Peter Mills
I've been meeting a lot of heads of communication in the NHS recently. They have lots of stuff to do (swine flu has been a little distracting, as you might imagine). But they also have a bundle of needs coming out of world class commissioning competency requirements that fall under their remit: social marketing, service redesign, community engagement and managing their local brands. And then there's the day job.
These requirements are often new ground, yet they fundamentally support the delivery of public services. And not just in health: local authorities, academies, non-departmental public bodies and further and higher education institutions all have to address an evolving communications and marketing landscape.
Gaining deeper audience insight by using comprehensive research analysis and personas to guide messaging and channels is becoming commonplace.
The holy grail of 'just one campaign' is fading. Instead, a variety of interventions is needed to get messages across to instigate behaviour change. Integrated communication is the name of the game.
Sounds like a lot more work? Yes it is, but it's much more effective.
Allied to this is a drive to improve services. It's all very well running a great campaign to drive people to your services, but if the service is poor, or doesn't sit around the needs of the user then, just as if you were selling a TV or a holiday, you'll find it difficult to get a second chance to engage and in the meantime your brand is damaged.
Marketers call this 'the gap'. Service design, or redesign, is part of this and that includes information provision.
What's driving this? Audiences, for starters. They're complex and often difficult to engage. Social marketing is in part, too.
This is supported by the much lauded book, Nudge, by two Chicago economists, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. They propose that through a process which they call choice architecture, people can be nudged into making behaviour changes. Public services are often a conduit to support that behaviour change, so understanding people better is vital.
And then there's the plethora of information, especially online. Recent research from the COI showed people looking for health and social care information had some 50,000 organisations to choose from in England alone. The quality of this information is quite mixed, which can leave people overwhelmed and confused about what they can trust.
That's why the introduction of The Information Standard is to be welcomed, especially as more information is user generated. The standard assesses the processes an organisation uses to publish information. The process of applying for certification, according to those in the pilot scheme, helps improve the quality of information provision overall. They'll get to use a quality mark to prove it.
One quality mark too many? I don't think so. Anything to help people cut their way to well-written, well-researched, appropriately-designed, accurate and impartial information has got to be a good thing and a priority for information producers in health and social care. A standard for all public service information can only follow.
Peter Mills is consulting director at communications consultancy The Team
From Whitehall Watch
From Bubb's Blog
From Flip Chart Fairy Tales
