Ten ways to engage with young people
If you want fresh thinking and innovation, then you need to engage young people. We’ve run Australia’s first youth summit on climate change initiated by a Council, and engaged thousands of students through travelling shows, and ran a curated film competition. We’ve …
Climate Change the Hot Topic
Aside from COVID, the hottest topic raised by community and stakeholders alike is climate change. Even before the IPCC this month issued a Code Red for humanity, ordinary folk were issuing their own concerns and seeking guidance and leadership. Even in communities …
Stories of our Regional and Remote Communities
Travelling into regional and remote communities earlier this year I was told many stories of heartbreak resulting from devastating natural disasters. Like one person’s plight to shift 1000s of dead cattle off a property devastated by flood waters. Not only did they …
Using the Maccas, Woolies and Coles Mindset to Engagement
If we really want to get more people to engage with councils and governments on the important topics, then we need to shake up engagement. Let’s apply a McDonalds or a Woollies / Coles / Aldi approach to public engagement projects and …
Reaching young people doesn’t need to be hard, but it needs to be engaging
Youth engagement is becoming an increasingly important part of engagement activities where projects and decisions have an impact on the youth of today and are likely to keep impacting them into the future. In any engagement project young people are typically …
To cry or not to cry?
Imagine this. A community member has bravely taken the microphone. They’re shaking but determined to tell their story. They’re detailing their years of abuse. They talk about specific incidences, how they felt, the frustration, the sense of helplessness. It’s not the first …
Building resilience
StickyResilience comes in many forms, whether it be discovering new skills, building new relationships, being more informed, taking decisive action or working with people who share common goals. Having worked in several regional areas across Queensland in 2020, one thing that always …
Tackling tough problems – improving staff morale
The executive manager shook his head. “I don’t know what to do. The annual staff survey results aren’t good. Staff morale is falling.” It wasn’t the first year. Morale had fallen in previous surveys. What should they do? At that point nobody …
Behaviour change
In 2020, the critical importance of behaviour change became apparent. Especially in the sectors of health, mental health, disaster resilience – all which featured so heavily during 2020 – engagement can and does change the way people think and act. By engaging …
Welcome to 2021
After a highly unusual 2020, our blog is back. During 2020, we focused on a few things that kept our attention away from blogging, notably working in COVID, home schooling, and making sure we had some time and space to take care …
“She’ll be right” because we’ll make it right
In a strange time, a strange thing is happening to our cultural fabric. Australians are redefining what it means to say “she’ll be right”. No longer does it mean we shrug things off or just hope for the best. It means “she’ll …
Customer Value Proposition
Who are you and what are you offering? You’ve got a great product but for some reason, it just isn’t getting the traction it deserves. Sound familiar? We all know organisations and people who spend a lot of time and valuable resources …
When you need an independent third party
Working across a range of projects for different sectors and organisations, Articulous is often called in to assist as an independent third party on often controversial and contentious issues as it doesn’t have a vested interest in the outcome. As an independent …
Talk is not cheap
For many years’ opinion polls have been used as the go-to tool to understand community attitudes and trends. But as we are increasingly seeing across the globe, the polls don’t always get it right. With a proliferation of opinion polls in the …
Behaviour change – more than a communications strategy
The fastest way to fail on a behaviour change project is to focus on bombarding people with information in the hope they’ll see the error of their ways and change their behaviour to make the world a better place. Although your message …
Always expect the unexpected.
No, it will never happen to me. We never do anything wrong. Everything will be fine. These are the common complacencies that many organisations have. And rightly so, the majority of decent, hardworking, ethical and have the right processes in place and do …
Clarity trumps assumptions in stakeholder engagement
“Clarity comes from engagement, not thought” – Marie Forleo This is one of my favourite quotes about engagement and it’s equally relevant to all types of stakeholder engagement whether it be customer, employee or community. It often seems easier to make assumptions …
If you think customer engagement is about driving sales, think again.
When it comes to your business, your customers are the most important when it comes to your bottom line. But they are also important for contributing to a business that they want to keep coming back to. Customer engagement is a whole …
Think you know gaming? Drop that stereotype right now
You might think a typical gamer is a teen or 20 something male who spends hours on end in their room, not seeing the light of day. This stereotype is not accurate, not even slightly. Around 60% of everyday Australians play video …
Why everyday people turn up to solve community problems
It was a Saturday morning. The first day in a four-month process for members of a citizen engagement process to tackle a very tricky issue. …