Following a transformation review of the communications and marketing service in 2016 to 2017, the council’s approach to communications and marketing was split into 2 distinct functions:
- strategic or high level
- business as usual or low level
Corporate team
The council’s corporate team focuses on:
- strategic communications for major projects and transformation or business change
- anything that poses a significant risk to reputation or requires large scale behaviour change
The corporate team also runs the council’s press office and is the lead for out of hours emergency communication support. A communications officer is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for emergencies.
Routine publicity
Council directorates are responsible for low-level and day-to-day news and events promotion through their trained ‘routine publicity’ officers.
Routine publicity is defined as business-as-usual internal or external marketing communications. This could be routine awareness campaigns, events, warning and informing, consultations, announcements and recognition.
Staff
Subject matter experts are responsible for routine and general stakeholder updates. All staff have a responsibility to communicate day-to-day and business as usual information to residents and other stakeholders.
Graphic design and branding
Our graphic designers safeguard our overall visual presence.
Our brand must be used on all communications including, social and digital media, promotional materials and presentations. Our identity standard sets out how the brand is presented visually.
We have an in-house design service, which is free of charge to all council services. Anything that is off brand or inaccessible must be reproduced and redistributed in the correct brand and format.
Advisory services
The communications team can also advise on:
- photo consent and copyright for publicity
- the local authority code for publicity
- pre-election period publicity restrictions (previously referred to as ‘purdah’)
- third party endorsements and publicity protocol
- social media protocol and policy for personal, professional and corporate use
- plain English
- translation and interpretation
- media training
While the communications and marketing team supports work being carried out under engagement, formal responsibility lies with the council’s community engagement and equalities team.