Larry Kramer: C-Scape: Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today Sigh. I've been collecting lists of 'c' words for about the last three years, trying to make sense of the changes that are happening in the way people connect to, use information and talk with one another en-masse.
Larry Kramer has managed to condense all of my 'c' words into just four and write an whole book about them.
I just about hug this book when I saw it on the shelves at the Whitcoulls at Wellington Airport yesterday, with the recent IABC World Conference fresh in my memory, and my brain working overtime to figure out where all its ideas fit.
None of these ideas are new, they've been brewing since the dawn of online and gathering momentum as social media spreads from the fringes to the mainstream, but finally very clever people like Kramer are pulling them together in way that connects the dots and puts them in context.
Curation, Consumers, Convergence and Content are the four words that Kramer has picked to describe the world we find ourselves in - "a world where consumers, not producers and marketers, make the choices, where content, not distribution is king, where curation becomes the prime currency of value, and where convergence continues to revolutionise every part of every business."
A great read if you're looking to understand what's now, in some places, and what's next for the rest of us.
Ben Sherwood: The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life Not a business book, in the strictest sense of the term, but its lessons are equally applicable to work as life.
If you've been through life in Christchurch in recent months, you'll be fascinated by what makes for a survivor, why some people thrive and others fold and, astonishingly, the amount of control that we never knew we had in unpredictable and dangerous situations.
Howard Schultz: Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul I loved this book, and with the dust just settling on February 22nd, it came at just the right time for me.
I found myself torn between scribbling down great ideas for clients and great ideas for GT as, like so many other local companies, we ponder how the future might look in this crazy 'new normal'.
What made this book such a great read was not just Schultz's successes, but his failures, and his wide open and realistic accounting of the culture change process.
Anybody who has embarked on a change programme will tell you there's no such thing as a straight line, and that you can expect many, many things to go wrong before you stumble across a happy right. Schultz's candid telling of the ups and downs of his Onward project should provide great comfort to leaders who have hit the 'WTF Have I Done' stage of the change cycle and are having trouble keeping the faith.
Atul Gawande: The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right Boy, am I pleased I didn't read this one before I went under the knife. I'd have been intolerable...
Not a marketing books, as such, but an informative and thought provoking read for just about anybody running a business.
Gawande (a surgeon) looks to fields as diverse as the construction industry and aviation for lessons in keeping people safer through the use of very simple check-lists.
Made me think of all the change management initiatives I've seen over the years launched with a whizz and a bang and that then fizzled out for the want of simple reminders and processes that gently nudge people towards compliance.
Walter Kirn (Author): Up in the Air (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Mass Market Paperback) So as much as I'm hanging out for an iSlate (or whatever it ends up being called) I'm counting the sleeps til I can get to this movie.
What's not to love about it? Just the product placement skills alone make this one a must-see, along with the exploration of how sophisticated loyalty programmes are at pushing the 'give me more' buttons of their corporate devotees.
I devoured the book, which shares the big screen version's jaundiced - but oddly compassionate - view of all that is corporate life on the road today.
Patrick M. Lencioni: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Manga Edition: An Illustrated Leadership Fable I started out reading this book on a plane, all hunched up against the window so nobody could see that that what I was absorbed in was, in fact, a manga book.
I was so totally absorbed by the time we lifted off that I forgot to hide the pages for the rest of the trip.
Cartoon or no cartoon, this is a book with a message that will resonate with anybody who works with teams of people (OK, so that’s pretty much anybody who has to go to work).
Subtitled ‘An illustrated leadership fable’, the story follows the adventures of the SMT of a floundering tech company as it transitions from its founder/owner/manager CEO to an outsider brought in by the board to whip it into shape.
The cartoon format, unique for a business book, adds, rather than detracts from the message.
This is a great example of both the power of story telling in getting the message across and the increasing importance of graphics as a way to make those instant connections that go beyond words and cut through the clutter of our info overloaded world.
Lindstrom's game is Neuromarketing, which is so new my spell-check doesn't even recognise it as a real thing.
Lindstrom and his kind have gone as far as putting ordinary people in MRI machines to find out why we make the purchasing decisions we do, and what influences them.
This is the guy who did the research that showed that the actual brand is as much of an influencer on the enjoyment of drinking a Coke as the taste of of the brown fizzy stuff itself: totally dissolving the line between product and packaging, and proving the worth and value of brand beyond anything we had really understood before.
He also casts light on some of the strange and unusual things that happen when you move products out of focus groups and into the real world (think: New Coke); gives some great criteria for when product placement does and doesn't working (with American Idol as his case study) and gives a wonderfully elegant explanation as to why Pepsi tends to out-rate Coke in taste tests, but the tables are turned when measuring actual sales (turns out that people favour sweeter tastes when it is smaller amounts, but milder tastes when it's larger: taste testing involves tiny samples, the real world buckets full. Who would have thought?)
Lindstrom covers some new territory, as well as age-old marketing challenges, looking in some depth at the new consumer and how to get cut through in an overbranded, overhyped, visually overwhelming world. Watch out for sound and smell as the next two killer brand values.
To both get a taste of 'what's next' in the world of marketing, and answers to some of the oldest and most vexing questions we marketers ask ourselves every day of the week, pick up a copy. It's an enlightening and thought provoking read.
More and more of the work I do seems to be about helping these organisations across a range of sectors, but primarily health, education, disabilities and social services - to connect with this new consumer environment, and importantly, bring their staff along for the ride.
Not being a great believer in management gurus (I'll make an exception for Seth), I'm usually pretty skeptical of how-to books, but this one from Lee Cockerell has some great points to make about how to help staff connect, and stay connected, with what your organisation stands for.
Cockerell was one of the founders of the Disney Institute, which runs half day, 3 day and 5 day courses on Campus at Disney sites (not that I'm thinking about doing one or anything...but the combination of Space Mountain and picking up some Disney learning is a lot to resist...) for business people, covering a variety of topics.
Can't get to the Mountain? Then bring Disney to you! One of the DI team will come and speak at your next event for US$12,000, plus per diem expenses, plus business class airfare.
Perhaps not quite the thing for that next NFP conference. Still, the book's a good read. And he uses some great real-life case studies to illustrate his points.
Key out-takes - don't even try to bring old-media tactics online, and, the doozy: realise that we are living in a world where changing the marketing model has the potential to actually change the entire business - just think about how the entire travel industry has been turned on its head operationally, thanks to online marketing technology.
In classic Godin style, the chapters are bite-sized (perfect for a plane ride to Hokitika - you'll get through at least 5 chapters), and there's a handly 14-point list to help you see all the concepts in context.
The 14 points continue the themes of his earlier works, building just that little bit higher to give a true birds-eye view of the ever-evolving new economy and what its latest turns mean to businesses everywhere.
Thanks, QANTAS, for helping to justify every cent and minute I spent to get to IABC's Crisis Communications Summit at the University of Southern California last week.
Waking up to to this piece of news (QANTAS's patently stupid and utterly avoidable twitter fail) just made me more and more determined that it's time for us kiwi PR/comms people to pull ourselves into the 21st century by the bootstraps, fast. The rest of the world won't wait for us to hone our skill sets, and while the impact of social media is only just starting to really make itself known at home, it's happening. And it's happening fast.
The QANTAS fiasco just goes to show why it's so important for strategic communicators - not spotty recent graduates or the IT guy - to take hold of the social media space and own it. Not because we're control freaks (though mostly, we are) or that there's masses of money to be made in it (there isn't, in the traditional clip-the-ticket sense), but because we owe it to our clients to make sure that the people taking them into this unchartered territory are experienced communicators who can make the link between every one of their channels, their marketing plan, and the wider business plan.
Social media can't sit alone, whether you're using these tools in an attempt to spread good news or it's part of a bad news scenario. While it can't be managed, there are absolutely things that organisations can do to keep them out of the sort of crap that QANTAS has found itself in. Many of these things are grounded in traditional strategic communications thinking. Others turn what we thought we always knew on its head. Success in this scary, exciting, and fast becoming unavoidable area means knowing what to use, when. More later.
What's not to love about this sales pitch for the Gold Coast:
"It isn't exactly exotic and mysterious but it's an easy option for a holiday. 3 hour flight, plenty to do, reliable weather and easy on the pocket."
I'm not looking for a holiday to the Gold Coast (got one booked already - for exactly the above reasons), but I can't help but click through from the promo emails that land in my in-box from travelscoop.co.nz, as I'm busy relegating the efforts of their competitors to the 'junk' folder.
So what is it they're doing right that the others just haven't yet grasped? And what are the lessons for others looking to stand out from the spam crowd?
They're willing to do something differently. The travel sector is full of hype, glitz, hyperbole and over-promise. These guys tell it like it is, in plain English, and in language that immediately sets them apart from the rest. So many organisations say 'we want to stand out from our competitors. But when the rubber hits the road, reject every new marketing or PR idea because 'it's not the way we do it in (insert industry/profession here).
They're likeable and fun, which is reflected in the tone and style of their emails. They make me want to read on, and hook me in with a story that takes me to the deal before I even know I've been sold. Again, from the Gold Coast promo:
"It's quieter than a Tuesday night in Taihape out there. Our TravelCafe experts are all Mums and many work from home, so when it's quiet they have to deal with piles of washing, knitting, preserving fruit and stuff like that (I'm a bloke and I'm embellishing but stick with me.) So, in an effort to avoid their 'other jobs' they go hunting for holiday deals that I might have missed... They then nag me until I agree the deal is worthy of a Travelscoop and then 'hey presto' you get this email. So make our travel expert Mums busy, give them a break from their chores (and me a break from them) and get them arranging your next holiday."
They're transparent and honest. They not only tell you there are hidden taxes, extras or credit card fees, but are at pains to point out that they are per person. There are no surprises.
They're using their personality, the way they do business, as more of a sell than what the business is about. Travel sites are a dime a dozen, and travel packages are the same wherever you click. These guys (and Moms) have used personality to add some X factor to what is basically a commodity product. Even their staff profiles differentiate the brand, and provoke interest, as well as trust.
They're using their business model to tell me how they're different. By telling me a bit about the way they do business, they're showing me they're not like any other online or bricks and mortar (or combo) travel agency. Which makes me think they're more likely to come up with innovative solutions to my own travel challenges, rather than throw a cookie-cutter solution at me.
If you want to watch a company embrace all that is the next big communications thing - check out weatherwatch.co.nz.
I'd never even heard of them before I interviewed Richard Green on the radio show, but now it seems they're everywhere - including holding a permanent space on my desktop during the event they affectionately refer to as 'Snowmageddon'.
By my reckoning, they've just about doubled their Facebook 'likes' in the past 24 hours, rocketing ahead from a respectable 2000 to something around 4000 at the time of writing.
There's no doubt that Weatherwatch are on to a good thing. After all, weather is the one great universal topic. And since the fragmentation of mainstream media and the consequent death of shared experience (when was the last great 'who shot JR' telly moment?), it's a guaranteed people connector and community binder. Safe ground, no matter what the differences between folk.
So it only stands to reason that, since we love to talk about weather in real life, we'll also love to use social media to extend the conversation - especially those true obsessives who have exhausted (or bored to tears) their immediate realm of real-life contacts, and are looking to connect to others just like them.
Weatherwatch has managed to do something that the crusty old Met Service never could: it has hooked into the excitement, the thrill, the drama and passion of the weather, and put it out there for us all to share. They're a great example of an organisation using tools like Facebook to connect with, engage and hold an audience.
But that's not all they do. They're tapped into another communications now secret: they speak plain English . It may not always be perfect, and one of them is seriously comma impaired (continually leaving out the , in sentences like 'that's right, Susi'), but we forgive them because they seem like really likeable guys.
They've got something else that the competition can't match: personality and the freedom to express it.
When was the last time you saw a regular-guy-or-gal metservice person who was just like you and I, without all of the 'I'm a Met Service Spokesperson, and Here Are My Official Words' business? Oh sure, some of them try. But between the unkempt beards and the pocket-protector fashion sense, it's hard to find much to relate to.
These guys, on the other hand, are warm and funny, spontaneous, and just plain real. They use smiley-face emoticons when people Facebook them, excited about the coming snow. They show empathy and interest. Importantly, they're OK about getting it wrong. They're willing to take risks, and they're not precious about it.
The Weatherwatch guys understand something else that's important about what works right now: they know how to start and sustain a conversation. Old school organisations continue to issue edicts/statements/information updates, and retreat back to their ivory towers. New communicators know that the real gold, the opportunity, is not in the information itself, but the interactions that follow - that gather momentum in snow-ball fashion as more and more people gather around the idea.
They also seem to intuitively understand something that so many organisations don't: that even though they're hard work and time consuming, the new consumer expects more than a single-time interaction. Truly successful companies today find ways to build and sustain relationships.
NZ's first state-of-the-nation for the media industry is out, thanks to a new report by PWC which takes a big picture look at the sector through until 2015.
NBR's take on it (Media Forecast Bright) and Stuff's summation look initially to be good news. However scratch the surface, and the picture is not pretty for mainstream media still overly reliant on traditional off-line channels. Unless they are to turn their current thinking on its head, and really get to grips with the stark, cold reality that it's content, not channel, that will drive their future.
This idea - that people will gravitate towards the best writing, reading, imagery, regardless of the form it is housed in - is anathema to many mainstream media outlets, who have spent years centralising, systemising, de-localising, generalising and just plain dumbing down their content in the hubristic belief that people will continue to flock to them - just because they're of who they are.
The evolution of the 24 hour news environment has led to a quantity-over-quality ethos. The initial toe in the water to digital for many media organisations left a bad taste in their mouth, as efforts to monetise the early days of online content failed.
However models like the itunes store shows that people will pay when relevant, quality content is organised, categorised, filtered and boosted (curated, in today's communications lexicon) - even if for a little more work they can get it free from somewhere else.
That digital advertising revenues now surpass traditional media spend in this country should come as no surprise, but still, it is hard not to draw breath sharply at how quickly it has happened.
More on this later. There's a lot left to be said.
This Close Up gaffe is a great example of what happens when organisations don't quite connect with the way the world is changing.
The show recreated a segment from American show ABC, at times verbatim, with no acknowledgement of the original piece.
Let's be real about this: every day reporters looks to the work of their peers for inspiration. And so much of journalism these days builds on, deepens or find new angles on stories created by others, echoing all of life in this hyperlinked world of ours.
There are salient lessons in this Close Up piece, not just for media, but for all organisations, as we come to grips with changes to the way we use and interact with information.
Increasingly, non-media organisations are grappling with the fine but very clear line that exists between the curation of content - a perfectly valid and constructive art - and ripping off the work of others.
The opportunities presented by new direct-to-consumer publishing technology, the removal of traditional hierarchical communications barriers, the fragmentation of audiences and the truly niched audience bases that are emerging mean every organisation is a potential publisher or broadcaster of sometimes highly-specialist content.
Sometimes this content is created from scratch. Other times, sites provide a portal that links the audience to like minded ideas, often providing context and wrap-around to the original content or commentary on it.
So it stands to reason that we all need to come to grips with the difference between curation and plagiarism.
To stay on the safe side of the line, think about the job that galleries do in curating the works of others. Shel Holtz explains that idea elegantly in this clip from IABC World (San Diego, last month - stunning).
Curators don't claim it as their own, they happily acknowledge the artist, even helping audiences connect with more of his or her work once their interest is piqued (echoing today's online 'link culture'). Furthermore, they understand two things about linking. Firstly, that there is value in providing introductions to the work of others, and secondly, information territorialism is last decade's thinking. Todays consumers live their lives in a link economy. They are used to open-source everything, and don't take kindly to side-steps and fudging. Transparency, honesty and authenticity are bottom line to this generation of media consumer.
Curators don't just slap up a title and a bit of background, they really think about the context that the work is being shown in, and what their own specific environment can add to the experience of viewing the work.
There's nothing wrong with being inspired by the work of others, and I'd venture to suggest that in information terms, we're all collaborators - even media outlets that consider themselves to be fierce competitors. The media consumer doesn't draw a line in his or her head about where all the different elements of the story have come from - to them, it's just a mash-up of information that continuously forms and reforms. However in a world where content can be cheapened to the point of being deemed worthless, we must continue to demand that peoples' work is valued, by continuing to acknowledge the source.
We live in a world where the work of others is so accessible it's dizzying. One of my ZB colleagues, the long time journalist and very wise human being, Lesley Murdoch, refers to the glittering news array we face at 5am every morning as 'the candy store'. Her counsel is wise: make your selection carefully, then leave. Or else you'll end up mesmerised by the bright, shiny colours, and you'll never get enough focus to get a talkback show off the ground.
The temptation to pinch the candy must be huge for those resource hungry news organisations who have progressively found their staffing whittled down to near nothingness yet are still expected to churn out an hour of quality programming, five nights a week.
Nonetheless, for Close Up, the litmus test should have been a simple question: are we comfortable being transparent that we've taken another media outlet's work and simply 'New Zealand-ised' it, or do our viewers expect more from us?
It's the sort of pondering that PR and marketing departments world wide, need to be doing, as we all come to grips with where the line sits, and what constitutes crossing it. More often than not, the answer is glaringly obvious. We just have to be brave enough to ask the question. And respectful enough of our readers and viewers not to duck the answer.
One of the things I loved the most in Shel Holz's IABC World presentation was hearing about Bullshit Bingo.
Audiences download and print Bingo cards ahead of time, tailored to the particular event type - e.g staff meeting, strategic planning day, conference call (somebody really should make one for those torturous EQ media conferences).
Players check off each block when they hear a Bullshit Bingo word or phrase - things like core competency, paradigm shift, user centric etc. The first person to get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, can either stand up and shout BULLSHIT!!! or send a secret signal to other meeting attendees to let them know they have a winner.
Bound to be happening somewhere in the shaky isles. Probably not so much in Christchurch, where there are barely enough places left to hold a meeting and we're all too tired to mince words, anyway.
Six days on, I'm still working my way through my notes from last month's IABC World Conference.
I keep saying (and thinking) that none of these are new ideas. Smart communicators have seen them coming for at least the past five years. Smarter ones, even longer. But what is new is that we're now starting to see the case studies emerge from this new consumer/communications environment and evidence around what's working - a world where:
- 'us to them' and 'them to us' is no longer enough - 'them to them' is an integral component of any successful communication effort
- authenticity rules
- you can't capture minds without first capturing hearts
- content comes first, channel second
- content holds the key to connecting with the ideas that you and your customers/staff etc care about, and holding their attention
- a changing media landscape means content has to be sharper, smarter and savvier than ever to cut through the babble and make a connection
- your key influencers may well no longer be the people you thought they were
- a realisation that your greatest competition for slice of mind isn't information from the rest of the organisation - it's what's going on 'out there'.
- conversations are the point of story telling
- finally, we get it that staff are people too, and communicate with (not just to) them as respectfully and strategically as any other audience whose slice-of-mind and commitment we're looking to win.
What does it mean for you as a leader, a communicator, a business person, or all three?
What new skills/tools/resources do you/I need to bring ourselves up to speed with the new consumer and how they're connecting? These are just some of the questions we all need to be asking ourselves right now - whether we class ourselves as communication professionals or not.
Apologies in advance to all the clients and colleagues who will be subject to my rekindled enthusiasm for what it is I do, when we finally return to the shaky city - IABC world has got more excited about the wonderful world of corporate communications than I have been in years. And we all know how unbearable I can be when I'm over excited...
The International Association of Business Communicators hold their world conference every year, pulling together communicators (this time 1400 of them) from around the globe.
This year's theme was The New Normal - which couldn't have been more fitting for a Cantab - covering every conceivable angle of channels, content and strategy as we sit at the cross-roads of the old/new media divide, and all of us come to grips with a new generation of media consumer, with a whole raft of different expectations and needs.
By far my favourite sessions - containing by far the biggest of the Big Ideas for me out of this conference - was Shel Holtz, a digital strategist from San Francisco, who talked about Communication 3.0 and its focus on curation, creation and sharing. The slides alone won't do it justice, and unfortunately there's no video of this session. But you can listen to the audio here.
It was the sort of presentation that had me frantically scrawling ideas for GT and clients alike, all through the session, until I'd run out of space on my note pad and had to start writing on the back of stuff.
A close second was BJ Fogg, a Stanford University academic described by Fortune Magazine as one of '10 new gurus you should know'.
BJ is bringing science to the art of marketing, developing systems to change human behavior. Much of it is based around the creation and maintenance of habits (I know, scary, huh?), and he talked about the way that social media tools like Twitter and Facebook clues to marketers looking to create connections between ideas/products/services and people.
I tried to get a balance between PR, marketing, internal comms/engagement and social/digital media, but to be honest, I only felt like I managed to scratch the surface.
Not looking forward to touching back down in liquefaction central. But very much looking forward to further exploring the ideas I've had the privilege of being exposed to and sharing them with everybody I work with.
My worst nightmare, on booking to come to IABC world (PR conference, San Diego, on now) was that I would be sitting in a conference session and I'd get a text from Molly's (12) school to say there'd been another big shake. It was something I'd wrestled with over and over again, when I made the decision whether to come or not. Especially since Douglas decided to tag along, too, leaving neither parent in Quakesville.
So you can imagine how surreal it felt to hear that tell-tale buzz as I sat in the opening keynote (Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide) and to glance down to a text reassuring parents the kids were ok, but asking us to come and pick them up.
I completely freaked out for a full minute (in the confined of my own head, of course) before remembering that we'd decided to take Molly out of school and bring her with us - to avoid precisely this moment.
It's 1pm here in San Diego, 8am at home. All I know for sure is that the GT team, my closest friends and my parents are ok. The dog has company again after the housesitter got stuck on the other side of town, necessitating a dog rescue moment by my wonderful friend, Kim - despite her dog allergy. Apparently the house is standing, but stuff is broken and flung around in every room. The ground floor of our post-February offices is liquef...ed all the way through the concrete slab again. And James has performed a daring server rescue mission (not quite as daring as mine, which involved a dash under darkness and some quick talking) to rescue that all-important square box and sequester it off to safer and less shaky ground (Rangiora).
Watching from a distance is so hard, it's difficult to even be grateful for the things that I know will be a precious luxury by now at home: running water, flushing toilets, fresh, hot cappuccinos, roads that are passable, land that stays still. Very still.
Most of all I should be grateful that we were all away and safe when the quakes hit this time - Bramley in the North Island at school, the balance of the Macleans hein San Diego. But I struggle to be anything but shocked and scared and worn down. And if I feel like that from the comfort of the Grand Hyatt here on the waterfront, surrounded by 'normal' (whoever would have thought, in a room with 1399 other PR people), I can only imagine - and I do, constantly - what it is like to be back home right now.
I promise I will write about the conference, and what I have learned, and the amazing ideas I am being exposed to, soon. But for now, like all Christchurch people, I just need to keep very connected to what is going on at home, where and when I can, and try and figure out what this all means.
Just over a month into my recently renewed radio career, it's dawning on me that things quake-related are going to be the sole topic of conversation for some time to come.
From time to time we try to introduce a different topic of conversation. Honestly, we do. Every morning I'm prepping I rack my brains and scour the news for something, anything that won't somehow snake its way back to the 'e' word. But just the way it does at the hairdresser, the supermarket, coffee with friends, the makeshift gym, Saturday morning sports, the quakes somehow manage to find relevance in the most far flung topical places.
And so we talk. And we talk. And we talk.
Yesterday's talk was focused mostly on The Forgotten Ones - those people who still live in third world conditions, three and a half months on, still without basic sanitation and the things that the rest of us now take for granted again.
A feisty woman from somewhere over in the east, Beverley, got so fed up with what she said were fob offs and platitudes from those who should have been sorting things out, she did the only thing that seems to work any more. She called a TV current affairs show.
Astonishingly, the response from the authorities was deafening in its silence. Come 10.30 yesterday morning when we caught up with her on the wireless, a full 16 hours after her Campbell Live appearance, Beverley had yet to receive a single phone call from anyone but an opposition MP.
Hello? God only knows how much money the council spends every year on 'professional development' for its communications people, but somebody needs to spend a little more to send them back to PR 101. It takes neither a high level communications strategist nor a post grad degree to work out what needs to be done about Beverley: somebody needs to pick up the phone and call her. Not a call center somebody, not a PR somebody, not a pat-her-on-the-head-and-empathise somebody. A somebody who can make stuff happen in creative and pragmatic ways. A shower truck in her area, maybe. A communal kitchen and laundry facility in a portacomm. Lord only knows, I am just one simple ratepayer, but it doesn't seem that complex to me. Yes, yes we accept it's a complicated job and it's going to go on forever etc etc, but that's no excuse to throw our hands up as a community and say 'too hard'. Since when was that the Canterbury way?
The 'PR' issues in this extraordinarily long, drawn out and unprecedented situation we find ourselves in are mostly not PR issues at all. They're reality issues. Spin it any way you want to, sewage on your back lawn, toilets that don't flush, blocked drains and the inability to undertake basic household tasks are what they are. The big question is: when will we stop talking and start doing something about them?
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