Fresh thinking for your comms
I offer a range of communications services.
Whether you need just one of these or a combination, I can tailor my services to suit your brief and objectives.
Services
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Stories help people understand and connect with each other. Telling your story in a powerful way will result in greater impact from your communications. I can help you identify a core narrative and key messages, either for your organisation as a whole or for a specific project, which both feel right for you and connect with your audience.
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Words matter. I use my journalistic background and extensive experience writing campaign and PR materials, website content, corporate strategies and plans to bring your stories to life whilst also keeping copy crisp and clean.
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Do you need to change behaviour, raise awareness or engage people in a conversation? I thrive on bringing fresh ideas and fun (where appropriate) to campaigns. I can support you on all aspects of campaign development and delivery from identifying your audience and objectives, shaping your message, channels and tactics, content and evaluation.
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Failure to plan is planning to fail. I help organisations pull together successful strategies that set clear outcomes, deliver and measure them. I can work with you and your team to shape your corporate communications strategy or on a high priority project. This might be through collaboration over a period or through a standalone workshop.
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Knowing your audience is key to success in any piece of communication. But knowing your audience and getting them to engage with you is not the same thing. I’ve worked on a wide range of engagement projects and consultations that required thinking differently to reach the right people in the right places.
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I’ve benefited from support and training from many amazing people throughout my career and supporting others to develop their communications skills and confidence is important to me. I can develop bespoke training sessions for your team or a programme of mentoring for an individual, drawing on the skills and specialisms I have to offer.
Case Studies
Transport Planning & Engineering Core Narrative
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Transport Planning & Engineering (TP&E) is Scotland’s leading active travel engineering consultancy, and a social enterprise established by Cycling Scotland.
I supported this unique organisation in developing a clear narrative to better tell the story of who they are and what they do…
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After working with the TP&E team to develop a new corporate narrative and key messages, I delivered new website copy, job adverts, and social media posts for a recruitment campaign, as well as supporting the photography brief to gather images to support TP&E’s online presence.
River Carron Flood Warning Scheme, SEPA
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A hyper local campaign to encourage people living and working in the River Carron area to be better prepared for flooding and more resilient to climate change by signing up for early warnings messages. With 1500 new addresses becoming eligible to receive these warnings, the key to the success of this campaign was reaching the right people in the right places.
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I worked closely with SEPA to develop the messaging and tactics for a campaign that went right into the community through direct postcards, campaign materials in popular local venues such as libraries, sports centres and shops, targeted social media and radio advertising. My role included writing copy for campaign materials and advertising including radio and video scripts. This campaign exceeded its objectives achieving a 134% increase in signs ups during the campaign period, increasing visitors to the flood warning webpage from the target local area and increasing followers to SEPA’s Flood warning social media channels.
Accessible Adventures, SportScotland
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SportScotland’s National Outdoor Training Centre, Glenmore Lodge, is best known for the expert training it provides for outdoor specialists, but less well so for the wider opportunities it offers everyone to develop their skills and confidence in the outdoors. With the centre's in-house comms team, I developed a short-term campaign to help tell this side of their story to a wider audience.
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I developed a campaign plan and key messages, identifying real life stories and partnership opportunities to bring this to life. As well as creating a new Accessible Adventures page for the website, I carried out interviews, including with deaf climbing and skiing instructor Morag Skelton who herself trained at Glenmore Lodge and has now worked with the centre to develop Scotland’s first mountain navigation course to be delivered in British Sign Language. A Q&A blog with Morag was published on the website and social media channels while the new BSL course achieved coverage on BBC Scotland’s Out of Doors show and in RNID magazine’s ‘Things We Love’ section. We also worked with travel blogger and podcaster @WatchMeSee to promote entry level training courses open to anyone looking to build confidence in the outdoors.
https://www.glenmorelodge.org.uk/tailor-made/accessible-adventures/
‘Here. Now. All of Us’ National Park Partnership Plan 2024-29
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This Plan needed to set out some uncomfortable truths about the current challenges facing Scotland’s first National Park and an ambitious vision for its future. The Plan and all comms around it had to strike a balance between urgency and inspiration, sparking a conversation with all those who would have a role to play in delivering or be impacted by its outcomes.
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I worked closely with the National Park Authority’s senior leadership and project team at all stages to shape the narrative, write and edit the Draft Plan for consultation, plan a consultation approach that went beyond the traditional stakeholder and reach lesser heard voices. Following consultation, I worked on redrafting and editing the final version of the Partnership Plan and a range of supporting materials including a ‘Quick Guide’ and all website copy.
WWT Caerlaverock Communications and PR Plan
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WWT Caerlaverock is the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust’s only site in Scotland but one of their largest and richest in nature. I provided communications and PR support to raise the profile of the site in local and national media, highlighting WWT Caerlaverock’s unique nature qualities and wonderful wildlife. My role was also to provide guidance to allow the reserve’s Engagement Officer to develop their understanding of the media landscape to continue to develop the site’s profile longer term.
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We created a 12-month media plan for both local and national media, tying this into social media content and building a targeted media contacts list.
I also provided copywriting support and media guidance, drafting press releases and media pitches to attract targeted media interest and put WWT Caerlaverock on the radar of specialist environment and nature correspondents.
The outcomes included regular local news articles, as well as national media coverage and interest from the Scotsman, BBC Scotland, the Out of Doors Show and NatureScot’s Make Space for Nature podcast.
Shh!...it Happens: What to do when you need to poo
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I led this award-winning behaviour change campaign for Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park to tackle the tricky issue of irresponsible toileting in the outdoors. Using lighthearted and slightly cheeky language helped spark conversation on a topic that most people shy away from discussing in public.
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This, alongside practical tools and messaging at strategic points on the visitor journey and at popular camping sites, made it not just easier but fun for people to change their behaviour.
This campaign won the CIPR Scotland PRIDE GOLD Award Low-Cost Campaign 2021 and the Comms2Point0 Unawards Low-Cost Campaign Awards 2019, as well as attracting interest from as far away as the USA from outdoor organisations looking to replicate this approach.