✅ Monday briefing: Socially Mobile open for applications for 2024
A week in management, media and public relations
We've opened up applications for the first Socially Mobile cohort of 2024.
Sarah Waddington CBE and I founded the community interest company in 2020 to help public relations practitioners from under-represented backgrounds in the UK gain management skills.
It's a 10-week executive education style programme supported by a community of 50+ teachers, assessors and examiners.
Please head to the website and hit the application button on the top right for details.
Management
🌍 ENVIRONMENTAL WHISTLEBLOWING: Protect's Environmental Whistleblowing Toolkit is a practical guide to safely and effectively raising environmental concerns in the workplace, providing information on environmental issues and legal rights when speaking up. The interactive toolkit aims to help ensure organisations are held accountable for their climate impact by empowering whistleblowers. Source: Protect Environment.
🚬 PRO-VAPE CAMPAIGN: Cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris is lobbying governments to prevent crackdowns on vapes, according to a leaked email which describes the WHO agenda as a "prohibitionist attack" on smoke-free alternatives. There is growing concern about the rising use and health impact of e-cigarettes among young people. Source: The Guardian.
🚰 WATER BILLS BOYCOTT: An activist campaign is calling for UK water customers to boycott paying the wastewater portion of their bills in protest at the daily raw sewage spills by water companies into rivers and seas. The campaign calls on consumers to complain and withhold payment to their water utility. Source Boycott Water Bills.
Artificial intelligence
🧠 STRATEGIC USE OF AI: The current focus on using AI for content generation overlooks more strategic applications such as analysing data to understand stakeholders, planning and build knowledge. AI tools can help public relations practitioners make sense of large datasets, identify patterns, and extract key information to inform strategy. Source: Wadds Inc.
⚙️ AUTOMATED BRIEFINGS: The summarisation and extraction capabilities of AI have huge potential in public relations. It can make sense of complex documents such as academic papers or reports. Once uploaded into a large language model, it can be integrated from various stakeholder perspectives or personas. Source: Wadds Inc.
🗃 AI IMAGES: The Better Images of AI project aims to provide more realistic and responsible images to represent AI technology in the media. The project researches, creates and curates better images to avoid fear-mongering, historical biases and misunderstanding of AI's current societal impacts. Source: Better Images of AI.
❓ AI FAQ: Ethan Mollick, Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has answered frequently asked questions about AI, covering topics like detecting AI writing, best practices for using AI, policy considerations and speculation on the future capabilities of AI models. Source: One Useful Thing.
🖼 GENERATIVE VECTOR IMAGES: Adobe has released updates to the AI image generation capabilities across its products, including vector image creation in Illustrator and improved quality in Photoshop. The new features allow users more control over AI-generated images and introduce capabilities like converting text prompts directly into editable vector graphics. Source: Adobe.
Social media
📺 YOUTUBE ACCESSIBILITY: YouTube has added multi-language audio descriptions to make videos more accessible to people with visual impairments, and the option for creators to display their preferred pronouns on their channel page profile. These updates help expand YouTube's audience reach. Source: YouTube.
📱 THREAD UPDATES: Meta's Twitter-like app Threads is working on adding trending topics, GIFs, voice posts, polls and editing features to make it more competitive with Twitter. Its goal is to attract disgruntled Twitter users and publishers unhappy with recent changes under Elon Musk's leadership.
🔗 MANAGING LINKS: Google Business Profile now allows businesses to add links to their social media profiles like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., directly on their business profile page to help customers engage with them on social media. It’s an opportunity for public relations practitioners to update organisational profiles. Source Google.
Media relations
📩 PRESS RELEASE SPAM: Chris Stokel-Walker was surprised to find he had been signed up to 46 email distribution lists by Mynewsdesk, even though he never consented to be on those lists. It highlights issues with the common "spray and pray" media relations tactic of sending mass emails to journalists, which floods inboxes and has low engagement rates. Source: Fast Company.
Thank you to the following community members for sharing and debating stories covered in the newsletter over the last week: Peggy Brønn, Tricia Fox, Andrew Bruce Smith, Julian Christopher, David Edmundson-Bird, Quentin Langley, Alan Morrison, Sarah Waddington CBE, Howard Walker, and Heather Yaxley.