Category: News

They say never work with children and animals, but we at DTW recently broke both of those rules when we decided this year to produce a Christmas video instead of a greetings card.

But could we really pull it off in such a short space of time? Despite many a dubious glance, and at least one “I’ll eat an elf’s hat if you pull this off!” we got everyone together for…an interesting couple of hours.

Trying to direct a one-year old to “Crawl like this”, and explaining to at least three separate six year olds what their motivation for the scene was, you might have been mistaken for thinking you had walked onto the set of a Hollywood blockbuster film.

But, you wouldn’t have been mistaken for too long, with mince-pie encrusted carpet stains and tinsel coming out of our ears… literally, I thought, maybe, this time we had gone too far, reflecting back to the night the idea was born, I asked myself ‘Had someone had too many wines on a school night?’

However, despite the crying noises of several tired and frustrated babies, chocolate handprints all over the photocopier, dog hairs on the Christmas Tree, and the curious case of the missing chocolate coins that never made it to the bright lights of the tree branches, (a mystery still to this day) we somehow managed to get all the footage we needed.

But, chaos and stress aside it was a lovely afternoon… Hopefully not to be repeated too soon, and the lesson we all learnt was when you prove people wrong…make them eat their elf hat!

The new Government Communications Plan might have a foreword from Francis Maude but the hand of Alex Aiken, the new Executive Director of Government Communications, is all over it.

Having heard Alex present on the future of government comms at the recent CIPR Northern Conference, it is no surprise to see his favourite word of the moment – ‘exceptional’ – prominent here.

What this document does reflect is both the repositioning of comms and PR at the heart of the government information machine and the creation of the new communications hubs.

The one side of A4 communication plans summaries for each department (I bet the editing was fun) are also a welcome introduction and a good starting point for anyone looking to engage with a particular department on a comms issue.

More important though as a signpost for the future are the seven communication hubs – Health and Care; Tax and Benefits; Infrastructure, Communities, Environment and Personal Safety; Crime and Justice; Growth and Economy; Public Services and UK Interests Abroad.

Joined-up-thinking is one of those great over-used phrases which often doesn’t mean a lot, but this is a clear recognition from Government that real people think about issues, not departmental lines of responsibility, and is good to see.

For anyone looking to work with Government and add value to their own comms work, it is also an invaluable guide to the key agenda issues as we move forward.