This week in PR (4 June)

Author: Richard Bailey, Editor
4th June 2021 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.

It’s the second week of British Tomato Fortnight! 🍅🎉 @pamlloydpr on Instagram
It’s the second week of British Tomato Fortnight! 🍅🎉 @pamlloydpr on Instagram

It happened this week

Ethics and professionalism

ESG, corporate and financial

  • Ben Smith: What should an ESG report include? Clive Booth, CEO of the ESG Foundation on the PRmoment podcast (3 June)
    ‘The reason [ESG] superseded CSR is that a number of organisations were found to have marvellous CSR reports but were greenwashing their environmental or social impact.’
  • Gihan Hyde: What role does PR & Comms play in bringing the ESG story to life? (3 June)
    ‘With the new focus on a new kind of stakeholder capitalism, which places new demands on management, PR should not lead the ESG journey but certainly play a critical role in stakeholder, customer and pipeline delivery engagement.’
  • Fiona Gildea: Climate history – and the end of the beginning (2 June)
    ‘Wednesday 26 May was the day that climate reality hit the fossil fuel industry — hard. As Churchill might have said, “Now this is not the end of big oil. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
  • Claire Foster: Carbon, Caveats and Consumers (2 June)
    ‘The consequences of CO2 emissions have been documented for decades, but it is now or never for the energy industry to accelerate reduction plans before shareholders, customers and plaintiffs decide what’s best.‘

Consulting, teams and careers

  • Claire Simpson: Getting Chartered: A guide for young PR professionals (2 June)
    ‘There’s no right or wrong answers on assessment day. It’s not a formal test with predefined notions of what a good response looks like. It’s a conversation among peers. An opportunity to reflect and learn. It’s rigorous but relaxed.’
  • Niamh Murray: Career Paths Aren’t Straight (2 June)
    ‘Career Ladder’ implies that career progression is linear and you can see the next steps to follow. All you have to do is just keep going up in one direction. But, that’s not what careers are like.’

Wellbeing, gender and diversity

https://twitter.com/MGreer_PR/status/1400475113892548617

  • Tamara Littleton: Why Pride month matters (1 June)
    ‘As a gay female CEO, I feel privileged that I’ve always been able to be out at work, without fear. I want us to be the kind of agency which attracts and keeps the best talent, with the widest and most diverse experience and where everyone feels that they have a voice.’

Politics, public affairs and public sphere

  • Dafydd Rees: Keir Starmer Version 2.0: Off with the mask please (3 June)
    ‘Despite the credentials Sir Keir Rodney Starmer KCB QC, it’s hard to think of a mainstream politician since John Major who has such an evident lack of privilege displayed in his upbringing. His father was a toolmaker and his mother a nurse.’
  • Tiffany Burrows: The Kids Aren’t Alright (3 June)
    ‘Writing in The Times, Sir Kevan compared the Government’s plan – which he states will bring the equivalent of £22 per primary school child – to that of the Netherlands (£2,500 per child) and the US (£1,600 per child), which serves as an illustrative example of his accusation that the Government’s plan is “half-hearted”.’
  • Adam Tuckwell and Jon Wilcox with Michael Mpofu (@MichaelMpofu): Political Intrigue and Comms [podcast] (3 June)
    ‘I switched my degree and ended up majoring in politics and law. I hated law! The only law I enjoyed was constitutional law because in South Africa that was a new concept.’
  • Joe Cooper: Government eyes up renter reform as part of latest round of levelling-up (2 June)
    ‘There are 4.4 million households in the private rented sector in England, comprising 19 per cent of total households and making it the largest tenure behind owner-occupiers.’
  • Ciaran Gill: Here comes the summer: Ulster unionism, the DUP, and a new era of division (2 June)
    ‘The “brutal” way in which Foster was replaced has caused a rupture within the DUP leadership. Poots beat the more moderate Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP to the leadership of the party but tensions between the two were in full view when Donaldson, alongside Arlene Foster, walked out of a party meeting at the end of last month before Poots gave a speech to accept his nomination as party leader.’
  • Jamie Capp: What next for the housing market (1 June)
    ‘The Conservative Party has always billed itself as the party of home ownership. From Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy to George Osborne’s Help to Buy, in government the party has always held that supporting people onto the housing ladder is good policy and good politics.’
  • Emily Wallace: 5 things Public Affairs professionals can learn from Dominic Cummings (28 May)
    ‘If Cummings was the second most powerful person in Government 12 months ago, he certainly isn’t today. Always have a wide Stakeholder map and never rely on relationships with one person and their political tribe to form the basis of your public affairs strategy.’

Brands, storytelling, and influence

Internal communication

  • Oliver Tipper: Commsing the comms – our story of 2020/21 (29 May)
    ‘We launched our All Staff Zooms with Chief Executive Sara Munro. We ended up doing 40 during the year, with the light-hearted Christmas special being the most popular. Whilst the pandemic necessitated video conferencing, this is something we’ll keep going. And, when evaluated, it turns out that staff really liked them too.’

Technology, media and digital

https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6803938844107382784

  • Robert Taylor: GB News: force for good or hate? (2 June)
    ‘GB News starts broadcasting on 13 June. Millions are expected to tune in on the first night, if nothing else to see how it differs in style and tone from its established competitors. For anyone who remembers the first few moments of Channel 4 in 1982, as I do (Countdown was the first programme, I recall) this is an exciting moment.’
  • Amanda Coleman: Game, set and match (1 June)
    ‘There is no doubt that facing the media when you are stressed, anxious or depressed is a daunting thing. Even when you are feeling on top of things doing media interviews is pressured.’
  • Neville Hobson: Moving the podcast market (30 May)
    ‘Today, podcasting is a sophisticated industry with millions of podcast episodes available covering literally any topic you can imagine. A far cry from 2005 when the iTunes podcast directory offered just 3,000 podcast episodes (it was a big number at the time).’

Related topics

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