Clare Duncan, communications and marketing manager at Living Wage Foundation, shares with us her take on the secret power of "Who cares?"
Why did you choose to pursue a role in communications? For example, has it always been your passion or was it pure happenstance?
I didn’t choose the communications life, the communications life choose me.
On a serious note, I didn’t even know what communications was until I left university and begun working in an office where I began to unpick the mystery that was ‘job functions’.
Having studied Politics at the University of Sheffield, I had clarity on the kind of organisations I wanted to work for (I knew I wanted to work for a charity that I felt passionate about, and from where I could influence the political sphere) but I lacked clarity on which job role was right for me and would build on my strengths and interests. Ultimately, I landed my first role as a Communications Intern at Power to Change and the role just ticked a lot of boxes for me. I enjoy writing, I crave creativity, I value variety, and I’m excited by being on the public-facing side of an organisation — communications allows for all of that.
What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important in the communications sphere? Why these skills/attributes in particular?
There’s so many, but to pick two that I feel are particularly important: Creativity and common sense.
Creativity — there’s a few different aspects related to creativity that I think are very important. A creative vision — having an idea of what the communications story/campaign/social media posts look like and how they make you feel is what I would call ‘creative vision’, i.e. you know where you want to get to and just have to work out how to get there. As someone who enjoys painting and art, I often have a very clear vision of what I want — sometimes I’ll even draw it so I can translate what’s in my head into something others can see and get behind. But creativity also relies on being someone who is comfortable taking a risk and doing things differently.
Common sense — communications and marketing is common sense. You don’t need a fancy qualification to understand what makes a good piece of comms. Ask yourself, what messages grab your attention when you’re out and about? Why do you choose a certain product or organisation over another product or organisation? Bring this everyday intel and understanding of the way you navigate the world to your communications and marketing goals. Understanding what influences your behaviour will most likely be the same things that influence many others.
What sort of challenges do you face in your role? Is there a particular challenge that you experienced in the past that stood out?
Keeping up with the pace of communications. Although the pace differs depending on where you work, communications professionals are expected to drop everything to be reactive when an opportunity or crisis arrives, and there is often a time pressure too.
As someone who likes to be in control, communications often tests me by throwing me some situations that feel completely out of my control. Unable to prepare for the unpredictable, you are often forced to learn how to manage situations with what you have available to you at a given time. My role is fast-paced which is challenging, but my advice is to set clear boundaries for yourself and others, say no, and remind yourself that although comms professionals are superheroes, we’re also human and need rest in between the busy moments.
What one thing would make your working life easier?
Eight arms like an octopus, that way I could monitor all of our social media channels, read and respond to emails in a timely fashion, draft new content, check our digital stats, and join meetings simultaneously. My life would be vastly improved if I could do multiple things at once. But since humans have not yet evolved to this end, more time would be nice.
How is the role of communications perceived in your organisation?
It’s a brilliant question. I would hate to guess what perceptions others have of the communications role and team. Who am I kidding? Let’s give it a shot.
Luckily, I believe the role of communications is highly valued in my current workplace, the Living Wage Foundation. We’re a B2B organisation which asks UK businesses to sign up to become accredited Living Wage Employers, which means they commit to paying their staff a real Living Wage based on the real cost of living. When employers sign up, they tell us that one of the main reasons for doing so is the benefit to their brand's reputation. Which is music to my ears, because the communications and marketing team work phenomenally hard to ensure that ‘brand’ remains desirable and something people want to be associated with. In my opinion, it’s ultimately this desirability which affects the bottom line of our organisation and arguably wins more low-paid workers a necessary pay-rise.
What do you think the secret of success is when working in communications?
Asking ‘But… who cares?’ to just about everything. This links to the point I made above on common sense, but organisations often fall into a self-aggrandizing trap of believing everything they do is something people ought to know about it. I hate to break it to everyone, but there’s a lot of stuff organisations that no one cares about. The secret to success for someone working in communications is to question “Who cares?” Or “What would make people care?” about everything that we put in the public eye.
Secret of success #2 is in the name — being a good communicator. Communications will require you to have lots of conversations with people both externally and internally, it requires you to navigate some difficult conversations, influence people, sell a vision, drive behaviour change and doing all of these successfully, in a way that brings people with you.
At React & Share, we’re obsessed with helping our clients measure and report their efforts - what measurements do you think comms teams should be presenting to internal stakeholders?
There has been far too much focus on reach, clicks and impressions as a measurement of how well a piece of communications has performed but if people click or view something but do nothing about it — is this success?
I’d like to see a lot more support in helping marketing and communications professionals measure the return on investment (ROI) of their activity, or an easier way of measuring brand awareness.
The key question for me is how does the comms or marketing activity affect the bottom line of your business, charity or organisation? At the Living Wage Foundation, this would be how many accreditations come through as a result of communications activity. It’s something I’m keen to improve our measurements on in my current role, as it allows our teams to ensure the strategic importance of communications is understood at the most senior levels of the organisation, and gets full support.
Looking into your crystal ball, what do you think will be the next big thing in communications?
Turning almost everything that’s currently a piece of written communications into video communications. Getting used to reaching for the camera before the word document.
