This week in PR (14 October)

Profession

• Dr Felicia Blow: 4 unsung heroes of PR you should know (10 October)
  ‘As part of PRSA’s 75th anniversary celebration, which is taking place throughout 2022, we decided to do some historical detective work and highlight a number of the profession’s pioneers and their significant contributions to the field.’
• Stuart Bruce: FTSE 100 communications research reveals serious lack of professional PR (10 October)
  ‘The Chartered Institute of Public Relations analysed the boards and executive management teams of the FTSE 100 and found almost half have no director of communications, director of corporate affairs or similar dedicated (or hybrid) position at this senior level.’

Purpose, climate and ESG

https://twitter.com/InstinctifPtnrs/status/1578299019360489473

• Imogen O’Rorke: Can fashion fix its ‘sustainability crisis’? (13 October)
  ‘Research carried out by the sustainability verification tool Compare Ethics found that just one in five European consumers trust fashion brands on sustainability, and SEC Newgate’s own Global ESG Monitor (out next week) ranks the industry down there with mining.’
• Lucy Walton: One step ahead (no date)
  ‘Proposals from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) include mandatory disclosure of cyber incidents and oversight of cybersecurity risks and management by the board and management.’
• Shayoni Lynn with David Gallagher, Stephan Rollnick and Rebecca Zeitlin: The fight against climate change disinformation [podcast] (12 October)
  ‘It is clear that we are in a climate emergency. It is here, it is now, and we have to deal with it.’
• Adam Driver: Not all brands need purpose during a recession (no date)
  ‘Let’s not dance around the issue. The coming years will be tough, very tough. Consider how your brand or organisation deals with ESG values and brand purpose versus being competitive and attractive in other ways.’
• Imogen Hartley: Portland to join Anthropy event as official content partner (10 October)
  ‘Anthropy will cover all manner of issues ranging from sustainability, education, health, and the built and natural environment, to the arts, sport, media and technology.’

Read 1 thing on challenges facing business: Ben & Jerry’s vs Unilever: how a star acquisition became a legal nightmare. Living one's values can be hard. There is a need to properly risk assess, stand behind them, or change. But nothing is no option. https://t.co/DQyU151MVd

— George Hutchinson (@ghutchinson) October 11, 2022

Consulting, skills and careers

Formidable female agency leaders on stage at #iccoglobalsummit this morning: @RedRobertino @KetchumPR on the benefits (creative work + revenue) of running a people-centric business, and @gailheimann @WeberShandwick on ‘the vibe shift’ in culture/politics/media/tech/society. pic.twitter.com/vd6FR0TNe4

— Maja Pawinska Sims (@SparklyPinchy) October 12, 2022

• Emma Drake: Why flexible working and productivity are essential for comms jobs [podcast] (13 October)
  ‘Is it life or work that gets in the way? I do want to provoke some thoughts for my listeners during work-life week.’
• Stephen Waddington: Family business (10 October)
  ‘Building a regenerative business is a radically different mindset and value system to the capitalist model of growing a business to create an exit. I’ve done that twice and it’s not very satisfying.’
• Jessica Pardoe: Why Gen Z Are Actually Resilient As Hell (7 October)
  ‘There’s a great deal of courage in walking away from a situation that no longer serves you. It’s not easy to prioritise your own mental health over all else, so when we do, we should be praised for it. Not torn down.’

Gender, diversity and wellbeing

• Katie de Cozar: Tackling poor mental health in the comms industry: what should leaders do next? (no date)
  ‘The term HR is outdated. People are not ‘resources’, they’re humans with individual lives, personalities and realities. We talk about encouraging people to ‘bring their whole selves to work’. But it’s not about paying lip service, it’s about truly meaning it.’
• Amanda Coleman: If you have been affected…. (11 October)
  ‘In the past six months I have suddenly come face-to-face with the huge mental challenge of grief. Grieving is like no other emotion I have experienced before. I have realised that I am not only dealing with the huge losses that have happened, but I am realising that my life, my attitudes to things and my thoughts of the future are also changing. It is huge and life changing.’

Politics, public affairs and public sphere 

https://twitter.com/JRGerlis/status/1580515451959812096

• Douglas Johnson: Sunlit uplands (11 October)
  ‘This points to a broader need for a strategic approach to land use in the UK. The country faces an urgent need to deliver more of its own food and energy, at the same time as delivering enough housing and helping nature flourish.’
• James Surallie: Bank of England intervenes…again (11 October)
  ‘For the Chancellor, it now appears that his fiscal event is already make or break. In an attempt to reassure the markets, yesterday, Kwasi Kwarteng brought forward the OBR’s forecast alongside his Medium-Term Fiscal Plan by nearly [a] month to 31 October.’
• Stuart Thomson: Establish the key facts [podcast] (8 October)
  ‘You need, right at the start of your [public affairs] campaign, to establish the key facts. Even for more established campaigns, those key facts are always worth revising. Sometimes the level of ignorance about an issue can be quite worrying.’

Research, data, measurement and evaluation

https://twitter.com/PRCA_HQ/status/1580465864817549313

• Dave Turnbull: Data-driven PR is an exciting new world (13 October)
  ‘Cybersecurity was the biggest technology topic in the UK in September, and we can see a number of spikes in the social media posts throughout the period. It was a turbulent month with a number of incidents, most notably the well-publicised Uber incident, where large volumes of employee communications were stolen.’

Internal communication

• Justin Talbot: A Winter of Discontent: keeping employees on side in tough economic times (13 October)
  ‘At a time when wages are falling, how do you motivate, retain and attract staff?’

• Dan Holden: A candid conversation with Sacha Boljevic (13 October)
  ‘I’m currently working for one of Scotland’s biggest charities in an area I am personally passionate about. I’m in the process of leading a complete internal comms overhaul – a great opportunity to start from a blank page organisation-wide with comms and implement some exciting and creative stuff.’

• Katie Macaulay: Host in the hot seat: reflection on 250,000 plays [podcast] (12 October)
  ‘I’m convinced that our success is a reflection on the growing interest in – and importance of – internal communication.’
• Rachel Miller: How to help leaders communicate [podcast] (7 October)
  ‘Your leaders could refer to anybody within your organisation. So you may want to decide on one person or group of people. It’s our business as professional communicators to know our business.’ 

Media, digital and technology

I have a “PR” agency guaranteeing me placement in specific top-tier publications, saying “Our journalist team will write and publish an authentic editorial news article.”

That’s not journalism. And it’s definitely not PR.

— Sabrina Ram (@SabrinaRam_) October 12, 2022

• Joe Toal: How to media train CEOs in the age of social media (11 October)
  ‘We are in the era of social media. Most people now consume content and retrieve their news from social channels. But social media is a landmine filled with catastrophes. CEOs who are well trained and well versed in how to navigate social media will avoid the pitfalls that tripped up many CEOs over the last few years.’

• Duncan Chapple: Ten ways that analyst relations can build trust and improve analyst success (no date)
  ‘Analyst success means helping analysts to develop positive thought leadership. Key to analyst success is understanding how to help the analysts more confidently understand the market and to create analyst value.’
• Rich Leigh: Want to create the perfect PR pitch? A look at Propel’s Q4 Media Barometer data dump! (11 October)
  ‘Journalists respond to just over one in thirty pitches. For every thirty people that email a journalist, they’ll respond to just ONE.’

That @DBanksy is a media law genius. Seriously, he knows his onions if you need a steer on media law. pic.twitter.com/qzFhBYfRyG

— Dan Slee (@danslee) October 13, 2022

Academic, education and training

• Teela Clayton: What can tha do when thi boots let watter: Towards accentism in the UK (9 October)
  ‘Every time I use my Yorkshire accent, in PR and academia, it feels like a little act of rebellion. It may not wield gravitas or suggest pedigree, but it is my armour. To remove it would be to make myself vulnerable. It anchors me to Yorkshire, to my working class roots.’

#prstudent #CreatorAwards23

I’m holding this space open for student content creators. I’m keen to discover and follow the starts of the future.

• • Shruti Gupta (Cardiff):