Exeter is a city that is going places. Of course I would say that as the council's director of communications and marketing, but it really is a place that is trying to set a new direction in promoting a city rather than the council itself.
The city has one of the fastest rates of growth in the country, is home to the Met Office and three of the world's most important super computers. Together with a global leading university, we are aiming to become the world's number one location for applied environmental science.
Despite being small, congested, and not even a transport authority, we are working with private investment in Exeter City Futures to become energy independent and congestion free in the next eight years. And we want our growth to be inclusive too.
As a journalist of 15 years and former editor of the city's Trinity Mirror outlet I fell in love with the place. With Local World, a new dynamic company that took over from Northcliffe, I was able to start to bring in measures to help redress the decline in my beloved industry. Strong cities traditionally had a strong local press. In my stint as editor we were the only regional newspaper in the country to launch a new edition, take on new staff and relocate the offices back into the heart of the community to be accountable to the city we served.
That was working well until I got good at understanding the data behind what engages people online and gets them to read things. It really put a spanner in the works for me. Engaging an audience, more often than not, relied on provoking a reaction. You can do that in a positive way, with news about good things, but it is much, much easier to engage with an audience off the back of traffic carnage, fires, court sentences, death, disruption and division. A child getting stuck with superglue to a seat in McDonald's would get a hundred times the reaction of the opening of new swings for the benefit of children.
In the run-up to the launch of the new edition of the paper, we conducted the first major research for decades into what people wanted to read. The results were surprising. I discovered that there was absolutely scope for leading, at times, on a positive news agenda.
A higher proportion of people than I expected wanted to share in the major successes of a city, looking forward to great things to come. New retail developments would be a prime example of this. Don't get me wrong, my career history is littered with holding councils to account, damaging Freedom of Information requests and, at times, getting it wrong. I capitalised on sales and web hits through bringing a spotlight into areas people would have much preferred were kept in the dark, along with the usual fires, death and uncertainty.
But these results gave me evidence of people who perhaps wouldn't dream of commenting on social media, had never written a ‘letter to the editor' and would rather eat soap than call and speak on a radio phone-in. They are generally optimistic, realistic, astute and caring. But being passive, they have a fraction of the visibility of those who are active and engage, often in block capitals, online. One of my tasks for the council is to find new ways to speak to them, along with everyone else. And, unlike my previous role, I feel I can now do this without having to turn a commercial profit.
This is in the best interests of the city, not the best interests of the institution that is the council. If your objective is to create a stronger city, it should be about using your resources to support those people and places.
Marketing and communicating place, making this truly about Exeter, and not about a council per se, is now the arena we are working in. When the city's rugby club won the Premiership, we organised the victory parade and broadcast the event from the top of a bus. When businesses open new stores, we are going to support them and help create the environment to support their future. When our community asks for ways to get things important to them out in the public domain – we are doing it.
I think the council should be using its limited means to help support and promote the news of our community and join up our message calendar primarily around the city. Residents first, businesses first, city first.
For a working day this means we are trying to be proactive and less reactive, setting the tempo for the day. When it does come to council matters, we have started to broadcast council meetings onto Facebook, the platform most people use, despite implications of being subject to negative feedback.
What we are doing has raised the odd eyebrow with former colleagues – but it is compatible with the press doing what they do best. This isn't Town Hall Pravdas – it is about how to genuinely market and support a vibrant city in a changing media environment.
Most council meetings aren't covered at all – just the topics which are likely to engage an audience. We have helped fund an apprentice for a local radio station so that more things can be independently covered and we are looking to do more.
It will be a good day when the BBC or the Government weigh in with their plans to support private media. Councils should be held to account. We spend 30 times as much with one local media organisation than we do on boosting Facebook posts.
While that is happening, we are concentrating on promoting our partners. Some things have worked, others have not. We won a CIPR award for the way in which we communicated with the city during a six-day hotel fire and have seen significant growth above other councils in terms of reach and engagement. We are now looking at how we take this forward to promote the priorities of our stakeholders on a national and international scale.
There is a huge amount to be done and we will make mistakes and adjust along the way. But things are changing. We are making huge strides, and very shortly I see a time where we are established as an organisation which is genuinely known for putting the interests of the city first.
Jon-Paul Hedge is director of communications and marketing at Exeter City Council
