✅ Monday briefing: WaddsCon, Future of the office, creative unlocked, menopause support, ESG webinar, and more...

Media, industry, best (and worst) practice, research and insight, tools, social media and platforms, and events.

Farzana Baduel, Orla Graham, Asif Choudry and Ursula Ojiji will join WaddsCon at the end of May to discuss how agency/client relationships have fared during the pandemic, measurement frameworks, the renaissance of print, and professionalism in PR. Book yourself a ticket.

Media 

📊 NEWSLETTERS AS EARNED MEDIA: Muck Rack is adding newsletter authors to its media database. It's a sign of the times. Traditional publications, digital-first outlets and influencers have embraced the format to build stronger relationships with their audiences. Spotted David Sawyer.

👔 DIGITAL JOURNALIST RECRUITMENT: Ten new journalism jobs are being created as part of regional news group JPIMedia’s investment in digital. It cites search engine optimisation as an area for investment. It follows a similar move by rivals Reach and Newsquest. Spotted Alan Morrison.

Industry

🤕 MENTAL HEALTH: The PRCA, CIPR and ICCO have joined forces to address the PR industry’s mental health challenges. The professional bodies have launched a new survey to gather insight on the mental wellbeing of PR professionals. Spotted Stephen Waddington.

📉 AGENCY RANKINGS: PRovoke has published its 2021 ranking of the world's top public relations agencies. It’s a story of innovation and resilience. Overall the industry shrank by 4% but is expected to recover strongly in 2021. Source Maja Pawinska Sims.

🏢 FUTURE OF THE OFFICE: Disengaged employees enjoy working from home according the CEO of WeWork, a $8.5bn real estate company. Meanwhile the founder of an adult media company has an innovative proposal to encourage employees back to the office. Spotted Alan Morrison and Sarah Waddington.

Best (and worst) practice

🍺 CREATIVE UNLOCKED: Guinness has launched a #LooksLikeGuiness campaign in anticipation of pubs and bars reopening indoors in England this week. It’s a lovely piece of creative work. You can watch it here. Spotted Tony Byng.

🚂 CYBERSECURITY TEST: West Midlands Trains has been slammed for emailing 2,500 staff promising a bonus to workers who had run trains during the pandemic – only to reveal it was in fact a test of their cybersecurity awareness. The train company said that it was a phishing simulation test. Spotted Seán Massey.

Research and insight

🔤 PANDEMIC FONTS: Companies have ditched functional typefaces during the pandemic in favour of more friendlier fonts. How words are displayed may be as important as what they say. Typefaces are the visual equivalent of tone of voice according to The Economist. Spotted Karan Chadda.

😯 EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION: The Financial Times has published an interactive article that demonstrates the use of emotion tracking tech. It uses your webcam to measure your emotional response to content and shows how media companies can use computers to track engagement. Spotted Stephen Waddington and Andrew Smith.

😐 SOCIAL MARKETING: Research by mobile commerce platform Bango suggests that CEOs are losing faith in social media. The Board to Death report suggests frustration  with meaningless metrics that don’t translate to business goals. Spotted Andrew Smith.

Tools

💁🏾 MENOPAUSE SUPPORT: Rachel Miller has collated menopause guidance and practical policy advice for organisations. It’s a useful toolkit for organisations seeking to support employees who are experiencing the menopause. Source Rachel Miller.

Social media and platforms

😰 ONLINE HARMS: Facebook moderator, Isabella Plunkett gave evidence last week to to a UK parliamentary committee revealing the mental toll of the job. In an unrelated move the UK Government announced in the Queen’s speech that it intends to introduce an Online Harm Bill during the coming term of Parliament. Spotted Mark Dye and Alan Morrison.

❌ SHARING ARTICLES: Facebook have tested new prompts to stop users sharing articles that they haven’t read. The prompt alerts users that they're about to share a link they haven't opened. It follows a similar move made by Twitter in June 2020. Spotted Alan Morrison.

🎧 ANDROID CLUBHOUSE: Clubhouse has launched an Android version of its audio social platform. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have all added Clubhouse-like audio social options to their platforms and are likely to slow Clubhouse's Android user take-up. Spotted Andrew Smith.

👫 GENDER IDENTITY: Instagram has offered users a dedicated profile section to share pronouns to help users specify their gender identity. The new feature allows users to share up to four pronouns selected from a pre-approved list of common pronouns including she, he, they, ze and others. Spotted Sarah Waddington.

Events

📅 ESG WEBINAR: Dr Jon White, Rebecca Zeitlin and I will talk about the ESG opportunity for PR in a webinar at 14:00BST on Wednesday 19 May. The session is based on The Environment, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) opportunity report published by Vuelio that Jon and I co-authored.