews of Yankee celebrities chatting about new their latest film. What happened to late night infotainment? And why aren’t we seeing interviews with our intellectuals and stories about the achievements of our writers, researchers, scientists, artists, musicians?

Advertising is another barometer. In everything from food advertising to depression support we see the faces of our heroes and heroines – namely rugby players, rowers and weather presenters. What are we telling our young people about what it means to succeed in life? Certainly team values and discipline are important, but is winning the competition all there is to life?

Well, as Lord Winston says, being an intellectual in New Zealand is just not cool. Indeed …. “in New Zealand, being an intellectual is slightly disadvantageous and is often seen by the press as being something which is rather well, not to be celebrated. On the other hand, if you are a great rugby player, maybe parts of your private life which are pretty appalling will go ignored.”

The irony of this is that New Zealand has plenty of unacknowledged brilliance and innovation to celebrate. Take biotechnology for example. New Zealand has world-class thinkers in this field who deserve a bit of time with Johnny Campbell or Mr Sainsbury. How many Kiwis know that thanks to some of our hot brains, New Zealand is regarded as a leader internationally in biotechnology with our innovations in agriculture, horticulture, forestry and marine life?

Suffice to say; perhaps it is up to our media, as such a powerful force in setting the tone our society’s values and attitudes, to rethink its focus on what is considers is newsworthy and important to New Zealanders.  As Lord Winston says New Zealand has some “fantastic” values that need to be safeguarded and nurtured such as freedom, the environment, self-reliance, courage and care for each other…Hail Lord.

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”.

Not for responding to consumer pressure – because there was a clear business imperative for doing so; consumers had launched a boycott and Whittakers was milking it for all it was worth.

No, what impressed me was the tone and manner of their back down. Cadbury proudly let the consumer win the battle by admitting they got it wrong, that they were listening to their customers, and in response were removing palm oil from the formula.

So they should admit their mistake? Yes, of course. But not many companies do.

It’s often quoted that reputations are won or lost not on the issue itself, but how the company responded. The corporate world is littered with companies who have failed to understand the effect of taking responsibility – think Panam, Exxon, Enron. In admitting they got it wrong, Cadbury avoided becoming another casualty of reputation – and in fact have actually clawed a long way out of the deep reputation hole they’d dug.

I’m not saying chocolate lovers have totally forgiven Cadbury. Like all reputations, it’s a delicately held thing which takes time to build (and as they’ve experienced, just moments to destroy). But I think most Kiwis will respect them for it, and will buy Cadbury chocolate once again. I’ll certainly think about it.

Cadbury will of course be conducting their own market research to measure the impact of their back down on their reputation, and closely monitoring sales. Oh if only I could be a fly on the wall to see those results!

And one last point… another Kiwi company, Tip Top, has made a silly announcement justifying the downsizing of their ice cream containers by saying it was in response to “consumer feedback”. Hmmmm…..!

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. As we are all lucky enough to be living in the least corrupt nation in the world, true cover ups are few and far between. And in my 15 year career in the PR industry, I haven’t been involved in even one.

Mostly, when it comes to Ideas Shop mainstream media liaison work we just use the media to tell people’s stories – and talented people at that – those with a bona fide good story to tell.

Those who employ us to help them receive media profile are usually experts in other fields; they might know everything there is to know about potatoes or organic wine or philanthropy or sausages or IT security but selling themselves to the media is not their forte.

Mainstream media profile, however, is something they need to help increase business and/or to raise awareness of their services, to employ more people or to help more people. And that’s where we can help. We know what newspaper readers, radio listeners, TV watchers and web watchers like to know about.

We have dozens of clients who do amazing things in their jobs. They do things that other people find interesting; they have stories that other people like to read about or listen to.

Those with a monopoly on “spinning” the news are the mainstream media themselves. Many of us have worked in newsrooms and know what it is like leave the editorial briefing meeting, armed with a shorthand note pad and a pre-conceived angle dictated by the news editor. It’s not easy going back to the boss empty handed or with a different (read; toned down) angle.

Also, newsrooms have been whittled down to skeleton staff over the last decade or so but news pages still have to be filled. Unfortunately. this void has been filled taken up with a greater reliance on the easy-to-get stories from the police and court rounds (if it bleeds, it leads). The endless, highly detailed descriptions coming out in the media during the Clayton Weatherston trial showed just how gratuitous our news coverage has become.

In this kind of mainstream media environment, it is entirely necessary to have a separate group of people dedicated to generating positive news about people and organisations in this country. And, I’m rather proud to be one of them.

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.

The advent of digital cameras means that it is now perfectly possible for pretty much anyone to produce decent quality photographs. Being perfectly possible, of course, doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen – yes, digital cameras will do pretty much everything for you short of brewing a coffee and doing the housework, but they aren’t foolproof.

First you have to remember to take your camera to the event. For those who forget, don’t even bother reaching for the cellphone. While the resulting shot may look fine on Facebook it will never be of sufficient quality for newspaper, magazine or newsletter purposes.

So, digital camera in hand, what next?

Ten top tips for taking great photos

1. Take a high-resolution photo regardless of what you’re using it for on the day. You can always reduce the quality of the photo but you can’t increase it. For print purposes your photo needs to be at least 500kb.
2. The easiest way to sort out what are high-res photos is to set your camera so it stores the least number of photos on your memory card. The bigger the photo, the fewer photos the camera can store. Can’t find that setting button? Get out the manual.
3. It’s not vain to want to look good in a photo. Do your hair; wash your face, open your eyes and smile.
4. If you’re taking a photo to illustrate a story then encourage your subject to do something that is relevant to the story rather than just staring at the camera. If the story is about your shop then perhaps take a photo at the shop counter? If it’s about your winning sausages, include the sausages.
5. Make sure the horizon line in the background is straight.
6. After taking the picture check it on the camera to ensure it’s in focus – if it’s fuzzy take another.
7. Follow the light – make sure your photo subject has the light on their face, not behind them.
8. Check the background – it doesn’t matter if you’re looking as good as New Zealand’s Next Top Model if your ratty old handbag can be seen or worse – your competitor’s logo across the street.
9. At Ideas Shop, if we need one good photo we take about 20 because that gives us lots to work with.
10. Take landscape (horizontal) and portrait (vertical) shots and long shots as well as head and shoulder shots – that provides a sub-editor with more choice when designing a page. Remember to provide a caption identifying who is in the photo.

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

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.

So it’s no coincidence that according to Wellington Regional Council, there were nearly 150 cycling casualties last year.

Of course, there are some bad cyclists out there, those who run red lights and weave in and out of the traffic — but there are also bad drivers.

But what we all need to remember, drivers and cyclists, is that we share the road. Respect each other and there should be no problem.

Drivers need to be aware that a commuter choosing to cycle means one less car on the road, it means one person who’s willing to battle gale force winds and torrential rain on their way to and from work.

However, cyclists need to be aware that just because you’re on a bike, it do0esn’t put you in a class above motorists with the right to do what you want, when you want.

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. I live in Featherston, Wairarapa, a town that is comprised of young families, beneficiaries and commuters who travel to Wellington each day for work. Since I don’t have kids that go to school, didn’t grow up there and don’t go to church (we have six for a town of 2,500 people) I didn’t really know anyone. I’d often come home to find that something great had happened the day before and I’d missed out.

So I set up a Facebook page. I thought if I was lucky a few people would sign up and people might occasionally add local events. Boy was I wrong! To date, 363 people are fans of Featherston, Wairarapa (that’s more than 10 percent of the population) and we’re a really active online community showcasing our events, sharing our photos and discussing a range of issues including: 

• When to send kids to Playcentre and where that is in Featherston,
• A caution about leaving cars out on the street,
• The new Thai Takeaway in town and how great it is,
• Trick or Treating for kids,
• Whether anyone has spare lemons, and
• The Featherston Gymnastics Club.

What’s the secret to our happy community? Here are some tips for all communicators:

1. Share the responsibility. Online communities are about democratising information, not about bossing people around or only having your point of view heard. The first thing I did after setting up our Featherston community page was to give five other people (ranging from the community coordinator to local councillors to people I’d seen on the train) administration rights. 
2. Be active yourself. I add events to our page and make sure a PDF copy of our local newsletter is available. I comment on other people’s discussions and ask questions. 
3. Be friendly, informal and open – it’s the community’s information, not yours alone. 
4. Update the fans occasionally. They’ll receive a notification and those that aren’t participating in the page will be reminded that it exists. 
5. Be encouraging and help the community generate more content. We’ve got a great photographer in Featherston so I asked them to add their photos to the photo gallery. When someone mentioned they were writing a story about Featherston on Facebook, people on the page added their experiences. And we even get talked about on Masterton’s More FM because one of the local DJs is a fan.

Here are a few other online communities as a starter for six:

The National Library of Flickr’s The Commons – the National Library of New Zealand lets the public to tell them about what’s in their collection

Community Central – a place for not for profit groups to work

The Big Idea – an arts community

*The copyright licenses on the Maori Showbands website have now lapsed and it has been decided that the exhibition won’t continue online.

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.

A recent review of the SOGI by the Association of Non-Government Organisations of Aotearoa called for the Government to note the value of government-sector statement, to formalise the way it is implemented by government agencies, and to regularly evaluate progress in government’s responsiveness.

The forum picks up on these recommendations and will seek to get some sort of process going from which a recommendation for an agreement can be taken to Cabinet later next year.  It will take high level ownership from both sides to make this agreement work where the other agreement failed.

For some involved in the Sector, it is also hoped that refocussing the relationship will give some airspace to some of the innovations that are quietly taking place.  Inspiring Communities, a network of community-led development projects, is a good example of new models attacking old problems. Their approach recognises that traditional approaches don’t always deliver the desired outcome, especially as the intensity and complexity of social problems has grown.

What is clear is that the status quo cannot be an option if the Government is serious about value for money. Done well, an agreement will have significant benefits for all New Zealand.  Put simply, more resources will be able to go on the actual ‘doing’. That should be reason enough for the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who participate in non-profit organisations or receive their services to take an interest.

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.

Even those who are cynical would benefit from blogging, which leads to knowing more people – albeit it in a shallow way – thinking about what one thinks and in the long run improving on one’s thoughts – with very little effort involved.

Once started on this blogging, I can see how it could become addictive. For some, obviously it becomes like keeping a diary; a daily record of thoughts – interesting or not. For, others I can see it’s the speediest way to develop as many relationships as you desire all over the world without moving your butt.

For those who are more ambitious, blogging is a great opportunity to show off your expertise and knowledge and develop recognition – even a fan club. I’m not quite there yet, but I can see how laudable responses to one’s blogs could inspire more of the same.

And, what an excellent business tool this is. Blogging is the perfect channel for not only informing customers, but getting to know them and what they think and want – true two-way communication like never before. Every business knows that developing customer relationships and knowing who customers are is fundamental.

While I’m still not entirely comfortable with putting my mental musings to the world, I am convinced that it’s worth doing if not just to ensure that if someone Googles Alice Taylor – they’ll find something.