The scales aren't so bad

The Media Trust's latest report 'The Marketing & Communications Needs of Charities' provides a succinct summary of the communications issues facing third sector organisations today. The highlighted issues will be all-too-familiar amongst the communications agencies working within the sector, where a general lack of strategic expertise and experienced marketing presence on boards often makes it hard to address communication issues strategically.

This is coupled with the increasing demand in today's climate for measurement and accountability of marketing and communications spend. Without strategic marketing representation at board level, a vicious circle can ensue where measurement is overlooked at the planning stage of campaigns and projects, leaving only testimonials and anecdotal feedback to illustrate the true contribution of media in the overall mix. Measurement is a bit like trying out a new diet a week; if you don't get on the scales before you start, you have no idea whether Atkins works better for you or whether you should stick to Weightwatchers.

Organisations such as the Charities Evaluation Service are doing some great work in helping provide advice, guidance and tools to assist with precisely this challenge, but there also lies a responsibility with the providers of marketing expertise and services themselves. Including a measurement element into a project plan to measure success may require some initial thought, but the results are invaluable.

These issues are exacerbated by the lack of awareness as to the variety of ways in which communications can transform and address various issues for not-for-profits without being in the form of all-singing-all-dancing billboard campaigns. It's easy to think about communication in it's most simplistic sense, delivering increased donor support. For many organisations however, effective communication can play an important role when used as a facilitating tool at a more central level.

Take one of our recent films, commissioned to help keep magistrates and judges fully up to date with the variety of community-based schemes available to assist in offenders' rehabilitation. For busy magistrates, carving out hours to read about the various programmes that can build confidence and influence behaviour to aid reform is a tall order. The film enabled London Probation to deliver against a policy-related objective, cost effectively generating a better engagement with and understanding of these options to its time-poor audience.

The great thing about well-executed media communication is its ability to illustrate the general through focusing in on the personal, capturing audience's imagination and giving greater capacity to cut through the clutter. At IJP we strive to deliver innovative solutions that do just that. And we hope that by working with our clients to facilitate effectiveness measurement, we are helping to advance the use of media in the third sector, raising the bar in order that organisations can better compete with their private sector counterparts, and maybe loose a bit of weight in the process.

Louise Brown, Marketing & Communications Manager, Inside Job Productions

People Will Always Need Good Pants

I went to see the lovely people at Pants to Poverty yesterday to talk through some film ideas. This organisation is really worth checking out if you haven't already. Born out of the Make Poverty History campaign, the idea of making, wearing and selling 'good pants' as a way of raising awareness about social and environmental issues has grown into an exciting and sustainable social enterprise.

Now selling three collections of underwear a year across 16 countries, Pants source the cotton in their pants from Zameen Organic, the world's finest farmer-owned marketing company for Fairtrade and Organic cotton. Based in Hyderabad in India, Zameen Organic is co-owned by the tribal cotton farmers in the Vidarbha region, where on average 26 farmers commit suicide every day due to unfair trade. Since Zameen has started its work, there have been no suicides amongst their 5,000 members and farmers earn approximately one third more than farmers of conventional cotton.

Pants use their influence, their products and their fans to campaign against 'bad pants'. The production of 'bad pants' embody all sorts of evils such as the pesticides used in cotton production which poison whole communities and the child labour used in garment factories. So Pants to Poverty hold pant-wearing protests, bad pants amnesties and lobby multinationals producing pesticides to effect change. Not only that, and this is the really clever bit, they demonstrate that the solution already exists - it is possible to produce cheap, organic, Fairtrade cotton, because they're doing it.

I love the fact that social enterprises like these ones are reinventing the way we do business, and having a lot of fun along the way. So now there's no excuse for wearing bad pants.

Naomi Delap, Managing Director, Inside Job Productions

To find out more (and buy pants) visit http://www.pantstopoverty.com/