How green is my strategy?
Ben McKenna
Information Communications Manager, Yorkshire Culture
One of the inevitabilities of life in the public sector is the fact that, each morning when you receive your post, without fail you will be confronted by a strategy of some shape of form. My desk is littered with them and from time to time I feel like I am drowning under the weight of nicely printed paper and cleverly illustrated action plans.
Now, I’ve done my fair share of strategies in the past. Big ones, little ones, quiet ones, loud ones and sometimes even fun ones. They play a useful role in our world even if a small percentage of them exist solely for the sake of pointing to some sort of achievement, namely writing a strategy. The business of writing, designing and publishing these auspicious tomes has become an art in itself. There are great designers, either in house or at an agency level, working on a lot of these things but it’s a massive challenge to make a lot of what the cultural sector does truly engaging.
We’re lucky really, that in the cultural sector we can illustrate our work with exotic dancers (steady), taught and striving sporting figures and either sexy new buildings, fascinating old ones or sweeping landscapes. It’s a lot easier than sending out business, science and technology or regeneration pieces. Men in pinstripe suits, white coats and hard hats are never going to play well with whatever target audience you’re trying to hit.
I’m in no way as green as I should be, I recycle a bit of paper here and there but I don’t compost, wash my cans out or take regular trips to the bottle bank. The problem is though, that the culture of how the public sector as a whole communicates is still very much based around the strategy document ethos. Write it, make it look nice with some “inspirational” shots, print it and then post it. I know that 99% of these documents will be printed on at least 80% recycled stock which has come along way in the last decade but is this really enough? Especially in these Green days where party leaders cycle to work and former US Vice Presidents implore us to make a difference to the world through the medium of middle of the road pop. I’m not sure that, if we looked good and hard at the carbon footprint of each of these documents, we’d like what we saw. Or for that matter that we’d feel we are truly getting value for money.
We live in an age now where the internet gets information to you faster, cheaper, easier and more interactive. Maybe the price of the matt effect, double thick stock paper or the lushly de-bossed accompanying envelope could be better spent elsewhere on a cool viral or a site which grabs the attention and gets the message across. Direct Marketing still has its part to play and I’m not saying the standard of the design needs to be lower, just that maybe the medium for it could do with changing. It’d certainly last longer, be cheaper to deliver and wouldn’t have coffee spilt over it or get left in the office.
Now, I’ve done my fair share of strategies in the past. Big ones, little ones, quiet ones, loud ones and sometimes even fun ones. They play a useful role in our world even if a small percentage of them exist solely for the sake of pointing to some sort of achievement, namely writing a strategy. The business of writing, designing and publishing these auspicious tomes has become an art in itself. There are great designers, either in house or at an agency level, working on a lot of these things but it’s a massive challenge to make a lot of what the cultural sector does truly engaging.
We’re lucky really, that in the cultural sector we can illustrate our work with exotic dancers (steady), taught and striving sporting figures and either sexy new buildings, fascinating old ones or sweeping landscapes. It’s a lot easier than sending out business, science and technology or regeneration pieces. Men in pinstripe suits, white coats and hard hats are never going to play well with whatever target audience you’re trying to hit.
I’m in no way as green as I should be, I recycle a bit of paper here and there but I don’t compost, wash my cans out or take regular trips to the bottle bank. The problem is though, that the culture of how the public sector as a whole communicates is still very much based around the strategy document ethos. Write it, make it look nice with some “inspirational” shots, print it and then post it. I know that 99% of these documents will be printed on at least 80% recycled stock which has come along way in the last decade but is this really enough? Especially in these Green days where party leaders cycle to work and former US Vice Presidents implore us to make a difference to the world through the medium of middle of the road pop. I’m not sure that, if we looked good and hard at the carbon footprint of each of these documents, we’d like what we saw. Or for that matter that we’d feel we are truly getting value for money.
We live in an age now where the internet gets information to you faster, cheaper, easier and more interactive. Maybe the price of the matt effect, double thick stock paper or the lushly de-bossed accompanying envelope could be better spent elsewhere on a cool viral or a site which grabs the attention and gets the message across. Direct Marketing still has its part to play and I’m not saying the standard of the design needs to be lower, just that maybe the medium for it could do with changing. It’d certainly last longer, be cheaper to deliver and wouldn’t have coffee spilt over it or get left in the office.
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