Download a pdf copy of the manifesto here.

Creative Unions believes unions should harness the power of good design, strategic communications and social media. Unions have improved the lives of hundreds of millions of working people around the world.

We are a new non-profit social venture aimed at strengthening trade union communications and design.

Creative Unions focuses on social media, effective copy-writing, campaign management and great design.

For too long, unions have been slow in taking up new techniques, new campaigning tools and improved standards.

Creative Unions sees its role in working with union officials across the globe in finding the movement’s best practice and showcasing that best practice.

Sustainability must also be at the forefront of unions’ communications, designs and campaigns. It is no longer acceptable to be unsustainable, use paper from old-growth-forests or consider campaign props as disposable. Sustainability must now be a core part of the union’s activities and culture.

Social Media

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool for unions to reach a new audience, and to communicate to existing members in a new way. The rules of social media (conversation, participation, openness and community) fit well with the union movement’s values, but like any tool must be used properly to be effective.

Creative Unions believes that social media must:

• Engage members, non-members and supporters in conversations: Tools such as Facebook and Twitter allow for instantaneous conversations with hundreds or even thousands of people at once.
• Give members ownership over the union: Members must be participants in the union’s communications, rather than just a passive audience. Unions need to let go of their communications and open them up to their members and supporters, and reach out to non-members. Unions websites must appear contemporary and be updated regularly.
• Be innovative and use best practice: Unions should aim to reach industry-standard benchmarks, and eschew amateur or te lowest common denominator approach. Twitter shouldn’t just be links to media releases, and YouTube videos must have high production values, rather than look like they were shot on a web-cam.

Writing

Content is king in the new environment, and unions must put as much thought and consideration into their copy as they do into campaign strategies or enterprise bargaining. This should be the case whether the copy is for a newsletter, leaflet, or email.

Creative Unions believes best practice campaign writing should:

• Consider the audience: Slogans and key messages intended for members often will not resonate with other key audiences for a union. Each piece of copy should be specifically written with its audience(s) in mind.
• Recognise different levels of language proficiency: Everyone has different levels of education, reading ability and vocabulary. Union publications especially should ensure that they can be read by as many people as possible. The Rules of Plain English should be applied to every piece of copy.
• Simplify complex information: Many union publications have large slabs of text. Unions should reduce the number of words to the minimum – this is especially the case for writing for the Internet.

Campaigns

Effective campaigns are ones that are carefully planned and follow a clear, agreed upon strategy from the outset. Planning is essential to the success of union campaigns. Campaign strategies should have unambiguous milestones and goals. Union leaders must communicate the strategy to organisers, members and supporters.

Campaigns must also be grounded in qualitative and quantitative research; the days of relying on “gut feelings” is over.

Design

The connection between effective, professional design and effective communications is clear and long established. Unfortunately, many unions continue to utilise amateur design. An attitude that “giving organisers a day of training with Photoshop” is acceptable is widespread in the union movement. Poor standards of design reduce the appearance of professionalism of unions, especially when most employers and businesses use professional designers.

Creative Unions believes that professional design for unions must:

• Recognise that design is a specialist skill in its own right: unions should separate the important work of designing materials from other communications work, so that the media officer is not also designing the union’s newsletter. Design should be considered as the profession it is.
• Use industry-standard best practice principles: members and non-members are exposed to exceptional design every day, both from the private sector, and also other non-profit groups (such as human rights or environment groups). Unions need to match or exceed at least the non-profit sector standards of design.
• Understand how design works: Design is conceptual, and should be based on solid, researched ideas. It should use accepted design principles, and stay up to date with the latest industry research, in order to convey the union’s message.