Whether you’re fighting a war, trying to lose weight, running a health campaign, trying to win the Premier League or – dare I say it -planning your communications you’ve got to have a strategy.

In fact strategy has become such a ubiquitous and at times widely misused word that it’s little wonder many of us feel that cold shiver of dread when asked “what’s the communications strategy for this?”

Communications strategy is widely debated online and is invariably one of the most front facing and high profile issues for most public sector organisations so that alone makes it important. Continue reading →

Well, it’s almost time to hang another year on the line as we hurtle towards 2019 with all the foreboding of a 1970s-era outlaw country music playlist.

This is always a time for reflection and introspection and the last 12 months give us plenty to think about, whether you believe we’re heading for the apocalypse or just starting out on the glorious ascension to the sunny uplands.

Either way 2018 has offered up plenty of lessons and looking back over the most popular posts on this blog some key themes do emerge. Continue reading →

In the 2013 Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis the eponymous central character stumbles through a difficult week, wondering where his life is going and why he can’t make a success of his music career despite talent and self-belief.

The struggling folk singer can’t do right for doing wrong and it’s hard to point to any single reason why. There’s a grudging melancholy at the heart of the film with the anti-hero battling the odds but always knowing that he won’t overcome them and never really understanding why.

I was reminded of Llewyn Davis reading the first few chapters of this excellent book aimed at midlife careerists looking to find fulfilment. Continue reading →

Blogs are pretty simple and have been around for ages, so while ours is nothing shiny or especially new it has helped us talk about everything from dementia and falls, to sign making and nutrition.

Last year we launched a new blog space for sharing stories about the NHS in Gateshead and so far an incredible 28,000 people have taken the time to read them. Continue reading →

“I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all Hell,” William Tecumseh Sherman

In an era of visual innovation, virtual reality, second screening and social engagement it was a documentary series from 1990 that reminded me that simple storytelling, using the rules that have always stood true, is still one of the most powerful ways of communicating with an audience.  Continue reading →

The cover of Bob Leaf’s book on a life in PR will come as a blessing to all fans of the seminal TV show Mad Men, with the author silhouetted against the cover in true Don Draper style.

I was fortunate enough to meet Bob and get a copy of his book – The Art of Perception, memoirs of a life in PR – at the CIPR Northern conference earlier this summer as part of a session with President Sarah Hall.

Dubbed ‘the father of public relations’ with a 50 year career in the industry, the Mad Men comparisons proved irresistible to this diehard fan (with even the title of this blog based on a quote from the show). Continue reading →