✅ When should an organisation take a stand on a social or political issue?
Your week ahead in management, media and public relations
Balancing business and societal imperatives is front of mind for management and corporate communications. It’s an issue explored in the Wadds Inc. report commissioned by NewsWhip that we published last week.
Influence through Insight describes the role of public relations and corporate communications in supporting management with planning and insight.
My view is that there has been a lot of soft research since the COVID-19 pandemic that makes the case for organisations to share their views on political and societal issues.
An increased focus on corporate purpose and social responsibility creates tension for the corporate communications function. Business drivers must be balanced with value-driven leadership.
We interviewed 20 senior communicators at organisations including Accenture, Adobe, BP, BT Group, Deloitte, Ford, Legal & General, Microsoft, Oracle, PayPal, Shell, Shopify, and Workday.
Views were polarised between staying quiet and speaking out. While some communication teams adopt more partisan stances on social and political issues, others argue for an apolitical position.
We've codified a decision-making framework from the interviews.
NewsWhip CEO Paul Quigley and I will discuss the report on a LinkedIn Live session at 4pm GMT on 20 February. Please join us.
As a next step, we plan to work with NewsWhip to investigate this issue deeply. It’s a highly relevant issue for corporate communications in the UK and US, with upcoming elections and public opinion increasingly polarised.
Please get in touch if you’re a corporate communications leader and you’d like to contribute to the next study.
Management
📈 STRATEGIC GUIDANCE: The 2023 Gallagher report shows internal communications teams increasingly provide strategic guidance to management. The business case for internal communication is based on contribution to culture, strategic alignment, channel optimisation, evidence of value and ultimately, profitability drivers such as engagement and productivity. Source: Wadds Inc.
📊 STANDARD METRICS: The new Government Communication Service Evaluation Cycle outlines the processes for planning and executing campaign evaluations to assess impact. It incorporates continuous improvement, links to other frameworks, and standardised metrics. Source: GCS.
🧑🏫️ STRATEGIC PLANNING: There is strong interest in Prof Dr Betteke van Ruler's ideas on integrating communication processes into organisational strategy. Her study published in 2018 discusses how public relations can play an important role in supporting management by continuously building, defining, presenting, realising and rebuilding strategy. . Source: Stephen Waddington.
✨ AI LESSONS: The spreadsheet, launched in 1979, provides useful lessons as we consider the likely impact of generative AI. Spreadsheets boosted productivity, they reshaped rather than eliminated accounting jobs, but over reliance has led to misuse. Examples include autocorrect, cell confusion and dodgy formulas. Source: Financial Times.
🚗 GREEN CLAIMS: The ASA published verdicts on eight ads from car manufacturers and public sector groups making environmental claims. It found issues with six ads and requested more clarity around some claims, such as zero emissions from BMW and MG Motor, without outright bans. Source: ASA.
Industry
👥 DIVERSITY NEEDED: A report finds that public relations practice lacks socioeconomic diversity, impacting the industry's ability to effectively and ethically communicate with diverse audiences. It recommends a series of interventions to address this issue, including training programs, mentoring, and revised hiring practices. Source: Socially Mobile.
📏 MEASURING IMPACT: CoverageBook is exploring how practitioners measure the impact of media coverage and would appreciate your support by completing its survey. It is keen to explore the relationship between earned media and business outcomes. Source: CoverageBook.
📖 ETHICAL MEDIA: Practitioners must understand the difference between paid and earned media and how content should appear in print and online. Paid content should always be disclosed. A CIPR best practice guide examines ethical issues such as ensuring transparency around paid partnerships and potential conflicts of interest. Source: CIPR.
Technology and platforms
🧑💻️ RANKED FEEDS: The Threads algorithm gathers posts from accounts you follow and public content, then ranks them based on predictions of your interests informed by signals like your past interactions and preferences. Higher-ranked content that the system predicts you are more likely to engage with is shown at the top of your feed. Source: Meta.
🐦 TWITTER ALTERNATIVES: Bluesky, the open-source, decentralised social media platform, gained nearly 800,000 new users on its first day open to the public, hitting almost four million total signups. Social platforms like Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads have seen rapid growth as users seek alternatives to mainstream sites like Twitter. Source: Bluesky.
🔍 SEO BASICS: Google has refreshed its SEO Starter Guide by simplifying explanations, removing advanced topics, clarifying key points, and focusing on the fundamentals website owners need to understand to improve search visibility. The revised guide aims to be more approachable and explain the rationale behind best practices. Source: Google.
💻 PLATFORM DECLINE: Enshittification describes how online platforms degrade in quality over time due to business pressures. An example is Facebook's shift from focusing on serving users to exploiting them for data to sell to advertisers. Cory Doctorow invented the term and argues that we must restore competition, regulation, user empowerment, and labour power to halt this trend. Source: Financial Times.
Artificial intelligence
🤖 BARD REBRANDS: Google has rebranded its AI assistant Bard as Gemini, launching it as a new app and subscription service priced at $19.99 monthly. Gemini will be incorporated into Google services, including Search and Workspace. Source: Google.
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, Stuart Bruce, Julian Christopher, Slavina Dimitrova, Darryl Sparey, Alan Morrison, Andrew Bruce Smith, and Sarah Waddington CBE.