Bad PR Solved By Thinking Hat

Late last night while lying in bed I started thinking about using Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats as a tool for good PR.  The Six Thinking Hats allow you to see an event from six different perspectives.  This can be useful in PR when things have gone wrong and you need your audience to see events from a different angle.

So today I tried writing some copy using the six thing hats as a starting point.

Event:  Not Getting Funding From My Local Education Authority

My local education authority turned down my appeal for a discretionary grant.   I felt cheated and angry.  The worst thing was that this decision meant I had to find an extra £10,000. The good thing about it was that it pushed my fundraising abilities into overdrive.  I seem to prefer the more adventurous paths in life; I love the road less travelled! Now I am grateful that that one decision allowed me to develop my financial capability, entrepreneurship and creative thinking abilities.

And another attempt:

Event: The Twin Towers

In 2004, the World Trade Centre was destroyed by terrorists flying two hijacked planes.  Watching the event on TV, I felt sickened and saddened.  What depths had humanity sunken to now?  The worst thing about it were the thousands of innocent lives lost.  Despite this, heroic rescue attempts were made and people helped one another in extraordinary ways.  Suddenly the West started to question its relationship to the Middle East.  Were we really these untouchable, super-power nations, or just wealthy shysters with vulnerable Achilles heels? This one event changed the way we live our lives in the West, and forced us to remember that our commercial 'celebrity' nations are not so popular the whole world over.

Well, what do you think?  It seems to work, huh?

This could be a great tool for use in speeches, debates, negotiations, the press and even essays. Like the great genius mathematician, scientist and painter Leonardo da Vinci said, you should always see things from at least three perspectives. 

I think he and Edward de Bono are right.  Thinking about things from multiple perspectives allows for reasonable presentation of facts, feelings, good and bad without ego getting in the way.  I am definitely going to use this more often when communicating to an audience.

Hey, send me your attempts to write or communicate in this way!

You Gotta Give To Receive

Not long ago, a friend of mine called Kees was stopped by a homeless guy near Liverpool Street.  

"Here y'are, mate!" said the homeless guy, and gave him a penny.

Kees laughed his head off.  "What's this for?" he asked.

"I'm an alternative beggar," said the homeless guy.  "I'm giving you a penny."

Kees thought this was the most hilarious thing he'd heard for ages.  Of course, he dug his hand in his pocket and gave the guy a few pounds.  

What does this example teach us?

Free stuff is irresistible, isn't it?  Remember when you were 5?  Did you manage to get your parents to buy the cereal with the free toy inside too?  Seth Godin did. His books, "The Big Moo!" and "Free Prize Inside!" are all about doing something different and giving away a special free gift.

For Kees, the free gift wasn't the penny.  He didn't need the penny!  It was the special feeling he got from this experience.  He was shocked, he was surprised, he was entertained - and he had a great story to tell to everyone he met.  THAT was the free gift.

Seth Godin has a great list of those 'free gift' experiences right here on his blog.

And for the homeless guy, what did it cost him?  A bright idea, a couple of minutes and just one penny.

What can you do to make your target audience feel that free gift feeling?

Donations And The Credit Crunch

"Do you think financial gifts will be affected by the credit crunch?" Helen asked me.

Hmm.  I wasn't sure.  So I thought about it for a second.

A recent trend has started in our neighbourhood.  My neighbours and I have started sharing our leftovers.  Clothes, magazines we've already read, tubs of food, biscuits... any surplus and we're handing it around like the Red Cross.  Only just last week my neighbour Paul offered me a huge pack of bacon that someone else had passed onto him!  Certainly in my neighbourhood the credit crunch seems to have inspired a sense of community and sharing.  

Giving makes us feel important.  So even if we feel more cash-strapped right now, we still want to give.  We still want to feel important.

So how can we use this in terms of fundraising?

Well, gifts in kind are definitely on the up.  Instead of asking for cash, why not ask for donations in kind instead?  Here are some suggestions:

-a donated bicycle to help a cash-strapped student save thousands on tube fares

-two free hours in a large hire room twice a week to rehearse for a fundraising event

-use of a computer, printer and stationery to send out three hundred sponsorship letters

No-one likes to see waste and no-one wants to be mean.  Normally, if a person or business can help, they will.  But you need to point them in the right direction!

To get ahead in these hard times, why not review your fundraising needs from an in-kind-er perspective?

How To Study For Free

I was overjoyed when I received my place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.  I had tried for three years to get into acting school, and this was the opportunity of a lifetime!  There was just one catch: the cost.

All together, the fees and maintenance for the course came to over £25,000.  The course was a three-year diploma course and I wasn't entitled to a student grant or a student loan.  The course was 50 hours a week plus evening rehearsals so a part-time job was out of the question.  My family earned a lot less than the national average and could not afford to pay for me.  What was I going to do?

A little leaflet from another drama school gave me a sneaky peek at the truth.  It gave some basic information on a student who had managed to raise everything they needed to pay for their own acting training.  And if someone else had done it, I was damn sure I could!  I spent months researching, planning and building a fundraising campaign that raised over £25,000.

What I discovered is now revealed in Free Degrees, and together with its partner website degreesforfree.com, offers a step-by-step guide in raising all of the money you need for college or university without getting into debt.  

Free Degrees has been described as a 'life saver', 'first class' and given rave reviews by parents, students and academics alike.  Free Degrees isn't published until the end of April 2009, but here's a little taster of what to expect:

• How to find out how much your education really costs and write a budget
  
• How to market yourself, communicate your message and gain huge publicity
  
• How to appeal your local authority's decision to refuse you a grant
  
• How to raise thousands of pounds from people you have never met before
  
• How to search and find hundreds of scholarships and bursaries
  
• How to hold fun charity events that really bring in the cash

The knowledge and skills I gained from my experience have lasted me well beyond my student days.  Don't let debt get in the way of your studies.  You deserve to get the very best out of your education, and it doesn't have to come at a price.

Graduates Don't Make More Money

I was reading the NUS report 'Broke and Broken' recently, which highlights the current state of student debt.  Apparently Barclays reckon by 2010, the average student will owe over £30,ooo by the time they graduate.

The NUS report also shows you how much the average graduate will earn extra over their lifetime, compared to someone with just A levels or a college education.  As you might expect, doctors, lawyers and business CEOs are up there earning hundreds of thousands of pounds extra.  Good times!  They might have an expensive education, but the hard work and investment have paid off.

But arts and humanities graduates have a different story.  The NUS report predicts that in the lifetime of the average arts and humanities graduate, they will earn just £35,000 more than someone with A levels.

That's not per year, that's over a lifetime!

So let's get this straight... you are going to study History at university... you borrow £30,000 to pay for your education... you end up making £30,000 more as a result.  So three years hard work has actually made you nothing extra.  Not a penny.  Thirty grand in, and thirty grand out.  Bad times.

These statistics are frightening.  But then think about everyone you know with a degree.  Are they all working in the careers they studied for?  I know Design graduates who sell cars for a living, and Sociology graduates who work for Club 18-30.  There is nothing wrong with that, but the truth is, more and more graduates are not working in the field of work they studied for and are not earning any more than the national average. 

However, help is at hand.  You don't need to graduate will huge debts.  You can raise all of the money you need to study without taking on any loans or credit.  I know because I raised over £25,000 for my education with no previous experience in fundraising.  Trust me, I'm no genius.  I did it and you can do it too.

How To Describe Your Ideas

Can you let someone else see what is only in your own imagination?  Can you sell your vision to someone?  Can you do it so accurately that a listener can almost see it, touch it and taste it?

As you know, I work in the creative industries and regularly have to describe my ideas to others. This extremely important skill was highlighted the other day while in a training session for Creative Partnerships.

As part of a creative task, we were paired off and one partner was given a postcard.  Partners sat back to back.  On the postcard was a work of art.  The artwork was fairly complex and the task was to describe the artwork to the partner behind, while they drew a sketch of the picture from your description.  Sounds easy?  Not at all!  

This reminded me of how important it is to be accurate when trying to sell your vision. Whether your ideas are a work of art or a future fundraising event, if your description is poor, your listener will lose confidence.  Or get the wrong end of the stick completely.  But if your descriptive powers are accurate, people will clearly visualise your idea, and they'll be sold!  Do you want people to sign up for your ideas?  Then try improving your descriptive powers now!

Try this exercise.  Grab scrap paper and a pen.  I will describe a work of art, and you draw it. Then follow the link to see if your sketch is anything like the real thing!

This painting looks German in style.  It uses a lot of blues and greys.  It is an abstract painting, and the images represented are quite surreal.  The style might be called Dada by an art critic. Looking at the picture, it feels heavy and brooding, like a war is going on.  

In the very foreground of the picture, at the bottom right hand corner is something that looks like a white, headless, naked female mannikin.  Her left arm ends in a red glove and is raised.  Instead of a head, a horizontal line balances on top of her neck.

Behind her, in the midground and still to the far right, is something that looks like a grey chimney.  The chimney is in five pieces, stacked one of top of the other.  The chimney probably takes up about a tenth of the painting's width and reaches two thirds up.  The very top chimney stack is shaped like a watering can.  On stack number three is another 'watering can' style spout, this time in red and pointing towards the middle of the picture.

In the centre of the picture, in the midground and taking up about two-thirds of the available space, is a grey kettle-shaped cow.  We see the cow head-on.  The cow's horns are white and its nose is stuck inside a white cone, that extends upward like a trunk.  

In the background of the painting, the top third is thin white clouds washed against a pale blue sky.  At the top left hand side, two skinny blue fish intertwine with the clouds.

The bottom tenth of the background is grey.  The middle of the background is white.

Okay, put your pen down and let's see how well we did.

Click here to see the real painting.  Does your sketch look anything like that?

I missed out some details.  Try printing off the picture and having a go yourself. This will definitely improve your ability to convey your ideas to others.  So go on, start improving your descriptive powers and see how quickly you can inspire others by really selling your vision!

How To Believe In Yourself

Do you really believe in what you are doing? And if you don't, then how do you make yourself believe?

Take the four minute mile, for example. Until 1954, people believed it impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. In that year, Roger Banister proved them wrong. Within one year, 37 runners broke the belief barrier. And the year after that, 300 other runners did the same thing.

Your beliefs can either empower you or limit you. So if you feel a limited; a little low in confidence, like the task you have to complete is impossible, if you feel like you'll never get there then the remedy is simple. Just change your beliefs!

One way of tackling belief is to start using affirmations. Repeated on a daily basis, affirmations reprogram your mind and change your beliefs over a period of time. It's not a quick fix, but it works!

Telling everyone about your plans works too. It forces you to commit to them. So tell everyone about what you are going to do. Tell family, friends, anyone who will listen supportively! Not only will people give you advice and help, it will strengthen your self-belief massively.

Another way of encouraging belief is to act like you believe!

"If you desire a quality and have it not, act in every respect as if you had the quality you already desire, and you will have it." (Aristotle)

So what does that mean? Well, if you act like you believe, then you have confidence. In terms of your body language, you stand tall, you speak clearly and you look people in the eye. Your breathing is regular and deep. Only move and speak when necessary, and be alert to whatever is going on around you. Next time you feel a little shaky, adjust your body language and see what happens. You will soon feel unstoppable.

So why is having a strong belief so important? Can't we just get on with things and leave all that hippy stuff out of the picture?

Well, here's a piece of advice. Everyone knows everything. The minute you open your mouth, people can tell whether you believe your own words. Try this simple exercise and see for yourself:

1. Choose a food you can't stand. For me, it's caviar.
2. Now tell yourself you love that food.

"I love caviar!"

3. Reflect on how that felt.

Did you feel false too? I can feel something inside of me going, "Ew no, that feels all wrong!".

4. Now choose a food you love. For me, that's cinnamon-dusted, chocolate coated almonds.
5. Now out loud, say you love it.

"I love cinnamon-dusted, chocolate coated almonds!"

Mmm. Now I sound like I really do love those almonds.

Can you feel you difference? Sure! Can others feel that difference? Sure. Which is pretty important if you are going to talk to people about the good cause that you believe in.

Take time out to change your beliefs and you will find the actions that follow are full of life, energy and empower others to believe in you too.