🤔 ABOUT US

Communications training designed to ban boring corporate comms

Our courses make comms professionals fall in love with what they do all over again.

It’s a case of unlocking all the creativity they’ve already got, leaving them totally invigorated, and feeling like they can take on the world.

You can see the topics we cover on the courses page, but here is what you can expect no matter how you work with us.

 

Comms Creatives Principles 💛 Authenticity at all costs Nothing we do is about turning anyone into something they’re not. We focus on developing existing creative strengths, rather than zeroing in on weaknesses. We’ll help you with real world strategies, not fancy-sounding theory that doesn’t work in practice. We’re a certified no-BS zone, for our team and our clients. 🚀 Progress, not perfection We’re all about moving in the right direction, not taking shortcuts, or forever chasing perfection. We don’t demand perfection from ourselves, our team, or our clients: we just have the courage to keep taking steps to get better and better. When you look back, it’s the smallest changes that have the lasting impact! 🦋 Bravery as standard Staying the same and doing things how you always did them – that’s safe. It takes bravery to try new things. We don’t need you to be totally out there, but we do want you to join us in pushing ourselves just a little each week. Get that thrill from being just a little bit bolder, more creative, and do the things that give you butterflies.

Meet the Comms Creatives team

I’m Hel Reynolds (on the left), award-winning social media expert trainer, international speaker on TV, radio and podcasts, avid doodler and founder of Comms Creatives.

And this is my big sister, Lesley Reynolds – my organised right-hand woman who handles the business operations, admin and student support side of things. I love working with my sister and I’m very proud to have her working alongside me.

Clients love her too because she’s fun and always happy to help and support them.

We’ve helped hundreds of corporate comms pros in orgs such as BBC Studios, Macmillan Cancer Support, and Manchester City Council to:

    • inject much needed creativity into their social media
    • increase their online reach and engagement
    • and have lots of fun in the process!

Along with a small team of expert comms and marketing professionals, we’re on a quest to bring inspiration, support and most importantly – creativity back to your life and work as a comms pro.

 

Our resident comms experts

As well as subject matter specialists we bring in as guest tutors, you get to learn from our gang of resident experts:

Creativity and campaign strategy

TikTok strategy and tactics

Productivity and personal effectiveness

Employer brand and internal comms

Social media advertising

Sustainable comms and marketing

The thing about working in social media…

This scenario may be familiar:

Your Chief Exec and other colleagues think it’s easy to work in social media and comms.

They sometimes have unrealistic expectations and don’t appreciate what you do.

Maybe they say things like:

  • ‘I could do your job!’
  • ‘You just hang around on Twitter and TikTok all day’
  • ‘Why can’t you make my 600-page finance report go viral?

You’re a highly skilled, talented and creative comms pro but being constantly told otherwise can dent your confidence and make you feel like an imposter!

Creative ideas you have for a social media post need input from or sign-off by various execs up the corporate ladder.

Once boring quotes have been added and certain words replaced for being too casual and informal, they end up sucking the life out of what would have been a good piece of content.

And it bears no resemblance to your original idea!

You know putting out the same dull, jargon spouting corporate posts won’t work and engage your audience.

As a result, you don’t get the engagement and results you deserve from your social media.

You feel like your creative mojo is being lost and stifled at every turn by formality, corporate rules or worry that you might hot the wrong tone.

The creative spark is missing because we can feel too scared to take risks and try anything new.

You might feel overtired, overworked, unsupported and unappreciated.

Something has to give.

Why I started Comms Creatives

I stated working in comms for a local council in 2005.

My first taste of social media comms was back in 2007, where I worked on a MySpace page dedicated to getting people to help a council restore a town hall.

I was obsessed with the opportunities social media presented.

And my lovely Chief Exec at the time gave me the freedom to experiment and try new things.

We started getting loads of attention as an organisation and winning awards.

I was really making things up as I went along social media and career-wise, but I also gained confidence by learning the strategic basics by studying for a CIPR Diploma.

Then I left the council for a comms job in the private sector. But that new job: I just

knew it wasn’t right for me – it was all so formal and I had no freedom to be creative in my work.

The final straw was when I was asked to speak at the ‘CommsHero’ conference and my new manager told me I couldn’t do it.

I quit the next week, and then and set up Comms Creatives.

I decided that I wanted every day to be enjoyable and fulfilling, and I’ve made it my mission to help other comms professionals to experience a fun and satisfying work life too.

Going online with our training online

In 2018, a few chronic illnesses (I have psoriatic arthritis and hypothyroidism) meant that constant travelling and carrying out face-to-face training was becoming more and more difficult.

That’s when we took our social media training fully online and I brought Lesley in to help me design the best learning experience.

Our first online course was on Zoom and we live streamed it into a Facebook group.

This was all very new and cutting edge at the time – now everybody is doing it!

Our first cohort of students loved it and told us they’d got great results from the training.

A talented comms professional shared a certificate her boss had given her to recognise her participation in the training programme.

She told us she had Crohn’s disease and would never have been able to take part in our training if it had been in person.

She loved the fact that it was flexible and could fit it in around her life when she was feeling well.

That was a really proud moment for me because I took something that was a problem for me and turned it into something that was even better than the way we were doing it before.

It turns out that some of our clients have challenges and circumstances that mean they have benefitted from us going online too!

 

Book an expert speaker on social media creativity in comms

Here’s a quick bio:

“Hel Reynolds is an experienced keynote conference speaker, chair and workshop host.

She’s spoken at hundreds of high-profile events all over the world and online including Social Day (London), Nato’s Social Media Conference (Podgorica), CommsHero (Cardiff, Manchester, London and online).

Hel also enjoys the thrill of appearing on TV, radio and podcasts to give her unique take on topical social media, communications and professional creativity.”

Get Hel as your speaker or guest

 





Those comms cartoons

Comms cartoons are a great example of how we can use creativity to make sense of the world, and engage our audiences.  I find drawing things helps  me describe problems and communicate ideas.

My comms cartoons have featured in The IoIC’s Voice magazine, countless conference talks, and various comms and marketing newsletters.