BWB3434F
INFORMATION REPORT
MEMORANDUM TO THE BOARD
MARKETING REPORT NOVEMBER 2011
Report by Marketing Director
1. PURPOSE
1.1 To inform the Board of developments and issues in the Marketing Directorate (which includes responsibility for the boating business). Periodically we will highlight an issue of interest in more depth.
2 HEADLINES
‘Soft’ launch of charity name and symbol well received Annual meeting is helpful in airing and discussing controversial issues Voluntary fundraising is meeting milestones, though corporate giving presents the greatest timescale challenges Canal & River Trust launch event date of 20 April provisionally agreed Volunteering on target for 30,000 days in full year
3. COMMUNICATIONS
3.1 Opinion formers
An exclusive preview is taking place in London on 23 November, inviting opinion formers from the charitable sector to learn more about the Canal & River Trust plans for England and Wales.
3.2 Media relations
All board members and trustees should be receiving our weekly news update, please let us know if you have any difficulty receiving it.
There have been two separate instances of drowning that have both attracted national media attention because of the tragic circumstances. One in particular, the death of a young boy, has led to local comment about safety.
BW’s last Annual Meeting and the ‘soft’ launch of the Canal & River Trust name and logo have received mostly positive coverage in the waterways press. A launch event date of 20 May 2012 has been provisionally agreed with Birmingham City Council
The winter works season got off to a good start with publicity helping to attract 2,000 people to the first Open Day in Worcester. Similarly, the search to find a dog to be the face for a Trust marketing campaign promoting dog walking visits in 2012 has been well supported – particularly across social media channels.
Other highlights attracting national media coverage include the results of this year’s waterway wildlife survey, conservation works to improve habitat for reed warblers and super yachts coming to London’s Dockland’s for the Olympics. There has been continuing travel-related features in the daily as well as Sunday papers. Conference season, specifically the Lib-Dems conference in Birmingham, led to a number of waterway mentions and uses as backdrops.
And finally, out of 55,000 entries, the public chose a photo of a horse drawn canal boat as their favourite image for BBC Countryfile/Children in Need 2012 calendar.
4. VOLUNTARY FUNDRAISING
4. Individual Giving
4.1 Case for support
Following a workshop made up of senior staff and trustees, an overarching case for support has been developed for the charity. This is encapsulated in the strapline ‘Keeping people, nature and history connected’. This case for support will now be developed into specific propositions for the face to face towpath fundraising and the launch appeal.
4.1.1 Face to Face Fundraising
Following a formal tender process, we have now appointed two face to face fundraising agencies to work with us from April 2012 onwards. Clive Mattock Fundraising Limited are private site specialists who work for RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and Woodland Trust. GIFT Fundraising are a street fundraising agency who work with Unicef, NSPCC and Amnesty International. These agencies will initially be appointed for a 4 month trial, recruiting 1,000 donors each. Work is now progressing to identify where they will base their teams and how they will present Canal & River Trust to the public.
4.1.2 Launch appeal
A small project group has been set up to progress the launch appeal. Over 400 ideas have been submitted by staff across the business for projects that could be funded by the appeal and that meet the brief of ‘Bringing the towpaths to life’ by investing into wildlife projects, improving safety and increasing access.
The appeal is now in a ‘private phase’ where we are researching and approaching statutory and trust funders to provide lead gifts to key projects. The success of this private phase will determine the overall financial target for the public phase (which will launch in April 2012), as well as the projects that will be featured.
The project team are liaising with Waterways Managers and Enterprise Managers to identify projects that will be included in the appeal and statutory funding opportunities.
4.2 Supporter Care
The development of the ThankQ database and discussions with the internal Shared Services Team have helped clarify the requirements for our Supporter Care Team. This team will handle all database amendments, processing and supporter interactions for both donors and volunteers.
The role profiles, location and line reporting of this team are being developed jointly by the Head of Fundraising and the Head of Community Engagement with the intention of recruiting this team to start by April 2012.
All processes for database and financial processing are being developed by the Head of Fundraising with support from Finance and IT colleagues as well as internal audit. This is time consuming but critical back office work.
4.3 Corporate partnerships
We have contracted C&E Advisory to support us in our work of identifying and engaging corporate supporters. With them we are holding two workshops with trustees and staff to develop our proposition to the corporate sector.
Meanwhile, conversations are ongoing with several major companies, all of whom could play a significant role in the launch as partners. This area of work remains high risk because of the tight timescale.
4.4 Future planning
Advance planning is already beginning on other areas of fundraising. Three of these are outlined briefly below:
4.4.1 Events
Numerous staff have signed up to take part in a sponsored cycle ride from London to Brussels, committing to raise a minimum of £1,300 each for the new charity. This is a great way to engage staff in fundraising in the short-term. Longer-term we are still intending to launch our own flagship event (or series of events) and the Head of Fundraising is in negotiation with two specialist sporting event agencies to develop this concept, with a view to launching in 2013.
4.4.2 In memoriam and legacy giving
We have agreed a supplier who will provide an online book of remembrance for those who support our work through legacy or in memoriam giving. Work to identify sites of potential memorial forests is ongoing.
4.4.3 Staffing
The Individual Giving Manager post has been successfully recruited. Start date is being negotiated now. The Leadership Giving Manager will be recruited pre-launch. Staffing requirements relating to Supporter Care are mentioned in 4.2 above.
5. MARKETING
5.1 Brand identity
The Trust’s name and symbol have been (generally) well received both internally and externally.
The next stage is to develop the high level work that Pentagram has done into practical brand guidelines. We have asked six agencies to quote for the work and will be appointing shortly. This work should be complete by the middle of December.
In the meantime, two rebrand projects are underway:
People’s rebrand (working title) – working with volunteers to rebrand the signage using stickers at key high footfall/fundraising sites. We are not alone in using stickers to update signs. Our supplier works with companies like Asda, Sainsburys, Iceland and National Car Parks. It’s a complex project as our signage comes in many different types, shapes and
sizes so stage one is to work with volunteers to survey each rebrand site. Only then will we know the true cost of the project. However to give some perspective, a brand new sign costs in the region of £300 whereas stickers cost between 50p and £2 each depending on the size.
Rebrand prioritisation plan – this will help inform decision making about what else to rebrand for April 2012 based on minimum cost for maximum impact as we cannot afford to do everything overnight. This will cover everything from name badges, uniform and workboats to boat licensing forms and word/powerpoint templates and much, much more!
5.2 Website for Canal & River Trust
The project to create a completely new website www.canalrivertrust.org.uk continues and is on schedule and budget. Wireframes are complete and basic design of template pages is out to test with BW staff and selected trusted external contacts. Work is well advanced on key national editorial content with the focus now on training staff and other potential users to create, upload and maintain their own content. We still expect to have a ‘live’ site for extensive ‘real’ testing by mid-January.
6. PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
6.1 VOLUNTEERING
Volunteering Activity
Volunteer activity is well on target to reach the target of 30,000 days this year, reaching just almost 20,000 at the half year point. A number of large volunteer campaigns are underway – education volunteer recruitment, volunteer lock keepers, towpath survey etc. and we are hoping to exceed the target.
ELearning
The eLearning/diagnostic tool for building employee understanding of volunteering across BW has been finalised and will start to be cascaded in November, completed by March. This will be released successively to Directors, Senior Managers, Line Managers and then the remaining employees. This will be computer based with a workshop version being planned for bank based teams with no access to computers.
Thank Q Supporter Database
The specification work has been completed for the volunteering elements of Thank Q. This will allow for a single database to manage and monitor volunteers and group information across the organisation. This will transform our management and communication with volunteers as currently no central database exists. Training will be given in January to key users.
Volunteer lock keepers
A business need has been identified in every waterway for volunteer lock keepers in 2012. Discussions with the unions have been completed at a local level and this has led to minor changes (both additions to and removals from) the original plans. A recruitment and communications plan has been prepared for a large scale recruitment campaign and coverage is planned with BBC Radio 4. The campaign will predominantly take place in January and early February with interviews and checks happening into early March. Training is planned in March for the volunteers to start in the run up to Easter. A common core training package is being planned which can be delivered by each Waterway team. We are likely to have over 150 seasonal lock keepers/rangers in the business next year.
Partnerships
A meeting was held with Defra and Keep Britain Tidy for BW to become a supporter of the Love Where you Live campaign. Several events have been identified for partnership working. A funding submission has been submitted to the Social Action Fund for Waterways Action Squad Development. Contact has been made with the Olympic delivery team regarding volunteering opportunities and joint working. BW is attending the next trustee meeting of National Women’s Network to explore how we can establish a partnership to assist their plans to raise profile, and increase community engagement.
Waterway Action Squad – Youth Engagement
Plans are being put in place to accommodate Lucie Unsworth’s (National Youth Engagement Manager) maternity leave early next year in order to maintain momentum and enthusiasm for youth engagement work.
6.2 Education and Learning
WOW education volunteers
Our growing band of volunteers is continuing to deliver activities to schools and groups once they have completed their induction and training. The group on the Kennet & Avon Canal based at Bath and Devizes have led their first school visits to the canal and we have agreed to work with the K & A Trust to recruit more volunteers in this area.
We have just recruited a team of five new volunteers for the Mon & Brec Canal. They will be based at Brecon and will be helping to deliver a schools programme as part of the 200th anniversary celebrations in 2012.
The Foxton and Birmingham teams have been especially busy leading school visits and family weekend events, some as part of the Big Draw.
Children enjoying a school visit to Foxton. Learning how to demonstrate a lock.
Review against volunteer targets: Target 2011/12 Apr – Oct 2011 Number of trained and active volunteers 60 46
Requests for school visit sand talks through WOW website 500 257 (dealt with by volunteers)
WOW evaluation research
Working with Kids Connections we have been evaluating the WOW brand, website and resources – so that we can improve our learning offer to teachers and group leaders and deliver an effective new website as part of the new CRT site.
Results have shown that BW is seen as a subject authority and its delivery of heritage, habitat and safety based resources is perceived as relevant to the work of the organisation – all of which is very positive for the CRT in meeting its education objective. However the name of our education project – “Wild over Waterways” is seen as being too far removed from the subject matter and not memorable enough, whilst the subject or current website do not offer WOW moments. There is a mismatch between the name and the educational offer – something we now need to discuss with our partners at a planned meeting in November.
Other feedback has been practical in nature and will be very useful in the planning and delivery of the new website. It is mainly focussed around relevance and navigation. Although teachers voiced approval of the range of content provided we need to work much harder at communicating the relevance of our resources – how do they help to deliver the curriculum or how can we use different formats and teaching practices to meet teacher’s needs?
Comments on the website itself were focused around the difficulty of navigating around the site and being able to find relevant resources – theming, signposting and having less content were all suggested solutions.
Contemporary Arts
We are shortly to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Arts Council England which is the first step in delivering a contemporary arts programme and embedding art into the future management of the waterways.
To help us deliver the arts programme we are recruiting for an arts development officer funded through a grant from the Arts Council England. This is a temporary role, with the option (subject to evaluation and funding) of renewal. The officer will develop and evaluate a programme of five pilot arts initiatives (these can be cross art forms, but with an emphasis on the visual arts) which were mainly identified within the arts report produced last year.
Our objectives for this work are to attract new audiences, encourage greater community ownership, improve the waterway environment and raise the profile of our waterways as a national treasure.
All about Rivers
The latest WOW resource “All about Rivers”, written by volunteer Martha Buckley is now complete and has been uploaded onto the WOW website. Martha spent two weeks with us researching and writing the resource which has now been designed and is ready to use! It complements the popular “All about Canals” resource already used in schools.
6.3 Fisheries and Angling Update -
Water levels on reservoirs in the midlands and south east have been critically low and remain in a difficult position as at the end of October. Major fish rescues at Naseby and Boddington have been avoided but only just. Concern remains that the fish populations will have become stressed by the challenging environmental conditions and this will manifest itself in a disease outbreak in the spring of 2012. There remains doubt about the ability of the reservoirs to fully refill which will impact on angling income prospects in 2012. Business plan income forecast has picked up between P4 and P6 forecast. Overall outturn should be c £12,000 CBIT deficit verses original business plan, with a strong performance at Drayton Reservoir offsetting restricted trading at other commercial locations. If the weather remains mild into the Xmas period a small further improvement may be achieved. The Environment Agency is investigating fish mortalities on the Aylesbury Arm which occurred at the same time as dredging activity. Un-ionised ammonia levels have been unexpectedly high. 10 reported cases of illegal fish theft have been reported over the past quarter. The British Waterways Stillwater Championships will again be run in partnership with Angling Trust in 2012. Annual fish rescue consents issued by the Environment Agency are all in place for the winter stoppage programme. All BW licensee angling clubs have been written do regarding permission to include details on CRT website.
7. CUSTOMER SERVICES/RELATIONS
7.1 The future of customer contact
Following the pre-qualification stage a shortlist of five suppliers have been invited to tender to provide a one number Customer Contact Centre for a three to five year contract. The services and costs will be reviewed along with a model for our ideal in-house team (our current model isn’t sustainable) and a recommendation made to directors before the end of November.
7.2 Complaints
So far in 2011/12 we have received 103 first level complaints, a reduction of 34% on the same period last year (2010/11: 155). Of these first level complaints 25 went to the second level to be considered by a senior manager or director, a reduction of 24% on the same period last year (2010/11: 33). The percentage of complaints progressing from the first level to the second level so far this year is 24%, this has increased by 3% on the same period last year (2010/11: 21%).
The independent Waterways Ombudsman considers complaints at a third and final stage. So far this year she has accepted eleven complaints for consideration. She has made eight decisions -
in six of these she ruled to not uphold the complaint or pursue the matter further. Two complaints have been partially upheld.
7.3 Freedom of Information Requests
So far in 2011/12 we have received 182 requests for information, this has increased by 43.3% on the same period last year (2010/11: 127).
The Information Commissioners office (ICO) has issued two final decision notices so far in 2011/12; both complaints were not upheld. One complaint related to customer belief that BW had breached the fourth principle (data accuracy) of the Data Protection Act 1998, the ICO found that it was likely that BW had complied with the DPA and no recommendations were made. The second complaint was made following BW’s refusal to release boat sighting information in response to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; the ICO found in favour of BW.
8. INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
8.1 Canal & River Trust
The reveal of the new name and logo at coordinated briefings across the country was generally well received. Colleagues were pleased to finally find out the name of the company they’re going to be working for next year it has helped to make the Trust a greater reality.
An important employee engagement ‘listening’ exercise is currently underway which will be the subject of the Chief Executive’s report. Internal comms is expecting some constructive feedback and ideas to come from this exercise to help influence future communications.
8.2 Business Briefing
The senior management team will get together for a conference on 6 December at our Fearns Wharf office in Leeds. The theme is ‘nothing has changed but everything has changed’. Running the business remains our main task but we need to embrace the new status and harness all that comes with it to get the full benefits of the change. A full programme for the day is being developed.
8.3 MK move
A staff forum is being established to influence and communicate with the Project Steering Group and affected colleagues. Volunteers are being sort from staff based in MK, Watford and London.
As the move becomes closer we are beginning to see a demand for more information from affected colleagues as they want to know it will affect their individual circumstances.
9. BOATING
Recession is affecting our income and sales of both boat licences and mooring permits. Boat numbers are running broadly static with this time last year, but competition in the moorings market is having a larger impact on our business. Licence sales income is forecast to be £320k down (£17.1m) compared with Plan. For moorings see below. The EA has announced an increase in their river registration prices for 2012 of 6.4% (identical to ours set out in the September Board pack). There has been little reaction to our announcement of a 6.4% increase.
Evasion – an interim check was carried out on our enforceable sites during Sept 2011 which showed another reduction in licence evasion by 0.3% to 4.6%. This means that licence evasion has remained below 5% for the last 18 months. Mooring vacancy auctions are reflecting the difficult economic climate. The percentage of auctions resulting in sales has dropped by some 10 percentage points over the past year with only 8% selling at above the current guide price. Our three yearly market review of prices charged for mooring permits at our directly managed sites is close to completion and will be announced in the new year. The review involves researching prices charged by our competitors, the extent of customer churn on individual sites and prices paid for vacancies at auction. We expect the result to yield a significantly smaller uplift in mooring fees than the average of 6.1% applied in 2009. We recently emailed just over 2,000 boaters with no home mooring promoting our short term winter moorings offer. Improvements to the website and better marketing have resulted in sales by the end of October exceeding those achieved for the whole five month period last year. The £1m repair / survey programme for our directly managed moorings continues. Water points are being surveyed for compliance with statutory requirements; a national programme of replacing outdated electricity meters at mooring sites will start shortly and our programme of eliminating known safety risks from slippery pontoons, lack of mooring rings etc. should be completed by the year end. Contractors will be on site early in the new year at the Willow Wren Wharf residential site in west London: the challenges of arranging relocation of 20 double decker static houseboats to make this work possible have been substantial. The past quarter has seen a significant slow-down in expressions of interest to the New Marinas Unit. Two significant marina applications in green belt have been turned down on appeal on the grounds that a marina is considered inappropriate development in Green belt. There are however 1000 new berths under construction and a further 1500 with planning permission awaiting construction. 41 new marinas have opened since 2007 providing 5200 berths. Substantial effort has been made to get to grips with the boating portfolio and tackle the outstanding rent reviews. As a result, year to date income from property and wayleaves is up by £250k against plan. Association of Inland Navigation Authorities: we have agreed with EA, Broads Authority and Defra (all significant funders of the above with us) that we will indicate to AINA that we will fund for 2012/13 but in the context of the Association moving to run itself on a voluntary basis from 2013/14.
Simon Salem Marketing Director November 2011