MD2756 GLA Marketing Budget 2021-22

1.1 The GLA has a duty to keep Londoners informed about and engaged in the work of the Mayor and the London Assembly. This includes making Londoners aware of the Mayor’s formal responsibilities so that they may respond to statutory consultations or attend statutory events, such as People’s Question Time with the Mayor and the London Assembly. It also includes making Londoners aware of wider opportunities that stem from the Mayor’s work, including cultural events, programmes and services across the capital.

1.2 In addition to this, as part of the ongoing COVID-19 response and in line with the future need around recovery, it has become vital for the GLA to deliver critical communications to Londoners in response to pressing needs arising from pandemic. This also includes high-priority vaccine communications. The insights from the first wave of the pandemic demonstrate that the centralised marketing budget played a crucial role in delivering a huge volume of communications relating to COVID-19, including: the delivery of crucial health guidance; the translation of COVID-19 messages into priority languages; mental health and domestic abuse support; small business support; and more. COVID-19 has significantly increased the need for adaptive communications campaigns at the GLA, with the centralised budget supporting the ability to dynamically react to the situation and ensure delivery of these critical communications to Londoners in line with reactive needs of the external environment.

1.3 The centralised marketing budget is used to promote the policies, programmes, events and statutory activities of the Mayor of London and London Assembly, enabling Londoners to better understand and engage with the work of City Hall. In addition to this core work, the need to align communications activity to the pandemic recovery priorities, alongside new programmes focused on that recovery, will also drive new and additional campaign activity that will need to be supported by the central marketing budget. This covers a broad spectrum of marketing and communications related activity, including strategy, research, creative services, advertising, digital, print and production, content production and tools and services required to deliver the Marketing Campaigns and Digital Communications teams’ work.

1.4 This includes, but is not limited to the following:

• media planning and buying, including print and digital advertising, social media and paid search;

• printing, distribution and production costs associated with utilising TfL advertising space;

• media agency strategy and auditing fees;

• user research and testing (qualitative and quantitative research);

• content production including a range of creative and digital assets, such as social media content;

• video and photography, including production tools, filming and editing services, and live streaming;

• email marketing, including strategy, tools and assets;

• creative agency and creative freelance requirements; and

• strategic work to maximise the impact of marketing campaigns and digital communications.

1.5 The GLA’s Marketing, Creative and Digital teams are collectively responsible for communicating and engaging with Londoners about the work and priorities of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly, in addition to the delivery of all integrated communications on priority public health issues resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The teams work alongside all departments in the organisation that require marketing and public communications support. They collaboratively provide a strategic consultation service as well as campaign management as required. The teams also work closely with TfL and other functional bodies on significant campaigns to maximise impact and ensure value for money.

1.6 The decision as to whether to seek external sponsorship for a specific campaign or campaign activities will be made by the Assistant Director, External Relations in consultation with the Mayoral Director for External and International Affairs. This will be determined based on campaign or project objectives.

1.7 Since its introduction in 2017, the centralised marketing, planning, and budgeting process has enabled the Marketing and Digital Communications teams to work more strategically, avoid duplication across the GLA, communicate with greater impact, and deliver better integrated campaigns that promote and engage Londoners in the work of the Mayor of London and London Assembly.

2.1 A centralised marketing budget has proven successful and as such the GLA would like to continue this way of working. Objectives and benefits of the centralised marketing budget include:

• strategic annual planning and a coordinated and holistic view of how the GLA communicates to Londoners;

• full accountability and transparency over spend on marketing communications, digital communications and engagement campaigns;

• better value for money for Londoners, for example, visibility of annual budgets has helped to achieve cost savings;

• more efficient and effective use of the GLA’s gifted ‘on-system’ inventory from TfL — approx. value £2 million per annum;

• more concise budget control, enabling GLA Marketing and Digital Communications teams to work with an agile approach and respond quickly to external factors and changing priorities; and

• greater efficiency within the finance and procurement processes.

2.2 Where considered appropriate by the Assistant Director, External Relations in consultation with the Mayoral Director for External and International Affairs, external sponsorship for a campaign or campaign activities will be sought to complement GLA resources and complement the campaign activity. The GLA will follow the Contracts and Funding Code and Sponsorship policy to ensure that it acts in a fair and open manner, giving a wide range of organisations access to sponsorship activities. This additional income however cannot be guaranteed.

3.1 Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as a public authority the Mayor is subject to a public sector equality duty and must have ‘due regard’ to the need to (i) eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation; (ii) to advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not; and (iii) foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. The duty involves having appropriate regard to these matters as they apply in the circumstances, including having regard to the need to: remove or minimise any disadvantage suffered by those who share, or is connected to, a protected characteristic; take steps to meet the different needs of such people; encourage them to participate in public life or in any other activity where their participation is disproportionately low. This can involve treating people with a protected characteristic more favourably than those without a protected characteristic. Relevant protected characteristics under section 149 of the Equality Act are age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

3.2 The development of all GLA marketing campaigns includes consideration of their target audiences. In every case, materials are assessed to ensure they are fully accessible. The GLA will ensure that marketing materials reflect the diversity of London’s population. Staff are trained to recognise and compensate for their own unconscious bias, and communications are governed by brand guidelines that require us to show a truly representative London – reflecting the city’s diversity. The guidelines also ensure that messages are simple and easy to understand with no jargon ensuring that our campaigns are accessible. Our owned channels are also fully compliant with best practice on accessibility.

a) Key risks and issues

4.1 The GLA’s centralised marketing, planning and budgeting process, introduced in 2017-18, has led to significant improvements in the GLA’s marketing and digital communications function. This includes working more strategically, efficiently and with agility, enabling the Marketing Campaigns and Digital Communications team to respond quickly to external events and changing priorities.

4.2 Key benefits are:

• streamlined messaging, ensuring we are not communicating to the same audience in an uncoordinated way. Rather than communicating with the same (highly engaged) audience, this approach enables us to reach a greater breadth of Londoners, ensuring different audiences can engage with messages most relevant to them. This is particularly important within the lens of public health messaging, to ensure the most vulnerable audiences are engaged with lifesaving information to avoid further disproportionate impact resulting from the pandemic, in addition to the need to effectively deliver recovery programmes, ensuring diverse audiences are reached and engaged with, to deliver holistic success;

• improved digital communications to ensure we are reaching Londoners effectively online with appropriate content;

• maximising the effectiveness of the marketing and digital resources to ensure we respond quickly to external factors and changing priorities; and

• delivering better value for money for Londoners – for example annual licences for tools, such as Shorthand (brings visually striking and compelling stories to Londoners online) as well as paid search strategies for London.gov.uk.

4.3 The GLA’s marketing campaigns and digital communications function plans and delivers large scale, campaigns across a wide range of policy areas for example rough sleeping and air quality. It also plays an important role in more reactive communications responding to external events and developments for example in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit.

4.4 The proven success of this approach thus far will be at risk if the centralised marketing budget is not approved and seeking other alternatives would reduce efficiency. A smaller budget or budget devolved to other departments across the GLA would mean less impactful campaigns for Londoners and would have a detrimental effect on the ways of working to deliver these campaigns and activities.

b) Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

4.5 This work is linked directly to the GLA’s core business objectives to:

• increase awareness of the work the Mayor, the London Assembly and the GLA are doing on behalf of Londoners;

• increase understanding, engagement and participation of Londoners in key projects, events and campaigns; and

• increase Londoners’ opportunities to access and influence London government.

c) Impact assessments and consultations

4.6 The GLA will ensure services are procured competitively and sponsorship activities are managed in a fair and open manner in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code and Sponsorship policy. Officers consistently aim to secure value for money and make efficient use of funds.

4.7 The centralised marketing budget will be closely managed and monitored to ensure effective and appropriate use of GLA resources. It is not considered necessary or appropriate to consult any other bodies on this proposed decision before it is submitted for approval.

5.1 This decision requests approval of expenditure over the financial year 2021-22 of £700,000 to effectively deliver marketing and engagement campaigns for the GLA. The expenditure will be funded from the 2021-22 budget allocation. The budget is held within the External Relations unit (Strategy and Communications directorate), who will be responsible for the delivery of the GLA marketing campaigns and the associated expenditure during the 2021-22 financial year.

5.2 It should be noted, while it is intended that any sponsorship income secured for specific campaigns will be utilised in supplementing GLA resources, officers will look to make efficiencies to reduce the GLA contribution to campaign costs (wherever possible).

6.1 Sections 1, 2 and 4 of this report indicate that the decisions requested of the Mayor concern the exercise of the GLA’s general powers, falling within the GLA’s statutory powers to do such things considered to further or which are facilitative of, conducive or incidental to the promotion of economic development and wealth creation, social development or the promotion of the improvement of the environment in Greater London; and in formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the Authority’s related statutory duties to:

• pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people;

• consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom; and

• consult with any appropriate bodies.

6.2 In taking the decisions requested, the Mayor must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010 and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the Mayor should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report.

6.3 The Mayor may, under section 38 of the Act, delegate the exercise of the GLA’s functions to the Assistant Director, External Relations, in consultation with the Mayoral Director, External and International Affairs.

6.4 The GLA may seek sponsorship, and charge third parties for discretionary services under section 93 of the Local Government Act 2003 provided that the charges levied do not exceed the costs of provision. If the delegation proposed in this MD be approved, the seeking, receipt and use of sponsorship may be approved by the Assistant Director, External Relations. Sponsorship arrangements entered into by the GLA must be in accordance with its Sponsorship Policy.

6.5 Should the Mayor be minded to make the decisions sought officers must ensure that:

• any services and supplies required for the effective marketing communications, digital communications and engagement campaigns for the GLA are procured by TfL Commercial and in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code;

• the GLA and service providers/suppliers enter into and execute contracts for the provision of the same before the commencement of such services and supplies; and

• no reliance is placed upon sponsorship income before a legally binding commitment is secured from the sponsor.