#15 🍝 Is The Godfather a PR manual? 🤡 Clown announces deaths 💻 BBC social media guidance 📰 Woolworths fake news

Welcome

💓 This is TWTWTW #15

Hello, I'm Stuart Bruce and this is my weekly compilation of public relations, communication and corporate affairs stories. If you are a regular subscriber you'll notice That Was The Week That Was looks a little different this week. That's because I've switched from publishing it on the free Substack newsletter platform to Curated, which is a paid for platform. If you are using #PRtech tools professionally there are often advantages in using a paid for tool rather than relying on a free one where the service levels and T&Cs are totally outside your control.

News

🍝 Can The Godfather be a PR manual?

Fascinating article about how for some The Godfather has become a politcal handbook. Are there any lessons in it for PR and corporate affairs professionals. I'm using this article as an excuse to rewatch it and reread it to see if I can find any. What about you?

🥚 America’s election - Why it has to be Biden | Leaders | The Economist

Can you spot the Easter egg on this fantastic cover of The Economist? A fantastic example of great design to convey a message. Let me know if you spot it.

🤡 Health official dressed as clown to announce COVID-19 deaths

I know I'll dress as a clown while announcing the latest COVID-19 deaths said nobody ever... except this public health official in Oregon state in the USA. A classic example of how not to do a media interview. Story via Stephen Canning.

Corporate affairs

💻 New BBC guidance on social media use

The BBC has updated its guidance on social media use for employees, contractors and freelances. The intention was to help maintain the BBC's impartiality and prevent high profile individuals and journalists from sharing personal opinions that might prove controversial. It's a timely reminder that every company and organisation needs to review its social media governance if it is more than a year or two old. As the controversy over the BBC's new policy shows this definitely isn't something that should be left to legal, marketing or human resources and must be something that is led by corporate affairs. This is one of the services I offer via my consultancy.

Crisis communication

📰 Fake news fools news media with Woolworths high street relaunch

I've blogged about how a fake Twitter account fooled dozens of mainstream news organisations including The Sun, The Mirror and the Daily Mail. They all fell for the spoof and wrote fake news stories that iconic retailer Woolworths was about to return to the UK high street.

AI, digital and social

📘 New social media playbook from UK's Government Communication Service

The UK Government Communication Service publishes lots of excellent resources such as toolkits and playbooks. It has just updated its social media playbook. Although the resources are developed for use by government departments and the public sector most of them are just as applicable to private sector and not-for-profit organisations.

Photo by Tracy Le Blanc from Pexels

🦟 LinkedIn active members and engagement grew substantially since the start of the pandemic

The latest results from Microsoft reveal some interesting data about the growth of LinkedIn. It has been apparent as more people are working from home that LinkedIn usage has grown. It is another place and community for people to connect when they can't do so in the office, in meetings or at networking events. Engagement on LinkedIn grew by 31% with a 16% increase in revenues for Microsoft. If you are responsible for corporate communication or public affairs you need to ensure LinkedIn is one of your channels.

Research and reports

🚒 New research about brand risk on social media

This new report by Crisp looks at the risks brands face on digital and social media. It looks at what consumers think about inappropriate, harmful and negative content and how it impacts on what they think about brands and companies.

🤼 The best brand communities of 2020

Community management consultancy Feverbee has published its report on the Best Brand Communities of 2020. Communities have always been important for public relations and communication professionals, but appear to have exploded this year as people look for stronger connections online now they are no longer getting as many in real life. I've known Feverbee founder Richard Millington since the mid-00s when I managed PR for an esports company and he ran gaming communities.

CommTech tools

🔎 New Google tool to explore and analyse large collections of documents

Pinpoint is a new free tool in Google's Journalist Studio that is designed to help you explore and analyse large collections of documents. You can use it to search forms, handwritten documents, images, emails, PDFs and more. It will also transcribe and search audio files. Story via Andrew Bruce Smith.

🤖 New AI-powered writing assistant

The latest AI-powered writing assistant is Wordtune. It's a Chrome extension (so also works in Edge) that claims to help you improve your writing. I've installed it and I am giving it a go, but reserve judgement at the moment. The image shows its suggestions for improving/changing the previous sentence. It might be a useful addition to tools like Grammarly, Linguix and Hemmingway.

That Was The Week That Was

🙏 Thank you!

Thank you for making it to the end of another That Was The Week That Was. If you want to talk about how I can help you or your team with measurement and evaluation, strategy or digital and social media then visit my Stuart Bruce Associates website and get in touch for a free, no obligation chat.