MY BEST EVER WORKING DAY - REFLECTION ON AN AMAZING DAY AT THE UNAWARDS19

The UnAwards19 was my best work day ever. I’ve been reflecting on why...

by Darren Caveney

There are so many highlights from the UnAwards19, too many for one post, but I wanted to share some reflections post-event.

The UnAwards soak up my time. They are not-for-profit and so as a self-employed team of one it is a pressure at a busy time of the year. But I am very fortunate and very proud to be able to run and host them. And, of course, I don’t run them alone – there are a team of people who put a lot of love and passion into them too, from the sponsors who make it even possible, to the 140 attendees who travel from all parts of the UK to celebrate.

As my friend Georgia Turner said “it’s a true feel-good event which hits you from the moment you walk into the venue”

Thank you, thank you, thank you

The UnAwards are special and for so many reasons. From seeing the joy on the winners’ faces to seeing people connect and have fun at the end of a very busy year.

There are so many people to thank so I made a little video here.

So many highlights…

The aim of UnAwards day is simple – to celebrate the people in our wonderful industry and that whether you win or not you have a fun day with friends old and new. Simple.

But, of course, there have to be some winners too and there many highlights this year.

Jude Tipper picked up best comms pro, and best guest post, for the second year running. She tells me that her home has high ceilings so she has room for a few more winners certificates yet. Can she do the treble in 2020?

Doncaster Council have in my opinion set the bar for best in class social media over the past couple of years so I thought their win in the best social media account category really was deserved. But there are a chasing pack of brilliant accounts after their title next year. Game on.

Two top comms leaders moved into new jobs at exactly the same time – Donna Jordan at Derbyshire Constabulary and Julie Odams at Derbyshire County Council – had to collaborate really early on in the new roles and handle the Whaley Bridge comms. They came out on top and that was great to see. Their award for best crisis comms was testament to good people, working hard together and just simply plying their trade based on years of experience and many skills. Bravo.

The Local Government Association do so much to support the sector in what has been a pretty traumatic last 10-years. Picking up the best collaboration UnAward was a fitting way for them to sign off the decade.

Seeing the Office of the Public Guardian pick up their first ever comms team award in the best internal comms category was a joyous thing.

Tower Hamlets Council’s comms team and been rebuilt in recent years by director of comms, Andreas Christophorou. The team there picked up an UnAward win for the second year on the trot. That kind of consistency really does point to a high performing team so well done to all.

The most entered category was – no prizes for guessing – was best low-cost comms. 50 entries hit my inbox. Wow. If you hit the shortlist here you did some exceptional work. The winners – Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority - picked up the win, having had an 11-hour journey to even make it to the big day. Two more lovely and deserving winners than Anna MacLean and Joanne Ford you’d struggle to find.

And Jo Bland – huge congratulations on joining a very small band of comms people who have picked up the prestigious Lifetime Achievement UnAward. That’s something to be really proud of.

Health and wellbeing

This year for the first time I launched the ‘best support for health and wellbeing’ UnAward. I won’t lie, I was slightly nervous about the kind of response it might get but I shouldn’t have been. There were 19 entries, which was brilliant to see.

Network Rail claimed the inaugural UnAward in this category and I’m hoping they will come to the UnAwards Winners Masterclass to tell us more. The judges raved about it.

Spare a thought…

Spare a thought for the brilliant small but perfect comms team at South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, run by head of comms Alex Mills. Winners in 2018 and 2019 they were shortlisted in no less than four categories. They were so close to another win picking up a highly commended. I’m sure they’ll be back in 2020.

Spare a thought too for people like Sally Northeast – individually and in teams nominated in a mighty four categories, and for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead nominated in three. I genuinely great return, and more wins are surely on the cards next year.

I was impressed with so many of the shortlisted entries. If you made the shortlist for best social media account and best social media campaign you are delivering truly exceptional work.

If you made the shortlist for best low-cost comms work then congratulations. That’s where real creativity shines through. Bravo to you.

And then there was the takeover. Rascals, including Sally Northeast, Georgia Turner, Louisa Dean, Ben Capper, Holly Bremner and many of the Comms Unplugged gang took to the stage to give me an UnAward. Something about being a superstar or something. It was a total shock. I was really chuffed and appreciated it very much - thank you to you all. You’re a lovely lot.

Well done to all of this year’s winners - you can find the full list here.

Get your diaries out

A diary date for you – the #UnAwards20 will take place on Friday 11 December 2020 when we can do it all again and I can spend three month’s worrying about film choices.

The importance of giving

This year the official UnAwards charity was mental health campaigner Jonny Benjamin’s Beyond Shame Beyond Stigma initiative.

You raised over £300 on the day so thank you for that and thanks too to Harriet Small who pulled together some great raffle prizes and to Comms Unplugged for offering up a two-night stay as the top prize. Well done to Kath Middleditch for winning that little treat.

Pulp Fiction – what a film

Choosing a film for 140 people is always tricky. There isn’t a film which everyone will love. In previous years I have chosen movies based on themes but this year I just wanted to treat a room full of brilliant, creative people to a brilliant, creative film. Launched in 1994 wow Pulp Fiction still packs a punch. In my view it’s much copied but still peerless. Many of the room hadn’t seen it before and even more not on the big screen.

2 hours 34 minutes of creative genius.

Gratitude

I’m so grateful to get to run and host the UnAwards but even better than that is the chance to spend the day with a room of amazing people, some who I have come to value as friends. Thank you for making this the best UnAwards yet.

A good friend of mine had some brilliant and important news just hours before the vent and this really was the icing on the cake.

Some final, special mentions…

Luke Williams, Ben Caper, Adrian Stirrup and Nigel Bishop thank you for all of your help. You are a pleasure to work with and a talented bunch.

To the attendees, thank you for giving up a busy Friday in December. I hope you had fun.

To everyone who submitted the 350 entries thank you for allaying my annual fear that one year no one will enter because you’re all so busy.

The UnAwards remains a not for profit event and I am so grateful to the official partner Granicus, and the official sponsors Orlo, CAN, NUJ PRCC, the Local Government Association, Alive With Ideas, Ineo Digital and Perago-Wales - without your kind support the UnAwards would not be possible.

I shall be asking you all very nicely if you’re able to support the UnAwards Winners Masterclass too, which I will make happen in the spring of 2020.

Until next year…

p.s. If you’re interested in being involved a sponsor for the UnAwards Winners Masterclass in the spring and/or the UnAwards20 please shout me – I’m on darrencaveney@gmail.com

Darren Caveney is organiser of the UnAwards, creator of comms2point0 and owner of creative communicators ltd

pic by Nigel Bishop

THE UNAWARDS: THEY'RE NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS

With three weeks to go until the submission deadline, there’s a great way for all entries – not just the winners – to provide ongoing inspiration long after the December ceremony.

by John-Paul Danon.

Last year’s UnAwards resulted in a bumper of crop of 420 entries in the 18 categories. Of these, 70 achieved the kudos of being shortlisted but – naturally enough – there was only one winner in each section. So, what happened to the 350 entries that didn’t win? Those well-crafted submissions will have contained a wealth of information and inspiration useful to comms folk – I know, as I was lucky enough to be one of the judges.

This year, comms2point0 mastermind Darren Caveney and we at CAN have come up with a way in which the 2019 entries (from which there’ll be 19 winners, with the welcome addition of the ‘Supporting health and wellbeing’ category) can have a life long after the credits have rolled on the Christmas movie that wraps up the UnAwards winners’ event in December.

When you sit down with your beverage of choice to fill in this year’s entry form, you’ll see a tick box at the end asking if you’d be happy to share your submission as part of a new resource. This resource – currently being developed – will be a digital ‘campaign bank’.

A stash of insight gained from the submissions UnAwards entrants agree to share, plus from the campaigns CAN runs with local councils (on everything from recycling and fostering to resident consultations and public health) comms people will be able to search through hundreds of examples of great campaign work to find out which approaches generated the best outcomes, the messages that really resonated with audiences, and inspiring ideas for how to do things a little differently.

The resource will incorporate a ‘creative bank’ in which measurably successful and/or award-winning campaign assets – artwork, videos and digital tools – can be licensed for a small fee from the council who originated them, so you’re not having to constantly reinvent the wheel when you’re pushed for time and resources.

Play to your strengths

So, what can you add to our bank of collective comms knowledge through your UnAwards entry this year? Luckily you don’t have to be an all-round campaign genius and good at everything. Comms comes in all shapes and sizes and the categories for these awards are carefully worded so you/your team can throw the spotlight on whatever has done the heavy lifting for you over the past 12 months.

So, whether that’s social media, research, evaluation, email, internal comms, creative work, collaboration or managing to get things done free or low cost, there’s a category for you – with a full list here.

One of my favourite winners from the 2018 UnAwards was rewarded for their creative chops: South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue. Their video ‘Kids talk about their firefighter mums’ (which you must see here if you haven’t yet) came out of a need to recruit more women by appealing to career-changers with kids. The simple but brilliant idea behind the production was key: getting firefighters’ children to talk about them as mothers first before the reveal to flip any potential stereotyping on its head.

CAN is a digital company so, as you might expect, it’s strength in research and evaluation that I value as a marker of success in the campaigns we run with councils. For example, I’m proud of our ongoing work on the Stop Smoking London campaign with the capital’s boroughs which has seen us find new ways to get to those residents most likely to be on the verge of quitting.

We honed in on research that pointed to the 25-40 age group’s habit of using social cigarette breaks to check their mobile phones and combined this with a qualifying question on smoking for those who clicked on our digital ads to make sure we were targeting the right people. We then targeted London pubs and clubs in the evening to nudge smokers towards taking action with repeat messages. You can see a case study here.

But it was social media – using a Facebook tool that tested people’s knowledge of what things could be recycled locally and where – that powered my other favourite CAN campaign over the past year. We managed to get over 37,000 interactions over a two-week period for the four London councils taking part (case study here).

Inside knowledge

Of course, the UnAwards are as much about recognising teams who get their internal messages right, helping staff along in their day-to-day work, as external campaigning. One of the highlights of the UnAwards 2018 Winners’ Masterclass was the comms team at Loughborough University showing how an internal campaign can be both effective and low-cost by combining a meaningful cause with a meaningful objective in a defined timescale.

The university’s Heart 2 Heart initiative took place over a set 12 hours on Valentine’s Day. With the support of the British Heart Foundation and local ambulance service, nearly 1,500 staff and students (a meaningful target of two people trained per one identified space on campus) were taught to perform CPR in a bid to increase the cardiac arrest survival rate of one in 18 in the East Midlands (the meaningful cause).

The team at Loughborough nabbed two UnAwards for that campaign – both ‘best low-cost’ and ‘best internal’ communications. And Loughborough University is The Times and Sunday Times ‘University of the Year 2019’ (the UnAwards has its finger on the pulse of the good guys!).

So, grab a coffee, fire up your laptop and get that UnAwards entry in by 30 October. Even if you don’t win one of the honours, everybody still wins because you’ve shared the knowledge from all that hard work you’ve put into your comms over the past year. Good luck!

John-Paul Danon is co-founder and Sales Director at UnAwards sponsor, CAN, which works with local councils to get their campaigns seen by the right people online and on social media. Say hello on Twitter at CAN and JPDanon.

image via USMC Archives