Co-creation and how to go about it

One of the more recent terms to surface in the social sector is ‘co-creation’, sometimes used interchangeably with ‘co-production’. Organisations like Nesta use the terms to describe the process of designing products or services with the people who are going to use them. Only occasionally are the term and techniques used for communications.

What is co-creation?

Co-creation basically means collaborative creation. At Poached Creative and we define co-creation as designing creative assets alongside the people we are trying to reach.

This could be:

·      young people producing anti-crime campaigns for their peers

·      people with learning disabilities building an accessible website

·      homeless and unemployed people creating a blog about their experiences.

More than a focus group

Traditional focus groups get people together, test some ideas and usually leave it up to the creatives to accept or ignore the feedback. In co-creation the ideas and content are generated, tested and approved by the group. They retain collective oversight of the product or service through the development process.

Top creatives will be involved with the process so they can hear from the audience first-hand  and bring in the professional view..

In addition to creating something that they care about, participants will also gain or practice skills in communication, team work and pitching/presentation.

The process

1. Meet with audience members. Often this will be a mixed group of different audience members, including staff and stakeholders. The workshop looks for consensus on the following questions:

·      What do we know about the issue and audience?

·      Why does it matter to us and what matters most?

2. Find the message, media and channel. Planning is the key to any successful communications project and this stage provides the foundation for PR and distribution plans. The group explores the following questions:

·      Where will our audience be, how do we reach them?

·      What’s it about? How would you say it to a friend?

·      What does success look like? How will we know when it’s good?

3. Get creative. Often this stage will take place with creative professionals – eg. writers, designers, filmmakers or photographers in the room. It will:

·      Look at what’s already out there, research content

·      Design/write/film/create social media

4. Critical feedback. This is the point where the creative is tested  with different audience members. Participants will ask the following questions:

·      Does this work? What do other people think? Are we missing something?

·      Feedback and input from stakeholders/experts

·      Amend and seek sign off

5. Launch and promote. This stage is all about getting the product out to the right people through the right channels and enlisting the help and contacts of everyone in the group.

6. Evaluate and feed back. Involving the group in evaluating the success, based on criteria agreed in stage 2, is crucial for the learning process and also to improve future products.

Co-creation techniques

Co-creation from Poached Creative starts with an audience group and a brief or theme. We facilitate groups using a range of techniques to engage them in the creative process over anything from two to twelve sessions.

Some of these techniques include:

·      open discussion, brainstorming and mood boarding

·      creating audience personas

·      future basing

·      SWOT and PEST analysis

·      distribution and PR planning

·      action planning, assigning roles and tasks

·      presentation/pitching and critical review

·      documenting progress and building networks through social media

“Co-creation isn’t about happy-clapper brainstorms and blank sheets of paper, it’s about well-channelled creative energy and structured tasks that meet a business challenge.”
Sense Worldwide (2009) The Spirit of Co-Creation: Risk-Managed Creativity for Business

For more information visit:

Poached Creative's co-creation page
www.staying-safe.com

http://www.nesta.org.uk

http://www.innovationlabs.org.uk

http://www.forbes.com/sites/infosys/2011/12/20/co-creation-innovation-bte

http://www.thespiritofcocreation.com/about/

Ten tips for effective writing

“Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which these thoughts occur.” Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, 1979.

The tips below are mostly drawn from Strunk and White’s brilliant little book, The Elements of Style. Its language seems archaic now but the principles it sets out are still spot on. I took the liberty of translating these principles into today’s language for my colleagues at the NHS Confederation.

They've served me very well in my communications career (first as a journalist and later as a writer for charities) and I firmly believe that every writer who aims to be read should apply these simple principles to their work.

1. Put your audience first.

2. Plan before you write.

3. Introduce only one idea per sentence/paragraph.

4. Use active voice.

5. Use concrete language.

6. Make every word count.

7. Say just the right amount.

8. Avoid jargon and complicated words.

9. Express similar content in a similar way.

10. Be wary of opinion and speculation.

I plan to expand on each of these points, with examples. Keep an eye on this blog and feel free to post questions in the comments field. I’ll do my best to answer them.

Explain yourself

I've been working on core messages for a few social enterprise and charity clients recently (not to mention my own) so I thought I'd share a few tips on how to explain what you do in writing.

You know how it is. You've been working flat out on a project, service or new venture for months, maybe years. You know it's good. You know people will want your services. You've got everything ready to go except...

How do you describe it in writing?

There'll be plenty of times you'll be asked for a sentence or two to describe your organisation. It will need to be compelling and get straight to the point. Marketers refers to this as the 'core message' or 'core description' and it is closely linked to your elevator pitch and your visual identity.

You've most likely developed some patter to intrigue that dreamt-of funder in a lift and you've quite likely got a fairly straight-forward way of explaining what you're up to to your mum. But when it comes to putting it in writing it can still be difficult to capture exactly what you do.

Your core message could be captured in a few different forms.

Strapline - explains your proposition in just a few words, eg, Tesco's "Every little helps" or Cancer Research UK's "Together we will beat cancer". Straplines need to be exceptionally strong and accurately reflect what you do.

Short description - how you would normally describe your organisation and what it does. A short description should be no more than two short sentences and would likely appear on your website homepage or on your 'about us' page.

Long description - a full description of your organisation and its services. This might include bullet points of the areas that you work in and describe a bit more about who you work with.

Key messages - things you want your audience to know about you, different aspects of your services, and what makes you different or unique. You may have several key messages that can be weaved into any communications materials you produce.

1. Identify your core audience

Now, anyone who knows me will know that I'm always carrying on about the audience but this is absolutely crucial. If your market is business start ups, there's no point describing your services to them in the same way that you would to your bank manager or to funders. Think about who the core audience is and focus on them. What words would they use to describe their need and the solution you provide?

2. Think about your words - carefully

The way you describe things within your organisation is often not the best way to communicate them to outsiders. And the words that seem perfectly obvious to you might have unintended meanings in a different context. For example, would you really want "engaged staff" or "green" airline passengers? Think about all the possible interpretations before you settle on something.

3. Get outside help

If it's your project, chances are you won't be able to get enough distance from it to explain it clearly to the uninitiated. If possible, budget for specialist help (from an organisation like Poached, for example). You'll find that a new, professional perspective can really simplify and clarify what you're trying to say. Regardless of whether you get help or if you try to tackle it yourself, you will need to test your words out on as many people as you can - particularly your intended audience.

4. Decide on something and stick to it

Tweaking the way you describe yourself too often will make you look disjointed and confused. Over time, organisations do evolve different ways of describing themselves but make sure your published descriptions (on your website and on your latest leaflet, for example) match up. If you do have a few distinct audiences and you want to tailor a description for each, great, but make sure it's clear who each description is for. Also, try to always use the some common elements in each.

5. Create a style sheet so there's no doubt

All media outlets and large companies have style guides so why shouldn't you? Having a style sheet will help you and your staff to remain consistent, which will strengthen your brand. (It doesn't have to be as comprehensive as the The Guardian's free online style guide.) Agree within your organisation on the dictionary you will defer to (www.askoxford.com provides a good online version) and put in writing little points such as how (and if) you abbreviate your company name, whether you prefer to use the less formal "we" and "you" in business materials, and any other common terms.

Of course there's a lot more to it that this, but this should give you an idea of how to start thinking about describing your organisation in writing. If you'd like further advice or help from Poached Creative, please contact us.

PR for the right reasons: a foray to the other side

Well, it's back to business here at Poached after a brief but productive pause. I have a new trainee, Louise, who is working for our new client, Healthy Planet.

This is my idea of Poached-lite now that the pilot is over: just one trainee who's main job is to help me out and make the most of any opportunity that comes their way. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I'm still working to build business, gain new funding and get us set up for the future.

Healthy Planet has added an exciting new element to our work here at Poached and, in truth, one I was reticent to take on: PR.

What I know about public relations (or dealing with the media, which is what it mainly amounts to) stems from being on the other side of the fence. As a former journalist I know what annoyed me, what was helpful, and what I'd like to receive from a PR agency. But I've always steered clear of 'doing' PR - it feels a bit too much like crossing to the dark side.

There's another way of looking at it though. Right now I'm working for a client who has really interesting and positive messages about people and the environment. They're doing innovative things with technology, schools and businesses to try to gain as much as possible for the environment from the transactions that we would be making anyway - in this case buying gifts and paying rates.

So it's not difficult to want to help get those messages out there. And I'm sure journalists and the public will be keen to hear them. So, here's what I'm trying to do for Healthy Planet in a neat five points that you might find useful too.

1. Make sure the messages are simple and clear. Try not to do too much with the one press release/event/email/etc. People need one message that they can grasp quickly and easily - without having to think too hard or dig around for more information.

2. Think about what the audience will find interesting about it. Ask what's in it for them? Then lead with that. Good journalists will be attuned to their audiences' interests and will be more likely to run the story.

3. Target the message to an audience that has reason to be interested. Wasting your time on people or media outlets that will never want to run your story is also a waste of their time and damages your reputation.

4. Spend time getting the information right. Make sure it's concise, has all the facts, is set out clearly and consistently and has contact details and links to further information.

5. Take a deep breath and go for it. The worst you'll get is silence.

Virtual stalking or communications revolution?

Twitter. It's all over the place. Electing presidents, attempting to rescue lost chums, giving me a sneak peak at my ex-boyfriend's dream bicycle (no, I'm not going to link to that one)...

It amazes me that the ability to ping 140 characters of text into the ether can have so much of an affect on society, individuals and relationships.

The truth is, while I've been hearing about Twitter for a while now, I hadn't actually seen it for myself until a couple of weeks ago. It was the first day of the pilot project for my start-up social enterprise and I'd spent hours preparing the more theoretical component for the day.

The idea was to give both trainees a broad foundation in communications theory - the message, the medium, communications channels, noise, feedback, that kind of thing. Twitter came up when we were talking about internet channels and I confessed I'd never been on it. Jeevan didn't know much about it either, so Angela took over my laptop and gave us both a quick tutorial.

She showed us what it meant to 'follow' somebody (which still seems quite stalker-like to me) how to send a post, and the counter that tells you how close you are to your 140 character limit.

This reminded me of writing news text messages when I worked for Australian Associated Press. Trying to condense a 400 word article into 140 characters without the aid of text-speak was, in fact, really good for developing concise writing. Providing the laws of grammar are heeded, it seems to me that the same could be said of Twitter. Perhaps, alongside the enforced brevity, we could introduce a grammar and spelling check that encourages the use of correct English.

But this still leaves the question of the terminology that builds up around anything web. People using Twitter post 'tweets', apparently, and the most popular tweeters are collectively known as 'the twitterati'. I only really know that through searching the Urban Dictionary - another revelation to me and, again, courtesy of Angela. Thankfully, this is the only dictionary that's currently keeping pace with the rapid rate at which web users create new words.

Our focus turns to web writing next week and I'm sure, once again, I'll be learning almost as much as my trainees.