This presentation supported the South Asia Urban Knowledge Hub March 2015 learning session on identifying your audience, developing key messages and an elevator pitch. This was part of a 2 day learning meeting on communicating our research.
2. What is research communications?
Research communication is defined as the ability to
interpret or translate complex research findings into
language, format and context that non experts can
understand.
DFID
10. Key Messages… the process
1. Start by choosing something to work on.
1. Pick a priority audience you must communicate
with and define:
– Knowledge
– Attitudes
– Practice
– Where they get information
– Information they need
10 minutes, fill in page 1 of your worksheet – go!
11. Key Messages… the process
3. Developing communication objectives
Knowledge: what new things do you want them to
learn about your subject?
Attitudes: what changes in opinion do you want to
stimulate?
Practice: what new things would like them to do?
What should they stop doing?
12. Ex: chocolate as
meeting snack
• New Knowledge:
– Latest price of chocolate, health benefits,
emotional benefits
• New Attitudes:
– You should want to eat (and provide) chocolate
during meeting breaks rather than other snacks.
• New Practice:
– Meeting organizers should buy chocolate for all
our meetings
14. Developing Comms Objectives Cont’d
• Objectives should relate to audience needs and
interests
• Objective should be SMART (see worksheet)
15. Goal: Better Meetings
Project Obj:
To allocate budget for
chocolate at all K-Hub
Mtgs
Audience Needs:
Benefits re: happiness,
performance, productivity,
relative price
Communication
Obj.
Show mtg organizers
that providing
chocolate as a snack
leads to more
productive meetings
and outcomes.
16. Ex. SMART Comms
Objectives
• Knowledge
– To ensure at least 50% of K-Hub members understand that
chocolate is economical, nutritional and provides energy,
by Dec 2015.
• Attitude
– To persuade at least 2 K-Hub meeting organizers that
chocolate is the snack of choice for effective and
productive meetings by Dec 2015.
• Practice
– To increase the number of K-Hub meetings with chocolate
by 50% by Aug 2017.
18. Convert obj to a key message
Recall project objective:
– To allocate budget for chocolate at all K-Hub meetings.
Recall communication objective:
– To show mtg organizers that providing chocolate as a snack leads
to more productive meetings and outcomes.
Messages:
• Chocolate is brain food
• Eat chocolate during meetings to sustain people’s energy
• Happy meeting participants equals great results
• People want to attend your meetings when you serve chocolate!
• One chocolate tastes better than 10 carrots – choose chocolate and
save money.
19.
20. Considerations:
• Language and style (for your audience)
• Tell them something new
• Give information they can use
• Move your audience to take action
• Use stories
• Snappy slogan
• Visuals, engaging presentations
• Clear and understandable
21. Key messages
4. Develop key messages
• 2 min inspiration– Power of Words
• Page 3 of handout, column Key Messages
• 5 mins – go!
22. An Elevator Pitch
• It’s a world of sound bytes, convey your
message in a very short amount of time
23. Some quick examples
• A billion for a billion (1 minute)
• The Girl Effect (Nike), 2 minutes)
24. 5. Create your pitch
1. Who are you?
2. What do you do?
3. Why are you unique?
4. Goal?
• 3rd floor = 30 seconds
• Page 4 in your handout
• 15 mins – go!
25. Let’s Practice!
• Find a partner
– deliver your headline pitch
– give and receive feedback (5 mins)
• Volunteer to give your pitch to plenary (PRIZES)
– Feedback (10 mins)
– The winner is…?
• Discussion on messaging (5 mins)
• Another example by WaterAid
This isn’t going to influence decision makers but it helps repackage information so it’s consumable. This way you have something to hand them when you meet them, leave a meeting, send an email, a news release, etc.
It’s a process…not easy.
Most people are not experts like you.
How would you explain FSM to your mother?
Make your information accessible to non-experts! Visuals is a helpful tool.
Symbolic development is the term used to describe the developmental process of understanding visual information. We all began by understanding the real object, then over time and through education we learnt to recognise the written word. The diagram below shows you the process through which we learn to understand visual information;
http://www.accessibleinfo.co.uk/things-you-need/
You will communicate differently to a fellow researcher than you would to policy maker, business person, community based organization.
During our workshop I’ll introduce at least 6 communication methods that are useful to help package and disseminate your messages.
There are many other aspects of research communications that we can cover.
Moreover, this is a start however to really mobilize your knowledge – need to remember to engage with policy makers and build relationships.
We will all get a taste of audience, key messages and the elevator pitch. Then you have a choice to visit 2 of the stations offered today and one tomorrow (1 hr each).
Example video of an organization talking about who they are (key message, long’ish elevator pitch).
Audience – different message for different audiences.
Priority audience is someone you MUST communicate with to achieve your influencing objs.
Example
We will look at packaging later this afternoon (here is sneak peak).
The idea of the elevator pitch is to convey a message to someone in a very short amount of time, perhaps the amount of time you might spend with someone in an elevator. It’s a world of sound bytes so you need to be able to communicate clearly and concisely.