Think Again News

More miles on the clock and more nights in chain hotels. But still feeling privileged to be working with such inspirational people.

Not one, but two great examples this  week of how digital and social media are changing the world of campaigning, and taking a battering ram to the old gatekeepers.

First, the Trafigura injunction story showed the futility of thinking that anything can be kept truly secret when communication is instant, global and in the hands of the users. On the face of it, a victory for free speech and open-ness, although it’s worth reflecting also on the dangers it reveals  – well captured in this post by PC Pro’s Barry Collins.

 Second, the comment article by the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir , originally headlined “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”.   Within minutes of it appearing in first editions and online, the backlash had begun.  A record level of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission – a Twitter campaign and a Facebook group headed “The Daily Mail should retract Jan Moir’s hateful, homophobic article”.  

Her assertion that “healthy and fit young men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa never to wake up again” had also angered those organisations campaigning to raise awareness of the many conditions which cause exactly that. 

Several companies, including Nestle (no stranger to the power of online campaigns), Visit England, Kodak and National Express asked for their online advertising to be removed from pages featuring the offending article.  

The Mail didn’t retract anything, but they did change the headline to the apparently less controversial “A strange, lonely and troubling death…” and publish a “clarification” from Jan Moir.   Her claim that she was the victim of “an orchestrated campaign” and that many of those complaining had not even read her article will have raised wry smiles from anyone who remembers the Mail’s own campaign against Ross and Brand a year ago.

Manchester Town Hall.  Great city, good people, amazing stories – long day.

Pause for breath in our tour of the music education services – helping them think again about how they get their messages across, and how they tell the stories of the amazing work they do in our schools.  So far we’ve met teams from Harrow, Enfield, Lancashire, Blackburn, Brighton, Portsmouth, Croydon, Derbyshire and Birmingham.   Tomorrow it’s Leeds and Manchester, then the West Country at the weekend.  

Everywhere, we’ve heard powerful stories of how music transforms the lives of young people, their families and their schools.  How, in some cases, music has literally saved lives.

We hope you’ll be hearing more of these stories, in more detail, over the next few months as the campaign to demonstrate the value of this under-appreciated resource gets properly underway.

Think Again are on the road for the next month as our Music Services Campaign and Communications programme gets underway.  Harrow and Enfield were the first of 25 or so local authority music education teams to take part in our day-long messaging, advocacy and communications workshops.  The workshops will be followed up with coaching, specific training and the creation of a “champions” group for each service.  The day was a great success, and it’s a real pleasure to be working with such passionate and committed educators.