Andrew Daniels from Chorley Council has emailed me to let me know about their use of a video to promote changes in their recycling collection services.
The video was produced professionally and features a couple of members of staff from the council to get the message across:
While using video on YouTube isn’t particularly innovative, it’s worked for Chorley on this campaign so was clearly worth doing.
But what caught my eye about this was that while the video itself has supported the campaign, it has become a story in itself, as Andrew notes:
It’s also generated a front page news story in the local press, featured on the radio and we’ve had debates on local PR/media websites. It’s also been picked up on local blogs and forums.
There’s definitely potential for use of new or different communications tools as a trigger for debate and coverage in other places – and this is something that we can sometimes underexploit when our focus is on delivery of the core campaign itself.
It’s also interesting to see how the council has responded to some of the less than positive feedback that has been made about the broader topic of recycling in the video comments. The council has answered the comments factually and in a friendly, non-corporate tone – which reflects the need to engage on a person-to-person not organisation-to-person basis.
Getting coverage for this kind of thing also has an impact on the way the council itself is perceived – done well, it can position the council as more forward-thinking and in touch. Done badly it can make the council look remote, out of touch or amateur.