✅ Measuring the value of public relations in terms that management understands
A week in management, media and public relations
Senior public relations and corporate communication practitioners frequently highlight the issue of demonstrating return on investment. Along with professionalism, it’s one of the significant issues that holds public relations back. We don’t speak the language of management or hold ourselves accountable to management standards.
It’s best summed up by an interview I did recently with a senior practitioner working in a UK plc who said we don’t have a chart in the board pack demonstrating our contribution to the P&L or balance sheet. Our response is to produce montages of media coverage or use proxies to demonstrate value. This significantly undervalues the contribution of public relations to management.
The AMEC Awards in London last week celebrated the work of practitioners at the forefront of addressing this issue through measurement frameworks and scorecards focused on the relationship perspective of an organisation. The awards also highlighted the growing role of public relations in contributing to management planning and decision-making through data and insights. We bring a perspective of media and publics through a variety of means.
Congratulations to all the winners on your work and for driving the alignment of public relations and management. It’s one of the most valuable roles within practice at the moment. Thanks to AMEC CEO Johna Burke for her leadership of the organisation and the measurement agenda within the public relations profession.
Artificial Intelligence
🗃 CUSTOM GPTS: OpenAI's new ChatGPT+ allows anyone to create customised mini-GPTs trained on their own data. Customised PR-GPTs could transform how public relations teams work by helping make sense of large amounts of content using a chatbot interface. Source: Andrew Bruce Smith.
🚪 ALTMAN OUT: OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman has abruptly left the company after losing the board's confidence. The board said Altman was “not consistently candid in his communications”. OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, will replace him on an interim basis. Source: Financial Times.
🏛 AI ACCOUNTABILITY: YouTube set out its approach for responsible AI innovation. It includes requiring creators to disclose altered or synthetic content, offering removal requests for unauthorised synthetic media, and using AI to improve content moderation. Source: YouTube.
Media
🧑⚖️ MEDIA AI ETHICS: A consortium of media organisations has published the Paris Charter on AI and Journalism created by a commission chaired by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa. It aims to guide journalists and newsrooms globally on safely adopting AI technologies that impact trust in information. Source: Reporters Without Borders.
☢️ MANAGING RISKS: The Daily Telegraph issued guidelines to staff prohibiting publishing AI-generated text except in limited cases with legal approval. Meanwhile, The Guardian has released a policy cautiously embracing AI to maintain transparency around human-produced journalism. Source: Press Gazette.
📈 LOCAL SUCCESS: Regional news publisher Newsquest has bucked the trend of decline in regional news media, growing revenue last year. It credited its growth to local ad sales and digital strategies such as website paywalls and AI copywriting experiments. Source: Press Gazette.
Good and bad practice
📺 CUSTOMERS OVER ADS: Iceland will not release a Christmas advert but will instead use the money to support customers during the cost of living crisis. The retailer said forgoing the advert was "a no-brainer" as consumers continue to struggle with increased food prices amid record spending on festive ads by other brands. Source: BBC.
📮 BARCODE BLUNDERS: Royal Mail customers participating in a scheme to swap old stamps for new barcoded ones have been accused of fraud after the company rejected stamps bought from post offices and supermarkets. Critics accuse Royal Mail of faulty barcode scanning and ignoring problems with the technology used to identify valid stamps. Source: The Guardian.
Management
❓ MANAGEMENT INTELLIGENCE: Wadds Inc. has partnered with NewsWhip to explore how corporate communications and public relations can support management with data and insights, including during issues and crises. We’d welcome your perspective via this short survey. All of the findings and results from the survey will be anonymised. Source: Wadds Inc.
🔵 SOCIALLY MOBILE: The programme aimed at helping experienced practitioners from underrepresented groups advance their careers is accepting applications until December 8 for its fully-funded, ten-week online public relations. It is ideal for those seeking a promotion, changing roles, returning to work, or starting a business. Source: Socially Mobile.
Industry
💲 NATIVE CONCERNS: A Press Gazette investigation uncovered a network of websites presenting themselves as independent local UK news sources displaying paid-for press releases as editorial content. The content is distributed further by Google News and MSN.com. It raises concerns about paid media portrayed as news on major platforms. Source: Press Gazette.
📒 PURPOSE PAYS: Purposeful Brands by Sandy Skees makes the case for brands to embrace purpose and sustainability as strategies that drive innovation, stakeholder engagement and profit. It’s a book about how businesses transition from promoting consumption to behavioural change that doesn’t cost the earth. Source: Wadds Inc.
🪞 REPUTATION REVIVAL: Celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Taylor Swift, and others have rebranded themselves after being cancelled, using tactics like lying low, timed media interviews, charity work, and playing into criticism to reshape their image. These public relations strategies help reconnect celebrities with sympathetic audiences. Source Huffington Post.
Thank you to the following members of the House of Marketing & PR community of practice for sharing and debating stories covered in the newsletter over the last week: Richard Bagnall, Rob Bruce, Craig McGill, Claire Munro, Teresa Nightingale, Sarah Waddington and Jason Weekes.