This week in PR (5 October)

News in brief

• Internal communication: Here are the winners of the IoIC Awards 2018
• CIPR Platinum – a collection of essays marking 70 years of the Institute of Public Relations (now CIPR) – is published on 10 October. Historians will also enjoy this handsome – and free – GCS publication covering 100 Years of Government Communication.
• PRCA: Last call for anonymous responses to the PRCA Digital PR and Communications Report 2018 (closes Monday 8 October).
• Vuelio Blog Awards 2018: shortlisted for the PR & Comms category are: Marcel Klebba, Neville Hobson, Ella Minty, PRexamples, Sarah Hall and Stephen Waddington.

Academic

• European researchers are investigating the role of women in public relations. This EUPRERA project is led by Dr Martina Topic of Leeds Beckett University.
• Professor Maureen Taylor will be joining University of Technology Sydney as professor of strategic communication in May 2019.

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

Consulting, careers and skills

• Heather Yaxley: Career ambitions beyond strategic communications (4 October)
  ‘We don’t just need organisational leaders with strategic communications capabilities, we need those with strategic communication capabilities to become organisational leaders.’
• Daria Partas: How to Re-Learn How to Be Human (4 October)
  ‘The questions are What are we going to do when all the work is done by machines? and What do we have to learn at schools and universities?’
• Hamish Thompson: The Art of War for PR professionals (3 October)
  ‘I’ve been in the PR game for thirty years.  Here is a cut-down version of some of what I have learnt over the years. I hope you find it helpful.’
• Jade Beddington: The four-day work week: tips for a smooth transition (2 October)
  ‘If you are a business looking to make that decision and smoothly transition to a four-day working week without cutting pay, here are some things worth considering.’
• Dan Gerrella: Public consultations: starting with a negative (2 October)
  ‘The ultimate aim of public consultations is to gain trust and support for your project from the communities affected.’
• Marcel Klebba: When the novelty – of working in PR – wears off (30 September)
  ‘I feel that my work is more thoughtful and more mature. My self-awareness has seemingly increased. My thinking is also more critical now — something Judy Gombita and I exchanged a lot of tweets about.’
• Chloe Marsh: Advice for a career in Communications: three things I wish I’d been told (28 September)
  ‘Your number one priority should be to get to know your business inside and out. Think about it like you’re in training for Mastermind. Specialist subject: your organisation.’
• Stuart Bruce: PR is not just communications (28 September)
  ‘Public relations is about what people think about you or your organisation. It’s about your reputations with different audiences or stakeholder groups. There is far more that goes into this than just listening and saying – communicating.’

Politics and public affairs

• Paula Keaveney: Conservative Party conference: Domestic policy dances to centre stage (4 October)
  ‘Conservative conferences differ from Labour and the Lib Dems. There is virtually no debate in the main hall. It is not a decision-making body. An MP I spoke to recently told me that you have failed if you spend most of your time in the main hall.’
• Michael Stott: Conservative Party Conference- Lansons briefing #3 (no date)
  ‘Clearly there’s still a lot of effort coming from big business to provide support to the Prime Minister’s plans, however the membership who turned out in Birmingham didn’t hear it.’
• Aidan Muller: A new model for think-tank communications (Part II) (1 October)
  ‘In my last post, I argued that a reframing of think-tank communications was required – away from the report, and towards ‘the story’. This post looks at how your communication content, assets and activity bring your story to life, which in turn helps you achieve your objectives.’

Presentation skills

• Stephen Welch: How to Tell Stories in Your Presentations (2 October)
  ‘If you are going to tell stories in your presentations, make sure you cover these six points.’
• Deb Sharratt: Public Speaking with Confidence (2 October)
  ‘Change your self-talk — instead of saying I’m not good at public speaking, try saying I’m getting better.

Public and third sectors

• Claire Whitelaw: University public relations – achieving global impact (2 October)
  ‘Like many PR teams, in recent years we’ve successfully moved from a ‘media first’ approach to one that puts digital media as central to reaching our target audiences – our students, our graduates, the global academic and business community, along with policy makers, opinion formers and influencers.’

Gender, age and diversity

• Nik Govier: When bad is good (no date)
  ‘I’m dyslexic. For years I inadvertently hid this, so was undiagnosed and miscategorised as being stupid and lazy. Turns out I’m neither. As well as now seeing my dyslexia as a great asset (I can see things that others can’t), it’s also where my drive came from. I’ve spent my adult years proving those that doubted me, wrong. The disability was the making of me.’
• Alan Morgan: Building a more socially mobile PR industry (2 October)
  ‘In an increasingly complex and fast-moving global media landscape, our job is to advise clients on how to understand and communicate with increasingly diverse audience groups.’
• Advita Patel: At our prime at 40? (2 October)
  ‘Maybe I’m naive but I honestly don’t think it matters what age you are, you can be 24 or 54 but if you can’t demonstrate that you’ve kept up-to-date with what’s going on in your industry then you will unfortunately struggle.’

Crisis and reputation

• Chris Measures: Brewdog, PR and smelling a rat (3 October)
  ‘When I first read the story I’d assumed that the offending communication had gone out on social media, and was just a throw away line by someone that wasn’t thinking, and automatically conflated Scofflaw’s redneck roots with Trump support.’

Brand, influence and measurement

• Stella Bayles with James Alexander: How Diageo measures multi-channel marketing [podcast] (2 October)
  ‘PESO is a really good way to boil down your outputs into four categories to achieve standardised data so we can compare and contrast. Outputs are a really good place to start.’
• Scott Guthrie: Helping influencer marketers be clear when posts are ads (28 September)
  ‘Today regulators responsible for overseeing influencer marketing in the UK have launched a new guide to help social influencers stick to the rules by making clear when their posts are ads.’

Technology and AI

• Stephen Waddington: March of the machines in PR (4 October)
  ‘I returned to the CIPR today to present a summary of the work of the #AIinPR panel to the Council. It was set up this year to make sense of the impact of artificial intelligence on PR.’

Internal communication

• Cathryn King: All about trust: Part 4 – Being the trusted communicator (28 September)
  ‘I look at what internal communications can itself do to become more trusted by those in its own organisation.’

Media and digital

• Debs Field: Everyone’s an expert (28 September)
  ‘How do we cut through the noise and make our voice heard even if we’re small? Or should we just give up?’
• Paul Sutton with Alex Myers: Fake news! How misinformation is impacting comms [podcast] (3 October)
  ‘Free beer for Trump supporters? It contradicted many of the things we’d done with Brewdog.’

#prstudent #bestPRblogs

• Heiða Ingimarsdóttir (Leeds): The path to here (3 October)
  ‘I believe that once I have finished my degree here I can achieve anything. I will be able to live those dreams I had as a 23 year old mum. I will be a good role model to my children, I will have a job that pays the bills.’
• Orlagh Shanks (LIverpool John Moores): #BloggersWanted: Lazy or Tactful? (4 October)
  ‘I just don’t really see Twitter as the most effective way of finding the perfect bloggers for campaigns, or contacting journalists. If I’m wrong, please don’t hesitate to challenge my opinion.’
• Yana Miladinova (Bourmemouth): 10 Questions With Rich Leigh (4 October)
  ‘Andy [Barr] will tell you I bullied my way through the interview, but, just before Christmas in 2007, he offered me my first job in PR, as the first employee at the agency. 10 and a bit years later, and I’m still in PR.’
• Aoibheann McCormack (Liverpool John Moores):  Pros & Cons of CSR: PR’s secret weapon. (2 October)
  ‘The inspiration for my post has come from brainstorming dissertation topics and my CSR final year module. Listening to my CSR lecturer, reminded me how much I want to fight for CSR recognition.’
• Geraldine Garvey (Leeds Beckett): Is social media a true representation of people’s offline life? (2 October)
  ‘I feel like I am surrounded by people that are so concerned about what they look like on social media, they will often go to extreme lengths of editing their photographs.’
• Niamh Murray (Ulster): The “P word” (2 October)
  ‘Take it from a current placement student who has learned some of these the hard way. And no, I did not follow all of these, which is precisely why I am advising you to.’