SUMMARY OF THE NETWORKING AND LEARNING EVENT FOR COMMUNICATION MANAGERS IN CBC PROGRAMMES Points Valencia, Viborg and Vienna 25-26 May 2009 Vienna NEEDS ASSESSMENT EXERCISE I. GROUP DISCUSSIONS 1. Internal communication Identify clear roles and expertise - Team building and coordination JTS/MA Communication between MA and JTS meeting - Improve CP 1 into an action plan - Written rules of procedure - Joint materials Coordinate programme comm. strategy and JTS/MA regional comm. strategy Coordinate different countries participating in one programme (incl. management of political pressure) JTS/MA/MSC 2. Synergies between programme and project communication Lack of project communication Help project communicate better JTS/MA (quantitative and qualitative)? Need to give a positive image of ETC - Highlight project benefits for to coordinate citizens thematic events - Organise thematic capitalisation events Lack of internal communication within project partnerships Lack of qualitative projects difficult to attract new projects applicants LP seminars not sufficient propose use of wiki tools by the projects 3. Joint ETC branding synergies between programmes JTS LPs Cooperation and synergies between Working groups (at national level, MA/JTS programmes (European added-value) e.g. with Objective 1-2 1 CP = Communication Plan is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
programmes) and at EU level Information and initiatives towards MSCs No single name (ETC, INTERREG IVA, OP, CBC, Objective 3 etc) Lack of awareness and knowledge of ETC in the media and general public (at national and EU level) No joint message at EU level Use just the EU flag (no name) Promote the current name (ETC) - Train the media as disseminators to the general public - Provide with simple and basic information on what is ETC ETC for dummies? Identify a joint message at EU level, through a centralised agency EC? programmes and 4. Evaluation and monitoring of communication Indicators Skip indicators or concentrate on MC/EC few core indicators The 2010 evaluation exercise - Organise an event to prepare Programmes and the 2010 evaluation - Quality assessment/quality evaluation: outsourcing - Organise a peer evaluation (evaluation made by other programmes) based on common checklist developed by Project monitoring Control project outputs in progress JTS reports Impact evaluation how to differentiate Organise a survey different levels of impact (project/programme/eu levels) 2
II. RESULTS OF THE WRITTEN NEEDS ANALYSIS AMONG THE SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS Almost all participants (90%) are interested in regular physical meetings with the ETC community, but most of them stressed that one meeting per year is sufficient due to time and budget constraints. 90% are interested in geographical meetings (per zone) as well as CBC-level events, whereas only 50% favour Europe-wide events. 95% of the participants are interested in keeping in touch with their communication colleagues across Europe using e-mail, forums, video conference or newsletters. 95% of the participants would like to attend the next event. Suggestions for topics include evaluation issues (50% of the participants mentioned this topic explicitly!); project communication activities; joint communication tools and capitalisation. Not all participants answered the question whether they would be interested in joint branding, but of those who did, 80% are in favour. The two main challenges are to develop a joint message for all INTERREG programmes at EU level (cf. results of group discussions) and to communicate successful projects. Positive feedback was given to the suggestion to have organise a major European event on 20 Years of Territorial Cooperation. Concrete suggestions range from organising a major fair for INTERREG programmes, to holding a series of smaller events at regional level to reach a more general public. Content-wise the event should concentrate on achievements and success stories of ETC so far. Some programmes are interested in joint activities to save time and resources. Appropriate topics could be training seminars for beneficiaries (on communication or other issues). MEDIA STRATEGY DISCUSSION Take benefit of VIPs such as Commissioner Danuta Hübner a good way to attract the media Topics for the next Panorama issues: o The Baltic Sea Strategy o Communicating Regional Policy o Environmental aspects in the Cohesion Policy Focus on flagship projects and human interest stories is recommended, i.e. how did a citizen benefit from a project? Why not use creative ways of selling your story? Good example: bike trip with journalists visiting all ERDF project sites in and around Toulouse (FR). Successful projects often have a political backup to be considered! Programmes need to cooperate with the project on communication activities and not just inform about rules and requirements and control compliance with such rules. 3
Train Communication Managers to tell stories. They may then either do editorial work themselves or pay a freelance journalists to sell their messages (this seems to be a reasonable investment). Is there a need or not for a programme to be visible in national media/newspapers? In general this can be a good thing but programmes should not invest too much time and energy in such media, as the likeliness to be published is rather low. Focus on local and regional media is more important. FACTS AND FIGURES A Sunday s edition of a national newspaper contains more information than average people received in a whole lifetime in the XVIIth century. Europe has the largest number of specialist media in the world. These specialist publications (also called trade media) are important source of information for generalist media, in particular national ones. In 2008 the web ads revenues were for the first time superior to traditional media web revenues. Use of video: o Prices vary a lot depending on production quality needed, on the use of a professional camera team, travel, length, copyrights for image and sound etc. The reflection phase (What message do we want to pass? To whom? What for?) is essential. The post-production phase as well, e.g. choice of images, sound, cuts etc. o Programmes could organise a video competition for their projects or cooperate with universities to reduce costs. Use of new media and IT: revise your communication plan/budget on an annual basis if needed. Diverse opinions on the usefulness of blogs and social media (Facebook, Twitter etc ). The best advice to give is that you get acquainted with these to then evaluate whether they make sense for your communication work or a just a waste of time! Communication needs to be a win-win interaction between programmes and projects! 4
MEDIA OUTREACH WORKSHOP TIPS AND TOOLS Don t try to communicate a communication product (e.g.: we have developed a nice brochure ) but concrete project outputs: o Start with one example, then mention to the journalist that you have other similar stories to tell (e.g. on different projects working on the same theme) o Tell the journalist the story first, only after that you can tell them about the programme and EU-funding The elevator pitch exercise: exercise yourself to tell your story within a very short time (the time to step in and out of an elevator)... Imagine a helicopter for your communications work: try not to be too close to the topic/programme/project! Identify your audiences: Audience What does your audience think NOW? What should your audience think at the END of your programme/project? The right timing for media work: Mondays, Summer break. EU MEDIA THE PLACES TO BE 5 The European Voice (http://www.europeanvoice.com) is read by 70% of the MEPs, it is the most influence EU magazine in Brussels and has a very good reputation. Euractiv (http://www.euractiv.com/en) only exists in an electronic version but it is also very influential. Its interest also lies in the fact that it has both a European edition and regional editions/networks. Also check out their Blogactiv (http://blogactiv.eu)! 70% of journalists nowadays use blogs as a source information. EU-Observer (http://euobserver.com) is also an online edition that is updated twice a day. It is also well-respected in Brussels circles. The Parliament Magazine (http://www.theparliament.com) and its sister publication Regional review must be considered carefully, especially as regards their prices for an advertorial (they sell editorials/ advertisement). Often they do not have the desired impact, however, the Regional Review is media partner of the Open Days and it may be worth investing in an article for this event.
This is a non-exhaustive list! CONCLUSIONS WHAT DO WE TAKE ONBOARD? The implementation of the communication strategy implies the selection of few measures with the most expected impact and the best ratio investment (time and budget) / result in terms of visibility and awareness-raising. Make use of project results for programme communication activities/messages! The language issue affects most CBC programmes: time-consuming to translate all communication products into the different programme languages, and additionally into English. A possible solution is to require from each project a brief project summary in English as part of the application form (as experienced in the IVA Programme Öresund- Kattegat-Skagerrak). 90% of press releases end up in the bin, so evaluate whether they make sense for your programme. Maybe try out the new bullet point format press release. Pay attention to photos and try to use unusual angles (instead of meaningless group pictures). It is always interesting to compare communication strategies, activities and issues with other programmes. ACTION PLAN/FOLLOW UP Start preparations for next year s 20 Years of Territorial Cooperation Event Keep you informed about the next Europe-wide or CBC communication event with focus on evaluation to take place at the beginning of 2010 USEFUL LINKS European Institutional Style Guide: http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en- 000100.htm Survey Monkey (for online surveys - this is an example, other similar websites also offer such services): http://www.surveymonkey.com/ EUTube on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/eutube INTERREG on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/interreg How to add RRS Feeds Video explanation from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klglssxgsu 6