✅ Monday briefing: Greenwashing, LinkedIn boom, Twitter affiliation tag, podcasting matures, pitching is a bitch, management function, comms tech trends, AI tool research, wellbeing in PR, and more...
Tom Levitt: Building socially responsible companies that support their communities
This newsletter is crowdsourced each week from our blog and community of practice for people studying and working in marketing, media and public relations. It’s a hive mind, newsroom, and source of information, help and support. You’d be welcome to join us.
Tom Levitt, author of The Company Citizen, spoke to Sarah Waddington CBE this week on the Wadds Inc. Better Business Outcomes podcast about why GDP fails to account for environmental and societal concerns. It’s a thought provoking conversation. The former Labour MP and co-founder of Fair For You said Brexit was a huge mistake and that the Nolan Principles are missing from public life today.
We’ve two stories this week about live research projects. A EUPRERA project is examining the mental health of practitioners and Lynn has launched its annual behavioural science benchmarking study. Please consider spending ten minutes contributing to both projects. Industry research enables us all to do a better job.
Don’t have a good week, have a great week.
Best and bad practice
🚩 SHIPMAN AD: A provocative ad featuring Harold Shipman by insurance firm DeadHarry has been pulled after complaints. It used an image of the serial killer to promote its services with the tagline: "Life Insurance. Because you never know who your doctor might be." The ASA is reviewing the ad. Spotted Steve Earl.
🌳 GREENWASHING: The CMA is set to scrutinise the accuracy of green marketing claims. The UK spends £130 billion on household essentials, many of which claim environmental credentials, including up to 91% of all dishwashing items and 100% of toilet products. Spotted Alan Morrison.
Social media and platforms
⛔ FT CLOSES MASTODON: The Financial Times has closed its Mastodon server citing issues related to compliance, security and reputational risks. The cost of running the service was also prohibitive. After a month of usage, the FT’s Fediverse presence required 160GB of server space. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
📈 LINKEDIN BOOM: Twitter’s loss has been LinkedIn’s gain. The professional social media network has seen record engagement levels in the most recent quarter, with the platform reporting 18% growth in total user sessions. Revenues are up 10% primarily due to talent solutions. LinkedIn says it expects a slowdown in 2023. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
🏷️ TWITTER AFFILIATION TAG: Twitter is testing an affiliation tag on the accounts of UK journalists. A small icon alongside an account name shows the user’s employer. It is intended as an alternative means of verification to the blue checkmark. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
Media
📻 PODCASTING MATURES: The number of new podcasts launched fell by nearly 80% between 2020 and 2022 and seems to keep dropping according to Neiman Labs. Meanwhile Podnews reports that the number of episodes remains consistent year-on-year. Source Russell Goldsmith.
📰 PITCHING IS A BITCH: Media relations is tougher than ever. Editorial teams run hot and lean. Journalists are under huge pressure to deliver stories. As media relations continues to become increasingly challenging, the opportunity for public relations practitioners is to help organisations become publishers and create their own content, media, and communities. Source Stephen Waddington.
🗞️ MEDIA COVERAGE KPI: Hards Numbers founder Paul Stollery kicked off a social media storm after posting about his agencies’ press coverage guarantee. It's not possible to guarantee coverage for a specific publication on a certain date but you can agree a media list and guarantee coverage on a monthly or quarterly basis by understanding a media sphere, he says. Source Paul Stollery.
Industry insight
📕 B2B MARKETING AND PR: 3THINKRS has read ten of the leading reports about business-to-business marketing and public relations so that you don’t have to. Topics range from the best time to pitch news media (7-9am) through to the most effective format for content marketing. Source Ruth Jones.
👱 MANAGEMENT FUNCTION: A Deloitte report finds that Corporate Affairs (CA) is a critical management function for organisations, their leaders, and Boards. It provides insight, influence, and advice on both creating the conditions for growth and how best to navigate fast moving social and economic changes. Source Rob John.
👨💻️ COMMS TECH TRENDS: 2023 is set to mark a new era for communications and technology as emerging technologies redefine the way people access and share information. Leaner tech with proven return on investment, AI as a communications tool, and alternative realities are all set to become mainstream. Source Koray Camgoz.
Artificial intelligence
ℹ️ AI TOOL DATABASES: FutureTools is a handy aggregator of AI tools. A series of filters allow you to search by function. A Master AI Tools List created on ClickUp allows you to explore tools by function. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
📱 MEDUIM AI DISCLOSURE: Medium users must clearly label any content that has been created using the assistance of artificial intelligence. The new terms and conditions resulted from a consultation exercise with the Medium community. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
🖼️ AI IMAGE TRAINER: Shutterstock has seen the future. It’s signed a deal with OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 artificial intelligence image-generating platform to supply images to help train the algorithm. It is also expected to launch its own image generative tool. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
Industry research
🤕 WELLBEING IN PR: A EUPRERA project is investigating mental health in public relations practice. Please contribute to a survey about your work-life balance and feelings and perceptions of work culture and environment. Source Dr Martina Topić.
🤔 BS MONITOR SURVEY: Lynn has launched its 2023 BS Monitor. It is seeking input from public relations practitioners to understand the capabilities and adoption of behavioural communication. Source Shayoni Lynn.
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