Welcome
In this issue we've got Rick Astley singing about running away with dessert spoons and a naked aunt.
We've also got another round-up of the AMEC measurement summit, this time from PRovoke Media's Paul Holmes with six key takeaways. If you missed the Davos Communications Summit then the video of the whole afternoon is now available.
And finally we've an informative article about hippos, but not the sort you're thinking about.
The 2024 Digital News Report from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is out with the main takeaway being corporate comms needs to be digital first and across a myriad of platforms.
Karen Marshall | Purposeful Relations | Stuart Bruce Associates
News
Davos Communication Summit 2024 full video
The Davos Communications Summit 2024 was a great success, bringing together top PR leaders from across the globe to explore the transformative potential of AI in modern communications. The keynote speech was by Paul Holmes, founder and chair of PRovoke Media.
Other speakers included: Tim Bailey (UK) of Purposeful Relations; Raina Lazarova (Ireland), chair of AMEC, co-Founder and COO of Ruepoint; Thabisile Phumo (South Africa), executive VP and head of stakeholder relations, Sibanye-Stillwater, PRISA former president; Bart Verhulst (Netherlands), co-founder of Presspage and partner of nuwacom; Darryl Sparey (UK), co-founder and managing director, Hard Numbers; Mary Beth West (USA), senior strategist, Fletcher Marketing PR;
Stuart Bruce moderated a panel on 'Modern PR in the Digital Age'.
Tim's panel starts at 37:23 and Stuart's at 1:17.
Karen Marshall
youtube.com
Six measurement takeaways from the AMEC Summit by Paul Holmes
PRovoke Media founder and veteran PR industry commentator Paul Holmes has written a summary of the recent AMEC summit in Sofia. He pulls out six key takeaways and includes quotes from Stuart's article on his PR Futurist blog.
Karen Marshall
provokemedia.com
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Tim Bailey | Digital Futurist
AI, digital and social
Is content creation the best use for generative AI in comms?
QTWAIN (Question To Which the Answer Is No) Lots of people are getting very excited by the possibilities offered by generative AI to create content from words to pictures to videos. However, in our work with clients these are rarely the tasks where AI proves most effective and provides the greatest benefits. One of the uses that potentially provides greatest benefit is insight and analysis.
The article looks at the potential of hyper personalisation. However, research by Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford indicates that hyper personalisation might not make much difference - see below for an article on persuasive influence of political microtargeting using AI.
Stuart Bruce
diginomica.com
Is it a legal obligation to provide AI training to employees?
QTWAIY ((Question To Which the Answer Is Yes)) Is it a legal obligation to provide AI training to employees? According to this article by a senior AI lawyer then yes.
Barry Scannell says "if an organisation is using Al in its business, it will have a LEGAL OBLIGATION under Article 4 of the Al Act to “ensure, to their best extent, a sufficient level of Al literacy of their staff and other persons dealing with the operation and use of Al systems on their behalf.”"
This on top of the apparent ethical obligation for professionals to use AI is yet another reason why organisations need to act quickly to put policies, tools and training in place.
Stuart Bruce
linkedin.com
Should AI be considered is a stakeholder for public relations?
PR Futurist (83) ran a story about Rupert Younger's view that AI is potentially a stakeholder in public relations. It was spotted by Doug Downs, host of the Stories and Strategies podcast who spoke to Rupert to ask if AI is a "a complex voice we need to influence for the greater good."
Rupert Young is the founder and director of Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
Stuart Bruce
storiesandstrategies.ca
How persuasive is the influence of political microtargeting using AI?
Advances in large language models (LLMs) have raised concerns amongst some about the ethical and societal impact of scalable, personalised political persuasion using AI large language models. Research by the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford indicates the persuasive impact of microtargeted messages was not statistically different from that of nontargeted messages.
Stuart Bruce
pnas.org
Research and reports
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report 2024
The TL;DR (too long; didn't read) is digital news means social media for many people. And social media is fragmented. Gone is the simplicity of Facebook and Twitter. Now people get their news from multiple platforms, with most using several. This means your reputations and relationships with stakeholders are also fragmented across multiple platforms. You need to be listening and learning everywhere while engaging and participating where necessary.
Stuart Bruce
ox.ac.uk
LinkedIn says marketers are improving skills to influence corporate policy and climb to C-Suite
Research by LinkedIn indicates that marketers are enhancing their skill sets to better influence corporate policy and secure roles in the C-suite. The Drum talks to Tom Pepper, who is driving LinkedIn's advertising business in EMEA and LATAM, to find out more.
Stuart Bruce
thedrum.com
CommTech tools
LinkedIn opens up newsletter access and improves features with AI
LinkedIn newsletter have had a 47% increase in engagement over the last year. LinkedIn has now opened them up to enable all members to publish newsletters. It has also improved the reading experience, so comments appear alongside articles to further improve engagement. Subscriber emails and notifications have also been improved,
The AI is integration with Microsoft Designer to create cover images. The image shown was generated by Microsoft Designer within LinkedIn.
Other content improvements are the ability to embed member profiles and pages in articles. A more techy one is 'staging links' which means you can see an article's URL "before it has been published for better cross-platform sharing." In theory this could make it possible to automate sharing via third party tools. But as the feature is rolling out it's hard to know yet as LinkedIn's API is incredibly restrictive which makes working with it hard.
To see these new features in action you can subscribe to my occasional LinkedIn newsletter. I will publish one this week to test the new features.
Stuart Bruce
linkedin.com
Professional practice
Is a hippo killing your company?
if you ever attended one of my training courses, you might have heard me talk about hippos. I'm not talking about big animals here. I'm. talking about the Highest Paid Person's Opinion.
This article looks at how a study by the Rotterdam School of Management found that projects led by junior managers had a higher success rate than those led by more senior ones.
There are many situations. where communications professionals will need to challenge senior leaders. They will often be asked to do specific activities such as a news release, event or specific message or statement. It is always better to find out why they want you to do this and what they want to achieve. They are not PR or communications experts (even if they think they are). The duty of a PR professional is to advise them on what needs to be done to achieve their goals. This isn't always just communications. It sometimes means making different decisions and doing something different.
To get the ability and credibility to do this requires continuous professional development, including traIning and qualifications.
Stuart Bruce
corporate-rebels.com
Case studies
I'm Never gonna Give You Up because your aunt's been naked
At AMEC Golin's Jonny Bentwood presented a fascinating case study of its work for Specsavers to promote hearing tests. You can imagine it's quite a challenge to get people to know that an opticians doesn't just do sight tests but hearing tests as well.
The campaign has just won the PR Lions Grand Prix at Cannes. This makes Golin the first PR agency to lead idea creation for the PR Lions Grand Prix winner as previous awards have been led by advertising agencies.
I'm a cynic when it comes to Cannes. It's an absolute myth it rewards the 'best' PR campaigns. It's mainly an award just for creativity. Often brilliant creativity, which I love. But don't make the mistake of mistaking creativity for brilliant work.
If people took the time to look they will see Cannes actually bills itself as a festival of creativity. It has no pretensions of rewarding the best work, just the most creative. The best work is always the most effective work.
That's why I absolutely love Golin's Misheard campaign for Specsavers because it was both creative and effective. It changed the lyrics of one of the most famously misheard songs — Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' — and then got Rick to sing the misheard version.
It had added poignancy and relevance because Astley was public about his own hearing loss so was genuinely able to urge people to get a hearing test.
In the new version of the track, Astley now sings about “dessert spoons”, instead of “desert you”, and replaced “your heart's been aching” with the line “your aunt’s been naked”.
But the real impact wasn't all the attention and awareness but that in the launch week it delivered a 66% increase in hearing test bookings.
When many PR agencies thought they needed to make a cry for help to win Cannes, Golin proved it's time for the ad agencies to move right out because the PR agencies who never knew love are now there whenever you need somebody to do effective creative work. 😊🎸🎹
You can watch Golin's video case study about it or listen to Rick's new version.
Stuart Bruce
provokemedia.com