So this year's EU Development Days have come to an end after two days of roundtables, conferences, seminars, workshops and discussions involving heads of state, diplomats, officials, development experts and interested members of the public. According to the Commission, 6,000 delegates attended the event and were treated to, among other things, a fashion show, a music concert and theatre productions. The cost for this affair? Rumoured to be in the region of two million euro. Money that would have been better spent in actual development, no doubt.This latest financial folly comes just weeks after a similar ill-conceived exercise to mark the EU Year Against Poverty in which thousands of free branded t-shirts were handed out to all and sundry outside the Parliament. The t-shirts were given away free, which is worth reiterating, because they weren't given in exchange for signing up to receiving more information about poverty in the EU or for pledging to help combat inequalities. No, the communications 'experts' responsible for such profligacy clearly have a complete disregard for the cardinal rule of communications campaigns: what do you want people to do NOT what do you want them to know. However much, or little, the branded t-shirts cost to produce, again, surely it's money that would have been better spent actually combatting poverty as opposed to promoting it!
In this age of austerity, surely the powers-that-be at the Commission could come up with more cost-effective ways for getting their messages out and engaging the public in a meaningful way. The key is not to throw money at comms campaigns but rather to inject a bit of common sense in to them. EC Comms Watch continues...
1 comment:
It's a disgrace but not in any way surprising. Most public sector comms people see marketing as a competition to see who can make the least difference whilst spending the most money. They measure their success by the amount of purchase orders they have raised.
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