✅ Planning for sustainable agency growth
Your week ahead in management, media and public relations
We've applied the Traction business planning process at the performance-driven marketing and communications agency Hard Numbers. Paul Stollery, cofounder and creative director, shared the backstory last week in his Scaling Service newsletter.
Gino Wickman developed the business planning framework. There are any number of business planning models, but I recommend Traction as a tool for any agency seeking to build its next generation of management.
It's a critical issue in agencies as, inevitably, everything goes across the founders' desk. All clients and employees want contact with the founders. To become sustainable, all businesses must remove this pinch point.
The benefit of Traction is that it aligns the founders and management team members around a vision and values and applies a straightforward process and methodology to build sustainable growth. It defines an operating system for the business and focuses on clear data points and key performance indicators.
Each member of the management takes responsibility for an area of the business and is held accountable through a rhythm of working meetings. Traction is particularly good in an agency environment to help remove risk and plan for sustainable growth.
Have a great week.
Management
💼 4-DAY WEEK STICKS: 12 months after a pilot four-day work week project in the UK, more than half of the participating companies have made it permanent. Managers and staff report benefits, including improved well-being, work-life balance and job satisfaction. The study provides insights into management processes to make the shift sustainable. Source: Autonomy.
🏥 PANDEMIC PRESSURE: Contextual management factors and not the crisis itself drove the intense emotional experiences of senior NHS communicators during the COVID-19 pandemic. A new study highlights how command-and-control governance, remote work challenges, and a lack of organisational support have impacted communications professionals. Source: Stephen Waddington.
Media
📰 GEN Z NEWS HABITS: Gen Z has a different relationship with news than previous generations, getting most of its news via social media rather than directly from publishers. Young consumers start their news journeys on social platforms and have less loyalty to publications, forcing publishers to adapt content and business models to maintain relevance. Source: Stephen Waddington.
📉 SALES SLIP: The latest UK magazine ABC circulation figures for 2023 show an overall 12.4% decline in average monthly circulation compared to 2022, falling from 24 million to 21 million copies. However, more magazines saw circulation growth this year than last, including BBC Top Gear Magazine, BBC Sky at Night, BBC Wildlife, and BBC Science Focus. Source: Press Gazette.
Industry
🔵 SOCIALLY MOBILE RECRUITMENT: The community interest company that supports practitioners from diverse backgrounds in gaining management skills is recruiting assessors and examiners. Please email Beth Thomas for a job description if you are interested in either role. Source: Socially Mobile.
🟰 DISPOSABLE DIVERSITY: A focus on hiring for cultural and societal norms to meet client expectations within public relations practice is holding back progress on diversity and inclusivity in the UK. According to a recent study published in Public Relations Inquiry, diversity goals are treated as optional and easily discarded rather than a requisite. Source: Stephen Waddington.
Tools and technology
📏CONNECTING COVERAGE: CoverageImpact is a free tool from the CoverageBook team that turns CSV exports of media coverage data into timeline graphs to visually correlate activity with real-world outcomes such as search trends or sales. Its goal is to help practitioners measure and showcase the impact of media relations activity. Source: Stella Bayles.
🤳 TIKTOK PLAYBOOK: TikTok has launched a creative guide to help businesses with content ideation, providing tips and tools to help them develop engaging and effective video ads. It encourages brands to embrace their unique voice, research their audience, collaborate, highlight their products and use TikTok's data-driven insights as a source of inspiration. Source: TikTok.
🖼 CREATOR MARKETPLACE: Instagram is expanding its creator marketplace to enable more brands and creators to connect for partnership opportunities. The creator marketplace simplifies the process for brands to discover and collaborate with creators on branded content and partnership ads, which perform well and provide transparency in scaling such collaborations. Source: Meta.
Events
📅 AI IN EDINBURGH: I'm heading to Edinburgh on Tuesday, 5 March, at the kind invitation of the CIPR Scotland community to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for management and public relations. The session will run 6-8pm. Please come and join us. Source: CIPR Scotland.
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 past week: Stella Bayles, Owain Betts, Slavina Dimitrova, Andrew Bruce Smith, Paul Stollery and Sarah Waddington CBE.