Information strategy - Guidelines Press information strategies? Press releases? Press conferences? Press Events? Continuous consultancy? Three stages Rocket? PR Dissemination focus: Who?? What? When? Where? Why Make sure you specify your audience before any activities on information dissemination takes place. This is since the efforts and media channels will vary depending on your audience. If you wish to address your scientific community with your new research results or defining a new policy strategy and use a press release, you may end up with no replies, since you didn t communicate your will to discuss. A discussion requires a press event. If you are planning to reach out to the public, prepare to explain yourself thoroughly. Find metaphors and simple explanations for what you want to explain. Picture a person in your head (your neighbour or your mother for example) and mind that you don t insult them with lack of information but don t demand too much of their knowledge or remembrance from school either. Try to make and effort to make your self clear and concise. Subject: What If addressing public, try to find an angle of your subject that interests people outside the academic sphere such as food, health, social life, predictions of the future, family matters, money etc. something that relates to peoples everyday activities and their prospect of prosperity. Use this in your headline and introduction for your press release or article.
When, Where If there is an event involved, make sure you mention when and where carefully and clearly. If it is your press conference make sure you will not have to change the date in the last minute, or you will loose your audience. Why Why are you disseminating your information? Is it to educate in long term time perspective, to attract new attention to a revised subject or to present news on the scientific frontline? Try to find out the news value of your subject before entering the process of delivering a press release. Try to make an impression! Remember that for journalists news is a flow of current history, they know what has happened before and they will follow up if the subject comes up again. Press releases Reasons for press releases not being published: a) The journalists didn t grasp the concept b) The editors didn t have other news to relate yours to c) Another greater event crushed your news value in the last minute. Try again! d) Intake disregarded it due to over-information Make sure you have your Who, What, When, Where and Why covered. Set date and place for your press release, coordinate with other stakeholders if necessary and possible. Write your press release and send it to all your press contacts as well as colleagues with same interest. You may also want to send it directly to information departments of larger institutions with interest in your subject. Include those information officers in your press contact list. After having sent out your press release, follow up with your most prominent contacts; give them a call the same day to check if they need additional information. Stay by your phone and email to answer questions the following 2-3 days. Writing a press release Headline; Include all your keywords, or at least the 3 most important. The journalists will re write it. If you have a very good formulation, use it. Otherwise it s the journalists profession to master that. Quotes are ok. Introduction; Try selling your concept here; Your angle of the news, how it relates to your subject and audience. Maximize text volume to two or three sentences.
Edited text; Make sure you provide contacts, dates and background information as well as all your keywords and people who deserve acknowledgement. Quotes are very popular, three is not too many, it gives the journalists choice. Quotes will also support to prove the public interest of your press release. Half a page is usually enough volume, try to keep text volume to one page, it is easier to post. If you can t manage keeping that text volume, consider to write two press releases, you probably have more than one subject. Be catchy! Provide most important information on headline and introduction. Note that this does not have to be your scientific news (the facts you want to publish). It might as well be your angle that takes up all this space. Example Sumaila article: http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/viewpoints/mvoice/060402mvoice.shtml#top Additional information background articles Offer additional information when you contact your press contacts. It should consist of written and other kind of information on your subject provided to the journalists in an easy to obtain format such as an information sheet of paper or a webpage. The purpose is to correct mistakes before they are done by the journalists. Provide vital information in writing; Dates, figures, statistics, numbers, names of people and geographic places, addresses and phone numbers, email addresses, sources, URLs etc. also provide graphic material, One picture says more than 1000 words: Photographs, illustrations, drawings, maps, tables, diagrams etc, just make sure they are all in an easy to read format i.e. jpeg or pdf. Press contacts Collect a list of the press contacts from your institution, university and vital public media such as local and national daily newspapers, radio and TV stations. Find out the exact person to address with the kind of subjects you are writing about. Address the scientific or political journalists that cover your subject directly and personally. Build out your press contacts with information officers at established institutions with interest in your subject. Press conferences Set the date and venue at least a month before the events, three is even better if you expect plenty of attention. Plan it around lunchtime or dinnertime and serve something edible. Invite your press contacts well in advance, mention when, where and what you are going to inform them about, provide background information at the latest on the press conference. Follow up your invitation, you may email a week after you sent it, then about a week before and then two days before with your most important contacts. You may email the first follow up but the last one should be a personal phone call, to be safe make all the contacts personal phone calls.
Attention span: An invitation to a press conference released with a weeks preparation can perhaps expect local attention, if released within the month you can expect regional attention, within three months you can expect national attention, in six months, multinational attention. The Three Stages Rocket The Three Stages Rocket 1. Press releases 2. Press conferences 3. Press events = Continuous consultancy status If coordinated in good confidence-building fashion the Three Stages Rocket will result in your continuous consultancy status with the media. It will help build your institutional solidity with media, and they will turn to you when they need expert information on your subject. Whenever you look up your press contacts they will be happy to discuss your latest press release. The establishment of this mechanism goes into process from your first press conference. This builds on mutual trust and regular contacts, it usually requires a press secretary to handle the contacts and follow up on news and events regarding your subject as well as coordinate institutional events with institutions in the same field of interest. Press events Press events are larger press conferences or other larger arrangements inviting other stake holders than only the media. It could be the final meeting of a project, a conference including two or more scientific institutions discussing the same subject from different angles or a joint arrangement between scientists and specific stakeholders. The most important thing to remember to get good press attention is to serve the media with what is considered the news value. This could be a new scientific discovery but a probably more successful news value would be for example the breaking of silence between two previously hostile stake holder groups, success stories of development or good news on the earth status of marine resources. Make sure you write your press releases on the event in time to absorb it for media. Invitations should be sent out with the same attention span as for press conferences.
Information officer In the INCOFISH project we should consider diverting one person per workpackage responsible for coordination of our information events, trusted to write or edit press releases. Coordinated press releases have a better effect on media and an increased chance of pushing through i.e. being published. This probability increases with amount of sources i.e: coordinate your press releases with other workpackages and contacts. PR Projects If you are involving other institutions and organizations in your scientific projects, considers the dissemination vectors they make for your information. If you want to reach out to local small scale fishermen with your scientific work and results, you better involve them in your projects. If you want to reach the fishing industry, start the negotiations now on how you can use them as data providers. Once your project is finished, you may summarize the outcomes of it and present them to media as a success story of collaboration. This could be done through a pres release, a press conference or an event. Event Marketing Press events have no commercial interest but involving commercial interests in your scientific work is a new and daring step to take and if you include press events in your activities with commercial interests you are entering the scene of event marketing. There is always a turning back (as long as you have a contract that says so). If you want to involve commercial interest in your projects they can help you draw media attention to your work in a way you never dreamed of. Make sure you have concise agreements and contracts. Preferably put yourself in the position of independent advisor for a project involving commercial interests. That will draw attention to your institution but hopefully not negotiate your scientific integrity or rupture your reputation in case commercial interests start running berserk.
Producers, vendors and consumers If we, the scientists are the producers of information, management services and scientific data, the market would be the runners of an enterprise interested in selling our product and consumers the public and their policy driving voice. Media and PR are vectors and the attractor would be the environment where the product is exposed (our portal, a fish market, the EU commission greendays), the information is the attention we gain from the public by going to market. We want the attention from the public to be able to push policy development forward. Consumers Information Attractors Vectors Producers Market Now, who is interested in selling biodiversity data on their market? Not so many. But support from established scientists is something worthwhile trading. Shell oil buys in scientists to their platforms to improve their corporate ethics profile as well as many others. Who can resist a charming marine biologist at work in shiny neoprene? They are actually only pumping fossil gas in the commercial, that s all right with Mother nature, isn t it? It is important to win your consumers approval, and as awareness grows moral has become a high rated good of trade. It s called Ethics corporate management systems and there are even attempts to standardize it. 1 ounce of moral for 2 pounds of public attention Since moral is expensive these days, we can get funding to promote projects involving our research as well as organisations promoting our subjects, using corporate management strategies to make a better world. Is it worth considering? INCOFISH Information plan See annex II (.pdf)
http://172.29.59.14/incofish/workpackages/wp11/pdf/incofish1stannualactivityre portdraft2.pdf Information strategy and outcome according to INCOFISH Management of Knowledge and Tools All data, tools and concepts developed by INCOFISH will be considered public goods and will be made available through the INCOFISH web portal. Members of INCOFISH have volunteered to archive data and continue to make tools available beyond the duration of this project. Consortium partners accept and authorise that the Commission disseminates relevant project information, including summaries and public project results, names and contact details of consortium partners through visual, oral and electronic media. Raising public participation and awareness Public participation is envisaged mainly through the INCOFISH web portal where lay persons can upload data such as observations of species or pollution events, attach their own web sites if relevant to INCOFISH, or discuss issues with experts in the relevant forum. Public awareness will also be raised through traditional means such as regular press releases demonstrating success stories and guiding lay persons to the INCOFISH web portal. Involvement of stakeholders or the public in general are essential parts of work packages 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. (INCOFISH T. Annex pp: 15) Final Plan for using and disseminating knowledge All data, tools and concepts developed by INCOFISH will be considered public goods and will be made available through the INCOFISH web portal and also on CD-ROM for users who have difficulties accessing the Internet. Members of INCOFISH have volunteered to archive data and continue to make tools available beyond the duration of this project. Workpackage 1 Data, Tools, and Outreach is particularly designed for using and disseminating knowledge. Report on raising public participation and awareness Public participation is envisaged mainly through the INCOFISH web portal where lay persons can upload data such as observations of species or pollution events, attach their own web sites if relevant to INCOFISH, or discuss issues with experts in the relevant forum. Public awareness will be raised through traditional means such as regular press releases demonstrating success stories and guiding lay persons to the INCOFISH web portal. Ways and methods of raising public participation and awareness will be part of the report of workpackage 1 Data, Tools, and Outreach. (INCOFISH T. Annex pp: 54)
Read more: European Commission Guide to successful communications http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/science-communication/index_en.htm PDF file of the same document. http://ec.europa.eu/research/conferences/2004/cer2004/pdf/rtd_2004_guide_success_com munication.pdf By Lotta Jarnmark, May 2006 WPL1 cjarnmark@cgiar.org mailto:cjarnmark@cgiar.org INCOFISH, Philippines