Conquering the blank page

communications

Five strategies to unblock writer’s block

by Revekka Balancier | Jul 9, 2024

We've all been there: staring at a blinking cursor, the pressure building, the memory of the second hand ticking away on a clock (because no one actually uses wind-up clocks anymore, right?), and the dreaded writer's block stays firmly in place.

Fear not, fellow wordsmiths! Here are five simple strategies to help you get those words flowing freely:

Dive into the deep end:

Read, read, read!

Sometimes, the best way to ignite your creative spark is to immerse yourself in inspiration. Explore your topic through research articles, news stories, or even a well-written blog post. Let the ideas of others paint the canvas for your own masterpiece.

Master the list-ocracy:

Word association

Forget the pressure of crafting entire paragraphs right off the bat. Instead, jot down keywords, phrases, or even single words related to your theme. I personally love to keep a good thesaurus on hand! Once you have a list, connect the dots, flesh out the ideas, and watch your story unfold organically.

Speak your Truth:

Talk out loud

Ever notice how the moment you ask for tech help, your computer miraculously starts working again? This phenomenon extends to writer’s block, too! Talk to a friend, a family member, or even your pet about your writing woes. Often, just verbalizing your ideas can trigger a chain reaction of inspiration.

Step away:

Fresh air and fresh ideas

Sometimes forcing it only makes things worse. If you're feeling stuck, give yourself a physical and mental break. Go for a walk, listen to music, or do something completely unrelated. Returning to your writing with fresh eyes can clear the brain fog and bring a renewed perspective.

Embrace the Power of AI:

Chat it up!

Technology is your friend! Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can be surprisingly helpful in overcoming writer's block. Enter a prompt, a keyword, or even just a snippet of your idea, and let the AI generate text based on your input. Even if it doesn't perfectly capture your vision, it can provide a starting point, a springboard to launch you into your own writing flow. Editing is easier than staring at a blank page, so use AI to your advantage!

Writer's block is a common hurdle, not a sign of failure - we’ve all been there. Experiment with these strategies, find what works best for you, and most importantly, be kind to yourself, and patient. I started this blog two years after I meant to start it…but I finally got into a groove! The best way to get over writer’s block is to give yourself grace and your words will come again.

7 Alternatives to hosting a public meeting

marketing insights

communications

Town HallNeighborhood DialogueDesign Charette Just kidding

by Revekka Balancier | Mar 19, 2024

A public meeting by any other name is still old school. And I love old school, but only on the radio. Yes, I still listen to radio. Nonetheless, even I know that more than twenty years into the twenty-first century, there has got to be a better way to do community engagement.

It’s not that I am against community meetings. They offer a rare opportunity to make governments human, to connect with people, to answer questions in real time, to gather feedback from our most important stakeholders - the public. They play an important role in our community outreach toolkit; but rarely do you build a masterpiece with just one tool.

Community meetings seldom draw huge crowds. Yet, when construction begins on a new recreation center, or a public park is moved, or enforcement begins on a law people ignored throughout the legislative process - everyone has an opinion. We often hear the same responses from Public Information Officers, “We followed our standard public notification process. We hosted community meetings. We provided our standard public comment period.”

Clearly, these are not always enough. As marketing and communications experts, we know we have tools at our disposal to reach thousands, if not millions of people, using proven techniques. We don’t need to limit our outreach to the local community room capacity. We don’t have to stay chained to a projector, sentenced to a lifetime of clicking through powerpoint slides. We are not beholden to foam core display boards forever.



Conduct a Facebook poll

Sometimes we just need to simplify things a bit. Facebook polls are a fun way to conduct “pulse-checks” and see what the community thinks on a particular subject. For example: This year we closed the road for the first time as a safety measure during the city’s signature festival. We are interested in hearing what you thought. Did the new road closure work well for keeping people safe? 1) Yes, it was great for safety, please do it again next year. 2) Yes, it made a difference, but I think it needs some changes. (Comment below.) 3. No, I don’t think this is a good way to address safety, I have some other ideas (Comment below!).

Pros: This simple poll lets us get a percentage of what the participants think, and record comments. It also sends a message to the community that we care what they think.
Cons: You are opening yourself up to negative feedback for the world to see. Though honestly, if you have a Facebook page, you are doing that anyway. Also, the poll is not scientific nor does it accurately represent the entire community. Guess what? Neither do community meetings!



Distribute a Prezi or Loom

The beautiful thing about Prezi is that it allows you to present ideas and information clustered in a circular, triangular, or any other format, rather than just linear as with powerpoint. You can zoom to different neighborhoods on a map, and between each screen, show the entire city for context. You can look at different depths of the ocean zooming deeper with each click to represent the journey. You can follow the path of traffic or a watershed to help your audience understand the challenges your team is facing. The speaking points can be simplified and worked into each screen so the presentation is self contained. The final screen can ask pointed questions and provide a link for responses to those questions. The prezi can be posted online and the URL can be distributed on your website, to your email lists, on social media, in a press release and you can even use a paid media strategy for targeted distribution. Leave the Prezi up for a 30 to 90 day comment period and really give people time to explore and respond. Check out this example of a Prezi on Moving Towards a Digital Government.

Pros: The Prezi still works at community meetings if you are obligated to host one by ordinance, and can be taken to stakeholders as well.
Cons: It is important to put the effort into development of the Prezi upfront to ensure the content and messaging are clear.



Produce a Video

I don’t mean videotape your elected or appointed official giving a presentation for people who couldn’t make it to the meeting. Animate your ideas, use b-roll to illustrate your points, or use 3-D modeling to show how something will work. I find talking heads aren’t usually necessary unless they are adding credibility. This can also be distributed on multiple platforms and linked to an online survey or feedback form. It can be as simple as a call to action that says, “Tell us what you think. E-mail feedback@government.org”

Pros: Videos grab people’s attention and give us the opportunity to animate complex subjects that are difficult to show in still formats.
Cons: Not much time. To be most effective, videos shouldn’t be too long, because you will naturally get drop off. Engaging content will help, but you don’t want a documentary!



Host a Radio Call-In Show or Podcast

Remember those Sunday morning public affairs shows? Well, actually, lots of other people do, too! Not to mention talk stations dedicated to public interest programming. Many will work with you to sponsor a segment. This particularly works well when you are early in a process and do not yet have visuals or renderings, but perhaps want to gather feedback on the idea. An example might be looking for new locations for a park, or beginning an environmental review process and asking for input on what should be considered. These days, podcasts are much more popular, but you lose the call-in factor, unless you are participating in a live event.

Pros: You can reach a lot more listeners at once this way, more than you ever could in a single room.
Cons: I suggest asking pointed questions to keep the comments on track; the station can help you filter if necessary.



Host an Open Exhibit

3D models are cool. Show them off! Use a public plaza or even the outside entrance to a government building and put up three different half-scale public art pieces that are being considered for the area and leave them up for several weeks. If you are planning to put up new park monument signs, make full scale foam versions of each and put them on display in a centrally located park for a full month. Build the exhibit so it has the story built-in to the signage in the exhibit and people can learn about the background, options and next steps as they walk through. Ask for feedback by providing a URL or e-mail address. You can do this indoors for more complicated models that need to be encased, which also gives you the opportunity to add in a tablet or kiosk where people can provide input onsite.

Pros: People love to take pictures with stuff like this and you can set it up artistically to encourage social media exposure. Provide a hashtag!
Cons: This is public. Very public. You cannot get this kind of engagement in an auditorium. Be ready to hear anything.



Build an Interactive Micro-Site

Long-term projects with multiple opportunities for comments over time may be worth building a micro-site. I normally fall on the landing page side of the debate, but for finite projects (and with meticulously aligned branding!), a micro-site may give you exactly the kind of interactive freedom you need. You can find the right platform to show renderings, build animation, add surveys, and change information over time.

Pros: You can usually add the newest functionality, without being tethered to your standard platform.
Cons: Using a micro-site diverts traffic from your main site, but for major projects where it is important to get feedback during multiple stages, this may be worth it.



Send out an online survey

If you really want to know what the community thinks, use an online research partner to send out a survey. They will help you develop questions, recommend a survey size sample, and execute your survey tool. In the end you will have a breakdown of feedback that is much more representative of the community at large.

Pros: You can segment your data to better understand differences in responses between neighborhoods, education levels or other filters.
Cons: It excludes the element of choice - the people who want to participate. You will still need an option that gives people a choice to give feedback if they choose to do so.

Just because people don’t come to public meetings doesn’t mean they don’t care about the future of their communities. We can meet people where they are, on the platforms they are on, with the mechanisms built in to provide feedback. Let’s take the risk, skip the comment cards and save a golf pencil.

Need some help for your next public meeting?

Infusing humor into PSAs and purpose-driven marketing

purpose insights

communications

by Revekka Balancier | Mar 6, 2024

Somewhere along the way, the collective purpose-driven marketing industry fell into the idea that making people feel meant making people feel negatively. And I place myself in this industry. The public sector is about as purpose-driven as you can get. I’ve worked on everything from foster parent recruitment to increasing literacy to anti-drug campaigns. I know, not always as glamorous as my movie publicist days, but I certainly had no doubt I was serving the greater good! I simply insist on serving the greater good effectively…

As purpose-driven marketers, we know creative campaigns are most effective when they connect with people on an emotional level. Oh how easily we seem to forget there are emotions beyond sadness, fear, and guilt. It seems every other public service announcement is trying to scare us into not doing drugs, guilt us into donating to children, anger us into supporting animals, tug at our heartstrings to pull on our pursestrings, or in some way trigger us toward some action. Cue the violins.

Why does the PSA paradigm operate in an alternate humorless universe from the rest of the advertising and marketing industry? Our colleagues have long been using positive emotions to connect with audiences. Happiness, smiles, and even… laughter. When building awareness for serious social issues we may not have the luxury of big budgets for production, talent, and special effects. However, we certainly do have our creativity and our wit, and can use it to broach delicate subject matter in a way that can help people relate, remember and respond.

I was curious to see how often humor is used in PSA, so I turned to my most trusted research partner to make my case: Google. A 2011 article from Huffington Post, 10 Funny Public Service Ads About Serious Issues specifically showcases PSAs that use humor. That, my friends, is the most comprehensive, up-to-date list out there. Yes, 2011!

A more recent 2015 Contently article, Jillian Richardson’s 10 PSAs that actually get your attention, features seven out of ten PSAs using humor and wit, rather than the more typical guilt trip. Thousands of very worthy cause-related campaigns are out there, so surely more than this go beyond the negativity overload, right?

I kept digging. In 60 Powerful Social Issue Ads That Will Make You Stop and Think on Digital Synopsis, only three of the PSAs use humor instead of shock, disgust and shame. I’m talking blood, lots of blood; children, lots of children; and animals, lots of animals - in uncomfortable combinations of the aforementioned negative emotions. And the research shows (actual research! not just online searches), this approach is not effective. Some are turned off and their instinct is to look away. Some don’t buy it and believe the opposite of the message’s intent. Some are literally triggered due to similar trauma or experiences. We want them thinking about how inspired they feel to change their behavior. Purpose-driven marketing has evolved beyond the negative emotion model.

The case for humor is overwhelming. In Psychology for Marketers, Magda Kay asks, Does Humor In Advertising Help Sell More? (spoiler alert: yes!) “We buy from people we like, and humor is the easiest and fastest way to get there.” Our brains are hardwired to respond to people we like and we naturally like people we find funny.

I think Point Park University’s Daniel Karell explains it best in his 2018 article Is Humor in Advertising Effective? (another spoiler alert: yes!) “Humor in advertising associates the positive emotion elicited from the advertisement with the brand.” Now we are getting somewhere!

In a campaign my team worked on while I was in-house at the Port of San Diego, we decided we had seen enough environmental PSAs that scare the public, preach to people, and leave audiences feeling, rather simply - depressed. Where’s the motivation in that? We wanted to give the community reminders about being responsible for their trash, while also building pride in our beautiful waterfront, and still making people laugh a little. We wanted to give them something to remember, fondly, when they were actually out having a picnic. A little something silly usually does the trick. Our #ThatsMyBay video series may not have dead animals or big sad eyes. But our monkey is stuffed and our mime has a tear, if that counts.

Conquering the blank page

communications

Five strategies to unblock writer’s block

Dive into the deep end:

Read, read, read!

Master the list-ocracy:

Word association

Speak your Truth:

Talk out loud

Step away:

Fresh air and fresh ideas

Embrace the Power of AI:

Chat it up!

7 Alternatives to hosting a public meeting

communications

Town HallNeighborhood DialogueDesign Charette Just kidding

Conduct a Facebook poll

Distribute a Prezi or Loom

Produce a Video

Host a Radio Call-In Show or Podcast

Host an Open Exhibit

Build an Interactive Micro-Site

Send out an online survey

Need some help for your next public meeting?

Infusing humor into PSAs and purpose-driven marketing

communications

Need some help creating a fun purpose-driven campaign for your cause?

Our Services

What we're up to...

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Success!