This week in PR (18 September)

Author: Richard Bailey, Editor
18th September 2020 11 min read

About the author

Richard Bailey Hon FCIPR is editor of PR Academy's PR Place Insights. He teaches and assesses undergraduate, postgraduate and professional students.

@jennifield This is 11 years of friendship and 8 years of The IC Crowd which celebrates its birthday this weekend. I never imagined such a friendship would blossom when we started chatting as three people working in internal comms @danaleeson @rachelallthingsic
@jennifield This is 11 years of friendship and 8 years of The IC Crowd which celebrates its birthday this weekend. I never imagined such a friendship would blossom when we started chatting as three people working in internal comms @danaleeson @rachelallthingsic

News updates

 

Covid-19 commentary

  • Amanda Coleman: Are we there yet? (16 September)
    ‘The Covid-19 pandemic is going to be with us for some time. There is no magic injection yet, and as we are seeing with the increase in positive tests in recent weeks there is no sign it is going to disappear. This leaves communicators with some serious challenges to face, but these can also be huge opportunities.’
  • Naomi Smith: PR predictions in a post-COVID-19 world – Part 1 (13 September)
    ‘Digital activism will continue to increase the pressure on brands to ‘do the right thing’, this will be a test for brands to see if they truly are aligned with their brand values, vision and mission.’
  • Sarah Pinch: A Love Letter to London (11 September)
    ‘We all need a Capital.  Without one, we lose all the punctuation in our lives.’

Purpose and professionalism

Consulting, teams and careers

https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:6712424426962468865

  • Stephen Waddington with Amanda Lowe: Have I got a Story for you? Q&A with Amanda Lowe (16 September)
    ‘Our backbone is strategy and media work. We’ve built on that and invested in content, video production, digital, design and SEO services during the pandemic – meaning we can look after more – from finding a brand’s story to telling it across owned and earned.’

Wellbeing, gender and diversity

  • Elena Georgieva: Mental Health Awareness: You can’t change your brain (no date)
    ‘In the four years I’ve suffered from depression, I’ve never been suicidal, even in my darkest days, but I have no doubt in my mind that if I had left things as they were and didn’t ask for help, I was heading down this path.’
  • Katie Macaulay with Tasneem Chopra: Cross-cultural communication [podcast] (16 September)
    ‘Diversity started with gender; we’ve since moved on to sexuality. I think cultural diversity is also important. It’s about mixing it up because we live in a globalised world.’
  • Karan Chadda: What is cultural appropriation? (15 September)
    ‘Christmas! Why leave out Christmas? | Baptising Saturnalia, | So pagans imbibed the Word’’
  • Rachel Miller with Advita Patel and Priya Bates: Are you a leader like me? (11 September)
    ‘I feel sad that I felt like I couldn’t bring my whole self to work and that I had to hide parts of my identity – mainly due to fear of being treated differently.’

Public and third sectors

Politics, public affairs and public sphere

Brands, storytelling, and influence

  • Laura Santillana: How to build your brand on social using brand codes (no date)
    ‘Social media has been one of the first points of brand contact in 2020, with 52% of online brand discovery happening in public social media feeds. In other words, business accounts should look and act as a homepage for brands, being immediately recognisable and trustworthy – even without a blue checkmark in sight.’
  • Jennifer Robson: Tips to boost your writing productivity (14 September)
    ‘The best way to achieve a high writing output is to block out time solely for writing. Nothing else. No emails. No phone calls. No messages or social media.’

Internal communication

  • Katie Marlow: What do you want to keep? (17 September)
    ‘We need to find out what we want to keep. What from this experiment have we learned and what do we want to take with us into our future of work? The themes are useful guides to consider.’
  • Bea Buckley: It’s time to merge internal and external communication teams (14 September)
    ‘Throughout my career internal comms has always been seen as the poor cousin. It comes into its own during a crisis, we’ve seen that during Covid-19. But the business-as-usual stance is that external comms is king, and this is reflected in the career choices of many of the comms pros I’ve met who baulk at the idea of moving into internal comms.

Technology, media and digital

  • Stuart Bruce: Boris Johnson and Alan Partridge embrace LinkedIn (11 September)
    ‘I appreciate the Partridge profile is great fun but it’s disappointing that at a time of huge concern about fake news, misinformation, and disinformation that LinkedIn didn’t take the opportunity to remind people that fake profiles aren’t allowed.’

Related topics

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