11 March 2024

This is what 584 of the coolest people from the media, PR and marketing worlds were congenially discussing on WhatsApp from 3 March to 10 March 2024.

Thanks to all of the contributors including Diana El-Azar Advita Patel Dustin Chick Catherine Arrow Georg Schmitt Philippe Borremans Farzana Baduel Jolien Erkamp Tim Weber Andrew Bruce Smith Shayoni Lynn FCIPR FPRCA

Thought Leadership

We don't have a dedicated sub-group on the topic of 'thought leadership' but it dominated the general discussion chatter for a few days.

It started with this. Guidance from Edelman on b2b thought leadership. Too narrow? Too transactional? Two camps emerged: Team It's All About Sales, and the The Value & Community Crew.

It took an academic turn. The actual paper uploaded by Stephen Waddington, CPFA, FCCA isn't available to share, but here's a summary of the 4-Ears model from Friedemann Schulz von Thun.

There was a poem. Too long to replay fully but it starts: "In the hallowed halls of thought, they said / Let's lead the way with brains well-fed!"

Motivations were questioned. Courtney Johnson on TikTok.

And then: isn't every form of communications, thought-leading or not, ultimately about status and tribe?

Next. A video symposium for a live discussion for this and other big topics, coming soon from this community via Jesper Andersen

Also In General Discussion

International Women's Day. #InvestInWomen was the actual theme for the day - created by the UN - and observed on last Friday. Advita Patel on why this matters. And my own thoughts: whatever the question, the answer is probably investing in women.

Reputation laundering. A new report from the Foreign Policy Center in the UK lines up the issues associated with PR agencies supporting clients from kleptocratic jurisdictions. It focuses on UK agencies - London is a magnet for this kind of work - but applies to other obvious hubs as well. Thanks and well done, Farzana Baduel

Power play. And unsurprisingly, the PR Week Power Book generated a lot of chatter. Hearty congratulations to all included, a supportive wink to all left out, and a reminder from Rod Cartwright

Crisis, Risk & Resilience

No consensus. Question: why is there no commonly agreed framework for crisis communicators? Answer: because everyone likes their own definitions. Useful links from the chat:

• a list of skills in the absence of a framework
• the British government's crisis communications operating model
• the Global Alliance capabilities frameworks
• CIPR guide to drafting crisis communications plans

Disaster exercise. Coming soon: Preppr.ai. Yes, we discussed the branding.

Artificial Intelligence

Text-to-video. Sora - OpenAI's new tools that takes text or still images and converts to video - is not even out yet, but we're still talking about it.

AI IQ. AIs ranked by intelligence. They're getting smarter, by the way.

Measuring communications. How Microsoft is using AI to evaluate its communications. Gated content.

War games. The US Army is testing chatbots as battle planners.

Cage match. On the dispute between Elon Musk and Sam Altman.

Good grief. This is terrifying: an AI scam that uses your loved ones' voices.

Education & Research

University uniformities. On the risk of creating on-campus echo chambers. Gosh I'd hate to be a university president or vice-chancellor.

ESG & Sustainability

Do retail banking customers actually read ESG reports? A question for the group prompting a thoughtful exchange. Collective response: sort of. From Debra Sobel : "Long story short, people have base line expectations that financial service companies act for people and planet, and they want all of the evidence ... to be in a report online. But they don't read it. The prefer short bursts of moreish storytelling ... with links to the reporting to reassure it exists!"

Thirsty AI. All those new servers don't come without a cost.

Finger pointing. Whose fault is climate change anyway?

Disclosure change. The US SEC presents a diluted rule to require public companies to diclose certain climate-related risks. It was still too much for some and not enough for others.

Meanwhile. February was the hottest on record.

Mis/Disinformation

Emotional impact. Our brains process deepfake anger expressions similarly to real images, but fake smiles come across less distinctly, research says.

Digital & Tech

PDF love. Everything you need to work with PDFs.

YouTube TV. YouTube says viewers devour more than one billion hours of its content from their televisions, making it the largest streaming service in the world. So they're adding channels to help us devour more.

TikTok challenged. The Feds are going after TikTok. Well, Congress at least. Again.

Also: beginning of the flop? Is TikTok beginning to decline?

Bio Comms

Space corpse. What would happen to a dead body in space? I had to click on this.

Policy & Politics

Twelve Traps. George Lakoff is an American linguist writing extensively about framing political arguments from a progressive perspective. This is from 2006.

Fiery SOTU. Fiery indeed.

The Library

Documentary style. A splendid new podcast series on ... documentaries. From someone who knows how to tell a good story, Petra Sammer

Neurodiversity At Work: Drive Innovation And Productivity With A Neurodiverse Workforce. By Amanda Kirby and Theo Smith. Recommended by Ludivine Delattre, MBA, ICF Coach in response to a request for suggestions on the topic.

Among The Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland. By Marianna Spring, BBC disinformation and social media journalist. Recommended by me. A review here.

Means Of Control. By Bryon Tau. On order. Tech, government and total information awareness. Reviewed here.

¡Gracias!

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