REPORTER'S BLOG: Getting down and dirty with charity PR

Still from a Friends of the Earth film on climate change. FRIENDS OF THE EARTH

By AlertNet&${esc.hash}39;s Megan Rowling, at the Charity Communications conference in London

A politician lies strapped to a bed in a hotel room, while a dominatrix prepares to have her wicked way with him. Suddenly a cleaning woman bursts into the room and demands to know what the MP is doing about climate change.

No, it&${esc.hash}39;s not a new series of the comedy show &${esc.hash}39;Fawlty Towers&${esc.hash}39; &${esc.hash}39; but a &${esc.hash}39;viral film clip&${esc.hash}39; produced by Friends of the Earth to support their Big Ask climate change campaign. As the film ends, the website address appears onscreen, encouraging the viewer to go and find out more &${esc.hash}39; and crucially, once at the site to take action, starting by lobbying their MP.

The environmental group says this film clip, circulated by email, was watched by 70,000 people. It helped spur the actions taken by 50,000 people in support of the campaign, which 373 MPs have now signed up to.

We&${esc.hash}39;re being shown this clip as part of a session on the future of communications at a conference in London exploring the relationship between charities and the media.

Once the clip is over, Tony Juniper, Friends of the Earth director, sits down amid a wave of laughter. It&${esc.hash}39;s a funky piece of marketing but the point is that it&${esc.hash}39;s just one element in a campaign that focuses heavily on a website, but uses other media and communication tools, including celebrities such as Thom Yorke from the band Radiohead to draw people in.

As Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper says, getting the public interested in complex issues like climate change is a big challenge - and the idea is to attract those who the organisation wouldn&${esc.hash}39;t normally engage with through tactics such as branded events and gigs and the viral film clip. These new recruits are then channelled to the website which provides them with the tools to take action. Sexing up climate change has never seemed so easy.

Everyone on the panel is adamant that new technology provides new opportunities but that the trick is to find ways of combining this with more traditional media strategies. It&${esc.hash}39;s not a case of abandoning one for the other, more how to leverage the increasing number of tools at your disposal.

Take blogs and podcasting. Some charities have now started to use these techniques, and communications consultant Mirella von Lindenfels says getting staff to write a blog is a good way to liven up a worthy U.N. summit or to communicate an environmental action happening on a ship.

There&${esc.hash}39;s general agreement that podcasting &${esc.hash}39; if and when NGOs really get their teeth into it &${esc.hash}39; could be a great tool for charities and aid agencies to create their own news services. These could reach the public directly, who would download and listen to them, say on the way to work. Or, as Jude Habib, a former BBC employee argues, NGOs could create broadcast-quality podcasts, which radio and TV producers could then use in a story.

The idea here would be to make real-life testimonies and &${esc.hash}39;human interest&${esc.hash}39; stories available to broadcasters in the same way as print media pick up quotes from traditional press releases. This is obviously a hot topic as, once the session is over, Jude is besieged by people asking for her card. Her plan is to train NGOs in how to produce high-quality podcasts.

TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS

The next session looks at some of the success stories &${esc.hash}39; we are trotted through three campaigns focusing on what went right and what went wrong. They&${esc.hash}39;re all quite different: the British Heart Foundation (BHF) targeting kids over heart disease, the British Red Cross and its work around the Indian Ocean tsunami, and a joint initiative by the British Museum and Christian Aid against small arms, focusing on a &${esc.hash}39;Tree of Life&${esc.hash}39; sculpture made from decommissioned guns by artists in Mozambique.

Here are some of the hot tips on offer:

• Tell a good story and don&${esc.hash}39;t be afraid if it&${esc.hash}39;s an old one &${esc.hash}39; the BHF got acres of coverage with a &${esc.hash}39;one in three kids don&${esc.hash}39;t know what chips are made of&${esc.hash}39; survey.

• Make the story personal, whether by using a well thought out case study or targeting the story carefully to a particular journalist. The Red Cross says it&${esc.hash}39;s still grappling with how best to get the stories of the people it helps into the media &${esc.hash}39; but thinks they are the most powerful advocates. How to protect them from being mistreated?

• Don&${esc.hash}39;t go for wham-bam-thank-you-ma&${esc.hash}39;am coverage &${esc.hash}39; think about creating sustained media interest.

• Make sure everyone in your organisation is onboard with your media campaign and try to build a communications component into campaigns right from the start (including getting some funding for it).

• Carry out research among "stakeholders" to make sure you&${esc.hash}39;re telling people what they want to hear in a way they want to hear it. Then afterwards evaluate the campaign to understand what worked and didn&${esc.hash}39;t work.

• Try to think of creative ways to get the message across (among other things, the BHF produces magazines targeted at children, shock posters showing what really goes into fast food, scratch-cards and so on).

• If appropriate, make something visual the symbol of a campaign, such as the &${esc.hash}39;Tree of Life&${esc.hash}39; sculpture, with a good story behind it. Once installed in the courtyard of the British Museum, the tree was used as a backdrop for the launch of the Africa Commission report in 2005, with Blair et al sitting beside it.

• Be persistent. BBC4 first rejected Christian Aid&${esc.hash}39;s pitch to make a documentary about the Tree of Life, but came back to them later and produced a half-hour programme.

• Celebrities can be useful in selling a campaign to the media &${esc.hash}39; but this must be carefully planned and the celebrity has to be right for the job. Actor Christopher Eccleston made three thoughtful films with the Red Cross for BBC Breakfast on Banda Aceh one year on from the tsunami. But a press officer sitting next to me tells a story about how a children&${esc.hash}39;s charity staged an event with the teen band Steps. Asked why they were supporting the charity, the clueless popsters replied: &${esc.hash}39;We think their shops are great!&${esc.hash}39;

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