PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations - 🚀 PR Futurist #56 After slap Oscars bring in crisis team | PR Education survey

Welcome

Springing in to our latest issue. Interesting to see how Airbnb's earnings have surged after cutting its performance marketing in favour of investing in brand and reputation. After the horse has bolted, the Oscars is now adding a crisis team for the Oscars ceremony. If you haven't already fed in your views to the the public relations education survey, you can still do so but hurry, the deadline is tomorrow. Don't be like the Oscars, let us help you get your crisis plan in place before any crisis actually happens, we're happy to chat with you about your approach. Hope this one's a good old read!

News

Airbnb's earnings surge after cutting performance marketing in favour of investing in brand and reputation

Expect to see lots of PR agencies and in-house teams citing Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky saying, "PR is Airbnb’s most important channel" and that 90% of the platform's traffic is direct.

The obvious conclusion from Airbnb's earnings report is that every company should ditch performance marketing in favour of reputation and brand building by public relations. Or is it? Of course it isn't as it's all about the mix. Sometimes performance marketing might be a big part of it, other times none existent.

The whole point of a public relations strategy, a marketing strategy or a corporate strategy is they are part of a whole and that means integrated communications. Different elements will play different roles. Stakeholders experience multiple touchpoints during the stakeholder 'customer' journey.

Still the Airbnb example is still a good one when you're faced with the 'last click' brigade claiming credit even if they've had little to do with most of the customer journey.

Stuart Bruce

Get in touch

Be prepared, don't be like the Oscars!

Don't be like the Oscars, who only thought about getting a crisis communications plan after the horse had bolted or the slap had taken place. We would absolutely love to have a chat about how we can help you to be prepared for the situations that could happen. You know it makes sense, look forward to your call.

Crisis communication

Oscars 2023 adds a crisis team for ceremony, after the Will Smith slap

My immediate thought on seeing this was astonishment that an event as big as the Oscars didn't already have a robust crisis communications plan and team in place. And one that had been rigorously rehearsed and tested. I'd have hoped that even more minor events would have such basics in place.

However, on reflection maybe I shouldn't be surprised as I often work with clients that either have quite basic or dated plans, or don't have a crisis communications plan at all. Give us a call if you're looking to update your plan, run crisis communications or media training.

I would have included a photo or official news from the Academy's PR team, but it looks like its newsroom was designed in the 1990s by complete and utter numpties who haven't grasped the basics of 21st century communication. They clearly prefer fake news about themselves to telling their own stories by publishing their own news and images.

I get why they are doing it as celebrity publicity is the ultimate in command and control. But it's still no excuse for such a rude, aggressive website designed to antagonise. If you wanted to write about them in a positive way it appears they are trying their hardest to encourage you to do it in a negative way.

Free crisis comms tip. if you want your story to be the one that's reported and shared then don't hide it where most of the world can't see it.

Stuart Bruce

AI, digital and social

Microsoft, Google and BT argue for regulation of AI use cases, not technologies

Most (everyone?) people agree that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated. The question is how to do it most effectively in a way that enables innovation and protects people. MPs on the UK’s Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons are investigating AI governance. Microsoft, Google and BT have all presented evidence around regulating how AI is used rather than the underlying technologies.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

Latest CIPR AI report takes an updated look at tools

The CIPR has published a number of papers, reports and comment on the impact of artificial intelligence on public relations and communications. The latest has just been published.

If you already know a little about AI's impact on public relations (and if you're reading PR Futurist regularly then you probably do) then the report won't add a great deal. However, if you're an AI novice then it's an excellent primer as it touches on the potential to impact our roles, the tools and the ethics.

One of the contributors to the CIPR AI report was Professor Anne Gregory, who is on our Purposeful Relations' Advisory Board.

Stuart Bruce

New research on visual content for social media

Some interesting research on effective visual content. It turns out that what marketing and creative people think is 'good' isn't necessarily what the consumers they are targeting think is good. In the first example of a cleaning company marketing folk choose a clean, modern, stylistic design with a carefully composed colour palette as their favourite. Consumers (not surprisingly to me) choose a 'it does what it says on tin' approach with a jumble of photos of people cleaning.

The report is from Robert Rose and the Content Marketing Institute and VistaCreate. This makes it even more interesting to me as a few years ago I attended Robert's content marketing masterclass. It was one of the best training courses I've attended as I actually did learn new things and have been able to use what I learnt and learn a lot more since. We also use VistaCreate as our primary design tool for social media graphics. Using VistaCreate also lets you support Ukraine in a tiny way as it's a Ukrainian company (used to be called Crello) that was acquired by VistaPrint. It's still a Ukrainian based company.

Stuart Bruce

Public relations education survey

Every 5-7 years the Commission on PR Education runs a major study about what should be taught in undergraduate education in public relations. The deadline to respond is tight as it's 28 February. It needs responses from both public relations and corporate affairs practitioners and educators.

I've taught undergraduates, postgraduates and professional qualifications as well as recruiting people who've graduated from both so want to ensure teaching meets the needs of students and potential employers. Please help by completing the survey.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech tools

Help improve digital newsroom technology and get a $50 gift card

Digital newsroom platform Presspage is looking for corporate communications professionals who would like to take their platform for a test ride. They want to learn how you interact with it, in their abiding quest to simplify PR's essential, but typically very time-consuming tasks. Every click, every frown from you, will help them see where to automate even further, and create more space for communications professionals to use their human touch.

Would you like to be part of one of their tests? Fill in the form to message their UX lead Hugo. Every tester receives a $50 Amazon gift card.

Discloser: Presspage is one of the sponsors of our global survey on how public relations, communications and corporate affairs professionals think of and use technology.

Tim Bailey

Artifact - yet another news reader

Usually when we include tools in our CommTech tools section it's because we think they are good and want to share them with you. This one isn't that. It's included because of the hype about its launch, which is largely because it's by the founders of Instagram.

I hoped it to be a much-needed replacement for Nuzzel, the news curating service that highlighted top stories shared by people in your Twitter and LinkedIn network. Nuzzel was a fantastic way of identifying really relevant content rather than just popular content as you could configure it to monitor your own Twitter lists on specific topics or issues. It wasn't the prettiest app, but it was incredibly useful. Unfortunately, Twitter acquired the company and later killed the app.

And on first look Artifact isn't a replacement as it appears to be totally style over substance. Which perhaps isn't surprising given that it is the Instagram founders. It claims to create a personalised custom news feed based on your social network, AI and the interests you choose. The problems start on installation as it forces you to choose 10 interest areas. I couldn't honestly find more than three or four, so I knew the 'personalised' news feed wouldn't be personalised before I'd even started. It also claims you can 'Get all your subscriptions all in one place'. Except you can't as it's a limited list of mainly US and international titles.

On the plus side it does look pretty, so give it a go if you're a sucker for style over substance. Or let me know what you think.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech newswatch

NewsWhip raises $13m in fresh funding

Newswhip, the Dublin based predictive media monitoring firm, has raised $13m in fresh investment. The company will use the money to grow its operations, with plans to increase its workforce by 50% between now and 2024.

Disclosure: NewsWhip is another sponsor of our global communications technology research.