Mediakitbanner.png

There’s a pattern I keep running into: the projects that are deep inside of the transition, are usually the ones least set up with communication in mind. After all, they are working on the transition, not on the marketing of it. Usually it’s a team that has been working for years on the adoption of a new system, or implementing a new idea. Based in science, but still a proof of concept. Sometimes, already a minimum viable product.

And this is where those projects hit a wall: The people involved understand exactly why it matters. And yet, outside of their sector, almost nobody has heard of it.

This playbook is about what to do about that. It's written from the inside of one specific project (VISTools, a Belgian fisheries initiative), where I came in as a filmmaker to help with a “promotional” video. A year later, we ended up building a full media kit for the project from scratch. Nothing more, nothing less. The lessons below come from that process (the mistakes too). If you're working on a project that lives deep inside a transition (scientific, environmental, policy,…) and you're trying to figure out how to communicate it to people who don't already know why it matters, this is for you.

<aside>

TL:DR A playbook for science communicators, project leads, and anyone trying to get their project into the next room.

</aside>

❌ Where it (usually) goes wrong

Mediakitprocesspattern.png

Tell me if this flow sounds familiar:

  1. A project gets funded.
  2. The team gets to work.
  3. Months, even years, go by.
  4. The results slowly come in.
  5. The project or funding deadline gets close

And then, finally, someone asks: "So, what do we have that we can share?" or “Okay, who does the dissemination?”. What gets shared around then is mostly one of these: