Spreading the word
Bet DaviesHead of Communications
• External Communications• Stakeholder and trustee
relations• Key corporate messaging• Brand Management• Reputation management• Community engagement• Trustee of Prince’s
Regeneration Trust
What are we?
• 1,900 seat lyric theatre, the Donald Gordon
Theatre
• 250 seat theatre space, the Weston Studio
• Home to 8 other creative companies
• Function/conference rooms/restaurants/cafes
• Rehearsal Rooms, recording studios
• Concourse areas with free performance stage
• Dance House; BBC Hoddinott Hall
What are we?
• Company Limited by Guarantee
• Registered charity
• With clear charitable objectives
• Business model requires that we raise up to £1m per annum
• Trading arm
What will be covered?
• Identifying/developing your brand
• Key messaging
• Identifying/getting to know your audiences
• Communication channels
• Top Tips
THE BRAND
Brand Identity
• An organisation’s sense of self. It is formed by
history, beliefs and philosophy, technology,
ownership, its people, personality of its leaders,
ethical and cultural values, as well as its
strategies
• It is the core of an organisation’s existence
• Don’t think a brand is just a logo!
Brand Image
•It is in the eye of the receiver
•It is the reception of received messages by internal
and external audiences
•Just think of strong brands and the messages you
are receiving from them.
•e.g. Apple; Audi; Amazon; Facebook; Visa;
Innocent; Waitrose & John Lewis;
Who is representing your brand?
People who work with you People you are trying to reach
Building on your brand
AIDE MEMOIRE:
When you continue to build on your brand culture you build loyalty with your customers/ supporters
(c/f Wales Millennium Centre experience)
Top Tips
FIVE IMPORTANT TWEAKS YOU SHOULD MAKE TO BUILDING YOUR SUCCESSFUL BRAND
The what, the why, the who, the how and where
1.What is it?
2.What does it matter?
3.Who should care?
4. How can you help?
5. Where can you be reached?
Your Vision
• Integral to your brand
• Vision statements are short statements which
articulate your organisation’s DREAM
• Essential part of your communications toolkit
• A Stage for a Nation, our vision pre-construction
in 2002
Our Mission
“To bring the best of the world to Wales and to showcase the best of Wales to the world…”
Developing your Mission
• Establishing a simple clear and consistent
statement of your mission is also key to your
brand and all communications
• It should be outcome oriented
• Time spent on this will mean:
Buy-in at all levels
Clarity of purpose & organisational focus
Clear, consistent messaging understood by all
• Trustees, supporters, Community;public at large
• Politicians, local and national,
• Funders, existing and potential, public and private sector
• Key stakeholders, officials, influencers and opinion
formers
• Media, local, regional, national, online and offline
Identifying your audiences
Generic messages
• Working Together
• Preserve and Protect
• Best of the past is kept to enrich lives today
and in future
• Improve and develop for everyone
• Protect and Promote
• Fighting to save the heritage of our
communities
Storytelling
• Good communicators are storytellers
• But storytellers need good stories to engage with
their audiences
Top tips:
• Spend time developing the narrative of your story
• Identify what’s important to the ‘listener’ or reader
• Find the nuggets. Find the human interest
• Seek out your own storytellers – often found
where you least expect them
Find your online audiences
• Rapidly changing media landscape
• Need to find new audiences online
• Join them online – free and paid
• Share valuable information – avoid overload
• Share on OPP and relevant
professional/community fora
• Use all social media platforms available to you,
including You Tube, Vimeo, Twitter; blogs …..
Communicating with online audiences – top tips
• Find volunteers to help create contagious digital
content
• A picture tells 10,000 words
• National news providers have strong online
presence
• Track and evaluate what is being said. Respond
to negative comment, as well as the positive
• Use Google analytics/Twitter evaluation tools
• Engage in a personal way
• Get to know your audience to understand what they want
and need from you – don’t make assumptions
• Connect regularly – stakeholders, community, media etc.
• Don’t undervalue local/regional newspapers – often more
readers than Western Mail
• Creative events
Reaching out - person to person
• Identify five or six key messages – these should
underpin all communications, campaigns and on-going
communications, written and verbal
• Tailor the approach and use of language to your
audience, while maintaining consistency
• Media training – Top tips. The Power of three.
Tailoring/delivering the message
• Important to find synergies between your own ambitions
and national/local agendas, to spread the word
• For example Welsh Government’s Future Generations
Bill and the Wales We Want
Matching with national agendas
Sustainable Development
And finally . . . .
Any questions?