The Brand Midwife

Taking a break from the COI

I have been nearly two years working part time as a Strategic Consultant at the Central Office of Information, the UK Government's centre of excellence for marketing and communications. Off a three month contract. 

I stopped last week as I want to devote myself full time to a product launch for one of my private clients.

Even though I was a freelance, I was given a nice send off by the peeps at the COI on Thursday with a card an' all. As colleagues they were the brightest and most self-motivated bunch I have worked with anywhere and nice into the bargain. The work was usually hellishly complex given the number of stakeholders involved in any branch of government which is a plus for me. And I found the scope for actually changing things that mattered to citizens/clients is at least as great in the public sector as it is for private.

I said I would check in with the COI around Christmas to see how the land lies. In the meantime I will get my head down on this new product development project.

More of which soon.

Digital engagement lead

The incoming COI CEO Mark Lund has already pinned his colours to the mast on digital engagement in the Guardian. Which means that the two projects I am leading on the subject at the COI should get a good airing then.

Proving Lord Leverhulme wrong

The Health and Safety Executive are in the middle of choosing a new communications planning agency, a pitch that is being run by the COI. One of the key planks of that process is an evaluation I led there recently of HSE's communications for the last three years. 

Government is taking its responsibilities for the public purse extremely seriously in marketing; what I have seen at the COI is leading edge thinking in the field of evaluation. We are only a hundred years on from Lord Leverhulme's maxim ("Half my advertising money is wasted. The problem is that I don't know which half") but it may yet get cracked.

So long, RSS

I set myself the errand this weekend of dismantling the RSS feed on my Mac.

I remember the excitement of when I saved the original feeds what seemed like years ago. Here was going to be my personal newspaper du jour, so I only need read what I am interested in. Job done.

However it has fallen into disuse in the last six months, the un-read postings stretching into triple figures. I couldn't take it with me very easily, like onto my phone or other computers. And turning them off and on if they were boring me was an all or nothing thing.

So yesterday I converted my RSS feeds into Twitter ones. I can carry them with me on any web enable device. And flipping in or out is no longer a big deal.

Another small victory to Twitter.

Britain appoints first Twitter czar

...or so runs the headline at BusinessWeek.

I worked for Andrew Stott on a study on collaborative working in the civil service that was published last year. And I've got two more on the go for Andrew at the moment with Alex Butler, all very digitally engaging.