Communications: switch off the TV and be social

In the financial year that ended a few weeks before the election, the biggest supplier to the Department of Health was the Central Office of Information. The department spent £154m through the government's clearing house for marketing and communications services ( article ). But that looks very unlikely to be the case this year. The COI currently consulting on a 40% cut in its 737 staff, and as the DoH pointed out when it released the spending data to SmartHealthcare.com, "the government has implemented an immediate freeze on new communications, with only minor exceptions". In July, health secretary Andrew Lansley said he was "progressively scaling back" the £75m marketing budget for the previous government's Change4Life campaign, which at one point sponsored The Simpsons on Channel 4. In a speech, Lansley called on other organisations, including the commercial sector, to get involved in the campaign. The government would use social media, rather than traditional advertising, to promote healthy living ( article ). Social media has already been used by government to good effect. One example was the RAF's Afghan Diaries campaign, which saw military personnel filming their work in Afghanistan, with edited versions being shown on YouTube ( link ), with the aim of encouraging recruitment. The social media component involved the use of Bebo, a site popular at the time with teenagers, where the RAF sponsored an online forum which included the videos. The forum was moderated by users, who could criticise the deployment, but those who were attracted by the films could apply to sign up. The whole campaign, which included conventional media such as television advertising, was successful in helping the RAF meet its recruitment targets. Another example is of direct relevance to NHS organisations. During the period when the National Pandemic Flu Service was activated to combat swine flu, the COI used a free online service, Netvibes.com, to monitor what was being said on the web about the subject ( link ). It picked up discussions showing that pregnant women were concerned about the effect of the anti-viral injections offered by the government. As a result, the government ensured that it answered these concerns in a prominent position on the Directgov and Department of Health's flu advice site. Tiffany St James, the former head of public participation for the government, says that social media techniques are ideal for a time of financial restraint – although military recruitment is among work that it has pardoned on the basis of being 'essential'. "It's about listening to your audiences, which is easy and free online," she says. "There's great guidance in the public sector about participating online, working within the civil service code." But St James warns that it does require a gradual approach to joining people's online conversations: "An online conversation is very much like an offline one," she says, and no-one would barge in on an existing group in a pub and expect to be listened to. Case study: West Midlands tries local digital communications