This week in PR (12 April)

In the news

• The PRCA has launched a gender pay gap toolkit. The industry average gender pay gap is 21%.
• The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has published its Online harms white paper for consultation.
• Cosmetics firm Lush has announced the closure of its social media accounts (BBC reports). See below for opinions on this move.
• Unsung heroine: Addy Fredericks, a communication manager at Prudential, is this year’s winner of the Suzy Spirit award that honours Suzy Ferguson of LEWIS, who died of bowel cancer in 2012.

Insights and opinions: Pick of the posts

These are the editor’s pick of posts about public relations this week (UK focused, but with a global outlook). Recommendations are welcome to editor@prplace.com or @pr_place

Purpose and professionalism

• Keith Weed: The ‘why’, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of establishing purpose – insights from Business in the Community’s latest Purpose Roundtable (10 April)
  ‘At Unilever we believe purpose is good for business and good for society and that you cannot have a healthy business in an unhealthy society. We put purpose at the heart of our brand strategy to serve the consumer better and leave the world in a better place then we found it.’
• Jennifer Sanchis: Writing about the Public Relations Oxford scene for a year showed me how vibrant this community is (no date)
  ‘Oxford has such a vibrant PR community. Fourtold’s Kathryn Bowditch was definitely right: London is not the only way when it comes to attracting talents.’
• Adam Tuckwell and Jon Wilcox: The PRHub Podcast: Mike Sergeant, Sergeant Leadership Communications & former news broadcaster (10 April)
  ‘Journalism is really the dark side: you’re looking for death, destruction, scandal. PR is on the light side because you’re looking for positive stories. I’m happier on this side of the fence.’
• Andrew Bruce Smith: What PR Week’s search results page tells us about the changing nature of the industry (8 April)
  ‘2004 was the high watermark for references to media relations. The overall trend since then has been downwards.’

Consulting, careers and skills

• Brendon Craigie: Being born right: how Tyto became the New Agency of the Year (11 April)
  ‘We were obsessed about being born right. We wanted our new agency to be built on strong foundations. Foundations that were well researched, had a strong strategy, had an amazing launch team, and was elegantly executed.’
• Jasmin Cruickshank: “I’m proud to have been an apprentice” (no date)
  ‘My apprenticeship really helped me get my foot in an industry I originally would never have considered. I have thrived not only in my chosen career but also in myself. I’m proud to have been an apprentice.’
• Mark Pinsent: Deconstructing (and reconstructing) European public relations (8 April)
  ‘As those of us who live here know, ‘Europe’ isn’t a single entity (any more than ‘Asia’ is). Multiple markets, multiple cultures, multiple languages.’
• David Brain: Accenture’s acquisition of Droga5 is an ‘at scale’ threat to creative agencies and marks the end of PR’s brief chance to become a lead brand discipline (6 April)
  ‘Creative really was the last part of the marketing services puzzle for Accenture and the consultancies. Just a reminder of what they collectively already account for: they already earn the same in fees from CMOs (Chief Marketing Officer or Marketing Director) as WPP, Omnicom and IPG combined.’

Public and third sectors

• Jill Spurr: No comms is an island – why you need to network (9 April)
  ‘That’s really been one of the biggest benefits of networking – discovering you are not the only one to feels like this, or experiences certain things. Safety in numbers.’
• Ross Wigham: Nostalgia, neurosis, animals and other lessons (8 April)
  ‘I’ve seen so many speakers recently who have a clear, simple story and can tell it in their own voice without any props. If there is a secret to conference speaking success then that’s it.’
• Richard Evans: 10 fastest growing charity Twitter audiences over last 3 months (8 April)
  ‘The rest of the sector has a long way to go before it catches up with National Trust – it still has more than 150,000 more followers that second-placed Macmillan Cancer Support.’
• Dave Worsell: Forget e-newsletters, 2019 is all about ‘performance communication’ (7 April)
  ‘2019 should be the year of Performance Communication. The Government Communication Service (GCS) has long been extolling the virtues of “outcomes not outputs”, but e-newletters are definitely an output that doesn’t deliver great results for the public sector.’

Gender, diversity and wellbeing

• Sara Hawthorn: Are we leaning on women to solve PR’s diversity problems? (8 April)
  ‘Somewhat ironically, the findings from the studies show that as we succeed in getting more women into top positions, we jeopardize parity in other ways.’

Brands and influence

• Stephen Davies: The Merging of Celebrity and Social Influencer with Alex Payne [podcast] (no date)
  ‘I realised there was a problem: either brands are spending lots of money, or gifting items that are of no interest to people. We’re a matchmaker between brands and people of influence.’

Trust, crisis and reputation

This isn’t the end, it’s just the start of something new.#LushCommunity – see you there.

— LUSH UK (@LushLtd) April 8, 2019

• Charlie Pownall: LUSH’s social retreat ignores its customers and unduly exposes its reputation (11 April)
  ‘According to LUSH’s final tweet, ‘This isn’t the end, it’s just the start of something new’. Let’s hope so.’
• Oliver Druttman: Being crisis (and creative) ready (8 April)
  ‘Effective navigation through an issue or crisis requires – to an extent – that the playbook be thrown out the window. Because every time an issue or crisis occurs, it does so on a new day, in a new global environment, with new forces, people and influences at play.’
• Alex Malouf: Huawei, Boeing and McKinsey – When Internal Cultures Cause Reputational Crises (7 April)
  ‘Is there a common thread to all of these events? And is that common thread an internal culture which is neither diverse or inclusive enough to understand and tackle issues before they become crises?

Internal communication

• Emma Bridger: Employee Experience: it’s time to get personal (no date)
  ‘There’s no doubt that Employee Experience is having a moment, but the gulf between customer experience and employee experience is huge.’

Technology and AI

• Lucinda Kingham: Blockchain — the solution to the world’s problems? I’m not so sure (no date)
  ‘Bearing in mind that Bitcoin was launched ten years ago, it’s clear that education needs to be a priority if we want to use this technology any time soon.’
• Keith Lewis: Automation? A threat or an opportunity for PR? (9 April)
  ‘My role didn’t even exist 7 years ago. I was a died-in-the wool press officer. But then social became a thing I spotted the opportunity social was about to bring to us, and grabbed hold of it. I turned myself from a subject matter expert on the side, to it being my day job. A risk. But an opportunity.’

Media and digital

Sunsets and seagulls. #Brighton at its best.

#BrightonSEO pic.twitter.com/9nKnaxfeDX

— Chris Lee ??‍? (@CMRLee) April 11, 2019

• David White: REPORT: Is Instagram becoming the emerging channel for online reviews? (10 April)
  ‘Across all reviews analysed we see that 18-24 year olds are the most likely to leave a review. This demographic could potentially explain why social media is a more common platform when writing online reviews.’
• Dan Gerrella: Plans to protect people from online harm revealed (9 April)
  ‘This seems to be the latest example of an ongoing shift, with governments around the world stepping in to regulate social networks.’

#prstudent #bestPRblogs

PR Careers: 2019: 150 PR internships and graduate schemes

• Heiða Ingimarsdóttir (Leeds): Do you mind sorting my problems out for free and do it quickly please! (11 April)
  ‘All of a sudden, I was the nurse and the lawyer I never imagined I would become. Being asked for professional advice on the spot. As if people go through years of university to be able to apply quick fixes to people’s problems.’
• Yana Miladinova (Bournemouth): My dissertation journey (11 April)
  ‘Next week, I am going to Wales to present at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research. My dissertation is still not finished, but I have more findings to show and I’m sure that I will get valuable feedback from the professors there.’
• Niamh Murray (Ulster): Facebook – Our fake lives online (11 April)
  ‘Let’s be real, the “us” we portray on social media, isn’t the same “us” that danders around tesco in their jammies or watches Netflix for 8 hours straight. Everything we post has been polished, filtered and approved by 3 friends in the group chat.’
• Orlagh Shanks (Liverpool John Moores): LUSH are Flushing Social Media Down the Drain (10 April)
  ‘My guess is Lush looked at the numbers and it doesn’t make sense to continue to spend in social against other alternatives.’
• Orlaith Strong (Ulster): A career in PR, is it for you? (10 April)
  ‘With PR, there will always be jobs out there because organisations are constantly trying to improve their image or promote their brand. Also, the practice of PR is adapting to keep up with current trends and the digital transformation.’
• Katie Gebbie (Sunderland): ‘Samantha Syndrome’ (10 April)
  ‘Personally, I would struggle to recall any PR professional I’ve seen depicted in a film or series who wasn’t female, wealthy or living a glamorous and outlandish life. Perhaps Thank You For Smoking’s Nick Naylor is the only exception to the rule.’
• Lottie Wiltshire (South Wales): I’m a slave 4 U (9 April)
  ‘I’ve certainly made an active effort to cut down on my phone usage but that still comes in at around 4 hours per day spent on my phone.’
• Lucy Hayball (Bournemouth): #Startingout: Career profile with Connor Peters (9 April)
  ‘I currently work in a digital marketing agency called Propellernet, as part of the media team. It’s a purely digital role, and is much more analytical than some of the more traditional PR that I was doing before.’
• Beth Smith (Sunderland): Click-Plate (9 April)
  ‘People’s obsession with pretty food and extravagant looking drinks has resulted in bars, cafés and restaurants completely changing up their marketing and PR strategies to make them as “instagrammable” as possible.’
• Ceri Jones (South Wales): 15 simple tricks to increase blog traffic (7 April)
  ‘Around 1000 words is the standard length for blog posts, but most of mine are over 2,000, and my more in depth, long form posts are upwards of 2,500.’