This week in PR (11 June)
About the author
Richard Bailey Hon FCIPR is editor of PR Academy's PR Place Insights. He has taught and assessed undergraduate, postgraduate and professional students.
It happened this week
This is damning and brutal. Many of us knew Brewdog’s PR was a sham. Never trust a brand that claims to be punk and brewing for freedom and human rights when it treats it people appallingly and cosies up to China for $$$. https://t.co/3eMNmFqGO6
— mark perkins (@thatmarkperkins) June 10, 2021
Purpose and professionalism
https://twitter.com/shayonislynn/status/1403049536046698514
- Sudha Singh: Laura Sutherland: PRFest2021 – Sustainability of the PR Industry [podcast] (10 June)
‘I have just made the decision to specialise more in stakeholder engagement – purpose -, so that everything an organisation does matches stakeholder needs.’
Academic and education
- Rebecca Roberts with Nafisa Shafiq: Allyship in Student Communications [podcast] (8 June)
‘We really want our students to share their voices through our channels.’
Sport
https://twitter.com/MGreer_PR/status/1403024916103020544
- Mark Carroll, Colum Cronin and Simon Roberts: Euros 2020: how football managers and coaches control the narrative (10 June)
‘Southgate recently revealed that while his “boss” look will continue at the Euros, his signature waistcoat won’t because he now sees it as a “gimmick” that needs to be removed from his image.’ - Fraser Raleigh: 23 years of hurt: Scotland’s long road to Euro 2020 (10 June)
‘While Scotland will dare to dream of making it into the knockout stages for the first time ever, Monday’s match will be a victory in itself, as it gives a generation of Scotland fans the chance to see their country play at [a] major tournament for the first time in their lives.’
ESG, corporate and financial
A little thread on the complete bollocks that is encompassed in this deeply irritating announcement.
Here is a prime example of nonsense greenwashing. Why? Well for three clear reasons. https://t.co/E7z6k5IQeq
— John Brown (@BrownBare) June 11, 2021
Consulting, teams and careers
So we’ve banned all meetings on Fridays at Battenhall, and today’s the first crack at it. Meeting Free Fridays are meant to give colleagues more time to get their own stuff done, and spend less time on screens. pic.twitter.com/fxc21fEwfP
— Drew Benvie (@drewb) June 4, 2021
- Tamara Littleton and Wendy Christie: Tamara Strauss: The World of Travel [podcast] (10 June)
‘I want to spend my time promoting something I love. it makes my working life really interesting.’
- Katie Marlow: Mentoring: What’s in it for the mentor? (7 June)
‘Through mentoring you’re able to put yourself in the shoes of others. This is really helpful in planning your own career, areas for growth and development and benefiting your day-to-day practice with a different perspective.’ - Emma Leech: Mentoring and me (7 June)
‘I’m currently mentoring seven colleagues at intervals to suit them and with the focus squarely on their needs. As a mentor, it’s eye opening, rewarding, and a lot of fun.’
Wellbeing, gender and diversity
- Asif Choudry with Rachel Royall and Koray Camgoz: CIPR and PRCA join forces to address industry’s mental health challenges [podcast] (9 June)
‘I think this is the first time there’s been a planned, strategic, campaign that’s been executed from both HQs.’ - Perry Miller: Pride month: From Section 28 to ‘pinkwashing’ (7 June)
‘For my formative Pride years (the early 1990s), there was no visible corporate or institutional support. The community was on its own. So when I see companies’ rainbow logos now, I’m immediately heartened by the fact that people within that organisation concluded that it was something they wanted to do, or indeed that it was ‘the right thing to do’.
Public and third sectors
- Hel Reynolds: Pets: the secret weapon of housing associations on Facebook (10 June)
‘Your colleagues think your job is to inform people or news, events and advice. But nobody joins Facebook for that. It’s social media. Not ‘information’ media, not ‘corporate news story’ media.’
Politics, public affairs and public sphere
For those who attended my talks with @CIPR_SW @CIPR_NorthEast @CIPRdiversity @LGcomms and Public Sector Comms Headspace @danslee – tonight’s docu shows how we worked following the Colston Statue aftermath, and why it’s vital to have comms at the decision table #statuewars pic.twitter.com/ZyJsZZPxKE
— Saskia Alice (@SaskiaAlice) June 10, 2021
- Sophie Morello: Plastic waste: no longer out of sight, out of mind (10 June)
‘It’s estimated that less than 10% of household plastic packaging is recycled in the UK and in last year Turkey, Malaysia and Poland received the largest amounts of plastic waste exports from the UK.’
- George Esmond: How redrawing the political map could spell trouble (8 June)
‘The new proposals made by the independent Boundary Commission involve constituencies being chopped and changed to average out the number of voters in each one. Seats will be re-drawn, so they have, by law, between 69,724 and 77,062 registered voters each.’
- Tim Le Couilliard: Aid-memoir: Government spared potential embarrassment over vote on foreign aid (7 June)
‘Gone are the days when former Prime Minister David Cameron would embrace aid spending as a badge of honour – appealing to liberal, home-county voters he needed to target.’
Risk, crisis and reputation
- Kat Harrison-Dibbits: Why communicators can’t go back to business as usual after the pandemic (9 June)
‘For me, it’s about understanding what is right for the organisation, and having the confidence to firmly but kindly say no to requests that aren’t based on data, experience or strategy. The organisations who came through this the best were those who understood their purpose and stuck to it – and that means having a clear communications strategy that you stick to under pressure. It would be a shame if those valuable lessons were now lost in the maelstrom of every day life.’
Planning, insight, measurement and evaluation
https://twitter.com/stuartbruce/status/1402960604508340227
- Benjamin Cresswell: The Planning Fallacy: How we can plan better (10 June)
‘From a behavioural perspective, you may be succumbing to the Planning Fallacy. This is where we underestimate how long it takes to complete tasks, even when we know similar tasks in the past have taken us longer to complete. This can have a knock-on effect and cost us – monetary, social, and personal costs.’
Internal communication
- Stuart Sinclair: Employee Voice: Why You Need to Listen (Especially to Remote Workers!) (8 June)
‘Essentially, employee voice is how individuals communicate their opinions and ideas to their employer and how these views are then utilised to influence the company moving forward.’ - Vicki Marinker with Rachel Miller: The impact of COVID on communication, collaboration and culture [podcast] (no date)
‘The impact of remote working has varied depending on personal experiences for our employees. Some have thrived, others have struggled with the lack of social interaction. We’ve had to innovate and come up with new ways of making people feel a sense of belonging.’
Technology, media and digital
- Emma Drake: Telling your story when you work in a technical industry [podcast] (10 June)
‘Being too technical means there’s no compelling reason for people to connect with your product, business or service – or to take action. So we need to be telling the ‘why’ behind what we do. Why should they buy from you? Why should they invest in you?’ - Farzana Baduel: Do brands need to do media relations anymore? (8 June)
‘Digital marketing and digital communications have become an increasingly important component of PR, significantly lessening the need for the intermediaries of old: the media.’ - Alice Wilkinson: What should I do next? NewNew, The Control My Life App (7 June)
‘Of course, there is no way to know how NewNew will be used. It has the potential to be an exciting and clever tool for creative professionals to build their profile and monetise the process.’