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Selling-in the Coast, Child Protection & Cancer
The National Trust - from 'cub press officer' to 'chief press officer' April 1998 - December 2002
The National Trust - from 'cub press officer' to 'chief press officer' April 1998 - December 2002
Five successful years which originally started as a 'cub' press officer on a maternity cover contract culminated in being appointed as the Chief Press Officer - (Head of Media role) for the National Trust, one of the UK’s largest charities, with a multi-million person membership. He demonstrated an ability to secure major coverage for a host of stories that included the restoration of Sir Paul McCartney’s childhood home in Liverpool (world-wide media work), the preservation of a unique survival of slum housing in Birmingham (coverage in 7 national papers ranging from the Sun through to the Financial Times plus BBC TV’s Breakfast News) and the launch of a major economic study on the contribution made by managed landscapes to the economy (coverage included BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, The Times, Telegraph and Financial Times). I worked with a talented team of colleagues but even so worked personally on national media stories as varied as tackling the dangers of silver fish at Nostell Priory, the conservation and display of extraordinary historic dolls houses at Nunnington Hall for a major pictorial in the Daily Mail and a full-on photo shoot for a multi page feature in OK magazine with Bernadette, the then property manager of the Trust's Ightham Mote, asked to reveal the quirkier aspects of living and working as a guardian inside a historic medieval moated manor house while dressed in a ball gown for the sake of the camera. In the meantime I was also helping to push the repositioing of the Trust as an environmental charity playing a key role in the rural economy with an emerging policy unit to lobby more intensely with politiciand and othey key players
From nibbling slver fish causing a conservation nightmare to the closure of the countryside due to foot-and-mouth
Crisis management
Crisis management
This was never far behind the proactive press work. During his tenure, he crafted statements and media briefings in consultation with colleagues for subjects that included hunting on National Trust land, the managed retreat of the coastline resulting in the threat to people’s homes and culling experiments on badgers to track the source of TB infection amongst cattle. He was a key player in the senior management team during the foot-and-mouth outbreak when the Trust was positioned as a leader in minimising the spread of infection and protecting the livelihoods of the farmers (The Trust had two separate features on GMTV and the BBC’s 10 O’clock News).
Issues were many and varied whether needing to counteract Carluccio's call for mass foraging of mushrooms in the countryside on Radio 4 or being answerable as a major landlord to tenants in the countryside and brokering a fair right to respond for the National Trust with Jon Snow minutes before a live interview with a senior Trust director on Channel 4 News. The Trust was well versed in making careful, considered but transparent responses for a huge range of work and activities.
An article in the Guardian enables the National Trust's then Senior Press Officer, Jason Tanner, to explain the charity's aspiration to re-open the nation's countryside after a dramatic outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 2001 (tap to view)
BBC News was amongst a clean sweep of seven national newspapers that featured the National Trust's unusual restoration of a rare survival of slum housing in Birmingham. (Tap to view)
The Daily Express , was one of many news outlets that reported on research commissioned by CSV's Jason Tanner that showed how volunteering in the workplace boosts productivity and slows the loss of unhappy employees. (Tap to view)
CSV - Taking the national conversation about volunteers to new heights Jan 2003 to Feb 09
CSV - Taking the national conversation about volunteers to new heights Jan 2003 to Feb 09
When the National Trust decided to re-locate, Jason transferred his journalistic, PR and management skills to CSV (Community Service Volunteers - rebranded as Volunteering Matters in 2015).
When the National Trust decided to re-locate, Jason transferred his journalistic, PR and management skills to CSV (Community Service Volunteers - rebranded as Volunteering Matters in 2015).
CSV, under the long-term and unique leadership of Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, appointed him as their Head of Press in 2003. CSV’s press operation was re-energised following a fallow period previous to his appointment. CSV went on to regularly achieve the equivalent of more than £3 to 5 million of free editorial coverage in national print and broadcast media every year and the small but talented teams of individuals he recruited and managed was bolstered with demands to deliver key campaigns such as the Year of the Volunteer in 2005, which was backed with funding from the Home Office & The Treasury and the subsequent Dare to Care: 'make time to help end child poverty' campaign.
Volunteering charity CSV pioneers the placement of community volunteers into the families of at-risk children. It benefits both children and hard-pressed social workers. (Click the article to read more) CSV rebranded as Volunteering Matters in 2015 (Tap to view)
Achievements at CSV include:
Achievements at CSV include:
• CSV Volunteers in Child protection (working with the families of children on the ‘at risk’ register). Features were set up on both BBC Radio 4 (You and Yours) and Five as well as The Times, (as featured here), The Independent and the Evening Standard. As Head of Press for CSV, Jason oversaw the management of an impromptu press conference to announce the backing of the scheme by the family of Victoria Climbié who died tragically under the jurisdiction of Haringey social services. This was additionally covered by both ITV and BBC TV News for London. This is clearly a sensitive subject that required substantial pre-planning & communications risk analysis. In 2007, Jason placed the project as a ‘cutting-edge’ example of volunteering on The Daily Politics show on BBC2 as part of mounting interest by politicians in the role of the voluntary sector in everyday lives.
• jason worked with excellent campaigns colleagues and oversaw the press strategy implemented by equally excellent campaign press officers for CSV Make a Difference Day – the UK’s biggest single day of direct volunteering action when sponsorship allowed. Research commissioned for one of these annual showcase events via ICM about the positive health benefits of volunteering secured coverage in nine national newspapers and more than 100 other publications and was designed to be of wide appeal to tabloids and broadsheets.
• At the start of the Year of the Volunteer in 2005, he secured interviews with CSV directors for two separate features on BBC Breakfast News, BBC2’s Working Lunch and BBC Radio Five – in addition to a two-page spread in The Observer, which enchanted readers with volunteer cat cuddlers, and other impact led articles in The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.
• In September 2007, for the Dare to Care campaign, he designed and commissioned independent research that polled the views of children themselves and what they believed made a child to be in poverty in this country. Seven national TV pieces were tracked on the day of the launch including BBC Newsround, the BBC One O’Clock News and BBC News 24. This is in addition to more than 50 hits on radio.
• He also set-up a full page article in the Guardian about a scheme called Capital Volunteering that empowered people with mental health problems to volunteer to help one-another and aid recovery for some.
• Jason sought to nurture two seemingly politically opposite newspapers, The Guardian and The Times. Both newspapers were updated with the facts about Volunteers in Child Protection . He invited correspondents to meet the vulnerable families being helped by volunteers whenever it was possible. This included two former social affairs correspondents of the Times, namely Alex Frean and then Rosemary Bennett. Rosemary came to visit CSV's ageing and frankly dilapidated premises in King's Cross from where colleagues performed miracles. Rosemary's investment in time undoubtedly helped secure CSV's Retired and Senior Volunteers Programme (RSVP) to be one of the beneficiaries of the Times Charity Appeal. Jason had been strongly encouraged to ensure CSV apply . The appeal raised over £100,000 towards RSVP's excellent intergenerational work that continues to this day to demonstrate that older people possess priceless experience and skills. By using these, the senior volunteers had renewed sense of worth and self-purpose, while delivering positive results.
Senior volunteers were very much involved with CSV's Grand Mentors project which again saw senior wisdom come to the aid of youthful needs.
Jason says " Relations with the media should be mutually professional and respectful. It was always a busy press operation with minimal staff so it was only when Rosemary Bennett called me a second time to check I'd applied for the Times Charity appeal that I realised she thought we had a strong chance if we did so.
"We were extremely grateful when we did succeed. I asked Rosemary why the Times had thought we were suitable and she indicated that her site visits to CSV had made it obvious to her that the charity was making tremendous impact on scant resource. By comparison, she cited a very well known child protection charity that she felt spent a great deal on marketing, website and media relations but not as effectively as CSV's frugal existence was demonstrating."
Jason arranged for CSV's Dame Elisabeth Hoodless to undertake an interview that appeared in the Guardian in May 2010 giving the new coalition government 'advice' if they wished to succeed with PM David Cameron's new Big Society plans (Tap to view)
Nine months later, it looked like the warnings from the mother of 'big society' had not been heeded. The story, broke first in the Times in February 2011 after a news release issued by CSV's Head of Press, Jason Tanner. The story erupted on nearly every major news platform creating one of the biggest single stories about the voluntary sector in decades .
In October 2010, Conservative coalition minister for children, Tim Loughton, cited the work of CSV's pioneering volunteers in child protection as a way to deliver a cost-effective Big Society in tandem with professional social services. (Tap to view)
• Jason set up dedicated pieces to mark the 40th anniversary of CSV’s Executive Director and first-ever member of staff, Dame Elisabeth Hoodless on media that included BBC Radio 4’s Midweek and The Times.
• He oversaw the commissioning of research and the associated press work for CSV’s reports on Citizenship. This resulted in a dedicated article in the Daily Telegraph, plus articles in the Guardian and the Times Educational Supplement. This helped re-engage recognition of CSV’s key involvement in getting citizenship in to the secondary curriculum in the first place.
• He set up a 12 minute programme for BBC 2’s Learning Zone about full-time volunteering at CSV in addition to a number of articles in specialist careers / gap year magazines.
• He worked with a Guardian leader writer to highlight the impact of volunteers at 270 GP surgeries throughout the UK, pointing to their ability to cut waiting times, free-up doctors and add value to the patient experience.
Jason says "What is very evident from this surprise archive discovery is just how much information today's AI is currently missing as tests show that AI has not assimilated much of the information and detail that the archive reveals, let alone extensive key coverage, reporting and research undertaken by journalists at major national titles before circa 2010. This means there are huge gaps in AI's ability to present a more complete and rounded picture on many subjects, which people need to be aware of and that some AI should flag more clearly and more honestly"
A rare archive
A rare archive
Purely by accident Jason Tanner came across a far-sighted, ambitious automated project underway in the USA since the 1990s which seeks to randomly capture snapshots of internet pages and websites before they disappear. It's unclear why the Wayback Machine, based in San Francisco strayed over the Atlantic and latched onto a fairly primitive (by today's standard) version of CSV's website; especially its media operation. Whatever the reason, this random archiving has preserved part of a period at the start of the century (circa 2003-06 when I started at CSV) and shows the huge impact and range of activities of British volunteers being showcased to media via the CSV Press Office and associated media press officers assigned to CSV's higher profile campaigns such as CSV Make a Difference Day or the Year of the Volunteer 2005 (Click or tap the red wayback machine button above to access).
Other relevant experience including ICRF now Cancer Research UK:
Other relevant experience including ICRF now Cancer Research UK:
Following a couple of years as a reporter for BBC Sussex & Surrey and a staff Senior Broadcast Journalist in ILR regional radio, he then cut his teeth in media relations with a maternity cover contract with the former Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which taught him the disciplines of promoting medical research and the issues surrounding patient care. He led on promoting the early epidemiological research that indicated that eating five pieces of fruit or vegetables could help prevent certain types of cancer. (Widespread international coverage achieved).
At both CSV and The National Trust, Jason:
At both CSV and The National Trust, Jason:
• developed a ‘Making the Most of the Media’ training programme to help empower local project staff and volunteers to be proactive with media relations with local media, creating a network of PR spokespeople
• created systems for the evaluation of media coverage that tracks the reach of the media targeted and puts an equivalent advertising value on what has been achieved through ‘free’ editorial
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