For any hard-pressed comms person in the public or third sector who just needs a bit of inspiration, handy learning or fascinating facts (there really is a New Fave Fact section). Campaign and creative inspiration you can steal. Storytelling and comms tips and insight to pass off as your own.
How does John Lewis's Xmas ad rank?
Is AI really saving us time?It's not us, it's them. Maybe AI isn't a time-saving panacea after all. I spent several hours working up a report-style doc last week - researching, editing, refining - and sent it off for review. Back came a Copiloted version - a blanded out, corporate husk, sucked of any empathy (and even sense in some places) on a topic that very much needed to feel human. What did I do? I spent hours re-editing and putting the humanity and empathy back in. Essentially restoring it to much like the original. Back it went. This time, back came the approval - great, good to go. Did anyone really benefit from AI's intervention? Nope. Did it waste days of time? Yep. Of course, Claude and pals have the ability to help accelerate tasks, but when it comes to stuff that need understanding and know-how, maybe give comms the nod over Copilot. FREE TIPS: Video storytelling shorts I've teamed up with the lovely folk at Orlo for some video shorts called The Story Board. There's a new one every fortnight and you can catch up on them on their socials: Insta | LinkedIn | Tiktok JOHN LEWIS AD: best since pre-CovidSo, that's it then - Christmas is here, like it or not, cos the John Lewis ad has dropped. What did you think? Testing by marketing data wizards System1 suggests it's the best since 2019 (Excitable Edgar, if you track these things) in terms of the emotion and feeling it generates. (And for what it's worth, I can't disagree as 90s clubbing relic myself.) USE THIS: content and campaign ideas ...though when it comes to Christmas ads deploying a retro song for emotional impact, Shelter have put John Lewis firmly in the shade. (They did it earlier this year with this take on Madness too). (Get this type of creative and content inspiration first on the Creative Catch of the Day WhatsApp channel.) EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS: resilience as marketingWhen your oat milk is preparing you for emergencies, you know it's time to start taking it seriously. Through the Blue Light Comms Hub, we're talking to Local Resilience Forums about measurably increasing the resilience and preparedness of communities. You know the winter weather and floods are coming, so get in touch. NEW FAVE FACTSo, social media is...not really about being social any more. Anyone shocked? ABOUT USTurn The Page is a story-led communications consultancy, using the power of stories to create memorable, measurable campaigns, strategies and narratives. Campaigns and comms led by stories are measurably more successful and improve engagement and trust.
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The Page Turner - creative comms and storytelling gold
For any hard-pressed comms person in the public or third sector who just needs a bit of inspiration, handy learning or fascinating facts (there really is a New Fave Fact section). Campaign and creative inspiration you can steal. Storytelling and comms tips and insight to pass off as your own.
Praise the lore - storytelling takes a new shape First I winced. By the end I was punching the air in agreement When this LinkedIn post went semi-viral last week, I was ready to jack it all in and retrain as a dentist (always fancied it for some reason). Death to Storytelling is not the sort of headline you need to see when much of your work revolves around the subject. But as with everything, times change and things evolve. Pretty Little Marketer (LinkedIn) Lore has become the new buzzword...
'Trusted voices on social media open closed doors' How's your campaign or project going? Feel like you're knocking on a brick wall? Maybe it's time to look at who's doing the knocking (not that sort, mucky mind). The Edelman Trust Barometer is a report that emerges at the start of each year to largely tell us we don't really trust politicians and billionaires - who knew? But beyond the headlines, there can be some interesting nuance and the headline above 👆 was one of the more interesting...
Did Brooklyn-gate help us see through 'authentic'? Before last week, I knew very little about Brooklyn Beckham, other than why he's called Brooklyn (which is a bit weird now I think about it). So the chances of this being a psuedo-gossip column hot take on the family feud are nil. But the whole drama surfaced a question that had been troubling me anyway: what 'authentic' really means now. This piece on the Beckhams fallout highlighted how 'authentic' has now become a comms commodity in its...