This month in PR (November 2024)

‘The end is a far better story than the start’

Our striking image of a sunrise in the Scottish Highlands seems appropriate for an industry/profession that is so often focused on beginnings (launches) but shies away from endings – and which is notoriously poor at proving its value.

So our summary of this week’s content and conversations revolves around endings.

Jonathan Cross set the theme when reflecting on his time working for a university research department. The standard procedure was to announce the award of a new research funding, but rarely to report on the outcomes of the research project.

‘Surely it is of more interest to announce what you have discovered, than what you have received. The outcome, the learning, the applications and potential impact for the world is generally a far more interesting story than someone has been given some money to do something. The end, in this case, is a far better story than the start.’

Crispin Manners was talking about exit strategies in an industry podcast and advising agency owners to envisage what the end looks like even as they’re in the early start-up phase.

Then there are suggestions that ESG may be close to completing a remarkably rapid rise and fall.

Alison Taylor, author of Higher Ground published this year and reviewed at PR Academy Insights, challenges a striking media headline declaring that ‘Trump Will Bury ESG, But It Was Already Dead’.

She argues that:

‘Pressures on business to be ETHICAL and RESPONSIBLE are going to ramp up again. Rather than defenders continuing to beat the ESG business case argument to death, how about we refocus on governance, political responsibility, corruption and culture?’

Stuart Thomson has been addressing the same question in Does Trump’s victory spell the end of ‘woke’ business? and he reaches for a similar answer as Alison Taylor.

‘The reality is that this is another risk that needs to be managed and there will be different strategies on offer depending on the motivations for the commitment to the cause. It could be consumer, employee, leadership-led, demanded by the supply chain etc.’

But the month’s biggest story about an ending has even created its own word: Xodus. Ofcom’s new Online Nation report shows the year on year decline in use of X since it was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022.

What’s remarkable is how this trend suddenly became a major media talking point this month following the US election. It was discussed on Newsnight and Gaby Hinsliff writing in The Guardian makes the wider point that this points to something bigger, that the era of mass social media platforms is over.

‘Platforms come and go, but this feels different: the final death of the idea that social media could ever be the internet’s town square, a global meeting place for ideas that would broaden all our horizons. Now, the future of social media looks increasingly segregated for users’ safety, like rival fans at football. X for the rightwing and the raging; centrists and policy nerds on Bluesky; people who hate politics on Threads or Instagram; Gen Z on TikTok; boomers on Facebook.’

James Crawford also notes there’s less engagement and conversation:

I was hoping this wider question about the decline of social media would be put to social media expert Battenhall’s Drew Benvie in another podcast conversation, but he turned the answer in a different direction by asserting that everything is social. There’s no doubt that we’re being social when have group conversations on WhatsApp – but it’s also true that encrypted private networks are not the same thing as having conversations in public. They may be safer for users, but they’re much less useful for public relations practitioners who rely on hearing from publics and stakeholders and learning about public attitudes through conversations taking place in public, as well as getting ideas to spread in the public sphere.

Nor are all social networks the same. TikTok may be popular and still growing, but its attraction is that it serves up entertainment. It’s much less evident that it works as a social network that allows us to keep in contact with friends and have conversations with others based around common interests.

Julio Romo develops this discussion when reporting on Battenhall’s annual social media briefing.

‘Social media is not dying. It’s just evolving. It’s not social media that is evolving; it’s users who are siloing into smaller groups where their audiences seem more relevant to their own views and likes.’

Yet it does look as if the offer of an all-you-can-eat buffet of free social media that we’ve been enjoying for the past two decades is now being withdrawn. We may have  to go hungry for a while – but what were we expecting to happen?

Reality bites. As it did with one more ending noted this month. These are challenging times for job seekers and for agency profitability and Rich Leigh paid tribute to Andy Barr who has announced the closure of his 10Yetis Digital agency. He was the person who gave Leigh his break at a young age and he was a public relations innovator in the age of search.

‘He, and (thanks to his leadership and tutelage) we, became pioneers, building links, improving search rankings and helping clients make millions using earned PR in the early 2000s and 10s. It was our secret weapon – while others talked about coverage, we talked about coverage AND measurable search impact. I remember saying to Andy that we only had so long before others caught on, and… catch on they did!’

It’s a sad ending, but it does offer us all a lesson. And that’s to start your public relations planning at the end rather than at the beginning. What does success look like? And what value will it deliver?

It’s the point Crispin Manners makes about value and it’s a point AMEC makes throughout Measurement Month and beyond.

Endings are indeed more interesting than beginnings.

ICYMI: Here are some other pieces from this month I thought deserved sharing.

Profession

• • Farzana Baduel with Professor Lee Edwards: Public engagement and the future of PR [podcast] (4 November)
    ‘I do think it’s an important profession. Public relations practitioners do different things from marketers and advertisers.’
  • Neville Hobson: Public Relations is at the Crossroads of Measurement and Standards (1 November)
    ‘The persistent use of AVE and the debate over licensing are symptoms of a more significant issue facing our profession: the struggle to define and maintain professional standards.’

Gender and diversity

Politics and public affairs

• Daniel Herlihy: Irish elections represent Europe’s fears as world enters Trump 2.0 era (27 November)
  ‘Ireland is potentially facing the biggest change to its economic model since the beginning of a major boom thirty years ago, which propelled the country from backwater to Balenciaga.’

Planning, research and evaluation

• Thomas Stoeckle: Communications literacy: Teaching measurement and evaluation in interesting times (21 November)
  ‘Three simple rules (of communication literacy): Be clear about the problem you are trying to address; get the basics right: audience, channel, message; use technology to support and enhance, not replace.’

Media, digital and AI

• Stella Birks: GUEST BLOG: It’s my job to promote Derby – so when it was voted worst city I felt responsible (21 November)
  ‘It’s my job to promote Derby as a tourism destination, so finding out that it had been voted the worst city in the UK to visit was sickening. [Yet] we realised this was an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive and put a plan together to take advantage of it.’
• Andrew Bruce Smith: Exploiting AI Abundance: A New Approach to Problem Solving? (11 November)
  ‘Traditional problem-solving focuses on finding one solution. AI changes this by offering many possible solutions. Instead of searching for the perfect answer, AI encourages us to experiment with different options. Adapting to AI abundance requires a change in mindset. It means being open to new problem-solving methods and understanding how human and artificial intelligence can work together.’