19 August 2024

Last week recapped from the world's largest WhatsApp community of PR and comms people.

How strange: a quiet week

Relatively speaking, at least. But a lot of good stuff was discussed and shared. A few items to pass along in a much shorter-than-usual review:

• Expanded workload. Chief communications officers are taking on more corporate roles. A report via Sonya Cullington . And a view from Georg Schmitt .
• Celebrity fallout. Community member Farzana Baduel on risk registers in a Newsweek article about celebrity crisis management.
• No holds barred. Another celebrity PR story. Yikes. Via Elie Jacobs , without comment.
• Pressured influence. Google misses the mark on the Pixel review requirements. Thanks Tim Weber .
• Normal people. A conversation between Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, via Jamie Klingler .
• Terms and conditions. Kristian Hoareau Foged ?? shared a story about a novel legal defense from Disney: "Reason I'm sharing is it feels like a particularly egregious example of legal not speaking to/going over the heads of the Comms team. The reputation damage of this and the story is surely much worse than whatever a lawsuit may have resulted in. Horrible for the poor man and late wife as well"
• X hesitance. Our earlier discussion on whether to say or go, recapped in PR Week UK, by Evie Barrett .
• Advertising effectiveness. A little humor via Philippe Borremans .
• Rest easy. New report says nothing to worry about with generative AI. Via Andrew Bruce Smith .
• Climate control. The population of San Antonio, Texas, where my mom was born and spent her early childhood, was around 230,000 in the pre-war 1940s. It's now 2.5 million and one of several of the fastest growing cities in Texas and the country. What changed? Air conditioning.
• Ukraine war. We're sharing accurate / timely information resources about the war in Ukraine. Suggestion from Sergii Bidenko : Institute For The Study of War.
• Elon buys a pub.
• DNC. How to watch the Democratic National Convention, via Wen-Wen Lindroth .
• Political influence. A look at who's pushing what, via Elie Jacobs .
• Reimagined campaign. Six charts depicting the shifts from a Biden campaign to a Harris campaign.
• Olympic pictograms. Didn’t know a new set was developed for each Olympiad … or that they go back to 1964 …
• Extreme misogyny. Community-contributor and Reclaim The Streets co-founder Jamie Klingler was on the BBC regarding a UK government pledge to crack down on extreme misogyny.

Meet-ups

In-person meetings of community members included Shayoni Lynn FCIPR FPRCA , Diana El-Azar , Leah Selouk , Richard Griffiths , and George Kypraios . And I caught up with Gay Flashman , Adrian Monck and Hannah Vaughan Jones - but without photos.

Thanks!

If you'd like to jump into the live WhatsApp conversation, drop me a line for a link, and thanks as always to those who contribute each week.