The Childline “for ME” app was designed by four teenagers and offers one-to-one counselling, problem pages and a private locker with a daily mood tracker and a personal journal. Developed in partnership with Barclays.

Our Debut Digital Dunk !

Hello and Welcome to the first edition of The Digital Dunk!

Thank you for popping by. We’re glad you’re here. That means you’re curious like us.

Curiosity is one of the main things that anybody working in digital needs in our ever-changing ‘VUCA’ world. Digital innovation continues to rapidly change and reshape the professional and personal lives and behaviour of almost everybody in the UK. How to keep up ?

At NSPCC Digital, we’re all hungry to learn, to listen, to test, to analyse, to ponder, to challenge, to adapt, to learn and to do the right things well so we can help more children and young people.

Our Pantosaurus game (iOS and Android) has been downloaded thousands of times and helps adults have tough protection conversations with young children

We never forget that the young people our services help have grown up in a digital-only world. We worry and challenge ourselves about whether we’re learning and transforming quickly enough to reflect their perspective and needs. So every day, we try to improve what we do as individuals and as a team to help and support the wider organisation.

A valued part of our learning is from our charity digital peers. Thank You. Through benchmarking, case studies, events, meetups, coffee chats and reading we hear the experiences of others which help us reflect upon our own situations. In this spirit, we thought it might be helpful to share our own journeys, reflections and experiences with you here as The Digital Dunk.

You’ll read about what we’re up to, our learnings, our views, our observations, what went well and what could have gone better — and through your comments and feedback, we’ll start conversations and collaborations.

As Head of Digital, I get the opening slot which is great as I’m really proud of the digital team here at NSPCC and Childline and the excellent work we do every day. As a big, complex national charity we know we are fortunate to be well resourced digitally, and this means we cover a lot of ground across a wide range of digital and content marketing, data and analytics, production and development, social media and content. We work across the whole organisation on every type of campaign. It’s never dull :)

We have built a super-talented, vibrant, diverse, curious, passionate digital team - and on The Digital Dunk you’ll hear a variety of voices, perspectives and experiences from our revolving mix of digital team columnists.

The Digital Dunk is co-created and co-curated. We aim to publish a blog each week. Follow us here and subscribe to our newsletter. We’ll also post about things we read, like and learn from on our Twitter account : so follow us there too. And please comment, feedback and share.

I’ve got this far without explaining why The Digital Dunk ? Well, the truth is it was the most popular choice from a team-sourced brainstorm of contenders.

And it has two meanings :-

1. Like a biscuit dunk, we invite you to make a cuppa and spare a few minutes dipping into our posts and engaging with us
   [our cake, sweet and biscuit game is strong here at NSPCC towers]

2. Like a basketball slam dunk, we hope to share insights, knowledge and experiences that now and again will provide you with a moment of clarity and inspiration

So let’s briefly introduce our team columnists who you’ll hear from in coming weeks and months with three random factoids…..

James Barker — Associate Head of Digital Engagement
* Karaoke song: Holding out for a hero
* Favourite thing in digital: The amount of data you can get from your campaigns on how users have interacted with your content.
* Favourite/best digital campaign you’ve seen recently: RNLI Float to live.

Meredith Berman — Senior Digital Marketing Officer
* Proudest achievement at NSPCC: Being the #1 buyer from the shop
* Favourite thing in digital: Chatbots
* Which emerging technology will have taken over a lives in two years?: Augmented reality

RC — Senior Digital Content Producer
* Proudest achievement at the NSPCC: Working on the redevelopment of the website while on secondment.
* My irrational fear: Death by sinkhole.
* Favourite thing about digital: Using images and words to share our message effectively

Louise Corden — Lead Digital Producer
* I won’t shut up about: Chatbots & Alexa skills.
* Favourite thing in digital: Constant innovation
* Which emerging technologies will have taken over our lives in two years?:
AI & voice

Clive Gardiner — Head of Digital
* Karaoke song:
I used to sing only Phil Collins songs….but take a look at me now :)
* Favourite recent digital campaign: ‘Nothing Beats a Londoner’ by Nike
* Which emerging technology will have taken over our lives in two years?: VoiceTech

Holly Hawkins — Digital Marketing Officer
*My simple pleasures: Playing with dogs.
*My happy place: Anywhere with a dog.
*Irrational fear: Becoming allergic to dogs.

Declan Henesy — Digital Content Officer
* One life goal of mine: Write a book.
* Next/dream travel destination: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan.
* I won’t shut up about: Food.

Stromi Lof — Digital Producer
* One life goal of mine: Opening a rum bar.
* I won’t shut up about: Blockchain and how it will change everything.
* Favourite digital campaign you’ve seen recently: Not new but I loved the series of Spotify ads on how users use their data.

Zarqa Mukadam — Digital Analyst
* Proudest achievement at NSPCC: Achieving an award for making data easy to understand in the first six months of starting my role.
* One life goal of mine: To help bridge the digital gap for those who have little digital knowledge.
* I won’t shut up about: Excel — it’s such a simple (to some) but effective tool.

Sam Thompson — Senior Digital Fundraiser
* Proudest achievement at NSPCC: The successful development and launch of our new online donation platform
* One life goal of mine: Run a Marathon
* Which emerging technology will have taken over a lives in two years?:
Digital home devices on a mass scale

Prue Watson — Social Media Manager
* Next/dream travel destination: Japan
* Favourite thing in digital: Watching how people react to your work and the speed at which they do that, and being able to adapt what you’re doing to their response
* Favourite digital campaign you’ve seen recently: While I’m not really a fan of the chain and some of their practices, the way KFC responded to the chicken shortage was brilliant. Clear, funny and a lesson in how to do crisis comms on social well. Plus, the fact they follow 11 herbs and spices is genius.

Gavin Williams — Senior Digital Business Partner
* Dream travel destination: Iran, Georgia or Armenia. I’d also love to go to India again.
* Favourite thing in digital: Digital storytelling that really speaks to users.
* Best digital campaign you’ve seen recently: Not exactly a campaign, but Monzo is great because of its content, IA and user friendliness.

Marnie Winter-Burke — Senior Digital Communications Officer
* Proudest achievement at NSPCC: Winning the Childhood Champions Award this year for my voluntary work as a Childline counsellor and spokesperson for the NSPCC
* Favourite/best digital campaign you’ve seen recently: The recent CALM Campaign
* What’s your favourite digital platform: Instagram

About The Author
Clive Gardiner is Head of Digital at NSPCC & Childline and a Trustee at Charity Comms. Feel free to connect on Twitter, Medium and LinkedIn.