The Astrid Lindgren Company Engages Riot Communications for Pippi Longstocking PR Campaign in the UK

Riot Communications, the award-winning culture and entertainment agency, is thrilled to announce it will be working with The Astrid Lindgren Company to celebrate the life and works of the ground-breaking Swedish author, children’s rights campaigner and original Rebel Girl ahead of the 75th anniversary of Pippi Longstocking in 2020.

The Pippi books, first published in Sweden in 1945, have sold around 70 million copies in 70 languages and have inspired seven feature films and two TV series, as well as an infinite number of stage productions. Fans of the remarkable redhead range from Lady Gaga (pictured) to Amy Poehler, Lauren Child to Maggie O’Farrell, and ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus to Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki.

Working closely with Astrid Lindgren’s family, Riot’s campaign will celebrate Lindgren as a game-changing author, editor, campaigner and social commentator – along with her most famous creation, Pippi, as a thoroughly modern heroine – through a range of cultural and charity initiatives across publishing, stage and screen in the run up to the anniversary in 2020.

Olle Nyman, CEO at The Astrid Lindgren Company and grandson of Astrid Lindgren, comments:

“We’re very excited to work with Riot Communications to celebrate Astrid Lindgren and Pippi Longstocking in the UK. Riot has a great reputation and has shown impressive results in their work with other great literary properties, including the work of Philip Pullman and Meg Rosoff – both laureates of The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. We can’t wait for British audiences to rediscover the particular combination of wit, humanity, independence and flair that turned Astrid Lindgren and Pippi into icons both in Scandinavia and internationally.”

Preena Gadher, Managing Director, Riot Communications, adds:

“Astrid Lindgren was a true pioneer and her legacy is immense. She’s a great fit for Riot since championing women is in our DNA. I can’t wait to work with the team at The Astrid Lindgren Company and help raise awareness of her wonderful, kick-ass character Pippi Longstocking!”

#RIOTSKILLS: How To Make a Good First Impression

Strike a pose!

At Riot, we pride ourselves on being excellent communicators. We’ve won awards that stand testament to that, and clients who return again and again. However, we also know that success comes from constantly honing our skills – even when that means going back to basics. First impressions are critical to the work we do: from pitching to new clients to journalist meetings, winning the talent’s trust to networking with peers.

Over the past few years, there has been a focus on empowering professionals – especially women – when it comes to presenting skills and negotiation. TED Talks – such as those by social psychologist Amy Cuddy on body language, and comedian and coach Deborah Frances-White on charisma – are giving us the tools we need to create an impact on our audience, verbally and non-verbally. The science of first impressions is straightforward: an in-built vetting system in our primal brain means that we size people up within 30 seconds of meeting them. What’s often called gut instinct overrides most rational thought and, as with our ancestors, is based on both perceived threat and learnt experience. Think lion vs. prey on the Savannah, but in the boardroom.

We’ve taken the most salient points and turned them into a handy Riot 101 on how to make the best first impression. After all, that killer Cos jumpsuit isn’t going to do all the work for you…

T is for trust:
We judge people on how warm and trustworthy they seem: in fact, understanding someone’s intentions and perceived competency accounts for at least 80% of an overall first impression across all cultures. Your first job on meeting someone is to put them at an ease. Do you have mutual connections? Can you ask them a question about themselves? Can you align your body language to theirs, and ensure you are not giving off hostile non-verbal messages? Crossing arms is a real no-no, as is hiding your hands; maintaining an open posture, showing your palms and holding firm eye contact are all essentials here.

R is for respect:
Listen and be gracious. However experienced you are, you should always show respect for the time someone’s giving you. Whilst you should always be prepared ahead of a meeting, you should go into every interaction with an open mind and a willingness to listen to another’s agenda and concerns. Bulldozing might work for some, but generally it’s not the answer when it comes to building a long-term relationship. Show an instinct for harmony rather than appearing combative. It’s vital to be aware that your response (verbal and physical) can ramp up or deflate tricky situations: in a difficult negotiation, simple things like retaining an open posture and nodding your head to show you’re absorbing someone’s point (you can return to counter that point later if needs be) are more likely to help you resolve issues and reach the desired outcome.

I is for interest:
Show interest in the person you’re meeting – it may be a business meeting, but you’re also two human beings interacting. It’s good to engage in a little small talk: research has shown that just five minutes of chat before a negotiation increases the financial value created. Ask informed questions and encourage them to open up and share things about themselves. You can prepare for this by reading a LinkedIn profile, asking mutual connections about them and bringing up any shared interests you might have.

P is for personality:
No one likes a robot. Your personality and – ideally – a sense of humour will take you from a paint-by-numbers publicist to someone vital and worth listening to. Not full-on Siobhan Sharpe or Malcolm Tucker, but at least someone who has a something to say for themselves. You want to be memorable, and for the right reasons.

So there you have it: T.R.I.P.
If in doubt, channel Riot heroes Ellen de Generes or Oprah Winfrey. They are masters of non-verbal communication. From now on, we’ll be adopting Oprah’s expansive pose in all future negotiations.

Watch this space!

#RIOTSKILLS: How to Plan a Purposeful Team Away Day

Purposeful and beneficial team away days

‘We’re going to have a team away day’ is the sort of sentence usually met with universal groans from colleagues as they stare at the 5,000 emails and counting in their inbox and the To Do list running across ten pages. An entire day spent away from the desk can feel like a monumental waste of time (‘Remind me, how is shooting a paint ball at Gary from Accounts’ head contributing to our bottom line again?’).

But an away day done right, can have fundamental, long-lasting benefits to the development of an individual, team and business. They can meaningfully bring a team together, inspire honesty, allow for transparency, improve lines of communication, generate ideas and create solutions. We love an away day at Riot. We down tools for the day, put the out of office on and head out to an external venue where we can hunker down to get practical, get inspired and get fat on break-time brownies.

Riot’s 6 tips for a successful away day:

A clear purpose to the day is essential. Everyone needs to know exactly what the objective of the day is in advance. The agenda must reflect the purpose and not veer from it. The purpose of our most recent away day was to specifically focus on our new business strategy. The purpose of our next one will be skills consolidation – we’re all going on a negotiation skills course. Everyone in the company has inputted into the agenda of this course for maximum impact.

A realistic agenda carefully timed out in advance. The away day is an opportunity for the team not to be racing around feeling rushed, overwhelmed and deadline driven. The away day should create a sense of space and freedom for clear thinking and clear communication. Trying to fit too much in will leave everyone feeling harassed.

Set conscious intentions for the day. A powerful exercise to get everyone in the right frame of mind from the off is to ask everyone to share their intention for the day. What do they want to get out of the away day? What quality will aid them in that endeavour e.g. patience/openness/generosity? Lay out picture cards on the floor or pin them to the walls, random images from goldfish to rainbows, the Taj Mahal to a set of keys. Each person chooses a picture that represents their intention and shares it with the team. This picture is kept visible to them all day as a reminder. Come back to the intentions at the end of the day and ask everyone to reflect on how they achieved their intention.

Create a safe space for participation. A successful away day involves everyone feeling as though they made a valuable contribution and to do that were able to be honest, open and transparent. People need to feel safe to do this. A set of rules laid out at the beginning is a good idea and might include:

  1. reserve judgement
  2. no negative responses or behaviour
  3. every individual will have time and a platform to speak
  4. every individual’s contribution is valid
  5. ‘seek first to understand, then to be understood.’

Make the day fun, creative, unexpected. Remember the purpose of the day at all times, but within that bring the day alive with exercises, games, activities that challenge and excite. At Riot away days we’ve done everything from the spaghetti tower marshmallow challenge to a rock, paper, scissors championship to creating magazine cover stories. Each activity has fed into our higher purpose but has resulted in lots of laughs, chafed knuckles and tears of frustration. Not your average day in the office.

Invite feedback. Finally, always end the day with feedback from the team. A good old-fashioned bit of circle time is uniting and is a clear indication that you want to learn from your team.

Happy away day!