When door-knocking fails, find a new comms strategy

“UK’s top statistician loses sleep over troubled labour force survey.” 

That was a headline in The Times this week, following the comments by Professor Sir Ian Diamond – the head of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – on the lower and lowering response rates to the labour force survey. 

Our nation’s chief statistician was making the point that it’s becoming harder to get people to respond to survey requests, and those who do require more nudges than they’ve done before. The pandemic, it seems, has discouraged people from participation.

Many of us working in communications, particularly those engage in media relations, will be all too familiar with this conundrum when trying to influence a stakeholder into taking action. We will likewise have lost sleep over it – solidarity, Professor Sir Ian – and therefore, in acknowledgement that we are kindred spirits with the statisticians and that a problem shared is a problem halved, let me offer some unsolicited advice.

Ask yourself why. Diagnose the problem you’re facing. ONS questioners are attributing some of the increase in flat refusals to, “Ring doorbells and gated communities.” That’s a valid blocker, but your actual challenge here isn’t the smart tech and high walls that are preventing you from asking the questions; it’s that people don’t want to answer the questions (and are using smart tech and high walls to avoid having to say no to your face).

The ONS, like many organisations, has no instinctive license to operate in the eye of the people it is ostensibly serving (and/or selling to). People won’t answer the door and engage with you simply because you’re the ONS – or, indeed, any brand or organisation. 

You need to understand why they aren’t interested (which could be apathy, being time-poor, a misunderstanding of what you’re doing and why). That, then, offers a clearer course of identifying how you increase engagement.

Work out how. All communications professionals are – or should be – grappling with how they engage with their stakeholders in an era of alienation, apathy and ambiguity. With overflowing inboxes, vast quantities of social and digital content consumed that makes it difficult to pick anything out, and more varied ways of reading about and interpreting the world around them, there is an ongoing need to review your channels.

If your solution to people not answering the door is to send more door-knockers, you’ll make some progress. But your solution isn’t so much a solution as a stopgap approach.

If you can’t make progress in one way, ask yourself if there’s another way to gather the data (or influence an activity) to achieve your desired outcome.

Keep going. The single most underrated trait in communications professionals is resilience. If you can maintain your composure and get on with the job, you will find a way around the obstacle.

The important thing, in the end, is not simply to throw more money at the problem – more door-knockers/more pleading emails to journalists to “just follow-up”. If you have a problem that you need resolved, find an actual solution. In our communications landscapes, there are plenty of ways over and around. You simply need to diagnose the problem properly and then pull together a strategy to address it. 

So, good luck Professor Sir Ian and your plucky band of stats-gatherers. If you follow the above steps, you’re on your way to a new communications and engagement strategy.