It's all about CPD

I’m an Accredited Practitioner with the Chartered Institute of PR – well, I have been for a couple of years, but I’ve only just thought to add it to my LinkedIn profile. That means I’ve completed four year-long cycles of continuous professional development (CPD) with the CIPR so I’m keeping up my learning. I also, of course, abide by the CIPR Code of Conduct which begins with maintaining the highest professional standards, so you know I’m a trusted advisor when it comes to communications and PR.

Last month I attended a talk on crisis communications with expert adviser on disaster recovery Lucy Easthope and then bought her book When The Dust Settles which seems like a great read. I learned that all comms in a disaster are comms: the public are receiving all the messages being put out they’re whether intentional or not. For instance, images of people in hazmat gear will tell people a lot about the scale of an ‘incident’ the emergency services are attending to. If a CEO of a company involved in a crisis is on holiday in the Maldives, it won’t play well with public opinion.

I also had to laugh when I heard on radio news the other day that some people were objecting to Canterbury Cathedral hosting a silent disco, but one of the clergymen had said: “It’s not a rave in a nave.” Talk about inadvertently advertising your gig.

For crisis comms planning, it’s worth thinking, at the very least, about the reasonable worst-case scenario of any situation or initiative. Think risks and consequences; what to do if something is genuinely your fault, or if you lose people, and be ready to respond to conflict and war for example.

I also last month listened to the Beyond The Noise PR Week podcast with Arlo Brady, CEO of Freuds who has worked with Matthew Freud for 17 years. I learned about Davos and the need for comms professionals there as CEOs get doorstepped by the media.

This year the BBC got the Fujitsu CEO to say sorry just as the Horizon IT scandal, supplied by Fujitsu, was making headlines following the excellent ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

Overall, the podcast and Lucy’s talk have made me feel positive about 2024 and the prospects for comms and PR.

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In other news

It was a depressing day back in January (one of very many across that long, grey month…) when the editor of the Daily Mirror Alison Phillips said she was leaving amid talk of ad downturns and job losses.

Then there was this from the fabulous Jane Martinson on how the Daily Mirror is hanging by a thread. Deeply depressing, including for those friends working for the paper.

I picked up on this from The Guardian, not just because it’s interesting (although it’s not about the media) about the shortening of global supply chains in the light of tensions with China and attacks on trade in the Red Sea, but also because it’s proposing a new, horrible world. Glocalisation instead of globalisation. I literally groaned over my breakfast.

Why do some people feel the need to coin new terms trying to use some established term? If globalisation is being limited, and localisation is a trend, why not just use the word localisation. Presumably localisation is itself a neologism from some point in time. I, for one, won’t be using the term ‘glocalisation’ in any of my comms any time soon.

This article by Press Gazette made me realise how little I know about SEO and, a new theme for us in comms, optimisation for generative AI.

There was fab PR last month for ITN, although I am biased because I have worked for ITN on and off for a while. It’s great to see Ciaran Jenkins of Channel 4 News being recognised for holding former Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to account for saying she would not delete WhatsApp messages when she had apparently already done so in this story from Press Gazette.

And kudos to ITN director of communications Lisa Campbell and colleague Jane Marlow for a) publishing a book about how the news is made to address the issue of children accessing sometimes questionable news via social media and b) getting coverage in Press Gazette for both the book and the wider issue of trustworthy news.

ITN was in the news again this week, with director of news distribution and commercial innovation Tami Hoffman highlighting the problem of deepfake videos of ITN news presenters such as Mary Nightingale appearing in AI-generated films. In the case of Nightingale, she appeared to be endorsing an app allegedly helping people win thousands of pounds.

This is clearly very worrying and exactly why AI needs careful regulation and clear flags where something is generated by AI. Social platforms also need to get better at responding to reports of a deepfake and taking speedy action to take the film down.

Last month, The Guardian reported that Australia may ask tech companies to label content generated by AI, and that seems an eminently good idea.

That’s all for this month – it’s been a long read. Congratulations if you got to the end!