✅ Monday briefing: Pitch response rates, carbon reporting, industry reset, Edelman report, media monitoring tool, brand traffic search impact, community tools, and more...
Media, best practice, industry, research and insights, tools, and social media and platforms
This newsletter is crowdsourced each week from my blog and community of practice for people studying and working in marketing, media and PR. It’s a hive mind, newsroom and source of information, help and support. You’d be welcome to join us.
We’re raising funds again for The BAY Foodbank, our local food bank in Newcastle. Demand is greater than ever this year because of rising food and energy costs, and Universal Credit cuts. Thanks to Libby Howard, Koray Camgoz, David Alexander, and others for donations.
Media
📉 PITCH RESPONSE RATES: Average journalist open rate for media pitches was in 2020 was 36%. This year it’s dropped eight points to 28%. Response rates followed a similar pattern, falling from 4.62% to 3.49%. The findings are from the latest Propel Media Barometer based on 1.4 million media pitches. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
✋ RAISING BBC STANDARDS: A plan to raise standards across the BBC includes action in the following areas: regular reviews of content, increased staff training, external oversight on standards, increased transparency, and a new editorial whistleblowing policy. Spotted Michael Greer.
Best practice
🌍 CARBON REPORTING: The PRCA Climate Misinformation Strategy Group has welcomed an announcement by HM Treasury requiring financial institutions and listed companies in the UK to publish net zero transition plans by 2023. It has called for transparency and accountability on net-zero claims. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
🌳 CARBON BANDWAGON: The public relations industry is falling over itself to help businesses get to grips with the climate crisis. Practitioners must support business in making the right choices around carbon disclosure. This is an essay that I wrote for the latest edition of Don’t Cry Wolf Quarterly. Source Stephen Waddington.
🇪🇺 SUPERMARKET PLAYS CHICKEN: Morrisons apologised after facing threats of a boycott for labelling a chicken as containing "non-EU salt and pepper". A Twitter mob called out the supermarket claiming that the labelling was an anti-EU statement. Spotted Ramona Slusarczyk.
Industry
👨💻️ HIGHS AND LOWS: Founders letters can provide a brilliant insight into the highs and lows of starting and running a business. Blurred founder Nik Govier’s three year anniversary story is an extraordinarily humble and life affirming story of life and death. Source Nik Govier.
🤫 CEO SECRETS: Social Element promotes a culture of healthy conflict whereby employees are able to challenge each other. Founder and CEO Tamara Littleton told BBC News that company culture shouldn’t be too nice as it prevents good decision making for an organisation. Source Tamara Littleton.
Research and insight
👨🏫️ INDUSTRY RESET: Financial literacy within public relations, the role of communications as a management function, office return, diversity, and brand attitudes were among topics of conversation at the recent international PRovoke Summit. Spotted Maja Pawinska Sims.
📞 EDELMAN REPORT: Corporate communication established itself as a management function during the crisis according to data published by Edelman. More than three-quarters of communicators say that internal perceptions of public relations as a strategic business driver have changed during 2020. Source Stephen Waddington.
Tools
📺 MEDIA MONITORING TOOL: Newslit, built by the original Nuzzel team, tracks more than 100,000 media sources and identifies content being shared within communities. It’s a useful tool to see what the people you follow on Twitter are talking about. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
🚦 BRAND TRAFFIC SEARCH IMPACT: A CoverageBook case study demonstrates how to use Google Webmaster Central data to evaluate the incremental impact to brand traffic from a public relations campaign. The Performance view allows filters to be created to track how a website performs in search. Source Gary Preston and Stella Bayles.
Social media and platforms
👨 FACIAL RECOGNITION: Facebook has said that it will no longer use facial recognition software to identify faces in photographs and videos. There have been growing concerns about the ethics of facial recognition technology, with questions raised over privacy, racial bias, and accuracy. Spotted Catherine Arrow.
🔍 LOCATION SEARCH: Google Business Profile has relaunched with a series of tools to manage your company on Google Search and Maps. It enables an organise to engage with its customers via reviews, photos, posts, and more. An analytics dashboard provides information about the performance of your profile. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
💲 COMMUNITY TOOLS: Facebook announced new community personalisation and moderation tools at its Communities Summit. It also announced plans for subgroups, community chats, paid activities including fundraisers and paid groups. Spotted Catherine Arrow.
Don’t Cry Wolf is a Wadds Inc. client.