This week in PR (9 March)

News in brief

• Announced during National Apprenticeship Week, a new Public Relations and Communications Assistant Apprenticeship supported by the PRCA and developed to replace the existing PR Apprenticeship programme launched in 2011,
• PR Week has launched its 2018 Powerbook. It’s a list of talented high achievers, but it reflects public relations as a trade. A profession would surely include its star professors and researchers in such a list.
• Today is the last regular weekly print edition of New Musical Express (NME).
• Public relations and publicity stunts are not the same thing. Sainbury’s is receiving praise for doing the right thing for an employee – and NOT going public with it. The Evening Standard reports.

Calendar

Our calendar of events now appears on a separate page

Thought leaders: Pick of the posts

These are the editor’s pick of posts about public relations this week. Recommendations are welcome to [email protected] or @pr_place

Thanks to Judy Gombita, Rachel Miller, Claire Simpson and Heather Yaxley for pointing me to some on this list.

Business / profession

• Drew Benvie: Battnahall turns five (8 March)
  ‘I was asked in March 2013 what my vision for Battenhall was, and I said something a little different to my humble inner plan. “I want to create the next great agency”, I said.’
• Sean Williams: Why I attend the International PR Research Conference (6 March)
  ‘We PR people often are accused of lacking a theoretical foundation for our work, which frequently gets called “art.”’
• Sally Northeast: Go with your gut and pull the plug out (6 March)
  ‘We knew we’d created something special when we invited people to join us in a field in the depths of the beautiful Dorset countryside. What we didn’t anticipate was the emotional connection everyone would develop with each other and with this event.’
• Paul Sutton: The Four Horsemen of the PR-pocalypse (5 March)
  ‘PR in its conventional sense may very well have peaked as a discipline.’
• Jonathan Phillips: How much are we worth? (5 March)
  ‘Local authorities don’t really know what value to put on comms. To some we offer critical high level strategic insight, to others we are the press release department, or as we were described by a senior manager at a former authority I worked at ‘the people who advertise stuff’.’
• Stephen Waddington: 95 tools to help you work smarter in public relations (4 March)
  ‘The CIPR artificial intelligence (AI) panel has published an initial list of tools collated from its crowdsourced project. You’ll almost certainly discover something to help you work smarter.’

Campaigns

• Hel Reynolds: 7 easy ways you can get involved with the #BenefitToSociety campaign (3 March)
  ‘I’ve been working with a fantastic team on a campaign called Benefit To Society, which aims to challenge negative stereotypes of social housing residents, or council house tenants.’

Crisis and reputation

• Ella Minty: Do Boards Need Crisis Management Training? (8 March)
  ‘If I were to hire someone today for a crisis management position, these would be the questions I would ask.’

Gender and diversity

• Vikki Chowney: Six vital things I learned from Tracy Robbins (8 March)
  ‘We met, we clicked, and my professional adoration of her was immediate. In fact, her first comment to my after our meeting was “I think we could almost be dangerous together … :-)”’
• Amanda Lowe: Fixing the female PR pipeline (7 March)
  ‘PR is traditionally an ‘always-on’ profession, permanently hooked up to 24-hour news channels and on the end of email for any comms eventuality. It’s not an attractive proposition for someone looking to balance work with the demands of family life, particularly in the early ‘new parent’ years.’
• Rebecca Henderson: International Women’s Day 2018 – five PR powerhouses that happen to be women (8 March)
  ‘Catherine [Sweet] believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. I will forever be grateful for this. Catherine made a big difference to my life.’
• Gavin B Harris: My diversity and inclusion wishlist for PR and communications (7 March)
  ‘No more all-male teams, all-female teams, all-white teams, or all non-disabled teams. This needs to change. Now. There’s still too many of them in PR and communications.’
• Ángeles Moreno and Ralph Tench: Fact or fiction: Re-writing the text on gender inequalities in communication management (5 March)
  ‘Despite the clear acknowledgement that communication is a profession predominantly occupied by a majority of women, the glass ceiling and transparent salary gap between the genders continues to be highly evident.’
• Elizabeth Bananuka: Pros We Love: Roopa Ramaiya, Head of PR, North and West Europe, Zendesk (4 March)
  ‘PR isn’t just PR anymore, it’s a hybrid of a number of traditional and newer marketing disciplines and I love the variety – there is absolutely no risk of being bored!’

Internal communication

• Saskia Jones: 6 easy steps to simplify your internal comms strategy (7 March)
  ‘How can we make time to formulate a winning internal comms strategy under the weight of endless other impromptu requests? The focus should be on keeping it simple and manageable.’
• Ellie Buckingham: Five tips for writing change communications (5 March)
  ‘In the spirit of honesty, let’s be honest… sometimes you can’t be. Occasionally there’s something huge bubbling away that’s too commercially sensitive to say, especially in a written communication that could leak to the media or your competition.’
• Jenni Field: Four things I heard at the Employee Engagement Awards Conference (5 March)
  ‘Hearing from M&S about their campaign to engage sector managers from their head of customer experience just reinforced the point that what goes on on the inside shows up on the outside.’
• Amelia Tait: Postman Chat: Why an underground Royal Mail forum is a “godsend” for postal workers (2 March)
  ‘For 12 years, an unofficial website has been a haven for Royal Mail workers too afraid to post on social media.’

Media and digital

• Dan Slee: LONG READ: Why you should have corporate AND non-corporate accounts (8 March)
  ‘[Research] shows that there is a role for both the corporate and the non-corporate devolved account. They just do different things.’
• Andrew McClenaghan: How online influencers helped Jaguar launch the new I-Pace with a bang (6 March)
  ‘The I-Pace is Jaguar’s first all-electric car and positioned as the future for the marque, as it moves to target younger customers as part of a wider overhaul of the brand’s product range and image.’
• Chris Lee: SEO opportunity still there for PR agencies. But will they take it? (6 March)
  ‘The way Google’s algorithm works increasingly favours PR’s core competencies: gaining attention from high-value media and influencer sites and generating and seeding compelling content.’
• Scott Guthrie: More kids want to be vloggers than pop stars. Will it pay the bills? (no date)
  ‘More primary school children in the UK want to be vloggers when they grow up than doctors, singers/ musicians, artists or actors.’
• Ben Matthews: Dealing with digital changes (no date)
  ‘Charities need to keep up with what changes have taken place recently, while also keeping an eye on changes coming down the line and preparing their teams for when those changes come into place.’

#prstudent #bestPRblogs

Here are two useful resources for PR students:

• PR Careers: 2018: 150 PR internships and graduate schemes
• Stephen Waddington: Updated: public relations dissertation topics

And here’s our pick of the best posts by those studying public relations and/or aspiring to work in PR.

• Chloe Campbell (Ulster): Forget The Greatest Showman – was P.T Barnum ‘The Greatest SPINman’ of all time? (9 March)
  ‘A man full of bigger-than-life ideas – Barnum marketed to an audience interested in mass, and often crass, entertainment regardless of how factual or ethical such displays were.’
• Emma Stanfield (UWE Bristol): How the PR industry can prevent a burnt-out future workforce (8 March)
  ‘The PR industry is all about building and maintaining positive relationships, but what concerns me is the lack of education on having a healthy relationship with social media.’
• Jessica Pardoe (Liverpool John Moores): Sofie Hagen vs. Cancer Research UK (8 March)
  ‘Sofie Hagen has publicly slammed the charity for ‘fatshaming’, describing it as nothing more than an incredibly damaging, “piece of sh*t campaign”.
• Orlagh Shanks (Liverpool John Moores): What Not to Do During Your Work Experience (7 March)
  ‘In this day and age there’s no excuse to not know who you’re working for or what breed of dog the boss owns. If you’re working in Influencer Marketing, you need to have good stalking skills.’
• Jessica Patterson (Ulster): Losing a Limb Taught Me a Lesson (6 March)
  ‘It taught me that pain is temporary and this lesson proves valuable in every aspect of my life these days.’
• Joe Cullen (Manchester Met): Blurred Lines… What is Communications? (5 March)
  ‘It’s not just been my concern that the boundaries between marketing and public relations are blurring, it’s actually something industry experts are discussing as well.’
• Katya Hamilton-Smith (LCC/UAL): Preparing for those dreaded deadlines… (5 March)
  ‘Group work at university can be really hit and miss, sometimes you luck out with a group that’s enthusiastic and hard-working, and sometimes you can be doing everyone else’s work as well as your own.’
• Michael Rossiter (UWE Bristol): Hacking, Trolls and Cyber Security: Are We All Too Exposed To A Social Media Attack? (3 March)
  ‘Sharing her harrowing experience about being heavily trolled online during a brand campaign, Jess Siggers revealed how her 5-star Facebook review plummeted to 1-star within ten minutes during an attack.’
• Lena Coyle (Ulster): Donald Trump  PR mess or PR genius? (3 March)
  ‘In a year where Brexit won the vote it was silly looking back to think Donald Trump wouldn’t become president.’