✅ Setting the agenda for 2024

A week in management, media and public relations

If you want to ease into 2024, I’d recommend this discussion with CoverageBook’s Stella Bayles. We recorded it before the break.

We look back at 2023 and how the economy impacted the industry. We discuss marketing and public relations budgets, how practice responded, and how agencies were affected.

My hope for 2024 is that the public relations industry continues to drive alignment with management, notably in areas of diversity, training, measurement, and planning. My goal is to continue to help teams aim high, better sell success, and support the industry in raising its raise credibility with management.

Let me know how I can help you.

Happy New Year.

Management

♟️ STRATEGY GAP: CEOs view top-level corporate communication professionals as strategic advisors, but their requirements for the capabilities of these practitioners are typically technical and operational rather than strategic. A new study explores the gap between the theoretical concept of strategic communication and CEO’s perception. Source Stephen Waddington.

📅 ELECTION YEAR: 2024 will see elections across the world, with over half the global population heading to the polls, including major votes in Taiwan, Indonesia, India, the UK, South Africa and the US. These elections have massive consequences for democracy, the economy, and global stability, with worrying trends like rising right-wing populism and autocracy expected to continue. Source NewsWhip.

🧑‍⚖️ GOVERNANCE GAPS: Poorly structured or non-existent boards can hinder a company's growth, resulting in a lack of focus and dysfunction. Getting a board's balance and makeup right is key to decision-making, succession planning and sustainable growth. These issues can be addressed by robust governance including formal training and non-executive directors to provide an external perspective. Source Wadds Inc.

📈 FINANCIAL OUTLOOK: Fears of a UK recession rose late in 2023 after GDP data showed economic contraction, with forecasts of further weakness in 2024 including falling employment and growth below 1%. This has led investors to expect the Bank of England to slash interest rates from their current 5.25% even as inflation remains above target. Source The Guardian.

Artificial intelligence

🚔 AI ETHICS: A Muckrack survey of 1,000 public relations practitioners finds AI used to support efficiency and effectiveness but raises concerns about the disclosure of AI tools and the future of work. Agencies and in-house teams must develop employee guidelines on ethical AI use and enforce clear AI use policies including disclosure and transparency rules. Source Muckrack.

✨ STRATEGIC INSIGHTS: Alex Waddington has built a LLM based on a dataset of 465 LinkedIn Collaborative Articles about strategic communications. It’s a useful demonstration of a personal LLM tool and insight into public relations practice. Source Open AI.

Best and bad practice

📮 POST OFFICE BETRAYAL: Fifty new potential victims of the Post Office scandal have sought legal help after an ITV drama highlighted the issue where over 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly accused of theft due to a faulty accounting system. A criminal investigation has been launched into potential fraud and perjury charges against the Post Office. Source BBC.

👿 SMEAR CAMPAIGN: The Good Law Project claims that leaked emails reveal that data mining company Palantir has hired public relations firm Topham Guerin to pay influencers to attack the non-profit secretly. It has previously raised concerns about the £330m deal between Palantir and the Government to process millions of NHS patient records. Source The Good Law Project.

Social media and platforms

🚬 TECH ADDICTION: Nearly half of British teenagers feel addicted to social media raising concerns about the impact of digital platforms on youth mental health and calls for more accountability and transparency from tech companies. The data comes from the Millennium Cohort study tracking 19,000 people born in 2000-2002, with 48% of respondents ages 16-18. Source The Guardian.

🇪🇺 X UNDER FIRE: The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether social media platform X may have breached the EU's new Digital Services Act in areas such as risk management, content moderation, transparency, and data access. Source European Commission.

🍪 COOKIE CRUMBLES: The end of third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024 will deal a major blow to ad-funded journalism, with many publishers already seeing falling revenues and layoffs in 2023 due to factors including GDPR consent rules, ad blockers, and advertisers avoiding news. Publishers are adopting registration walls to collect first-party data, open web ad targeting and subscription models. Source Press Gazette.

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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 few weeks: Andrew Bruce Smith, Mark Chapman, Adam Driver, Richard Leyland, Ben Lowndes, Marshall Manson, Alan Morrison, Jack Richards, Rebecca Taylor, Alex Waddington and Sarah Waddington CBE.