I haven’t written anything for a while, partly because I’ve been very busy, and partly because I’ve just been rather depressed with the world. As much as this blog was supposed to be an outlet for the frustrations I feel, there’s only so much complaining one can do.
I tried a few times to write something, and just ended up petering out — it’s the same few issues again and again. Incompetence. Greed. The promotion of idiots and idiocy over any kind of considered thought. The examples of terrible work kept blurring into one another. Nothing seemed to stand out any more.
And then, earlier this week, I was reminded several times of why I started this blog in the first place. For both good reasons and bad. Really, it all boils down to the same thing:
A lot of people who work in Communications are REALLY BAD at communicating.
I did cover this in my first blog — that Comms people are to communicating as HR professionals are to treating people like humans — but when so many people who are paid huge amounts to do one thing ABSOLUTELY FAIL TO DO THAT ONE THING, I find myself getting a teensy bit grumpy. Let’s start with the bad.
Earlier this week, my workplace took part in an online meeting with an agency we’ll be working with. Now, I’ve never worked for a Comms agency, so I’m aware that I may be speaking out of place. However, if I WERE to take such a job, there are certain things I would think were important.
For example, I would do some research on a client before meeting them. I would make sure that I understood what their line of work was, so I didn’t repeatedly make incorrect assumptions about the nature of the work they did.
I would do a quick proof read of my presentations, to make sure that I didn’t repeatedly misspell people’s names. I’m not talking about strangely spelled names from unfamiliar cultures — I’m talking about five-letter British names. The kind of thing you’d expect a British agency to get right without thinking.
I would make sure that any surveys I asked people to fill out (where they might be critical of their own workplace) were anonymised, in order to ensure honest responses.
I would make sure, over 18 months into a pandemic full of online meetings, that my team knew how to use Zoom, and weren’t struggling with basic ideas such as how to share materials and how to un-mute themselves.
Obviously, my fears were unfounded, and the agency didn’t make any of the mistakes aboPSYCHE OF COURSE THEY DID, THEY DID EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Along with these mistakes, I got a wonderful insight into how their minds actually worked. Among the various childish games we played during this meeting, I was struck by the constant rictus grin of positivity and excitement being forced upon us. After we discussed altering the architecture of the Message House — which, by the way, was a genuine sentence that someone uttered — I started to wonder how these people provided value. What, exactly, made them communications experts when they were so bad at putting their own messages across. How could people be paid so much money when they failed to do the most basic things? How could they claim to be experts in marketing when they presented themselves so badly?
Fundamentally, I think some of the issue comes from the professionalisation and standardisation of the Communications industry. A considerable number of people who work in Comms have ONLY worked in Comms. They’ve done their undergraduate in Comms, then maybe a postgrad, then maybe a bunch of CPD courses. They’ve surrounded themselves with other Comms people, talking the jargon and thinking ‘The Right Way’. They read the same magazines, network at the same events, apply to the same awards, and persuade themselves that if they just follow the right pattern, and put the right objects in the right order, they’ll get the correct outcome.
An awful lot of the time, that doesn’t happen — but there’s always someone else to blame for any failure, and anyway, by then the agency have moved on to something else.
This isn’t just a problem with Comms. When I worked in Education, I saw this frequently from senior academics. Someone with a PhD in Chemistry might assume that this qualifies them to understand what a 17-year-old Chemistry applicant might think, but they’re too far removed from that age to realise their errors.
Think of political thinkers, strategies or policies, that with the benefit of hindsight are clearly idiotic. Perhaps the Ed Stone, or Neil Kinnock briefly turning American. Think of failures like the godawful Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad. Someone, somewhere, who thinks they know a lot about how to communicate with people, decided that was a good idea.
So with all of these complaints, it was quite a shock to find a great example of how to really communicate with people, along with an example of exactly the kind of over-promoted, over-confident moron I’m complaining about, all wrapped up in the same article.
And it involves this guy:
Specifically, it involves this short piece on him in The Guardian last week — “Skewering № 10 over Christmas Parties has made Ros Atkins a BBC star”.
As good as he is, I’m not sure Atkins would quite be labelled ‘a star’. I expect the majority of the country haven’t watched any of his videos, and most of those who have would struggle to name him.
However, he has come to prominence recently for doing exactly what journalists are meant to do — explaining a story clearly, concisely and accurately, avoiding obvious bias while still making the facts clear, and not getting so bogged down in efforts to ‘show both sides’ that you end up saying nothing.
Newspapers have, for the most part, moved away from this kind of reporting. News stories are written to invoke shocked, horrified responses. Columnists are more interested in witty one-liners than informing readers. Sure, Marina Hyde can be quite fun, but if she’s your main source of information on a story you’re probably missing quite a lot. You might also think that it’s all so simple, and politicians are idiots, and there are extremes on both sides, and if we all just lied down nicely in the middle of the political motorway everything would be fine. BUT I DIGRESS.
The thing is, I quite like these videos. They explain, very simply, what the issues at hand are, and you get to the end of each of them feeling like you know a bit more about what’s going on. But I swear news used to be like that all the time. I’m sure I used to watch reports on Newsnight or Channel 4 News during my youth that did exactly the same thing. Atkins is good at what he does (and I’ll come to why in a minute) but it’s not like he’s invented a whole new genre of reporting is it?
I need to make a small diversion here, to state an opinion that is incredibly unpopular and will likely make a lot of people turn off in disgust. It’s relevant to the argument at hand, I promise.
Here goes.
*deep breath*
I don’t think Amy Winehouse was that great.
…
…
Still here? OK. Don’t get me wrong, she could sing, and I can see the appeal. I even enjoy listening to her. I just didn’t think she was the greatest musician that ever lived, which was how she was presented at the time. I didn’t think she was *bad* either — maybe a 7 or 8 out of 10 on my personal, subjective scale? What I think made her so popular was that at the time she emerged on the scene (whether you consider that to be when her first LP came out, or when Back to Black was released), so many female singers were utterly devoid of any sense of talent or realism, so utterly polished to remove any sense of life, that in comparison, she was incredible.
Likewise, Ros Atkins is undeniably good — but I don’t think it’s because he has any particular amazing talent. He just does his job properly. The reason he’s appealing to so many people right now is that he’s one of the few that does.
That Guardian article explains it quite clearly. Take a look at how people describe his work:
“Ros is just brilliant at this,” the executive said. “If you look at what he’s done, it’s stripped down ‘this is what happened’ in three minutes flat — there’s no florid tedious language, there’s no self indulgence to it.”
Colleagues say Atkins, who is married with two teenagers, is dedicated, rehearsing lines and tweaking scripts until he is sure they will have the greatest impact. One former colleague compared his approach to news to his love of squash. “He makes things look effortless but they’re not effortless. Just like being a very good squash player takes years of practice, being a really good TV craftsman takes a long time too — he works bloody hard to make it spot on.”
He works hard, he refines his work, he understands what the words mean, and he performs his piece. No need for histrionics or pomposity. No need to dumb things down. Just the facts, presented in a clear, understandable manner.
Why does he stand out? Look at that last paragraph. Could you say the same about Andrew Marr? Laura Kuenssberg? Amol Rajan? Robert Peston? Krishnan Guru-Murthy? ANYONE CURRENTLY ON TV?
So, great, someone working in news is actually taking the time to do their job properly, and to present facts and information in a way people like. And people do like it — the article mentions 11M views in barely more than a week. Not bad for supposedly dry info-dumps.
Why then, was I also annoyed at that article? Well, because of lines like these:
the 3–4 minute clips — long for viral videos — have been watched over 11m times, far more than any other digital news series, with insiders in the BBC admitting that their popularity has confounded expectations about the desires of online news consumers.
or
The 47-year-old is no hotshot newcomer.
or
“He’s made this type of explainer his own, and it’s proved wildly popular with audiences across the world, and very shareable on social media,” ... The explainers, very much seen as Atkins’ baby, were created in an attempt to make live TV also work as an on-demand digital product.
The whole piece is filled with examples of higher-ups being surprised — shocked even — that such an approach could work. “These aren’t the viral videos we were taught to make!” they say (in my head). “Our research shows that people like angry gammons shouting and clips of puppies! How could a decrepit geriatric near-50-year-old come up with anything that would appeal to today’s ADHD-addled youth, who are of course the only people on the internet, and therefore the only ones of any importance?”
They are not just idiots — they fail to understand people.
I’m not on TikTok (as I may have mentioned), but some of the videos from there that I see getting shared on other platforms have a lot in common with Ros’s pieces. Yes, there are a lot of lip syncs and funny clips, but there are also people explaining their hobbies and work, or telling you about historical or political facts, or how disrespectful the Secretary Bird is.
Remember when you first discovered YouTube? How you could find people talking about stuff that interested you? Sure, the production quality might have been lower, but at least you didn’t have to wade through two minutes of “HEY GUYS WELCOME TO MY CHANNEL DON’T FORGET TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE AND HIT THAT BELL FOR EXTRA NOTIFICATIONS ALSO I WANT TO GIVE A SHOUT OUT TO MY VIEWERS I JUST REACHED 25 SUBSCRIBERS ALSO HERE’S AN AD FOR SKILLSHARE SEE YOU’VE ALREADY STOPPED READING HAVEN’T YOU? YOU’VE ASSUMED THIS IS ALL STILL PART OF THE GAG AND YOU’RE LOOKING FOR THE EQUIVALENT OF SKIPPING 2 MINUTES IN!”
An awfully large number of people don’t want to be shouted at. They don’t want to be sold things. They just want information in a clear, easy to understand manner.
Ros Atkins does that. He does it well. So why is he the only one? Why were so many people at the BBC surprised by this success?
I think it’s because an awful lot of them don’t consume their own output — and no, I don’t mean that in a scatological sense, at least not initially. They spend so much time looking at analytics, breaking everything down into numbers, looking at which trends to follow, that they’ve lost sight of what they’re actually making.
They’ve worked out that they can maximise profit by adding an extra 3% sawdust to their sausages. Who cares what they actually taste like? They’re not the ones eating it. Which is why they’re so surprised when someone comes along and serves something actually nutritious, that then ends up being popular.
It’s a shame it’s all going to be ruined when GB News inevitably decide they can mimic the format.
So, going back to the agency that started all of this debate. What are Comms people doing wrong? Well, they’ve forgotten to be people. They know that, yes, victims will sit through multiple video adverts before viewing their content; but they assume it’s because people like the adverts, and not because there’s no other option. Then, when someone comes along and shows no adverts and gets much higher figures, they’re astonished. “But people LIKE adverts!” they cry, “all of our metrics told us so!”.
Think back to the last time you had good customer service — maybe from service staff, or a call centre. Did someone go above and beyond? Or were you just shocked that someone did the very basics of their job properly? Do you remember the last time you called a company up, bracing yourself for hours of dealing with menus and scripts, and within 2 minutes it was fixed? You were left almost shocked at how easy it was, thinking “Why can’t it always be like that?”
The truth is, it almost always can, as long as the people in charge are given the tools to make it so. As long as their focus is not on profit, but on providing a good service. As long as there’s some reward for doing the job properly, and not just jumping on whatever the latest trend is.
Ros Atkins knows that. I’m not sure his bosses do.