Every couple of months I drive up to Orford – it’s one of those rare places in the UK where the sky seems a little bigger, and the light a little warmer. Watching over the village is the arresting Orford Ness lighthouse.

One cold afternoon in January I stumbled on the news that Orford Ness lighthouse had been recommended for closure, and had an idea. An idea which, thanks to Twitter, I could simultaneously share with the world and pitch directly to Radio 4 continuity announcer and Suffolk-born man Zeb Soanes:

What began and ended with a few casual (and easily forgotten) keystrokes for me was the beginning of a chain of thought and real time commitment for Zeb, so it’s really pleasing that by his own account he had an enjoyable time reading an excerpt of the shipping forecast from the lighthouse this morning.

This recording is from today’s Lesley Dolphin show on BBC Radio Suffolk and yes, of course, I blushed a little at the name check.

There are plenty of people rushing to judge Eurostar this weekend. The headline on TechCrunch is almost comical – “As hundreds of Eurostar passengers languish, Eurostar ignores Twitter.” On the face of it, it’s rather like saying “As shelves run dry of food, Tesco ignores Susan Boyle.” It’s quite random. TechCrunch’s view of the issue is pretty narrow (as this post from We are social shows.)

The whole communications effort could have been better, and the speed of the social media response is just one symptom – hopefully Eurostar will take some lessons away from this weekend.

Where did Eurostar go wrong?

• It’s worth saying that when it comes to PR, Eurostar were unlucky – as ever there’s not a lot of news around at Christmas, and this is a big story which is relatively low effort / low cost to cover.  Dramatic though it is, is it really a bigger story than a vulnerable toddler being abducted from a police station? Personally I don’t believe so – but there are unfortunately a lot of angry passengers in the Eurostar story who are able to keep the story running.
• It sounds like there was confusion in Eurostar HQ – We are social’s Robin Grant describes grabbing the chief executive for a minute “in between various crisis meetings”, and being sat alongside the Sales and Marketing Director.  In a situation as fast moving and high profile as this, the key people could have worked better together if they had been co-located in one room. It would have been good to see Eurostar’s crisis team validate or update their corporate message every thirty minutes, while managing the operational challenge.
• I think Eurostar could have picked a better core message – the explanation offered about changes in temperature affecting the trains left more questions than answers. Over time it looked like the company didn’t know what was causing the breakdowns, so it would have been more credible to say “we don’t know what’s happened to the trains, but we’re working as fast as possible to understand it.” There was also an attempt to move too quickly to the final stage of the comms plan – the review and compensation line – when practical operational comms to passengers was needed.
• Eurostar could have used a different spokesperson – I remember watching The Bottom Line on BBC News earlier this year and thinking that Richard Brown came across as a great business leader who had built a formidable operation.  It doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s the best spokesperson for the company in a crisis, as I think the video below shows. The delivery could have been more confident, and the subliminal messages (eg how the picture has been framed)  don’t shout “we have lots of staff working to fix this, and we’re in control.”
• Finally, and most seriously, Eurostar’s internal communications structures, and their face to face communication with customers appear to have failed. Staff weren’t visible to customers, and those staff who were dealing with customers followed different procedures and gave conflicting messages, and the people who needed the most communication – those in the broken down trains – were the people who received the least.An urgent review is needed to establish crisis comms protocols for staff which rectify the  situation which Robin Grant describes as being unable “to communicate with their own staff on board when the train is in the tunnel as all safety regulations and operational responsibility sit firmly with Eurotunnel.” Assuming that is true, EuroTunnel’s procedures would seem to have cost Eurostar hundreds of thousands of pounds in customer loyalty and brand damage. Their press release titled “EuroTunnel rescues Eurostar” (PDF) will need  a robust reply.

Where do Eurostar go from here?

In short:

• Rapidly and transparently announce the likely cause of the fault when it is established, and how it can be mitigated. Put the media and some key social media critics on a successful test run and make the engineers visible.
• Proactively reach their customers with any further news on all comms channels – by text message, email, face to face and yes, social media.
• Look after the passengers – free food and drink at St Pancras and Ebbsfleet. Passengers are talking to the media all the time and no part of the message coming from them is “Eurostar are doing their best to look after us.”
• Use a broader range of spokespeople  – most board level leaders with media skills can fulfil this role.
• Talk to past customers directly – I receive Eurostar marketing emails as a previous customer, and as a potential future customer I have now have concerns about using the service in cold weather – use that marketing data to drive reassurance and reputation rebuilding comms

I do have sympathy for Eurostar’s comms team – it sounds from the outside like they simply lacked any facts to communicate beyond the number of broken down trains. In the long term that internal comunications challenge is the most serious issue to address.

If you’re reading this and you work in Eurostar comms, I hope your Christmas gets better from here on!

“The Victorians who watched the early Lumière films did not only witness a new form of entertainment. For many it would be their first glimpse of their French neighbours, or continental architecture. It was a moment which connected cultures.  So it is fitting that in the same building we now teach social sciences, politics, and languages. Just as the Lumière brothers did more than a century ago, we are opening doors and connecting cultures. I can’t wait for the moment when, once again, we will be able to do so with the word “action!”.”

The words of my Vice-Chancellor – I couldn’t have put it better myself.

I’ve been busy today with our team launching a £5m campaign to revive the birthplace of British cinema. The Today programme and the BBC News website were really good to us. There is more news to follow, and campaign updates are being posted to www.birthplaceofcinema.com

Our media monitoring stations (powered by EyeTV) exported an MP3 of the Today programme package, which I’ve hosted using Houndbite:

(c) BBC 2009

Houndbite is simplicity itself to operate – effectively a YouTube for audio files – but I’m surprised the embedded version doesn’t link directly to the same file on the Houndbite site. Still some work to do, by the look of it.

Oh, and yes, that is me playing the organ throughout the piece. Angus Crawford (the reporter) took us a little by surprise when he asked for the organ to be played – I hadn’t played in seven years and had to make something upon the spot to demonstrate some of the quirky features of the Compton organ (you can clearly hear the bells/chimes). I’m afraid it comes across as a little funereal!

There’s so much top-notch work coming out of the government comms teams these days that  it comes as a surprise to see them cock up something as straight-forward as a press conference backdrop.

The shot above shows a press conference earlier today:

• That could be a short essay behind the PM. It’s not exactly “yes we can”, is it?
• “Copenhagen” has been changed in to a mark, with a footprint  graphic too small to be clearly seen on screen. It doesn’t really add anything to my understanding, it’s just another message.
• The Copenhagen website address is obscured, and there’s a different address on the podium.

Sky News used less than ten seconds of this presser, and there were three too many things fighting for my attention. The end result is that minutes later, I can’t remember a word the PM said.

However, to be fair, looking closely at the photo above it was either a couple of roll-up stands, or the PM with a chandelier growing out of his head – sometimes you have to make the best of a bad lot!

So far, my pilgrimage hasn’t been possible – the year has been busy, and I’ve been learning more about the piece and its composer at a rate which has lead to a constantly changing stream of thoughts and opinions, each needing further work to understand better. I’d like my thoughts on the piece to have settled down a little before going to the places of Tallis’s life and death. In particular, if there is anyone out there of a historical bent who could make an educated guess as to the probable locations of Court in the years 1568/69, I’d really like to hear from you.

In the meantime, some of you might enjoy sharing this moment i just recorded where I indulge in the idea of an eighty party motet. I should’ve done my hair. I could’ve been less effusive. I shouldn’t peer over my glasses. Singing was a mistake. It could probably have used a script, but I thought I’d just fire up the camera and record this moment of late-night Bank Holiday early music geekery. Enjoy.

Update: I have heard a couple of people be quite sniffy about the King’s Singers version of Spem. They are, whisper it….. populist.

As there are only six singers in the group, they used multi-tracking to produce their recording. I find it one of the most interesting recordings. Fascinated then to see that they made a video when recording it, which gives some sense of the technical complexity (though a minor gripe is that it doesn’t show off the key antiphonal moments well). These guys either have an incredible sense of timing, or a metronome ticking in their headphones!