NotYourOrdinary

Communications professionals can sometimes act as the MacGyver’s of their organizations. With whatever limited resources available, we can be expected to produce fantastic results, among stakeholders, the community or on the front page of the local daily newspaper.

Anyone familiar with the famed 80s sitcom knows that MacGyver's main talent was his inventive use of common items – along with his handy-dandy Swiss Army knife and roll of duct tape. In PR terms, you could consider insight and perspective as the communicator’s tools of invention and a defined communications plan as our ever-present duct tape. On January 23, 2008, IABC London introduced three PR MacGyvers to a breakfast audience at the Best Western Lamplighter Inn.

Faced with complex issues, events and circumstances beyond their control, the Canadian Cancer Society and London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) demonstrated ingenuity, dedication and creativity in executing two very different, and very unique communications plans. The speakers: Cathy Cuylle, Corporate Communications and Public Relations Coordinator, London Health Sciences Centre; Laura Wall, Regional Director, Canadian Cancer Society; Nathalie Noël, Communications Coordinator, United Way of London & Middlesex, (who was with the Canadian Cancer Society at the time of their campaign) recounted their experiences and impressed us with their resourceful tactics.

The Canadian Cancer Society set their sights at helping get a bylaw passed in London to ban the cosmetic or ornamental use of pesticides. With tiny target audience, of just four City Council members, their communications plan was part political campaign, part media relations and part community education program. Enlisting the help of physicians, volunteers, the media and other supporters, and with a very small budget, the Canadian Cancer Society’s campaign succeeded in repositioning the issue from an environmental to one of health, influencing their audiences and ultimately getting the bylaw passed.

LHSC had the value of a tactical crisis communications plan proven to them in one very eventful week. Over the course of five short days, the hospital’s communications team managed a potential contamination of surgical instruments, a Code Green standby, wherein an entire building could have been evacuated, and a record snowfall in London that virtually shut down the entire city – though not the hospital. Although the crisis communications plan could not solve all the problems the team faced, it did provide specific guiding principles, protocols and roles that made each new challenge manageable in terms of communicating with the internal and external audiences.

Using two very different approaches, both examples illustrate inventive and resourceful use of strategic communications plans. Just as I would chose to have MacGyver with me if I were in a life-threatening emergency, I would also want anyone one of these three communications professionals on my team when facing an exceptional communications challenge.