Special Tanners Tours: Try spotting PRINCE WILLIAM Sat 6 June | THE KING Sat 13 June (Colonel's Review /Trooping the Colour King's Birthday Parade)
Two of the three , Cancer Research UK and Volunteering Matters, opted for new names and rebranding. The National Trust remains the National Trust
In a quieter moment of reflection, Jason's been amused but also honoured to work for organisations that command great respect and in my time were headed by a Nobel prize winner and two Dames, though far from the pantomime variety.
Sir Paul Nurse, was Director General of ICRF (Imperial Cancer Research Campaign) before it became the Cancer Research Campaign.
The scientific rigours of this organisation made it an ideal place to transition from the role of journalist to the world of media relations. Terms like 'breakthrough' in relation to cancer were strictly banned. In those days, press officers might spend one moment speaking to a journalist about the latest paper published in the Lancet; but incredibly, the next caller could be a desperate father, mother, son or daughter searching for the latest clinical trial to extend the life of a loved one.
I was junior maternity cover in the press office at this stage. I think maternity jobs are a brilliant way to progress and dicover yourself in any career. Despite my new direction and relative youth, this busy and frankly excellent research charity still ensured I had a brief one-to-one induction with Paul, the man at the top.
Still fresh from a newsroom, I remember going to his brightly lit office and being impressed with his sci-fi demeanour, complete with a hands-free headphone & microphone device ready for action as he sat squarely behind his desk at Lincoln's Inn Field. This short-term contract was to be an excellent place to transition my role from journalism to media relations, which are similar jobs at one level, but very different at another. I appreciate the efforts of most of the colleagues in this press office who both welcomed me and helped guide me through this transition
I've never lied to a journalist or to my employer and would gain no satisfaction in doing so - even at interview stage. I had a great deal of respect for what I think woud have been the equivalent of the Director of Communications. I remember Margaret interviewing me and asking if I knew anybody affected by cancer. I can remember having an internal panic as I didn't and thought that perhaps I should have done to secure the job - but my honest 'no' seemed to bring much relief to the interviewers and a concern that all to often they had applicants possibly motivated by deep emotional factors rather than by the requirements actually needed by the job description.
Little did I know that more than a decade or so later, I myself would experience a cancer diagnosis and join the one-in-two who encounter cancer at some stage in life. If I had the testicular cancer in the year I was born in the 70s, then my prognosis wouldn't have been that great, but 30+ years later, the extraordinary research of scientists and the work of medical staff at the NHS made the whole process less intrusive than having my appendix removed. Early detection made a huge difference . By-the-way, tall, slim younger men need to be extra 'body-aware' as there is a higher correlation with cases of testicular cancer in this group not yet fully understood.
Both Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust and Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, Executive Director of the UK volunteering and training charity first known as CSV operated in distinctly different ways from each other. These two charities have so far consumed the highest proportion of my working life so far.
Both Dames were determined, demanding and driven as leaders. One arrived on the job professing to have a three legged stool as her focus for the future of the Trust. The other had already established an entire suite of furniture over the years but if we stuck to Fiona's stool analogy then I'd assess Elisabeth as having a nine legged stool. What I do know is that whether there were three legs or nine, both stools remained upright and strong. Both approaches had positives and negatives but both methods also worked.
Clearly the ways of achieving a positive impact at each charity, as symbolised by this analogy, were different and I know I'm not the first head of media who has to make radical adjustments from the style and demands of one chief exec to another. In different ways I also witnessed regime changes at the top of both organisations and in CSV's case saw 'one out and one' in when Lucy de Groot had to fill a seat occupied by the same woman for more than 40 years. But at that point CSV was facing a world where long-standing core grants from Government were disappearing in the voluntary sector which had long used citizen energy to plug many gaps the state couldn't always fill as effectively.
New realities were facing this part of the charity sector and Dame Elisabeth's passing swipe at poor resourcing and lack of strategic vision for the coalition Government's ' Big Society' agenda at the time not only marked this change but left me single-handedly dealing with one of the biggest media stories the voluntary sector had dealt with in decades, simply from a single line well-spotted initially by the Times newspaper in a media release I issued in February 2011. Their article kicked off an avalanche of international interest.
CSV's brand had been strengthening a lot in the last 10 years or so but if anyone had never heard of it before then most people in the UK and beyond will have momentarily encountered it for a week or so in early 2011 and pre-olympics.
Jason at the National Trust's Montacute House in Somerset
This think-piece is dedicated to Melissa Goss and Chris Pitt. Both were excellent colleagues in the CSV Press Office. Sadly, both lost their lives to cancer well before their time was due. We miss both your excellent talents and friendship.. Thank you both.
Jason's not spent his entire eclectic career focused by a drive to secure impactful but "free editorial" from the media for charities that inevitably lacked the big bucks budgets enjoyed by marketeers in more blue chip corporate settings.
Even so, he'd estimate that so far, he's overseen such "free" media work having an equivalent advertising spend totalling a conservative £40 - £50 million over a core 10 year period for charities. This is only one form of impact measurement and of course you need to know whether it had real impact in terms of causing a positive reaction to happen to make a difference where needed. The impact of a media or digital media relations operation is not about the number of posts or press releases and statements issued but it is more about what happened next once these announcements were published in whatever form
Jason Tanner says: "Social Media now means the metrics and techniques for getting noticed out there have changed dramatically and I predict this will change dramatically again. Diverse, quality and multi-sourced information for the public is facing one of its biggest threats to date. It's a near miss, but I'm hopeful about early indications that the world is actually starting to wake up to serious and still very current threats to healthy communications and free speech that I and others were starting to spot in recent times.
Jason continues: "Although my intention a couple of years ago was to start winding down more stressful occupations, ot feel almost wreckless not to pay-back some of the career experience I gained to help with the fight back. And for the moment, at a personal level, I'm able to say things a director of comms in a major charity or corporation probably wouldn't feel able to say so freely.
"As an independent operator my preoccupation is now very much about dealing with identified threats to the future of the very modern democracy that the UK initiated towards the end of the 1600s. My biggest concern is for one of the key foundations of this democracy; the much older concept of free speech which is facing its biggest challenges for centuries. "
" I'm lucky I can divert my attention to playing my own small part in ensuring there's a future for democracy. I also feel strongly that both professional and citizen journalism must be strengthened along with media literacy for the population which is now coping with living in a new 'smoke and mirrors world ' of 'fake and truth'. The reality is that we need to replace both of these concepts for the moment with 'accuracy' in the same way caution is needed with the use of 'his-story'. I hope that the Defend (uk) Campaign for fairer free speech , my own small voluntary contribution, will take root or at least inspire action elsewhere as part of a much needed 21st century movement driven by volunteer citizens themselves throughout the UK and beyond.
In his own eyes the answer is to be populist, professional, aware and empathetic to your target audience, no matter how serious or flippant a topic is.
Much of Jason's communications work has also been about presenting difficult issues in ways that are relevant, clear and interesting to the public, and therefore to the journalists seeking to attract public interest.
Jason prefers a popular-appeal approach, whether a light or serious issue as appropriate. His lon-standing trademark to secure media interest in previously dry or unpopular subjects is to think like the journalist he's trained to be and to find angles that capture the imagination of the consumer while weaving in the 'corporate' message the Chief Exec wants. It's the thing that ultimately causes someone to say 'wow!' or the type of message that can be equated to gossip and everyday chat.
It's not always possible to engage costly consultants to benchmark everything about an organisation though my instinct was that the National Trust sometimes had to breakthrough prejudices that it was a rich and elitist organisation (I think it probably still does face these assumptions). This was certainly the impression my own educated father appeared to have of the Trust until I started working there and realising how much we had to thank the Trust for protecting the very coastline of Cornwall that we, as a family, had enjoyed so much without properly acknowledging it to be one of the many key successes of the Trust. Furthermore, in a rather odd mix-up, I remember by father thinking I had started my initially junior role with the National Front rather than the National Trust. I think it was a slip of the tongue but it has personally become almost as amusing as witnessing Emily Maitless mistakenly introduce the head of gardens at the National Trust as the head of gardens at the National Health Service in her earlier role on a relaunched BBC London news programme in the early 2000s.
It's only now i feel I can come clean and reveal that in my early years at CSV (Community Service Volunteers, Now volunteering Matters) that I went out of my way to present the impact of volunteers without headlining the word volunteers. I felt in the early new millennium it was the unsexiest word around and was a stale 'turn-off' word. I had exactly the same belief at the National Tust where I ended up as Chief Press Officer before this role, which at that stage quoted a remarkable ratio of 12 volunteers to every member of staff. To my mind, the contribution of the Trust's volunteers was vital to its success and its extraordinary abilty to save stately homes where many others had failed and where top business entrepreneurs would never have suceeded.
I've always felt that volunteering was a tougher sell-in to the media than the conservation, environmental and tourist work of the Trust or the ongoing efforts at ICRF to deal with the many different cancers. But shifting the emphasis to the impact of people giving their time for nothing enabled a subtle, but needed reimagination for the concept of volunteering. The re-sexification of volunteering took hold, not just at CSV but elsewhere in the golden years leading to the UK Olympic volunteers of 2012.
You had to play a clever game to get journalists to take an interest back then, but eventually persistence and cutting edge projects meant that volunteering could emerge from the shadows and not be bogged down with very real prejudices of the time that I felt linked it to 'do-gooders and purely older, blue hair rinsed people. The reality was that it wasn't these things and it was my job and the job of colleagues at CSV and beyond to use the impact of citizens of all ages giving their time for free to draw people into the subject.
But just as' breakthrough' for advances in cancer treatment had been banned from the press office of ICRF then the word 'volunteer' was banned from my early press office operation at Community Service Volunteers which started with 2 of us and then dimished to me with the departure of a hard-worked press officer who'd done well to hand on to hand me the baton.
Temporarily down-playing the word volunteer was something I believe I didn't highlight too directly to the formidable Dame Elisabeth who I was wary of in the early days. I was ready to run shortly after my arrival when with limited staff she tried to divert me to annual report writing as well as media. It was enough for me to say in a rare heated moment that I would walk out if the drive for media attention was to be diluted but with all credit to Elisabeth, a compromise was found and this early spat served to strengthen mutual respect and a unique professional working relationship.
Elisabeth was herself a mistress of strong concise writing learnt from a time when the art of precis was taught more widely in schools. Before my radio career took a radical redirection, my news editor told colleagues I was a good headline writer but I suspect if Elisabeth had been let loose in that news room, the length of the main new bulletin would have been halved. She wasn't a fan of lengthy reports of any kind and preferred them to be kept to a summary page saying that she trusted all staff to have done the necessaey background research.
Admittedly one of my trademark techniques I've resorted to for populism to attract media attention is devising and then commissioning professional public opinion research (such as by Mori, ICM, YouGov)- whether to engage people in tackling concerns over child poverty in Britain or promoting and protecting the nation's historic gardens by revealing the nation's favourite vegetable. I've used this pollster strategy for both causes and worked with colleagues to get the results we wanted.
Five successful years which originally started as a 'cub' press officer on a maternity cover contract culminated in being appointed as the Chief Press Officer - (Head of Media role) for the National Trust, one of the UK’s largest charities, with a multi-million person membership. He demonstrated an ability to secure major coverage for a host of stories that included the restoration of Sir Paul McCartney’s childhood home in Liverpool (world-wide media work), the preservation of a unique survival of slum housing in Birmingham (coverage in 7 national papers ranging from the Sun through to the Financial Times plus BBC TV’s Breakfast News) and the launch of a major economic study on the contribution made by managed landscapes to the economy (coverage included BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, The Times, Telegraph and Financial Times).
This was never far behind the proactive press work. During his tenure, he crafted statements and media briefings in consultation with colleagues for subjects that included hunting on National Trust land, the managed retreat of the coastline resulting in the threat to people’s homes and culling experiments on badgers to track the source of TB infection amongst cattle. He was a key player in the senior management team during the foot-and-mouth outbreak when the Trust was positioned as a leader in minimising the spread of infection and protecting the livelihoods of the farmers (The Trust had two separate features on GMTV and the BBC’s 10 O’clock News).
An article in the Guardian enables the National Trust's then Senior Press Officer, Jason Tanner, to explain the charity's aspiration to re-open the nation's countryside after a dramatic outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 2001 (tap article to view)
BBC News was amongst a clean sweep of seven national newspapers that featured the National Trust's unusual restoration of a rare survival of slum housing in Birmingham.
The Daily Express , was one of many news outlets that reported on research commissioned by CSV's Jason Tanner that showed how volunteering in the workplace boosts productivity and slows the loss of unhappy employees. (Tap the article to read July 2005)
CSV, under the long-term and unique leadership of Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, appointed him as their Head of Press in 2003. CSV’s press operation was re-energised following a fallow period previous to his appointment. CSV went on to regularly achieve the equivalent of more than £3 to 5 million of free editorial coverage in national print and broadcast media every year and the small but talented teams of individuals he recruited and managed was bolstered with demands to deliver key campaigns such as the Year of the Volunteer in 2005, which was backed with funding from the Home Office & The Treasury and the subsequent Dare to Care: 'make time to help end child poverty' campaign.
Volunteering charity CSV pioneers the placement of community volunteers into the families of at-risk children. It benefits both children and hard-pressed social workers. (Click the article to read more) CSV rebranded as Volunteering Matters in 2015
• CSV Volunteers in Child protection (working with the families of children on the ‘at risk’ register). Features were set up on both BBC Radio 4 (You and Yours) and Five as well as The Times, (as featured here), The Independent and the Evening Standard. As Head of Press for CSV, Jason oversaw the management of an impromptu press conference to announce the backing of the scheme by the family of Victoria Climbié who died tragically under the jurisdiction of Haringey social services. This was additionally covered by both ITV and BBC TV News for London. This is clearly a sensitive subject that required substantial pre-planning & communications risk analysis. In 2007, Jason placed the project as a ‘cutting-edge’ example of volunteering on The Daily Politics show on BBC2 as part of mounting interest by politicians in the role of the voluntary sector in everyday lives.
• jason worked with excellent campaigns colleagues and oversaw the press strategy implemented by equally excellent campaign press officers for CSV Make a Difference Day – the UK’s biggest single day of direct volunteering action when sponsorhip allowed. Research commissioned for one of these annual showcase events via ICM about the positive health benefits of volunteering secured coverage in nine national newspapers and more than 100 other publications and was designed to be of wide appeal to tabloids and broadsheets.
• At the start of the Year of the Volunteer in 2005, he secured interviews with CSV directors for two separate features on BBC Breakfast News, BBC2’s Working Lunch and BBC Radio Five – in addition to a two-page spread in The Observer, which enchanted readers with volunteer cat cuddlers, and other impact led articles in The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.
• In September 2007, for the Dare to Care campaign, he designed and commissioned independent research that polled the views of children themselves and what they believed made a child to be in poverty in this country. Seven national TV pieces were tracked on the day of the launch including BBC Newsround, the BBC One O’Clock News and BBC News 24. This is in addition to more than 50 hits on radio.
• He also set-up a full page article in the Guardian about a scheme called Capital Volunteering that empowered people with mental health problems to volunteer to help one-another and aid recovery for some.
• Jason sought to nurture two seemingly politically opposite newspapers, The Guardian and The Times. Both newspapers were updated with the facts about Volunteers in Child Protection . He invited correspondents to meet the vulnerable families being helped by volunteers whenever it was possible. This included two former social affairs correspondents of the Times, namely Alex Frean and then Rosemary Bennett. Rosemary came to visit CSV's ageing and frankly delapidated premises in King's Cross from where colleagues performed miracles. Rosemary's investment in time undoubtedly helped secure CSV's Retired and Senior Volunteers Programme (RSVP) to be one of the beneficiaries of the Times Charity Appeal. Jason had been strongly encouraged to ensure CSV apply . The appeal raised over £100,000 towards RSVP's excellent intergenerational work that continues to this day to demonstrate that older people possess priceless experience and skills. By using these, the senior volunteesr had renewed sense of worth and self-purpose, while delivering positive results.
Senior volunteers were very much involved with CSV's Grand Mentors project which again saw senior wisdom come to the aid of youthful needs.
Jason says " Relations with the media should be mutually professional and respectful. It was always a busy press operation with minimal staff so it was only when Rosemary Bennett called me a second time to check I'd applied for the Times Charity appeal that I realised she thought we had a strong chance if we did so.
"We were extremely grateful when we did suceed. I asked Rosemary why the Times had thought we were suitable and she indicated that her site visits to CSV had made it obvious to her that the charity was making tremendous impact on scant resource. By comparison, she cited a very well known child protection charity that she felt spent a great deal on marketing, website and media relations but not as effectively as CSV's frugal existence was demonstrating."
Jason Tanner arranged for CSV's Dame Elisabeth Hoodless to undertake an interview that appeared in the Guardian in May 2010 giving the new coalition government 'advice' if they wished to succeed with PM David Cameron's new Big Society plans
Nine months later, it looked like the warnings from the mother of 'big society' had not been heeded. The story, broke first in the Times in February 2011 after a news release issued by CSV's Head of Press, Jason Tanner. The story erupted on nearly every major news platform creating one of the biggest single stories about the voluntary sector in decades .
In October 2010, Conservative coalition minister for children, Tim Loughton, cited the work of CSV's pioneering volunteers in child protection as a way to deliver a cost-effective Big Society in tandem with professional social services.
• Jason set up dedicated pieces to mark the 40th anniversary of CSV’s Executive Director and first-ever member of staff, Dame Elisabeth Hoodless on media that included BBC Radio 4’s Midweek and The Times.
• He oversaw the commissioning of research and the associated press work for CSV’s reports on Citizenship. This resulted in a dedicated article in the Daily Telegraph, plus articles in the Guardian and the Times Educational Supplement. This helped re-engage recognition of CSV’s key involvement in getting citizenship in to the secondary curriculum in the first place.
• He set up a 12 minute programme for BBC 2’s Learning Zone about full-time volunteering at CSV in addition to a number of articles in specialist careers / gap year magazines.
• He worked with a Guardian leader writer to highlight the impact of volunteers at 270 GP surgeries throughout the UK, pointing to their ability to cut waiting times, free-up doctors and add value to the patient experience.
Jason says "What is very evident from this surprise archive discovery is just how much information today's AI is currently missing as tests show that AI has not assimilated much of the information and detail that the archive reveals, let alone extensive key coverage, reporting and research undertaken by journalists at major national titles before circa 2010. This means there are huge gaps in AI's ability to present a more complete and rounded picture on many subjects, which people need to be aware of and that some AI should flag more clearly and more honestly"
Purely by accident Jason Tanner came across a far-sighted, ambitious automated project underway in the USA since the 1990s which seeks to randomly capture snapshots of internet pages and websites before they disappear. It's unclear why the Wayback Machine, based in San Francisco strayed over the Atlantic and latched onto a fairly primitive (by today's standard) version of CSV's website; especially its media operation. Whatever the reason, this random archiving has preserved part of a period at the start of the century (circa 2003-06 when I started at CSV) and shows the huge impact and range of activities of British volunteers being showcased to media via the CSV Press Office and associated media press officers assigned to CSV's higher profile campaigns such as CSV Make a Difference Day or the Year of the Volunteer 2005 (Click or tap the red wayback machine button above to access).
Following a couple of years as a reporer for BBC Sussex & Surrey and a staff Senior Broadcast Journalist in ILR regional radio, he then cut his teeth in media relations with a maternity cover contract with the former Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which taught him the disciplines of promoting medical research and the issues surrounding patient care. He led on promoting the early epidemiological research that indicated that eating five pieces of fruit or vegetables could help prevent certain types of cancer. (Widespread international coverage achieved).
• developed a ‘Making the Most of the Media’ training programme to help empower local project staff and volunteers to be proactive with media relations with local media, creating a network of PR spokespeople
• created systems for the evaluation of media coverage that tracks the reach of the media targeted and puts an equivalent advertising value on what has been achieved through ‘free’ editorial
