Hear from the VP Comms at a national organization campaigning on the frontlines for conservation and climate change.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to lead the communications team for Canada’s largest international conservation organization?
In this episode of Ampersand, we have the pleasure of speaking with Nicole MacAdam, Vice President Communications at World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF-Canada). Nicole is an award-winning communications executive with a proven track record of professional excellence and a passion for innovative digital storytelling. She gives us the inside scoop on how WWF-Canada comes up with some of their most creative ideas — like their campaign to turn down the volume on underwater noise.
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email media@emdashagency.ca with any questions.
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Caitlin Kealey: Welcome to Ampersand, the podcast helping good people be heard and comms people be better. I'm Caitlin Kealey, the CEO of Emdash.
Megana Ramaswami: And I'm Megana Ramaswami, the Senior Strategist at Emdash.
Caitlin Kealey: So Megana, I was off and I heard that you've gotten the pleasure of talking to my new BFF. She may not know that she's my BFF, but she will be soon.
Uh, Nicole McAdam, who is the Vice President of Comms at the World Wildlife Fund Canada.
Megana Ramaswami: Absolutely. And you know what? I totally get why you want her to be your new BFF. She's very cool. She's very fun. And more than anything, this is a great episode for anybody interested in climate communications. She gets into the details of not only, you know, what she does, uh, on a day to day basis, but also how WWF Canada comes together to employ effective storytelling techniques to engage and educate their audience.
Climate communications, of course, historically, has had some challenges in trying to get the right information to people. So, this was a really cool look at how the sausage is made and, uh, how an organization is very effective at it.
Caitlin Kealey: Well, given that she was the former editor in chief of the Ottawa Citizen, I think she has an A++ on storytelling.
So, I can't wait to hear what she has to say. Let's get to it.
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Megana Ramaswami: So my name is Megana, I am a senior strategist with Emdash Agency and welcome to Ampersand. Uh, Nicole, do you want to take a minute or two to just introduce yourself?
Nicole MacAdam: Sure. Uh, my name is Nicole McAdam. Uh, I'm the Vice President of communications for the World Wildlife Fund Canada.
Megana Ramaswami: Awesome. Thank you so much for being here with us today.
Nicole MacAdam: It's my pleasure.
Megana Ramaswami: Fantastic. So we are going to start with an icebreaker question. Uh, it's something that we like to ask all of our guests. Um, do you want to share a memory from your first computer or early days on the internet?
Nicole MacAdam: Uh, sure. Well, uh, this is going to age me a bit, but, uh, my first computer was a Commodore 128, which was this, uh, massive clunky looking machine that sort of sat on my desk in my bedroom, um, Fun fact, uh, it was the last 8 bit home computer produced by Commodore, according to the internet.
Megana Ramaswami: Amazing.
Nicole MacAdam: I used it mostly for writing school assignments and playing games, but to be honest, I kind of preferred reading books at the time. So, uh, and, uh, it was far too big and heavy to take with me when I moved away to university, so I kind of upgraded. To a pretty simple word processor when I went to Western and then discovered the student newspaper, which had these amazing, those amazing old Macs that kind of looked like a, like a midsized Amazon box with the teeny, tiny little screens.
Yeah. So once I, once I, once I discovered the Mac, I kind of, uh, I never kind of looked back and, and I remember the early days of the internet being sort of really weird because, you know, you have this thing This sort of sense that it was going to be a big deal and it was going to change everything, but you couldn't really see how or why.
And I remember getting my first email account in university and thinking like, okay, now what? If I really want to talk to my friends, I'll just go back to the dorm. So, so yeah, so those are kind of some of my early memories.
Megana Ramaswami: That is amazing. A Commodore, they definitely don't make them like they used to.
It sounds like, It was your computer. Was it like in your room and your desk?
Nicole MacAdam: No, it was in my room and I bought it with like my own, my own money. Uh, my parents took me. So yeah, yeah.
Megana Ramaswami: That is very cool. So are you some kind of early adopter of tech? Is that something that we should know about you?
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah, I'd say definitely.
I do like to be kind of on top of a– I love all the gadgets. Um, my husband will say I love them a little bit too much for our pocketbook. But yeah, I definitely am kind of an early adapter. I had an early smartphone, uh, and. And I just love tech.
Megana Ramaswami: That is fantastic. Well, that was a fun way to get to know some early days.
Let's start with some other early days of yours. How did you get started in communications?
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah. So, I mean, uh, I was a journalist for about 25 years. Um, uh, worked for some really great organizations. Uh, I worked for the Globe and Mail for many years. Uh, I worked for Postmedia, um, as the editor of the Financial Post and then of the Ottawa Citizen.
Um, you know, I really Uh, I think when I, from a young age, I just really loved telling stories, love to write, um, and then kind of developed a love for editing, uh, throughout my career, uh, and some visual journalism as well. Um, but you know, the media is a tough industry and, uh, it's only gotten tougher. Uh, I watched a lot of colleagues kind of leave the profession, either by choice or through layoffs.
So, um, and the demands were becoming. Really difficult to navigate, you know, there were long hours, a lot of stress, um, it all kind of took a toll and after COVID I felt really burnt out and was looking for what my next opportunity, what life outside of journalism would look like. Um, I knew I wanted to do kind of mission driven work.
I really believe in the power of great storytelling to kind of create change. So when the opportunity came up to lead the communications team for WWF Canada, I sort of jumped at it. Um, and you know, I think what I've, what I've discovered in the past almost two years now is that a lot of the values that matter in journalism.
Accuracy, fairness, trust, credibility, all of that good stuff are just as important in a, in a comms job that, you know, your organization needs to be credible, it needs to kind of build and maintain high levels of trust, uh, in order for the work to be successful.
Megana Ramaswami: That's fantastic. I imagine that background in journalism must give you an excellent perspective on media relations.
Um, what do you see as a critical component of success for that particular, uh, area of strategy for a nonprofit organization?
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think success with media relations is really all about relationship building. Um, I think you have to get to know the reporters who are on kind of the relevant beats, what their interests are, their publications, um, you know, it's, it's sort of very similar to the way a reporter builds a beat.
You know, you take people out for coffee, you ask them a lot of questions, you engage in a lot of listening about their work, um, and, and try and figure out kind of how your work kind of fits into the sort of narrative. That they are, that they are kind of building. So, um, I tend to be pretty stingy and strategic about press releases.
Um, because I, I don't believe that many of them result in coverage. I know what happened to a lot of press releases when I was in the media. So, um, you know, I think press releases tend to be more for your organization's stakeholders than really for the media itself. Unless there's a big news event happening and you want to kind of get some reaction out quickly.
Um, but I think. A successful media strategy should be based on kind of customizing pitches for individual publications and reporters using the knowledge that you've gained from building those relationships. Um, and when news happens and, you know, that impacts your organization, I think it's never a bad idea to sort of just send an email to reporters highlighting kind of who your spokespeople are, maybe giving a hint.
Of how they might contribute to the dialogue around the kind of news organization and, and what your organization's stance might be. But I think that's kind of like, I think the key to media relations, especially as media, um, the number of reporters has started to shrink and the number of opportunities has started to shrink.
I think that kind of personalized, customized, um, type of strategy works a lot better than kind of the spray and gray.
Megana Ramaswami: That definitely makes sense. I mean, it clearly requires a decent amount of prep, especially more and more today. As you mentioned, you know, there's, uh, just fewer journalists and they have less time than, uh, than they used to.
So that makes a lot of sense. You know, obviously WWF Canada, you're part of a global organization with an exceptional reputation. Uh, you know, what makes you excited about doing communications on their behalf?
Nicole MacAdam: Oh, wow. Definitely the work, um, the issues and the people who are kind of doing the work at WWF.
Um, you know, I think, I think I said it in my, my interview for this role, you know, climate change and biodiversity loss are some of the biggest threats to humankind. And yet, for a lot of people, there's such a blasé attitude about it. You know, it seems to be something people want to kind of kick the can down the road and let it be some other generations problems.
But. We're sort of at the point now where you can really see the effects, right? Like floods, uh, wildfires, you know, the wild, recent wildfire in Jasper and thinking about bigger, more powerful storms, you know, so it's really exciting for me to be communicating in this space and sort of making these connections for people trying to kind of drive home the message that, you know, we can't continue to kick this can in the road.
Any further, the time is actually now to make change and we can make positive change that has kind of big impacts, um, in this space. So I think that's kind of, that's one of the things that I'm really excited about kind of doing work for WWF Canada. And then, I mean, the other thing is just the opportunity to work with these people who are so smart and so engaged and so passionate about the work.
And, and, uh, we just, we have such a wonderful team. And I've managed to meet people from the international organization and other NGOs in Canada who are just as committed to it as well. So it's really great to come to work with some. Seriously smart, seriously engaged people.
Megana Ramaswami: I want to touch on something that you just talked about, about basically the urgency of the issue.
And we know that in climate communications, there have been some, you know, sort of general issues, I think, in this sector, uh, in terms of reaching people, do you feel like people have become maybe less apathetic than they used to be? And maybe if you want to talk about your philosophy around climate communications and, and what's effective, that would be great.
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah, I think what's really important is giving people hope, um, and, and, and making sure that they know, like, for as dire as the sort of news stories are out there and some of the things that are going on in the world, um, it, you know, it is really important to send the message that it's not too late, that, you know, While we need to act now, we need to act, um, I think is really important when we, and I think that's something that we've sort of engaged in, in our kind of, um, irreversible campaign around our WWF sort of 10 year strategic plan, which has some really ambitious goals around how we can make kind of meaningful change and rebuild ecosystems, um, and protect the ecosystems that we currently have, but All of it is kind of built on this sort of underlying philosophy that, that there's still time that, you know, we can use nature to fight climate change, um, but we have to, we have to act now.
Megana Ramaswami: Absolutely. And we see the effects of that. I mean, we, we know up here in Canada, we're absolutely Um, you know, we are absolutely dealing with wildfire season, and it's had some really tragic consequences. And of course, there are other emergency situations that we're seeing, you know, more and more of across the country and around the world.
Um, I imagine that this will lend itself to a lot of crisis situations. So, how does WWF Canada handle crisis communications, especially when you're looking at, you know, what could be an either uncontrollable environmental crisis or a controversial issue?
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah, well, I mean, it's certainly, it's an all hands on deck kind of team effort.
Um, we, we sort of work hand in glove with our conservation experts to kind of think about messaging that kind of works both from a scientific perspective and also from a policy perspective, but also is engaging and, and, you know, gets people sort of interested. Um, For us, you know, sometimes, uh, especially when you think of an issue as kind of complicated, um, and nuanced as wildfire, like wildfires are actually a natural event, um, and they can be useful in some purposes, the problem is that we're having more of them, and they're more intense, and that is kind of driven by climate change.
So sometimes you have to kind of provide that necessary context and nuance around things that kind of get people really, uh, scared and get people lots of attention. So. Um, we also we have a lot of conversations about kind of, what are the outcomes that we want here? What are the kind of changes we want to see and then sort of have a vigorous debate usually on teams about the right words to make our point the words that are going to make our point in the most kind of nuanced way kind of possible.
That kind of the exact right words, I think, are really important. Um, and then, and then you talk about kind of who you're trying to talk to. Who's our main audience? Who are we speaking to? Are we trying to drive actions from our sponsors? Are we trying to get the attention of policy makers? Are we trying to get the attention of the media?
Um, and then my team will take kind of all of that input and then decide kind of how, what the words are and how best to kind of communicate. I can think sort of a recent example was when the, uh, the federal government released its, uh, national biodiversity strategy and action plan, or NBSAP, um, and also introduced the Nature Accountability Act and Parliament, you know, we started early that morning with the team's chat, kind of talking, first of all, processing all of that information that was coming from us, um, and then, you know, We talked about how these are really important steps towards fulfilling our international commitments and also upholding a rights based approach when it comes to Indigenous led conservation.
So, you know, the organization has been working behind the scenes for quite a while, trying to kind of influence the strategy, make sure that there were things in it, you know, that would be really meaningful. Um, and we felt pretty good about, about what kind of came out. It was a little less detailed, I think, than anybody expected.
But at the same time, we felt really positive about it. And so it was sort of how to frame, you know, the positive, how this was an important step, and how there was still kind of lots of work left to do.
Megana Ramaswami: That's a really interesting strategy. I mean, especially given that, you know, of course, we're in the age of misinformation.
You're trying to cut through. Obviously, your strategy is using positivity, you know, for us, you know, Emdash has been trying to help folks navigate, you know, crisis communications in this age of misinformation. The things that we found that worked for us are, you know, uh, trying to stress the importance of planning ahead and having a really deep bench that can come together and, you know, uh, get through some of these crisis– crises.
Um, but one question I had was, you know, when you talk about, uh, issues like, uh, Indigenous led conservation, do you guys work with, um, Indigenous experts to kind of put together maybe a plan that, that has more of that perspective when you're dealing with an issue that's so, um, You know, both specific and broad.
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our conservation staff are constantly engaging with the Indigenous communities that we partner with, um, and Indigenous communities who have an interest in all of the kind of, uh, areas in which we work, um, constantly kind of getting their perspective. I think it's important to kind of center that perspective and all of the communications that we do, particularly when it comes to kind of the big news events of the day.
Um, so yeah, so we're constantly kind of getting that input from the conservation people who kind of have. Hold those relationships and, and, um, and have that kind of, and have that kind of partnership with Indigenous communities.
Megana Ramaswami: That's fantastic. It's really lovely to hear how maybe internally you guys all work together to, to find the right sort of tone or beat.
And I know you talked about really classic, you know, communications processes, who are your audiences, what platforms are they on, that type of thing. Uh, I want to talk a little bit about the sort of creative side of it, you know, some effective strategies. Storytelling techniques. I know that WWF Canada is excellent at this, particularly in your visual content.
Um, what kinds of storytelling, storytelling techniques do you find, uh, helps you engage with your audiences?
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously the main focus for us is our digital communications. And we, we tend to create a lot of content around kind of our core issues. So making sure that we're kind of constantly, Uh, putting more information up in front of people, highlighting the projects and the partnerships that we have, um, highlighting the kind of positive and good work that we're doing, you know, and then sort of once we have something that we're happy with, we'll remix it for a bunch of different platforms.
So whether it's a social video or a longer form video, a blog post, newsletters, social media, just kind of making sure we're getting it out on all of those channels so that people can see it multiple different ways at multiple different times. Different times. Um, you know, one, one example I'm particularly proud of is our Underwater Noise public advocacy campaign.
We've been, uh, engaged with the feds on the issue of increasing or, or on the issue of the increasing amount of noise that our oceans for many years. And, you know, there's been a lot of talk about the strategy that the government's going to release, but it's been delayed. Right? So, but you know, but there's urgency here,
You know, with, with sort of big infrastructure projects coming online in places off the coast of B. C., for example, in Kitimat, and you've also kind of got the Trans Mountain Pipeline, you know, the amount of ships that are moving, you know, Through Canada's coast or off Canada's coast is really increasing and that has a big impact to marine Mammals and other species that live and communicate in these waters.
So we created a web page that uses sound which is great, it's this, it sounds that are not often heard it's like the clicks and whistles and vocalizations of whales and other marine animals that are used to like identify feeding grounds, uh, to mate, to avoid danger, and then we combine that with sort of maps and graphics and text to both educate people about the issue, but more importantly, to kind of spur action, which for us came in the form of a letter writing campaign, um, Uh, to both the ministers kind of involved with the strategy, but also local MPs, you know, saying that people don't want further delays, you know, we need to, we need to act.
So, um, and then you kind of layer into that a campaign that uses social media, earned media, we, um, we publish an op ed to kind of spread that message far and wide. And, and we've had some success, some success, you know, we've had more than 10, 000 letters written so far and, and we just really hope the government is listening.
Megana Ramaswami: Well, congratulations. That sounds incredible. Also a website that uses whale sounds that I, you know, that just makes me want to really be part of your ideation sessions. It's going to be a lot of fun.
Nicole MacAdam: It is a lot of fun. We have these brainstorming sessions where, you know, we get the whole team together, um, both the communications and marketing teams together, and they are wild, um, you know, and, and the idea is just like spit out as many ideas as possible in a short amount of time as possible, write them all down, and then we kind of synthesize them.
You know, combine some things that work, take things apart, maybe, uh, take a little bit of this and a little bit of that until you finally have a plan and a strategy that you're super happy with. And, and, uh, and that's the great thing about working with this team is everybody's very, very creative. And, and, you know, when you love something, we love the message behind something.
It's easy to do really great creative work.
Megana Ramaswami: I completely agree wholeheartedly. I think what you just described is, you know, often, uh, a lot of folks that work in communications, that's their, you know, their favorite part of the job. Uh, what would you say your favorite part of the gig is?
Nicole MacAdam: Oh, my, um, I, I think because every day is different every day is, um, there's lots of variety.
I loved that about my career in media as well is that, you know, you never know what you're going to get, you know, never know what you're waking up to and you get to work in the morning. Um, I love the diversity. Um, I love working with these really smart, passionate people. Um, and, and as I said, like, the issue is just, it's such an important, uh, issue, uh, for us.
But I think that's kind of what I love about my, my job the most.
Megana Ramaswami: It's amazing. And I hope you have maybe a little bit of advice for somebody who wants to excel in this field or maybe break into communications. They might be listening to you describe what you do with so much passion. What would be your one piece of advice for them?
Nicole MacAdam: Um, I mean, I would say Be a sponge. Never stop learning. Um, you know, communications changes so fast and in such unexpected ways. So it's, I think, really important to sort of stay on top of new developments and and You know, stay on top of the conversation. Understand what the conversation is and how it's moving.
Um, you know, like, for example, we've been talking a lot in the past year about how AI has the potential to really change what communicators do and how they do it. And of course, you know, it comes with a ton of caveats and, and huge kind of yellow flags, but I think the potential is also pretty exciting.
Um, and then, you know, I spend, spend some time watching what other people and organizations are doing. Stealing their ideas. Um, one, one of the benefits of working for a large international NGO is that, uh, is that there's a lot of people, there's a lot of ideas to steal from. So, uh, and then I think the best piece of advice is just to kind of figure out who you are, kind of what your values are and what you bring to the table and be able to kind of articulate that.
Um, and then you'll, you'll go a long way.
Megana Ramaswami: That's fantastic. I love that piece of advice. I think it was a lot that folks can take away from there. Um, so we're kind of at the end of our session here. So this is a phenomenal conversation and I feel like we learn a lot from, uh, from your experience in the industry.
Um, you know, maybe just to wrap things up, how can people learn more about your work?
Nicole MacAdam: Yeah. So, uh, WWF. ca is, um, is the best place to go. Um, Awesome information there about the work we do and, uh, and you can find us on social media as well. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. We love our Instagram. Um, so yeah, definitely check us out.
Megana Ramaswami: I also love Instagram, so that is great. I will definitely be doing that. Awesome. Thank you so much, Nicole.
Nicole MacAdam: Thank you. It was lovely talking with you.
Caitlin Kealey: Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ampersand. Thanks for joining us.
For more comms and design tips, sign up for our newsletter at emdashagency.ca and follow us on your favorite podcasting app so that you don't miss our next episode. Ampersand is hosted by Megana Ramaswami and me, Caitlin Kealey, and it's produced by Elio Peterson. This podcast is a project of Emdash, the small agency focused on big impact helping progressives be heard.