Anna Ford: climate, justice and nano- salad dressing
Anna’s a communications consultant who specialises in science, climate and the environment.
Before starting her own practice, Curiosity Communications, she spent several years leading media and comms teams at University of Sussex and LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate and the Environment. One of her teams placed three stories on the Today programme in a single morning. So - quite effective, then.
Anna’s a consistently smart and sane voice on a set of topics I care a lot about - and which can be a real challenge to communicate. How do you stay true both to the nuance of climate science and the urgency of the climate crisis? How do you get people to stick with a story that can feel so overwhelming? And how can you accept ambiguity and controversy without feeding cynicism?
“Truth and trust are everything.”
“As a PR or comms person, you’re there to enable communication between the scientist and the public.
I think the way in is to talk about audiences. Some scientists will be bearing in mind their peer group. You have to reframe it for the real intended audience.
One of the best approaches I’ve heard is to think of your audience as Doctor Who’s assistant.
Engaged, intelligent, sharp - but not the expert. Don't ever assume you're more intelligent than them; it's just that you have more expertise on this issue.”
“There's often the challenge that science develops slowly and incrementally, but the news agenda wants big leaps.
I've generally always done media relations, so I’m instinctively looking for news. But it’s not always going to be a press release. Sometimes features or social content will be better. Or you can reach out to journalists, and say, ‘hey, can we tell you about this emerging field of research, so you know who we are, and what we do, for the future?’ That can work.
A small minority of scientists will ham it up.
So there, your role is to calm things down. Can we back this up when challenged? Because the risk there is that the audience sees through the puff and then doesn't trust what they’re being told.
Truth and trust are everything.”
“I started out explaining controversial legal decisions. A lot of the skills are similar.
You’re taking something very complex and making it accessible without losing its true essence.
I worked in the press office of the Crown Prosecution Service. It was one of the best jobs I've ever done, but also the most intense, because you'd have all the national journalists asking why on earth the lawyers decided to prosecute - or not prosecute - these controversial cases.
A lot of the time, the most effective approach would be to show journalists the detail of the decision making.
Again - trust is vital, and transparency can be a very effective tool in building it.
I developed such a huge amount of respect for civil servants and their diligence and decency and propriety.
I saw really tough work being done really carefully, with justice in mind. I ended up feeling very protective of the organization and the people who worked within it because they were under such fire, such scrutiny, and I felt like it was often my job to defend them from that.”
“When I moved to working with researchers, it felt more optimistic.
I really like their clarity of purpose, that so many are driven by genuine passion for what they do. And enthusiastic to communicate it. That's just a really joyful thing to be part of.
We talk a lot in climate communication about hope and focusing on solutions.
I've been doing a big audit of media coverage related to the ocean and ocean protection in the last few months. Solutions-based storytelling drives a lot of coverage and engagement. People want to read about nature-based climate solutions, like kelp and mangrove restoration. But I have a concern that the role these things can play in tackling the climate crisis might sometimes be over-represented in coverage.
When you talk to any climate scientist, whatever their specialism, what it boils down to is - we have got to stop burning fossil fuels.
But I do think that solutions-based storytelling, optimism, hope - they're all critical. Because people are not going to act if they just feel doomful.”
“What resonates with audiences is what will actually affect their everyday lives.
Like their diet. Industrial fishing is a massive problem, but we often find that the highest volumes of coverage are around consumer-facing things like parasites in salmon. Because people eat salmon. I mean, it's that simple.
In the audit, we found that some of the most effective articles about climate change are the ones that tell it through the lens of an individual.
A campaigner, for example, in a small island state who's facing rising sea levels. Somebody who can personalize a global issue.
Then there's the straightforwardness of a strong piece of news.
You see real peaks in coverage around extreme weather events for climate coverage, which is good, I suppose, because people are making connections between the concept of climate change and its real-world impacts.”
“And we found another area which I think is really important - around corruption and hypocrisy.
I think any large organization in the climate space needs to be really aware that they might not get coverage for the lovely, fluffy press releases they put out. But if there's a whiff of greenwashing, that's what's going to get picked up. I’ve spoken to journalists, and one of them said, I want to cover these issues, but there isn't always a way in. If the way in is controversy, I will take that.
I remember doing a story on nano materials, and the scientist said, ‘I came up with this idea making salad dressing with my daughter’.
He realized that the way the emulsion was made through salad dressing was the solution to the problem. We put that quote in the press release, and that's what got picked up.
Putting people at the heart of stories is endlessly effective.”
If you’d like to work with Anna, check out her website www.curiositycomms.com, or email her at anna[at]curiositycomms.com.