✅ Monday briefing: WaddsCon, trusted news, censoring archive content, banned Bristol reporters, Google news, union vs media, research diaries, voice usage, and more…
This is your last call for the June edition of WaddsCon.
This is your last call for the June edition of WaddsCon. At 1pm-2pm BST on Wednesday each of our speakers will share best practice approaches to newsjacking and explore ways to land stories by incorporating a brand, organisation, or individual into the news cycle.
Here’s our lineup:
How public relations invented newsjacking - Andy Barr, 10Yetis
The newsjacking toolkit: best practice - Paul Maher, Positive Marketing
A journalist-led approach: lessons from JOE - Clara Kelly, Legacy
When a brand should newsjack and when it shouldn't - Kate Hartley, Polpeo
Media
🏔️ CENSORING ARCHIVE CONTENT: Paramount has confirmed that it won’t remove historical content from its archives because it is no longer culturally appropriate. CEO Bob Bakish said that it would be a mistake to censor historical content because it may offend people. Spotted Sarah Waddington.
✈️ BANNED BRISTOL REPORTERS: Bristol’s Local Democracy Reporters (LDR) have been banned from attending press conferences with the city’s Mayor Marvin Rees. It follows a question about whether Rees saw any irony in flying to Vancouver in April to give a TED Talk about tackling the Climate Crisis. Spotted Stuart Bruce.
🔍 GOOGLE NEWS: Google News is 20 years old. Regional titles have been given equal prominence to national media on Google News as part of an upgrade to the news aggregation service. The change aims to highlight local news more prominently in search results. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith and Alan Morrison.
Best and bad practice
🚂 UNION VS MEDIA: RMT boss Mick Lynch had a good week rebutting criticism and attacks in the media. His emotional intelligence and command of his brief was underestimated by journalists. This YouTube video compilation will be used as a training aid for interview technique for years to come. Spotted Nigel Sarbutts and Stephen Waddington.
Research and insight
🎒 RESEARCH DIARIES: Public relations is built on a foundation of contradictions and paradoxes. These relate to theory, definitions, professionalism, management, and more. There are countless practitioner studies but fewer management perspectives. The next phase of my PhD studies will focus on the gap between practice and management. Source Stephen Waddington.
💬 VOICE USAGE: Consumers are increasingly comfortable with using voice technology after a surge in usage during the pandemic. More people trust Alexa and Siri with daily tasks including music, news, information and commerce. Vixen interviewed 6,000 consumers in Germany, UK and US for its annual Voice Consumer Index. Source James Poulter.
Industry
👎 PURPOSE MARKETING: P&G marketing chief Marc Pritchard called out companies using purpose as a marketing veneer much like corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the past. He believes that it will come back to bite them amid inflation and the cost of living crisis. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
⛑️ COMMUNICATIONS SUPPORT: Professional communicators keen to show their support for the people of Ukraine can get involved by adapting resources to specific audiences in digital channels. Rod Cartwright recently spoke to UNHCR communication chief Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams about ways to support the Ukraine refugee crisis. Source Rod Cartwright.
Social media and platforms
📈 LINKEDIN EVENTS: More than 24,000 LinkedIn events are created each week. The platform has added a series of community features to Event pages including repost and comments. It is intended to promote engagement around events and in the LinkedIn news feed. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
📝 TWITTER NOTES: Twitter is trialling a new longform format called Notes that enables users to post long form content. It enables users to write entire articles straight onto the social media platform and include photos, videos, GIFs, and tweets. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
▶️ VIDEO TRENDS: Community generated creative content, multi-format content, and responsive creative are three online video trends identified by a YouTube Trends report. Users seek out personally relevant content rather than mainstream. Source Alan Morrison.
Events
🎈 SUMMER PARTY: Sama Bankside in London (28 July) and The Pen and Pencil in Manchester (4 August) are the venues for the Summer Prty 2022 organised by Rich Leigh and the team at Radioactive. There will be a free bar thanks to Opinium and The PR Cavalry. The ticket price of £5 will be donated to Socially Mobile. Source Rich Leigh.
Vixen Labs is a Wadds Inc. client. Stephen Waddington is a founder and director of Socially Mobile.
Much, much success for your new PhD direction, Stephen. One of the chief problems with proving our worth to managers is that they have not been exposed to public relations except through marketing courses, which see us as content creators for their brand campaigns. PR professionals have historically had a really tough time convincing management schools that they should be teaching PR to their students, yet there is plenty of evidence that students need and want it. (I have stories!) I believe this is fundamental to getting managers' confidence. I do hope you address it in your work.