✅ Monday briefing: 2022 industry Almanac, WaddsCon, CIPR President Q&A, audio events, fake influence, tool mashup, news grid, and more...

WaddsCon is back for 2022 and welcoming pitches on innovation and excellence in media relations

This newsletter is crowdsourced each week from my blog and community of practice for people studying and working in marketing, media and public relations. It’s a hive mind, newsroom, and source of information, help and support. You’d be welcome to join us.

This newsletter brought you the highlights of more than 600 stories from across the industry last year. These form the basis of our 2022 Almanac published in December.

Eight short essays explore management issues such as accounting for carbon, artificial intelligence, and the UK economy; the governance and ethics of big tech and social media platforms; and the accessibility and diversity of communications.

If you’d like me to run a planning session or workshop for your team around the issues we’ve raised, or indeed any topic where we could be helpful, please hit reply.

Industry

🤑 FOSSIL FUEL ADS: Fossil fuel companies are among the biggest spenders on ads designed to look like Google search results. The results show that over one in five ads seen in the study – more than 1,600 in total – were placed by companies with significant interests in fossil fuels. Spotted David Edmundson-Bird.

💚 WADDSCON RETURNS: We’re looking for original speakers for a series of practical events focused on innovation and excellence in media relations. Check out the upcoming schedule and please submit a pitch. Source Stephen Waddington.

❓ CIPR PRESIDENT Q&A: Incoming CIPR President Rachel Roberts is focused on building the community outside of existing CIPR members and organisations that buy PR services. She believes that the changing nature of the workplace in the biggest challenge for practitioners in 2022. Source Rachel Roberts.

✔️ VOLUNTEER RECRUITMENT: Socially Mobile aims to support practitioners in increasing their earning potential. Classes start this week. If you’re interested in helping as an examiner, please complete this form with some basic information. We’ve an initial meeting on Wednesday. Source Sarah and Stephen Waddington.

Best and bad practice

🚴 SUSPENDED CAMPAIGN: Cyclists and car drivers are among the most polarised communities on social media. Transport for London pulled a safety campaign that encouraged shared responsibility after being slammed for victim shaming cyclists. Spotted Seán Massey.

👰INTERNET DATING: A Birmingham entrepreneur is using poster ads to find a wife. Mohammad Malik has set up a website www.findmalikawife.com and has plastered his face across ad hoardings. The tactic previously failed for Mark Rofe. Spotted Bridget Aherne.

Social media and platforms

📊 SOCIAL NETWORKS: Meta owns four (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp) 1bn+ user social media platforms. The 1bn+ club includes YouTube (2.3bn), WeChat (1.2bn), TikTok (1.0bn), and Kuaishou (1.0bn). Visual Capitalist has ranked the world’s most popular social networks by monthly active users. Spotted Stuart Bruce.

🔊 AUDIO EVENTS: LinkedIn is following Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces in adding audio events to the network of 800m business-to-business users. It’s a proposition built for the hybrid environment that includes live broadcasts and peer-to-peer events. Spotted Alan Morrison.

💸 STREAMING INVESTMENT: The top eight US media groups plan to spend at least $115bn on new movies and television shows next year in pursuit of a video streaming business that loses money for most of them. The massive content investment aims to consolidate pandemic fuelled growth. Spotted Stephen Waddington.

👩 FAKE INFLUENCE: Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service built a fake influencer account to investigate influencer marketing. The six-month project exposed a shady culture of hidden advertising, with influencers, brands and agencies ignoring regulations and laws designed to protect consumers. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.

Tools

🤝 TOOL MASHUP: Symphony Technology Group has acquired Kantar Reputation Intelligence, PRgloo and Onclusive to create an end-to-end tool. The new Onclusive platform will integrate monitoring, measurement, and workflow management. Spotted Alan Morrison.

🐸 SCREAMING FROG: Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a website crawler that helps you improve onsite SEO, by extracting data and auditing for common technical issues. It’s so good that Google’s Senior Analyst John Mueller has his own £149/year subscription. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.

📺 NEWS GRID: Build your own international television news grid of up to four feeds in a browser thanks to Financial Times product manager Matt Taylor (@MattieTK) . It’s useful for following breaking events or newsjacking. The web app uses public streams including Al Jazeera, BBC News, CNN, France International and Sky News. Spotted Karan Chadda.