 Hi there, I'm Liz Carlisle, director of communications here at IED, the International Institute for Environment and Development, and we're based here in London and in Edinburgh. For me, knowing the importance of good communication is really essential, and I'm not just talking about products or outputs here, I'm talking about how to communicate. I mean, obviously, we all do this all of the time, but getting it right in a way that you can achieve your professional goals is something else. So I'm going to say a few words about strategic marketing communications from my perspective. At IED, we have a simple overarching goal in our communications team, and that is getting the right information to the right people at the right time. This sounds a simple enough goal, but it's surprisingly difficult unless you're consciously thinking about it all the time and planning your communications work carefully. So, let's unpick this a bit. What do we mean by the right information? Well, I think you need to be really clear why you're communicating. So, are you wanting to raise profile about your organisation or your project? Are you wanting to make information available or accessible? Or perhaps you're wanting to influence change? Obviously, in IED, we're wanting to influence policy change. Or perhaps you're wanting to mobilise a community or a group of people to get them behind your cause. So, it's clear right away that those are for very different communication needs, and we would employ very different communication strategies and require different information to execute that. So, the right people, what do we mean by that? Well, we communicate for many reasons, but often because we want something to happen next, we want people to take an action. So, the right people are those people you need to be informing or those people who need to take an action to further your cause. Or perhaps they're the people blocking your way for a lack of understanding and you need to inform them. Already, I think you can see that we have a variety of the right people. So, when is the right time? I think this is an area where we struggle the most. The right time is not when we are ready. The right time is when our chosen audience is ready. So, this means we have to know the external environment well. We have to know what our audience is thinking and what they're interested in, what will resonate with them, what kind of message will encourage them to take an action. When might they be listening? When is your message going to be heard because they're paying attention or it's relevant to them? In marketing language, we talk a lot about different strategies, push-pull strategies, or demand and supply, or building enabling environments. These might be things you've heard about, but they're all there to help think about the audience. So, in a nutshell, strategic communications is all about understanding your audience, really knowing who you're communicating with and why. It's all about knowing what is going on in the external environment, who's your competition and what are they saying. And it's all about putting things into context and helping people hear what you want them to hear. In IED, to help us, we have three simple objectives. And these are a constant reminder in developing our communications activity and helping deliver the impact that we want for IED's work. These three are, firstly, putting audiences first. Who are they? Where are they? And what are their interests? And anything more you can know about them. Secondly, developing content for impact. And that's tailoring outputs, creating content, and making that content creative, fit for purpose, and targeted at the right people. And thirdly, and still as importantly, enabling and developing best practice. So, we do that in our own team, as well as with and for others. We share what works and what doesn't and try and enhance skills and knowledge. In IED, we want to make change happen. And we believe that strategic communications, carefully planned and well executed, will really help us to support a louder, bolder voice and a relevant presence for us and our partners.