Blue Light Comms Hub
Free support for police and fire & rescue communicators and council campaign partners.
Blue Light Explainer – What a CAN campaign looks like for your work
Not sure how a paid media campaign set-up works in practice? In this 5-minute explainer, James Morton from Turn the Page and John-Paul Danon from CAN break it down.
They explain how handing over your campaign to CAN saves you time and saves you wasting budget – plus the insight, planning, tech, delivery and reporting involved.
And how you will be able to report back internally on the impact of your campaign on service outcomes.
Any questions? Book to chat with John-Paul about your current or forthcoming campaign, or email him: jp@can-digital.net
Latest webinar: Saving lives this spring & summer - communicating water safety
As the temperatures start to creep up, thoughts turn to having fun outdoors. For young people in particular, the draw of the water is always strong but also where danger starts.
If someone gets into trouble in the sea, a river or reservoir, the fast actions of bystanders become critical. But they must be the right actions and not those that increase danger for themselves and others.
The “Phone Float Throw” campaign is new for 2026 from the National Water Safety Forum’s Respect the Water brand. It provides a simple, instinctive 1-2-3 to educate on the right behaviours.
On this webinar – presented by CAN’s Collaboration Director John-Paul Danon – we heard from Georgie Beardmore, National Water Safety Forum Marketing and Communications Specialist from RoSPA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) on the creation of the campaign in partnership with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) and the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC).
Points covered in this webinar include:
- How the understandability of campaign messages and creative concepts was thoroughly tested with focus groups.
- The idea behind using the “life ring” symbol for Phone-Float-Throw and how organisations can use campaign assets to help spread the safety messages in their own locality.
- How CAN will be helping RoSPA to amplify these important messages throughout the spring and summer months across online channels – following a successful pilot in 2025.
- Different tactics to use for amplification including contextual targeting to people who are regularly by open water, like anglers or runners, and using the campaign assets on public sector owned media like out-of-home poster sites by water, websites for local councils, tourism and transport, and in email newsletters.
- The importance of tailoring campaign assets to your locality where possible to avoid algorithms downgrading the campaign from overuse of the standard versions.
- A digital game currently being developed to help promote Phone Float Throw.
Find out how your organisation can support and be involved in the campaign, which launches on 8 April, by emailing:
Georgie Beardmore: gbeardmore@rospa.com
John-Paul Danon: jp@can-digital.net
Previous webinars
Webinar 8: How to Overcome Barriers to Building Resilience
What are the barriers to resilience locally and how can you help overcome them as an individual and as part of your organisation?
This Blue Light Comms Hub looked at resilience from three distinct perspectives that will each help you better plan and deliver these communications: behavioural science, crisis comms and storytelling. This session is especially valuable for Local Resilience Forum Communications partners.
Hosted by Martin Metcalfe, Blue Light Comms Hub lead and previously a serving police officer.
Watch the webinar recording to hear from:
Amanda Coleman, Fellow of CIPR and PRCA, is a crisis communication specialist, director and founder of Amanda Coleman Communication Ltd.
Amanda looked at understanding risk and planning for it and the consequences of not doing so. She also considered how to convince senior leaders to invest in building resilience – by demonstrating through real examples what happens when communication is not prioritised in this space and making clear the challenges ahead, including the Hillsborough Law.
Dominic Ridley-Moy, ChartPR, FCIPR, Dip CIPR, behaviour change specialist and founder of Behaviour Change Network.
Took us through the eight main behaviours people exhibit in a crisis and the ways in which you can plan communications in advance to help overcome these barriers including emotions and freezing getting in the way of decision-making, the tendency to follow others, and confirmation bias.
James Morton, creator of Turn the Page, a story-led comms and training agency. and former fire service comms lead.
Explained how messaging needs to be relatable to the people in your communities and how to achieve this through authentic storytelling that gives resilience information context and meaning. Much of what we have on our Local Resilience Forum websites and in our social media content doesn’t inspire us to read and remember it.
Webinar 7: Battery fires – how to reduce risk with your comms
Battery fires in the UK have surged. Last year, a 71% leap in fires in bin lorries and waste sites caused by batteries was reported by the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC).
The cause is a steep rise in the number of portable electrical items containing lithium-ion batteries – like mobile phones – which pose significant fire risk if they are binned instead of being recycled.
E-bikes and e-scooters are also said to account for more than a quarter of lithium-ion battery fires last year, according to insurer QBE, with incidents doubling between 2022 and 2024.
This is a challenge for both fire services and waste and recycling teams.
In this webinar, we heard insight into the challenges and communication approaches that can mitigate risks and promote safe behaviours.
This edited highlights video from the webinar features:
Dominic Ridley-Moy, founder of the Behaviour Change Network, outlined how we can take a behavioural approach to reducing battery fires by planning using the COM-B model.
John-Paul Danon, Collaboration Director at CAN, presented the latest ideas on how to target audiences most likely to throw away products with lithium-ion batteries with messages on how to do it safely.
James Morton, founder of Turn the Page, a former fire service comms lead, who described the #ChargeSafe campaign run by London Fire Brigade and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Webinar 1: Flood Alert – Communicating Preparedness
We know flooding is happening more frequently than ever before. And not just in places on the coast or on rivers. A heavy downpour anywhere could put homes and businesses at risk from flood damage.
Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFAs) and their blue light partners are under pressure to maintain a high level of preparedness.
In this webinar we explored how smarter communications with one trusted voice can ensure our residents and businesses are on the front foot, with the best chance of a quick recovery if flooding happens to them.
Featuring:
Jack Grasby, Senior Communications Manager, Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service and current Chair of FirePRO, which represents communicators in fire services – who discussed his team’s response to Storm Babet and the lessons learned.
Graeme Davidson, Business Development Manager, Letterbox – who demonstrated tech to specifically reach those still not online with pinpoint targeted direct mail.
James Morton, Founder of communications consultancy Turn the Page and former Chair of FirePRO – who provided a framework for “ever ready” flooding comms.
John-Paul Danon, Collaboration Partner at CAN – who discussed how to reach at-risk vs other audiences with smart use of low-cost online channels.
Webinar 2: Blue Light Recruitment – Challenges and Solutions
Getting quality applicants who are the right fit for your vacant job roles seems trickier than ever these days.
Are you always looking in the same old places?
Then you’ll be getting the same old results.
This webinar looked at the recruitment challenges faced by public sector organisations, with an emphasis on fresh solutions that have been working well recently for blue light services.
Featuring:
Tony Harding of Momentum SPK showed how using an “MOT” to review recruitment marketing and processes can help you make the best use of budget and ensure better quality of hire.
Leanne Hughes, Lead for Scotland, CAN and Corrine McConnachie, Communications Project Lead, Police Scotland took the recruitment journey forward, using a current Police Scotland campaign to explore the channels, tactics and end-to-end measurement that works best for public sector recruitment.
John-Paul Danon, Collaborations Director, CAN rounded up the session by expanding on the key takeaways: candidate user experience, utilising the most appropriate and inclusive channels for job ads, reducing cost per quality application and “doing nothing without data”.
Webinar 3: Abuse in the Home – Identify Behaviours and Give Support
There isn’t an environment more challenging to a comms professional than domestic abuse. Violence against women and girls, CSE and coercive behaviour of all kinds happens behind closed doors where support isn’t easy to access.
This webinar explored campaign examples where police and local authority teams have come up with innovative solutions.
Here is a brief recap of what we covered.
Sarah Archer, Communications Account Manager, Surrey County Council talked about the campaigns she has been involved with over the past couple of years around coercive control.
She worked with the Community Safety Team, commissioning surveys on residents’ experiences and how confident they feel to intervene to help others.
The eventual campaign used quizzes to educate people on the language around domestic abuse.
More than 60% of respondents felt more confident about helping in these situations once they’d had feedback from the quiz.
John-Paul Danon, Collaboration Director, CAN talked about the sort of insight-gathering that can help build campaigns on domestic abuse. The social listening that will tell you what local people are talking about, and which voices are influential. The search insight that will tell you what is and isn’t on people’s minds locally and the language they use to talk about things.
Webinar 4:
Beyond Another Meta Ad – An Intro to Programmatic Advertising
You need to reach a certain audience online. You stick up a Facebook ad for a few days. Job done, right?
Programmatic advertising reaches your audiences on the websites they’re visiting. The social channels they’re scrolling, searches they’re making, apps they’re using.
It pinpoints the right people, at scale, nudging behaviour and achieving results.
If you’re tired of posting yet another Meta ad and seeing little impact, then this is the webinar for you. Hosted by James Morton of creative agency Turn the Page.
CAN’s Customer Success Manager, Allan Watson, explained what programmatic advertising is, how it works and the benefits of using it in your comms.
He demonstrated how the aims of your campaign can be translated into optimised outcomes through ads targeted to your audience demographics, interests and geolocations on a range of channels including websites, apps, social media and video.
As a bonus on this webinar, Derbyshire Police Youth Engagement Officer, Julie Berry, introduced us to the “Shattered” board game.
This is used to open up discussions around knife crime in schools and has been successful in giving young people more confidence about many of the issues.
The board game is part of a session available to all key stages. A scenario is played to the class and then each student gets their own character through which they will make decisions going forward.
Shattered is a resource available to all police forces free and training will be provided.
If you would like to use the resources or want further information:
Webinar 5: Is it you? Targeting abuse perpetrators online
Ever considered making your target audience for VAWG campaigns the abuse perpetrators?
New online techniques mean we can now reach individuals to encourage self-awareness and seek help voluntarily.
It’s a topic explored in this webinar hosted by former police officer and cyber security expert Martin Metcalfe. We heard from:
Stuart White, Digital Forensic Operations Manager from CCL Solutions, the digital forensics and cyber security specialists.
He presented an overview of how forensics works in cases of suspected online abuse – from receiving a seized computer or phone, through to identifying saved and deleted indecent images, and then capturing, securing and analysing digital evidence.
Astonishingly, CCL deal with around 200 billion images and videos a year. Stuart also discussed both the positive and negative effects that AI is having in this space.
Email Stuart: stuart.white@cclsolutionsgroup.com
Karima Rahman, Communications Manager for domestic abuse charity Respect spoke about why perpetrator intervention is important to include in all work around domestic abuse.
Karima said that in campaigns we must emphasise that it is a choice to abuse – and to stop. There can be factors making it more likely, but they are not reasons nor excuses.
Intensive behaviour change work over a long period can help perpetrators out of what they’re doing. Partnering with Respect on campaigns can help organisations amplify how perpetrators can get support.
Email Karima: Karima.Rahman@respect.org.uk
John-Paul Danon, our Collaboration Director at CAN talked about how using online paid media can help provide perpetrators with a route out of abuse.
It can amplify what constitutes this behaviour and that help is available. By using programmatic (real-time bid) advertising, you don’t have to wait for perpetrators to seek help. Police, councils and other organisations can get messages in front of them wherever they are online.
Webinar 6: Effective Channels for Building Resilience in Communities
A short webinar in response to the Government’s Resilience Action Plan published in July 2025.
We explored how well prepared we are for adverse events. Could we do better?
And can we measure how resilient our preparedness was after the event?
As part of our Blue Light Communications Hub, we have researched multiple campaigns to identify the most effective channels and tactics for building resilience through communications.
We share these insights on this webinar, which is especially valuable for Local Resilience Forum Communications Teams.
Although not featured in this recording because the application is currently in development, Letterbox Distribution shared a new way to help bridge the digital divide by targeting postcodes with digital exclusion or reluctance issues (“digital dip zones”) with direct mail.
Letterbox is also developing a digital publishing platform that will enable tailoring of information to residents based on their unique household identifier.
We think this could have many useful applications for “single point of truth” information sites.
Hosted by James Morton, Founder of Turn the Page – the story-fuelled communications consultancy – and former Chair of FirePRO, which represents communicators in fire and rescue services.
Background to the Blue Light Comms Hub
The Blue Light Comms Hub is a free online community for police, fire and rescue, and ambulance communicators who want to get the best outcomes from their campaigns.
Local authority comms folk who work in partnership with blue light colleagues on themes like domestic abuse and preparing for local emergencies are also welcome to join and will be invited to relevant webinars.
The Blue Light Comms Hub Lead is former police officer Martin Metcalfe. It is delivered in partnership with Turn the Page.
Email Martin with ideas for future webinars.
