Text of a speech given at Thames21 International Conference, (London 2003) with Dr. Veer Bhedra Mishra (“Hero of the Planet” – Time Magazine), Sir Trevor McDonald and Max Clifford.

GLOBALISATION – FROM MY TESCO’S TROLLEY TO TABLE MOUNTAIN

In the UK we have never been so exposed to globally available products, never so close to the rest of the world through cheap travel, and it’s never been so easy to acquire these so quickly through modern technology.

How many times have you bought a new product, say a toaster, and the instruction booklet is bigger than the toaster itself? You prise the crumb-free shiny new object from the moulded polystyrene but can’t work out what all the knobs do, so resort to the instruction booklet. It’s very impressive, in width if not in print quality, but this isn’t due to comprehensive instruction in the art of toasting, but because it has the same illustration repeated 47 times, with 47 language variations. Finding the English language page is not easy, and some are not even in the Western alphabet but are in Russian, Arabic, Chinese or Greek.

My new toaster does not have any writing on it, but has symbols to denote where you put the toast in, how you lift it out and so on. This is impressive - one multi-lingual product using 46 translators (for the instruction booklet), manufactured, assembled, packed, distributed and shipped presumably to at least 46 countries. My toaster has travelled 5,600 miles to get to me, and is cheaper than the one from the company in Bradford, that was sitting next to it in Dixons at my point of purchase decision.

Aside from the less obvious imported products, and the lower profile global products sitting in our houses, there are also the often-cited global brands all around us, which mysteriously share the same colour logo; Marlboro, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and so on. It is impossible to enter any UK high street and not be exposed to the global logos of these usual suspects. In the UK the Big Boy brands literally “paint the town red”.

Our popular culture evolves around global media too. Take printed media; my week would not be complete without reading (correction – looking at) Hello magazine. I am relieved that a rich celebrity is looking a bit porky in ‘real’ life, or that they have acquired orange peel thighs. How I laugh at what the (usually) hidden spouse looks like, (obviously got married pre-fame), and that money does not lead to taste in the home furnishings department. But these photographs of celebrities are from all over the world, such is the global nature of popular culture; the supermarkets they emerge from, the beaches on which they canoodle, the houses they are interviewed in. Different locations, different countries, different nationalities.

Higher brow culture such as world events and politics are intertwined with the shock and awe tactic of celebrity spotting, (they’re shocked, we’re in awe). News reporting is a 24-hour activity, although more for those reporting it, I suspect, than those watching it. We read about, or watch, foreign politicians, world disasters and diseases. I can sit in the comfort of my rain-battered house in South Manchester and eat my Thai take-away, (I really love that papaya salad starter with garlic and beansprouts), and drink a nicely chilled Chilean Chardonnay, while I watch children die of starvation or dehydration. The incredible irony sometimes penetrates the everyday existence of my life. But only sometimes.

Meanwhile television and film-making keeps that cushy profession of ‘location deciding’ in demand. We watch programmes on buying houses in Croatia and cooking recipes without a frying pan in Zambia. Indeed, a new James Bond film would not be complete unless it had at least one location in each continent. How do you get the job checking the locations are OK before they start filming? They never told me about that one when the career service used to visit during sixth form. These are truly international activities, international operations utilising amazing logistics, which we sit and absorb from our settees.

History, geography, cheap travel and crap weather mean the UK public goes beyond our shores regularly  – stag weekend top spots are now Dublin and Prague. Just think, Prague is in Czechoslovakia for God’s sake, and guys in their twenties choose to go there to get hammered. Teenage holiday ambitions are no longer just a wet weekend in North Wales to get away from the parents, but Greece, Ibiza or all inclusives in the Caribbean. For the middle classes, holiday brochures don’t just show countries where you can access chips and beer, albeit in glorious sunshine. People travel to India, Thailand, South America, South Africa and Dubai – places of significant cultural difference.

The fusion of digital technology, most especially the interaction of the computer network with telephone systems and bank accounts, allows me to research a product in minute detail from another country, place an order and have the money taken out of my account in minutes. This is all the more remarkable as I can do so, without having any physical cash in my pocket, in fact without having the right currency in my bank account, and without leaving my chair. I can even do this stark naked, save a scarlet pair of stillettos, at three o’clock in the morning if I want. Having pressed the send button, it appears out of nowhere on my doorstep three days later.

The cross-border dimension of technology also allows international communication, which twenty years ago was really difficult. Yes, only twenty years ago – that’s the 1980’s in case you forgot. Not only can I contact another country with ease; I can do so with a small hand unit with no external wires or plugs. It’s cheap enough for a teenager to buy with their pocket money, and so easy to use even my technophobe husband has one. I can, if I so choose, climb up Table Mountain in South Africa, and use my mobile phone to speak to my Mum while she’s pushing a trolley around Tesco’s in Putney. I can tell her how great the view is, and she can remind me that I haven’t been to see her for months.

If you really think of these amazing advances, it is very, very exciting. Anything is possible. The world is our oyster. Globalisation truly is here. Its come to us through modern technology, cheap travel, the multi-nationals and the media, and it does permeate our everyday existence – all of us. It seems that I can physically engage with any part of the world, any continent or nearly any country from my front door within a day, (unless its via the M6). Alternatively I can barricade myself in the warmth of my house and connect to it emotionally through my television and computer, or consume it via my liver or stomach: Tesco’s to Table Mountain.

Culture – The Buy One Get One Free rule

Given the excitement of globalisation, it would be very easy to assume that this meant there was one globally accepted culture to go with it. You buy the globalisation package, and get the culture free. A sort of B.O.G.O.F offer - you accept the price of the first one and get the second one whether you want it or not. That didn’t seem so bad a deal during the late twentieth century, when the version of capitalist Western culture had a slightly naïve consumerist, but benevolent, feel to it. First wave globalisation however has laid the foundation of a new cultural dominance which some would argue is more menacing, and is crystallising into a purely American version. Jewel in the Crown morphing into Planet Disney. Given this vision, you might assume in this New World that if you let McDonald’s or Coca-Cola through your borders and into your shops, the whole of American culture leaks into your country with it.

But the signs that the acceptance of globalisation in the form of media, consumer goods, travel and technology, means that people will buy the accompanying culture, are not there. The whiff of colonialism could just be déjà vu. Globalisation will continue to spread but cultural homogenisation will not necessarily follow, indeed perversely it seems to be leading to a hardening of national or regional cultural identity. It is the very nature of humans to need their own identity in the scheme of things, and this is ever more pertinent when the ‘scheme of things’ seems so big. For myself, whenever I work in a company and they try to de-humanise me (as I see it), or worse make me “live the brand”, by giving me a number on a timesheet instead of using my name, or a swipe card to use for lunch instead of money, or by holding “brand awareness” days, my urge to strike out and make everyone realise I’m an individual becomes overpowering. I am sure the same applies when you feel an alien culture is being imposed on you. It makes us want to celebrate our own identity all the more. We have the ability to pick and mix and choose influences that appeal, even when juxtapositioned, the paradoxes are stark. Perhaps that’s why in Nigeria the population covets levi jeans and nike trainers and yet the most popular name for boys this year is Osama.

The embracing of globalisation whilst rejecting cultural homogenisation is a very important concept to grasp if you are marketing a product, service or message to the public. To misunderstand these subtleties will doom your attempts to failure, and this applies in a national context too. No one can deny the march of globalisation, but global cultural homogenisation is a myth. Two examples, one international and one national illustrate this perfectly:      

Americans always seem to miss this point of culture and national identity; they really don’t understand why other countries hate them. It bewilders them. They can’t place their own consumer export success, or their cultural values in the context of a foreign nation, and see what a huge contradiction it is. They really do think the B.O.G.O.F rule applies, and that people will love them for pointing out a new way of living they hadn’t thought of before. So convinced are they by the rightness of this, that they think it’s only a matter of time before the whole world is seduced by Amercian cultural benefits. They ignore centuries and centuries of cultural identity development, and the importance of history in a nation’s psyche, as it’s completely alien to them. But this is the essence of marketing – start with your intended public first. Understand their culture, lifestyle and outlook, before you construct messages or campaigns, even military ones. Don’t start from your perception of them, you’ll get it wrong, and make sure you approach the whole exercise with a degree of humility.

The Americans inability at the most basic of marketing concepts was writ large during the Iraq war. I resented this war, but I’m not quire sure why, maybe it was just sour grapes on my part – they sell us a kipper of a reason when they want help for their war, but turn up two years late when we needed them in 1939. Anyhow, whatever the pretext, I found myself excruciatingly embarrassed every night whilst watching the news, not at the death and destruction (we’re becoming impervious to that on the tele now), but at the way the Americans conducted themselves in that ‘Hollywood Blockbuster’ way in front of the cameras. Their blatant misunderstanding of the country and its people, and their appalling lack of humility were so evident in everything they did. Maybe its because they are completely impervious to foreign cultural influences themselves – an ironic point considering they’re the epitome of a mongrel nation.

Of course, the same is happening in a national sense from London. That awful arrogance the Americans have exhibited, which engenders such embarrassment by missing the public mood, is replicated by the so-called spin-doctors all the time. Not on purpose I hasten to add, but the similarities are startling. Politicians seem to miss the point of culture, history and regional identity. They all too often fail to recognise that the public is not a culturally homogenous mass that all live or work in London, or are remotely interested in politics. I strongly believe that politicians and civil servants enter their respective professions because they really do want to change society for the better. But like the American example above, they think that if their messages logically add up and are interesting as a concept to them, it will add up and interest everyone else. Well, it doesn’t; which is why more people vote for Big Brother contestants to be ejected, than for politicians to be elected.

Believing the UK is one interconnected, culturally aligned single personality is an easy mistake to make. It’s not as obvious a mistake as the American examples above, but nevertheless a mistake it still is. If the engagement of a public is to work, whether subjugation, campaigning or votes is the aim, you have to understand them, and assuming they’re all one analogous mass is, at best, condescending. Europe might have the Euro (except us of course), a European parliament, increasingly similar laws and less obvious national borders, but our strong national differences persist, and will continue to do so. The same is true for the regions and nations of the UK. Perversely, the more we are treated in a standardised and stereotyped way, the more humans will stubbornly entrench themselves in their localised tribes, whether regional, religious or sporting.

For a public campaign the trick is to appear national (to lend importance and kudos) and yet emphasise the ‘local’ aspect at the same time. Of course, there is a natural tension between the need to use a national context and the desire to have local character, because people do not want to be treated as part of an homogenous audience, and yet purely local issues can seem trivial in comparison to the bigger picture.

Because of the sheer importance and power of its job in a national sense, Government all too often falls in love with its raison d’être, the equivalent of falling in love with your product. The world of Whitehall is small, but it’s exciting, stimulating and powerful, it’s seductive nature makes it easy to over-intellectualise, and inadvertently drive a wedge between thinking and doing. The insistence on policy, deep departmental divides, intellectual dissection and general arse covering suffocates and confuses rather than illuminates public needs and wants. And be assured these public needs and wants are not complicated at all. The political raison d’être becomes the starting point and not the simple public need, no matter how good the intentions. With that start, public messaging comes across as self-centred posturing separated from reality. Also it really isn’t presented in an interesting way.

Realising the public find politics or social issues dry as old boots is essential. Our messages are competing with David Beckham’s barnet, Kylie’s bottom, Charlie Dimmock’s t-shirt, the Simpsons and “Freddie Starr ate my hamster”, let alone the multi-million pound budgets of advertisers; “va va voom”, “because you’re worth it”, “reassuringly expensive” and “the slag of all snacks”. Your elbows have to be sharp in the Del Boy world of media attention. “Quelle fromage. Who dares wins. You know it makes sense”. For a public campaign it has to be ‘news’, perhaps sensationalist, shocking, or at the very least interesting, in order to compete for attention. Please be assured a Minister surrounded by kids is not news.

In marketing terms we would conduct research and arrive at some sort of public segmentation to market a message across the UK, and ensure they marry with other aspects of the public’s cultural values and populist references. Understanding the public and breaking them down into behavioural or attitudinal clusters (i.e.segments) is undoubtedly the first step to engagement. Starting from what you think, or worse what your Board thinks, or from a London perspective, or from a political perspective is the slippery slope to divorce. And everyone knows how expensive that is.

Authenticity - trust me I’m a politician

Public messages must take into account the irresistible force of globalisation, whilst recognising the importance of local identities, but trust is an essential third element. Unfortunately, because of the apparently selfish starting point and the occasional sex scandal, governments and specifically politicians are not trusted by the public. Their words and deeds are taken with cynicism and disbelief (sometimes unjustly); continuously fuelled by broken promises despite good intentions. This has happened for so long, the distance between politics and people has never been so far apart, and its hard to see how the trust between the two can be won back.  

To try and bridge the gap government offers evidence, measures and figures to prove it has fulfilled promises. But the evidence starts from the wrong place again. It is what politicians and government wants to know, it is a description of their measures, their progress against policy objectives, often described in a complex formula. If I’m a member of the public, its what I perceive is the improvement, that is the only thing that matters to me. Take the local environment of a street where you live. ENCAMS measures its perception to the public to show an index. It’s not what we think, even though we’re tempted to measure technical things we’re interested in, we don’t. We’ve worked it out from the perspective of a member of the public as they come out of their house and walk down their street.

The methodology has been refined over 14 years. Things like litter, dogfouling, graffiti, state of the street furniture, weed growth, and so on. A mix of things that in combination just gives you a feeling that where you live is run down, which makes you feel uneasy, even unsafe. For us our ultimate corporate target is - can we get that improved over time? There are no other measures that really count. Action on the ground is how we decide if we’re succeeding, not awareness of our name or how many partners we’ve engaged. The measure of a dog fouling campaign for example? How many dog turds there are before the campaign and how many there are after. Nothing else counts.

When I first started at ENCAMS, and I was trying to get my head around what we did, the marketing department got a huge big fish made, (out of some material that’ll be with us well into the next century), to promote “Water theme month”. We floated it down the Thames and asked Michael Fish (who else) to promote it. Promote what? We did another one called “Waste theme month”, it made such an impact two and half years ago I can’t even remember what it was about.

I could cry at the amount of money and effort that was put into those old style campaigns. I doubt they changed anyone’s behaviour, but you should have read about the successes that we trumpeted afterwards. All to do with partners signing up, column centimetres achieved and branding opportunities. Well you tell me how many housewives went home and changed their wasteful water habits, after seeing a huge fish sailing down the Swanee. Did we have any figures on that? Did we hell - far too revealing.

Tactics by the government for announcing targets and measures can seriously undermine public trust if it isn’t thought through carefully. But trust is not helped by the enthusiasm government has for announcing its intentions. This is an odd convention, which I don’t think has a parallel in the private sector. I am astonished at this apparent tradition, however ENCAMS used to do this too so it must just be an NGO/government thing. This is how it works: I decide on a new initiative, let’s say the development of a churches environmental programme, for which I have a year’s funding, and then I launch it. Loads of ra-ra, bells and whistles, an impressive venue (how about St Paul’s Cathedral?) and a celebrity if I can afford it (is the Archbishop free or should we get someone from Songs of Praise?). I invite every stakeholder and partner I have, (all the people who have a vested interest in this succeeding), as well as the general great and the good. If I get it right the press should turn up too, and the public will get to know about it. Expectations will be raised and hopefully our objectives will become a self-fulfilling prophecy at the end of the first year. I’ll also feel an overwhelming warm glow of public service as they’re all gathered around me.

There are huge flaws in this apparent announcing intentions convention if taken from a public, partner and stakeholder point of view. If we were to translate this into the development of a consumer product, it is easy to see the error of its ways: I decide on a new product, lets say the development of a new whisky which is 40° proof but will never make you drunk no matter how much you throw down your neck. It’ll sit alongside my other brands, which are doing well at the moment. The product development guys have been given one year's funding. Should I announce the product before it’s been developed? Not on your nelly. What happens if it doesn’t work? Or if it takes longer than we thought? Or it does work but my suppliers don’t like it? Or it spreads discontent about my other brands because they don’t have that feature? What happens if our shareholders get to hear about it, really like the idea and then it just doesn’t develop as we thought? God! Our shareprice will plummet. Worse. What happens if the press or public gets to hear about it and we end up not selling it? Expectations would be raised and we’d never be able to match them.

Now go through this scenario a few dozen times with different new product ideas, repeating the same process. Where would your trust level be after a few years?

For a brand it would be launched when the product had been proven and fully developed, because it narrows down the chance of failure, ergo it increases the likelihood of public trust, because what we say we do. Smart marketing people always undersell and over deliver, not the other way round. It’s the only way to foster public trust, or at least diminish the cynicism with which it is received. To gain more trust in initiatives and campaigns, we need to tell the truth about now more often, not paint a picture of what it might be like with a good following wind and a bit of luck in the future. And we need to under sell and over deliver, although admittedly this is not what ministers want to hear.

But governments don’t just have initiatives to communicate, they also have critically important messages to impart for true public benefit, and lack of trust in this respect is catastrophic for the nation. For ages, both ruling political parties, have tried to communicate essential advice about health, personal safety, sexual behaviour and nutrition. Most have led to limited success for many complex reasons, but public trust plays a part. There are a number of surveys that demonstrate this; a MORI poll in 2002 found that only 17% of us believe that company directors “can be trusted to tell the truth”. The University of East Anglia in the same year found that on the subject of climate change only a third of the public “trusted the government to tell the truth”, but twice as many would be prepared to trust environmental groups. Annually there is a trust survey carried out by Edelman. Last year it rated NGOs like the WWF at 69%, whilst McDonald's scored 21%. Meanwhile a Gallup poll showed that 95% of Brits believe that senior executives of corporations are in it for themselves.

The distrust is deep and in-grained and was particularly highlighted with the MMR vaccine saga. Health experts believed firmly in the combined vaccine, but communications via the government to parents were not trusted. As a result the demand for single vaccines increased exponentially. The public is suspicious of our political rulers, and the historic build-up has led to an enduring absence of trust.

If public trust in government (and increasingly with corporates) is at such a low point, there are agencies that can be used to get these important messages and initiatives across instead. Why not use us for this purpose? We’re happy to do it and very well placed as long as we’re allowed to tell the truth, and come up with “news” not political agendas. There is much research to suggest that charities in particular are rated as being very trustworthy by our media-literate, technologically empowered, globally exposed and inherently cynical public. That takes a lot of doing. They say they feel we are impartial, and are there to do good, and so will at least listen to what we have to say. Staff at ENCAMS get paid well below the going rate, they are with us because they believe in what we do, think they can make a difference and can talk passionately about their subject area. They’re not in it for the money because they could get a job tomorrow elsewhere if they chose, (doing something really important like marketing pork scratchings or crotchless knickers). The authenticity of this is plain, and the public knows it.

Trust is a prized asset that already resides within agencies that work intimately with government. It is a measure of our success with our relationships with civil servants, politicians, the press and the public. Built over time, everyone assumes that NGOs and charities will naturally incline towards virtue and honesty, and therefore they rarely bother to scrutinise us (in a moral sense, not a financial one.). Certainly they don’t check our credentials or trawl through our past to look for inconsistencies or ulterior motives as they do with politicians. They give us the benefit of the doubt, a luxury the government never has.

We are open with the public and press; we are honest, share our problems, admit our mistakes and try to work with them as transparently as possible. This has served us extremely well in the last two years, and it is our belief it has served defra (our sponsoring body) well too. For example, ENCAMS works with local authorities to get them better at managing their beaches. It’s an under-rated and forgotten part of the public space agenda, but the increase in standards has been an incredible success. We monitor standards and announce the state of British beaches each year through our Blue Flag scheme. No-one doubts our impartiality, but would it have the same authenticity if it was a defra official political announcement? We got millions of pounds of Blue Flag coverage earlier this month, radio, tv, newspapers, magazines, both nationally and locally. We were asked our views, opinions, details on how it all works and so on. There are many NGOs and NDPBs out there, who have inherently high levels of public trust. In the main our corporate objectives are aligned to government agendas, why not use us more to get important messages across?

Market research – a profession for nosy parkers

My daughter, overhearing me talking about some market research we’d commissioned, asked me what market research was. I told her in great detail explaining how it was used, and she said “Oh you mean, like being paid to be a nosy parker?”. Well I think that’s as good a description as any.

I am a great admirer of market research, indeed we use it extensively, but  statistical techniques alone are not for us. Well actually that’s not quite true. Stats give us factual evidence and great quantitative analysis. A sort of state of the nation report, statistically verified. It is a barometer and a crystallising of social issues and their current state. It’s a sophisticated answer to a “what” question or a “who” or “where” question. Sometimes the research gives us clues to “why”, but what we need to know more than anything else is “how”. If that’s what it’s like out there, then how do I find a solution, how do I change behaviour, and how do I construct messages to overcome the problem? I know from MORI, for example, that litter and dogfouling is more important to local people than education or health. But clues on how I can get people to stop littering and stop allowing their dogs to foul are far more pertinent. It would be nice to work for a market research agency, not just because they generally do excellent work to a high quality, but because they have no responsibility for having to do something with it.

When my mum was a kid, she lived down a street where everyone knew everybody but they were all totally skint; really poor by today’s index of multiple deprivation standards. One house was full of the Smart kids (of circus fame), and there were hundreds of them, or so it seemed. In another house there was a woman with no kids at all called Winifred. She also had no teeth, but she did have a false pair that she put in on a Sunday. Win knew everything about everybody down that street. A professional nosy parker in fact, a natural market researcher. In later life she took great pride in buying me presents, when she could afford it, and for some reason was attracted to Next, I guess she thought it sold the sort of clothes that I liked. To her I guess it epitomised style and sophistication, and proved that she had gone up in the world. If she could walk in there and browse, buying for her relatives, anyone in her street could. A good few years ago the Next share price fell off a cliff, it went down into single figures, almost becoming a penny share and the stores were in serious trouble. Heads rolled, the media had a field day and ‘ordinary’ women were interviewed on the street for their views. They said they weren’t surprised because they didn’t like the clothes there much anymore, and had deserted it for some time. 

I am sure that a large retailer like Next would have been doing market research well before this crash. So why didn’t they know it was coming? I am sure they did quantitative and qualitative analysis of their buying public, perhaps they had interviewed Win in one of their street surveys. But it didn’t make any difference to their destiny of eventual disconnect with Next loyalists. I think they didn’t ask the right questions and they didn’t spend time with their customers. I bet they spent a fortune though, analysing the mean weekly loss of market share, with a sample standard deviation, using a .05 level of significance. Fascinating. If they’d have gone round to Win’s house for a cup of tea and a bun, she could have told you where and when Next had gone wrong. She’d have done it for a tenner. Of course it didn’t help that most of the Next Board were white middle class males, including their non-execs. When did they last go shopping for women’s clothes, or for anything for that matter? I think it’s not that they didn’t do their research, I think it’s that they died of paralysis by statistical analysis.  Constantly looking at the what, when and where answers, and not exploring the how with their customers. Of course, when it was very nearly too late they got in tune with their customers and manage to climb back up the cliff. Even in these pension-poor times the share price is now above £10.

ENCAMS doesn’t begin with statistical analysis. We begin with what people think; their attitudes and their behaviours, and link that to their cultural references. We go and chat with the Wins of this world first, because at that point I’m not interested in numbers. For us, if we start with the statistics and try to identify behavioural or attitudinal groups from that, it will be wedging people into mathematically viable boxes, and in any case how do I know what questions to ask in a street survey unless I’ve spent loads of time with someone like Win? Also we feel this mass questionnaire exercise for behavioural and attitudinal work increases the likelihood of people replying dishonestly. Let’s admit it, if someone stops you in the street and asks you how much you recycle, will you tell them the truth? Will you heck, you’ll lie your head off and try to cover up your wheelie bin ways. I would. I’m more likely to give them the answer I think they want, or that my mum would want to hear, then tell the truth.

We prefer to spend the greater proportion of our time and money at the beginning using qualitative research, really probing people’s attitudes and behaviours, drawing out their issues, observations, testing their theories, thoughts, what would make them change their behaviour and so on. From this, we generally find some common segments, we pull them out and really explore them. We go back again and speak to different people and go through the same exercise seeing if these segments really are distinct, and we test that we’ve got them right and refine them many times over. This generates statements which epitomises that type of behaviour or thinking. When the segments have been verified and a series of statements defined which really shows which camp they’re in, only then do we go and do the quantitative part and see how many people are in each segment.

For example, we know that a large chunk of the population agree with our messages on Keeping Britain Tidy, but actually litter themselves to a lesser or greater degree. We call them sympathisers. They are sympathetic to our message and are knowledgeable about the consequences and issues of litter but this hasn’t translated into changed behaviour. Inside the sympathiser group there are five types of adult litterers in terms of behaviour and attitude, and we can tell you exactly how many there are of each of them. We can tell you their cultural references too, what they are likely to read, watch, drive and buy, and even where they live. Knowing how much litter, graffiti, dogfouling, flyposting etc. is fascinating and has political uses, but working out how to change behaviour is critical, because let’s face it, just getting better at clearing it up is not a long term solution. We call this marketing research and not market research. There is a distinct difference because we find the state of the market interesting, but we want research to help us make marketing decisions.

So we never do any campaigning until we’ve talked to real people first. We work out if there are common behaviours and attitudes and we put them into segments. Only then do we research how many of them there are. It’s the Win win principle.

Summary of Execution

Globalisation has made an indelible mark on the UK. Its influence should not be underestimated, nor its opportunities ignored. However, the wired, electronically linked public are not an homogenous mass. If anything the new tribes and localised identities are more important than ever, and they must be given recognition. The ultimate pitch is an issue that has national weight aimed at specific behavioural and attitudinal traits, with a local focus.

Authenticity, transparency and trust lend credence to public ‘education’, so creating messages through inherently trusted mechanisms alleviates the likelihood of a cynical reception. Really understanding the target audience using the Win principle is an essential pre-requisite, and is truly powerful if linked to transparent and open communications.

Later today, a team of people from ENCAMS who actually do the work, as opposed to me who just talks about it, will explain how they fuse these aspects together in practice to deliver great public campaigns. They do the thinking, analysis and execution themselves, and are batting for the government on public space improvement. They know it better than any poncy PR agency that have read the brief and prefer style over substance. They have achieved some undeniable results recently, at the sharp end of the anti-social behaviour wedge; the changing behaviour end. They don’t want to deal with the symptoms of local environmental inequality, they want to tackle the problem at source. It’s individuals who cause these problems; a teenager that scrawls graffiti, a dogowner that doesn’t clear up, a businessman that drops litter. Changing behaviour, which is mostly just plain thoughtlessness, is what we do.

We truly admire the work of the other NGOs we deal with. We complement their work through our People & Places programme, by improving service delivery and efficiency of local authorities that have to deal with the problems. It’s depressing how few truly good ones there are, so there is much to do. But the most important area of our work, to me, is our campaigning work because it aims to change behaviour and deal with the issues at source. If we were allowed more money, we know we would significantly reduce neighbourhood noise nuisance, graffiti, litter, dogfouling, flytipping and flyposting. We’ve done it in a limited way, but I guess if we had proper national budgets, everyone else would be out of their government grant!

Finally, because we want more wedge but know we’re at the thin end of it, we have to spread our experience and offer our services or advice to anyone in government who will listen. We are getting results in behaviour change and we want others to get them too.

© Sue Nelson 2003