✅ Monday briefing: Dark arts, Coronation planning, agency planning, sex industry careers, charity lobby, cycling greenwashing, toxic workplaces, community based marketing, and more...
Media, Research and Insight, Best and Bad Practice, Industry, Social Media and Platforms, Tools, and Events
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.
Media
👿 DARK ARTS: The News Agents has published a podcast about the High Court case brought by Doreen Lawrence, Prince Harry, Elton John and others, against The Daily Mail. It covers phone hacking and other abuses of personal privacy. News of the World whistle blower Dan Evans calls for a truth and reconciliation commission. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
Research and Insight
🤴 CORONATION PLANNING: The House of Commons Library has published a planning paper on the history and ceremony of Coronations. The date for the Coronation of King Charles III has been set for Saturday, 6 May, 2023. Spotted Alan Morrison.
✅ AGENCY PLANNING: The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, rising energy prices, and the climate crisis are some of the big issues facing business. Wadds Inc. has produced an impact/certainty report to support 2023 creative agency planning. Hit reply if you would like us to send you a print copy. Source Stephen Waddington.
🍆 SEX INDUSTRY CAREERS: Liz Bridgen's work focuses on the margins of marketing and public relations practice to ensure no one is excluded from the body of knowledge. Her latest project is a study of women that work in marketing and public relations in the adult industries. Please contact Liz if you might be able to help. Source: Liz Bridgen.
📋 REPUTATION REPORT: The latest Ipsos Reputation Council Report collates the views of senior communicators (opens as a PDF). It examines whether the risks of posting on social media outweigh the rewards for an organisation. It also includes sections on crisis management, regulation and ESG. Spotted Rod Cartwright.
Best and Bad Practice
🌳 CHARITY LOBBY: The National Trust has become increasingly vocal in its opposition to Government policy. The charity has set out seven red lines that it says can’t be lost in government policy. Meanwhile communication director Celia Richards has called out Twitter bots attacking the National Trust's position. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
🚴 CYCLING GREENWASHING: British Cycling announced a sponsorship deal with Shell for investment in initiatives to make cycling more accessible and make steps towards net zero. Critics say it’s brazen a cynical greenwashing move by Shell. Spotted Alex Waddington.
Industry
🪧 PRWEEK PROTEST: Extinction Rebellion protesters outside the PR Week awards called-out agencies and clients including Shell and Saudi Aramco. It said that they were complicit in accelerating climate breakdown. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
🤮 TOXIC WORKPLACES: Bullying bosses, demanding clients, and long hours were called out on World Mental Heath day by Prolific North. New research by the mental health network State of US found that half of practitioners report severe stress, anxiety or burnout. Spotted Megan Codling.
Social Media and Platforms
🥽 SOCIAL MEDIA SAFETY: The Council for Responsible Social Media aims to tackle the impact of social media on young people, society and national security. The project is backed by political reform non-profit Issue One and includes Facebook whistle blower Frances Haugen, former US defence secretaries, lawmakers and intelligence chiefs. Spotted Sarah Waddington CBE.
🖼️ TIKTOK PHOTOS: Users can post carousels of still images for users to scroll through in the app. (And, yes, this does look exactly like Instagram...). Spotted Alan Morrison
🤳 TWITTER SCREENSHOTS: Twitter is trialling a prompt asking users to link to a tweet instead of screenshotting and reposting. It’s aimed at maintaining the integrity of conversations but there’s often a good reason for sharing a screenshot such as starting a contrary discussion or as a defence mechanism against a tweet being deleted. Spotted Stuart Bruce and Andrew Bruce Smith.
▶️ YOUTUBE HANDLES: The video sharing platform is notifying creators over the next month of when they can choose a handle for their channel. It’s a move that aims to add social features to the platform. Spotted Alan Morrison.
Tools
🔍 SEARCH ESSENTIALS: The Google Webmaster Guidelines are 20 years old. They've been overhauled and renamed as Google Search Essentials. The guidelines cover technical requirements, spam policies and best practices on the web. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
◼️ DARK ANALYTICS: Sparktoro has published a primer about measuring dark channels that don't provide analytics data. It recommends measuring real behaviours such as impressions, search volumes, direct visits, and conversation rates. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
Events
🎓 3THINKRS ACADEMY: An open source industry training effort for new entrants kicks off again today. It consists of 21 training modules from a diverse set of agency and in-house practitioners. Source Ruth Jones.
🔍 TIKTOK DISCOVERY: Instagram and TikTok are impacting Google’s dominance as part of the public conversation online. Hype Collective will discuss the fundamentals of optimising content for search on TikTok in a webinar on 19 October. Source Paul Stollery.
👥 COMMUNITY BASED MARKETING: Owned communities are the next big thing in marketing for 2023. That’s the view of McKinsey as well as the British community platform Guild. It will explain the principles of Community Based Marketing (CBU) and share some examples of best practice 2-3pm on 20 October. Source Michelle Goodall.
Disclosure: 3THINKRS and Hype Collective mentioned in this this week’s newsletter are Wadds Inc. clients. We’re taking a break next week for holiday but will be back on 31 October 2022.