Catholics for Choice converted YMM’s attention-getting advertisement promoting condom use into Spanish to greet Pope Benedict XVI  in Madrid for the 2011 World Youth Day celebration. Despite attempts by the local authorities to ban the ads, hundreds of thousands of people saw them via hand outs, nightly projections on buildings throughout central Madrid, and thousands of “clings” and posters put up around the city. Madrid’s news media also gave more exposure to the “censored” ad.

To help create buzz about the campaign, Your Message Media worked with See3 Communications to create a lively, fast, fun video. You can view it here:

We also created a variety of palm cards and posters to promote the program, and have placed ads on YouTube, Google and Facebook, as well as in the food courts at local area malls. Our materials carry a QR (Quick Response) code that will allow a person with a Smartphone and a QR reader app to scan the code and be taken directly to the video.

In response to the U.S. House of Representatives’ recent vote to bar Planned Parenthood health centers from all federal funding for birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and other lifesaving care, thousands of New Yorkers rallied to voice a common message: women’s health must be protected.

Under contract with Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP), Your Message Media wrote and designed this trend-setting report profiling how three large school districts in northern, central and southern California successfully transitioned to widespread use of green cleaning products as a way to protect the health of students, faculty and staff.

The report, Breathing Easier, has become a critical tool in the nationwide campaign to spread the use of child-friendly cleaning products in schools everywhere.

Read the full report here.

The key to communications success is a comprehensive and methodical approach, beginning with a thorough needs assessment, proceeding with capacity building and skills training, and culminating with the execution of a strategic communications plan tailored to your organization’s needs. YMM’s Communications Capacity Plus is a customized six-step process designed to establish an organization’s sustainable communications capacity.

Step 1: Capacity Audit

The first step to establishing an effective communications plan is to conduct a comprehensive audit of an organization’s current communications capacity. You can’t plan or budget for what you need until you know exactly what you have – or don’t have.

We objectively identify an organization’s in-house communications skills and strengths, point out its weaknesses and deficiencies, and inform where it might be under- or over-committing staff and resources. One staff may be rich in verbal skills but lack quality writing and design. Another may be full of great scholars whose writing and speaking skills require editing and training in order to connect with non-academic audiences. A Communications Capacity Audit will help an organization maximize its communications strengths and minimize its weaknesses.

Step 2: Developing a Strategic Communications Plan

The day-to-day demands of running a nonprofit organization often make it impossible to devote the time necessary to develop and implement a long-term strategic communications plan. To not do this, however, increases the risk that even communications successes will not serve a strategic purpose in furthering an organization’s goals.

A good communications plan provides a focused blueprint for activities, helps set priorities, facilitates staff and board buy-in, and allows an organization to establish a proactive rather than merely reactive stance. This step of Communications Capacity Plus helps an organization create a communications plan that effectively links its policy and program goals with the right communications strategies and tools.

Step 3: Communications Staffing and Outside Support

Many organizations accept the need for a comprehensive communications plan but don’t have the personnel necessary to implement one. Simply put, the key factor in any organization’s communications capacity is having competent personnel responsible for the management and direction of communications work. While we recognize the importance of an organization building its own sustainable communications capacity, we also recognize where it makes sense for an organization to contract a task or set of tasks to an outside vendor with appropriate communications expertise.

Step 4: Communications and Spokesperson Training

Recently hired or designated communications staff often need help sharpening and expanding their communications skills. Even seasoned communicators can benefit from trainings that help them more tightly focus messages and improve prospects of achieving their program goals. In addition, new media channels require an entirely new set of skills to be mastered and used effectively.

Step 5: Implementation

Communications staff recruitment and training is essential, but organizations often need “real-time” support in order to successfully launch a strategic communications plan. Your Message Media provides ongoing consulting services to organizations that need them, including hands-on assistance working with the media and, where necessary, development of collateral materials in both traditional and digital channels.

Step 6: Evaluation and Refinement

Once your comprehensive communications plan is in place, the key to ensuring success is in regular, structured monitoring, evaluation and refinement of the program. We can help you set tangible, measurable goals and assist tracking your progress based on objective results gathered from both traditional and digital media channels. This includes tracking web, email and mobile performance, as well as the impact of your social networking initiatives. In addition, we can set up a regular process for soliciting feedback from your target audience. This on-going evaluation can help you make valuable mid-course improvements to your communications strategy and maximize the impact of your efforts.

Your Message Media produces breakthrough campaigns that help our clients build their constituencies, advocate their positions, educate policymakers and engage the public.

YMM’s experienced and innovative creative team tailors its work to meet the specific needs of each client and issue, resulting in educational, visually striking, persuasive and powerful materials that get the message across with maximum effectiveness.

Our staff  provides a complete range of professional copywriting and design solutions, including: branding * logos * stationery systems * websites * radio and television spots * press and briefing materials * print ads * online ads * billboards and transit ads * brochures * posters * banners * wallet cards * buttons * invitations * calendars * postcards * T-shirts * newsletters * and much more.

YMM has produced comprehensive, multi-faceted creative campaigns for Community Action to Fight Asthma, Planned Parenthood of New York City, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, Catholics for Choice, Regional Asthma Management and Prevention, Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program, MIC Women’s Health Services, Public Health Solutions, Amalgamated Transit Workers Union, Local 1555, Center for Health and Gender Equity, Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program, and many others.

Nobody doubts the severity of the fiscal crisis our state and local governments, and entities like AC Transit, face.  We’re still in the steepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, brought on by reckless lending of Big Banks, the historic excesses of Wall Street, and tax cuts for the rich which have left working people and their communities high and dry.

In other words, the salaries of AC Transit bus drivers and mechanics aren’t what got us here today. But we’re willing to do our share, just as we have before.

In 1992, at the request of the AC Transit District, front line workers accepted a two year wage freeze to meet another budget crisis.  In 2004, we saved the District up to $3 million by again freezing wages, this time in exchange for improvements to workers’ retirement benefits.

Although AC Transit is the third largest transportation agency in the Bay Area, our drivers and mechanics are fifth in terms of wages. This for a job interfacing with the public while driving enormous vehicles in some of the most congested areas, and most dangerous neighborhoods, in California.

Every three years we sit down and negotiate a new contract with our employer. Last week as we approached the June 30 deadline of our latest contract, negotiators for AC Transit declared that we’d reached an impasse and walked away from the table.

I personally have negotiated seven labor agreements over the past twelve years and have never seen anything like this.  District officers sent me an email with their “last, best and final offer” just nine minutes before the Board meeting called to vote on imposing this contract started.  Significantly, the contract they presented to us was much worse than the one they showed us when negotiations opened on April 1.  Our team remained at the negotiating table, ready to talk, right up until that meeting.

We are unwilling to end talks and waste months of tough – and expensive – negotiations.  That’s why last week we filed a legal motion seeking the help of a neutral arbitrator to get us over this hump.  In a startling development, AC Transit Counsel Tom Prescott dismissed the union’s request, suggesting instead that the union exercise its right to strike.

We think this is a reckless response. Rather than negotiate a contract with its drivers and mechanics, AC Transit seems to be using this historic fiscal challenge crisis to hold its riders hostage by attempting to provoke a strike rather than agree to neutral arbitration.

We, on the other hand, are willing to continue negotiating with the District and continue service to our riders.  We have asked the Alameda County Superior Court to expedite the hearing into our request for a neutral arbitrator to help us get over the finish line.

We’re almost there, after all.  Interim AC Transit Director Mary King has asked our members to give up 8% towards meeting the District’s budget needs. So far we have offered savings totaling 6% (which is more than what the directors and managers are willing to take as a cut, by the way). This is a significant savings to the District consistent with the sacrifices drivers and mechanics have made in the past.

Yes, there are issues still to be worked out.  AC Transit wants bus drivers to work 13 hour days for 8 hours pay. We want to challenge management’s practice of paying itself deferred salaries equal to the entire salary of a bus driver – and calculating their retirement benefits based on this inflated figure.

But rather than provoking bus drivers and mechanics to strike, we call upon AC Transit representatives to come back to the table and finish negotiations. With the help of a neutral arbitrator we’re convinced that we can finish the job and arrive at a new contract that is fair to workers and provides the highest level of safety and service for AC Transit riders.

This is about more than two sides of a labor dispute.  This is about keeping a transit system running that serves thousands of our riders every day throughout the Bay Area.  Negotiations are about meeting the other party halfway, not breaking off talks and telling the other side to take it or leave it. Let’s get back to work.

Claudia Hudson is chief negotiator for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, representing more than 1600 AC Transit bus drivers and mechanics.