Media Monitoring - Vuelio

Ensuring effective and successful communications across different cultures

December 13, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, Communications, PR Club Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

This is a guest post by Life Size‘s PR Intern Martha Lane.

If you’re running an international communications campaign, adapting your approach towards each individual audience is essential. However, this means much more than simply translating content into the appropriate language. Instead, a deep understanding of each of your target cultures must form the basis of your campaign. Here is how to achieve this and set your international communications campaign up for success.

Stage 1: Check the relevance of your topic in your target country
A good place to start is to dedicate some time to researching how the topic of your campaign is viewed in your target country. While it would be easy to assume that consensus on your topic is similar to your native country, this won’t necessarily be the case. Your research should provide answers to some key questions, such as:

– Is your topic widely discussed in the news there? Is it discussed by the mainstream media, or is it limited to industry press?
– What is the political importance of this topic? Is there any relevant legislation in place in your target country that you should be aware of?
– What are the current societal or environmental impacts and benefits relating to this topic? How do they meet the current discussion about the environment or other ongoing social issues?
– Has it received any negative press, or do you get the impression that it is a sensitive topic? If so, it would be worth offering a fresh perspective that can provide a positive spin on the topic.

It is worth noting that negative or lukewarm press coverage on your topic does not have to be a disadvantage. Rather, you can utilise your communications campaign to be one of the first to highlight the benefits of what you are offering, giving you a unique position in the target market.

This is also an excellent time to identify your audience and decide who will be the best group to direct your campaign in a particular country. Once you have identified who you are communicating with, you can move on to the next vital step: working out how to talk to them.

Stage 2: Take the time to understand the culture of your country
At this point, it’s essential to get to the very root of your target country’s culture, such as identifying the values and beliefs that form its basis. This may sound quite overwhelming, but some useful models can be used to break down cultures into a handful of the most important underlying characteristics.

Hofstede and Trompenaars are two cultural experts who have created models that, though built with business management in mind, are equally applicable in the world of international communications. Both see culture as existing on various spectrums, within which any culture can be placed with considerable accuracy. This way of quantifying culture makes the job of communicators slightly easier.

Of course, there is variation within cultures, so the models should be applied with a degree of caution to avoid stereotyping, as personal experiences within cultures create differentiation. But the research of these experts has found that there are some predictable ways in which people within a certain culture are the same, especially when it comes to the workplace, making them valuable guides.

Stage 3: Use research to adapt content to your culture
Having researched the reception of your topic in your country, now is the time to use the understanding you have gained from the cultural models to adapt your tone. Ask yourself, how does your audience want to be spoken to? This is a crucial stage of the process that requires thorough planning. It’s easy to lose your audience in the delivery of your campaign due to cultural misunderstanding, no matter how relevant your product or service is to them.

Final stage: Don’t forget the simple things
There are the more routine details of a communications campaign to consider that may seem obvious but can be easily missed when dealing with the more complex aspects. Before releasing content, make sure to consider:

– Translation: aside from making sure your communications are translated accurately into your target language, check the translation of your product or service – make sure it isn’t offensive or hasn’t got a confusing double-meaning.
– Time zone: what time are you sending out content for your campaign in your target country? Make sure you respect any time difference and different working days.
– Visual materials: the images you use as part of the campaign may also need to be adapted. For instance, make sure that images such as landscapes are relevant to your target country as they will then resonate more with the audience there.

Following all these steps should ensure that your international communications campaign will be a success. Admittedly, it can be a long and sometimes monotonous process. However, the potential negative impact if done incorrectly, and the high rewards if the time is taken to do so properly, make the thorough process outlined above worthwhile.

Connect with the right journalists, political contacts and influencers from around the world for your international campaigns with the Vuelio Media Database – find out more and book a demo.

Doing things differently – how to tackle the PR recruitment crisis by growing an agency from the ground up.

December 9, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications Media Database, Media Monitoring, Stakeholder Engagement Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

This is a guest post from Alex Blyth, managing partner of design agency PR specialist Red Setter.

‘Hire people smarter than you,’ is a truism of business management. Variously ascribed to everyone from Steve Jobs to David Ogilvy, Richard Branson, and… err… former Leeds FC manager Howard Wilkinson, it always seemed like sound advice to me, so I followed it for years.

In the early days of Red Setter I interpreted it to mean I should hire experienced PR professionals. So that’s what I did. I hired people who’d been at the biggest agencies or who’d held senior in-house roles. However, with our tenth anniversary on the horizon, and our team of 20 now known globally as the go-to people in our brand design niche, I’ve realised I was wrong.

Like many people, I’ve done a lot of thinking during the pandemic. One conclusion I’ve come to is that we need to stop hiring senior people. We need to do things differently and grow our team from the ground up. In 2021 we’ve brought in four account executives, and one journalist in her first PR role.

It’s transforming our agency for the better, and has left us relatively insulated from the highs and lows of the recruitment market many agencies have struggled with this year. Here’s the why and how of we’re doing it.

Less gambling, more learning
In the early days, the allure of those senior hires is clear. You’re buying in expertise, credibility and perhaps above all else confidence. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve learnt a huge amount from many of those people. Our agency wouldn’t be where it is today without them.

But it’s not always the ‘here’s a job spec, client base, and large salary, now off you go’ scenario that many might hope for. Especially in a highly-niched agency like Red Setter, there is a lot to learn – about the brand design sector, our clients, our media, and the very specific way of working we’ve developed over the years. We’ve learnt that we need to invest time in training joiners on all this, regardless of how much experience they’ve had.

Those earlier in their careers are typically very open to learning. They rightly demand it. They’re in the habit of it. They come with a fresh perspective, unencumbered by what was hard-won expertise elsewhere, but which here can be limiting assumptions. You also tend to avoid high salaries, recruiter costs and organisational disruption by bringing in people earlier in their careers.

You then need to make sure you deliver the learning and development they expect. We’ve had to reshape our agency from one that was focussed solely on client delivery to build in space for workshops, on-the-job coaching, and ongoing conversations around progression. We’re building a set of sessions and materials for joiners, we’re growing education skills in the team (involvement, not lectures!), everyone from account manager up has development and coaching of colleagues in their KPIs, once a week we meet as a company to share expertise, team members have been on external courses ranging from a Guardian masterclass on what journalists want to a day workshop on vocal confidence. In our weekly catch-ups, each team shares not only a highlight but also something they’ve learnt. We do a lot but it’s still very much a work in progress.

That’s just the learning aspect – we’ve also had to find new sources of this raw talent. We’ve set up an annual internship programme with the University of Sussex. The first on it is now a valued member of our team, and recently gave a talk to this year’s PR students about life in our very specific type of PR. We’re doing more and more with the University and hope to expand the internship programme in 2022.

Right time, right approach
It’s not easy, but we’re discovering benefits far beyond our original intentions. A culture of learning is adding to our skills and knowledge at all levels. That makes us not only better able to deliver to our clients but also more inspired in the work we’re doing together. And as the PR talent pool dried up throughout 2021 it was far less of a problem for us that it would have been.

I don’t think this approach is right for everyone. Larger, more generalist agencies can bring in more transferable experience. When you’re starting out, you probably need to hire expertise in key areas – we wouldn’t be able to do this if we didn’t have an experienced, talented, senior team already in place. But for us right now it feels like the right approach.

Does it mean we’ll never employ at a senior level again? Never say never. And does it mean that Jobs, Branson and Ogilvy were all wrong? Of course not. The people we’ve hired this year might be less experienced than me, but I’m pretty certain they’re also smarter than me. I’m looking forward to seeing that smartness grow into expertise over the coming years.

For more on the importance of mentoring and investing in PRs early in their career, catch up on our interviews with A Leader Like Me’s Advita Patel and the Taylor Bennett Foundation’s Melissa Lawrence.

In need of a central hub to keep track of your internal and external stakeholder relationships? Find out more about Vuelio’s Stakeholder Management solutions and book a demo here.

Communications and Combating the Omicron Variant

December 7, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Health, Communications Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

This is a guest post by Louise Flintoft, associate director at Onyx Health.

The UK’s public health is in a precarious position. We’ve all seen in the news that the Omicron COVID-19 variant has been identified as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization.

At the time of writing, there are still a lot of unknowns about the new variant. However, early indications are that it is likely to be more transmissible than the dominant Delta variant and that our existing vaccinations are less effective against it.

In response to the uncertainty, the Government has announced a series of new measures to reduce the spread of the new variant. These currently include compulsory facemasks for public transport and retail, expanding the booster jab programme to all UK adults, new requirements PCR tests and isolation for people entering the country, and ten-day quarantine for people in contact with an infected person

The last cycle of lockdowns and compulsory COVID-19 restriction prompted one of the biggest acts of civil obedience in our peacetime history. With new restrictions looming, the Government will need to communicate behaviour change again to avoid a potential crisis. At Onyx Health, we are healthcare communication specialists and have some ideas about how we use the power of PR to re-engage the public.

Fighting COVID-19 fatigue
Let’s be honest; we’re all sick and tired of the pandemic. The success of the Government’s initial vaccine rollout and the removal of official legal restrictions earlier in the year had led many people to conclude that it was mission accomplished. However, the threat has never gone away, and it risks getting worse again.

One of the biggest dangers from a public health communication perspective is that complacency, and an unwillingness to take the potential new threat seriously, derails the effectiveness of the new rules. Re-engaging the public will be essential to make the latest changes work in practice. There is also a balance to be struck between taking things seriously and avoiding mass panic. This needs a strong, emotionally resonant message that the public can connect with.

Encouraging people to get masked up and booster jabbed to save Christmas can link behaviour change to a shared desirable outcome. Last Christmas was tough for us all. We all want to make this year’s festive season better than the last.

Helping our healthcare heroes avoid a winter crisis
The NHS is always close to the nation’s heart, but this is especially true during a public health crisis. It is arguably the closest thing we have to a national religion. During the first lockdown, the weekly clap for healthcare workers brought the nation together to thank those frontline staff who risked their lives to help us through the pandemic.

Today, the NHS faces a perfect storm of a new COVID-19 variant, the seasonal spike in winter flu cases and a general public fed up with the pandemic. Calling on people to follow the rules to help our healthcare heroes has the potential to reconnect people with that shared sense of solidarity we saw at the beginning of the pandemic. People may be willing to go the extra mile to help those who got us through the COVID-19 crisis by caring for our friends and loved ones.

Accelerating booster jabs and getting people doubled dosed
The booster jab programme was originally targeted at the elderly and vulnerable to increase their immunity to COVID-19. This week, the Government announced that it will be extended to all adults over 18 in the UK. Problems beset the initial rollout of booster vaccines for complex reasons, including the rollout’s speed, limited uptake, and confusion over eligibility. The expansion of the programme magnifies the scale of the communication challenge.

There are specific audience demographics that require specialised targeting. Increasing the immunity of those most at-risk through medical education is a key priority. We need to reach out to the elderly, vulnerable and underrepresented groups using community groups, local champions and NGOs to foster grassroots engagement and build trust from the ground up.

Another big issue is getting younger people doubled dosed. The figures show that people aged 25-29 are more vaccine-resistant and statistically less likely to have taken up the offer of a single or double vaccine dose. Targeting young people through viral content, social media influencers and pop-cultural icons provides part of the answer to create a generational mindset change. Getting through the latest stage of the pandemic requires a renewed collective national effort; as communicators, we need to do our bit.

Keep track of the conversation in the media with Vuelio’s Media Monitoring services and our sister brand Pulsar’s series of social listening solutions.

How to build strong foundations for a successful email campaign

December 6, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications, PR Club Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Elliot Ross, Email Evangelist, Taxi for Email (a SparkPost company), discusses the foundation of a successful email campaign, and it all starts with your messaging.

How’s your inbox looking? If you are anything like me you receive dozens of emails every day, a good chunk of which you don’t have the time or the inclination to open, let alone read.

The question of how to get your branded email messages opened has been focusing the minds of marketing managers for well over two decades now. As the number of emails people receive has increased, so marketers have been forced to adopt ever more cunning ways of securing an opening. But why is it that we read some emails and consign others to the junk folder?

In spite of what some gurus claim there is no magic formula to getting your brand’s emails opened. There are however some golden rules to follow which will maximise your email’s chances of success and set you on the path to becoming an expert at creating the right branding and messaging for your emails.

Begin with a strategy rooted in your brand’s values
Before you even think about sending your first branded emails you need to ask yourself a few questions. Why am I sending emails as opposed to engaging on other platforms? What am I hoping to achieve? And most important of all, what does success look like?

There are five key things to consider when you are setting out your strategy:
1. What are your email goals? Think about what you want to achieve from the emails you are sending and whether email really is the right channel to help you reach that goal.
2. Who is your audience – your subscribers? What email clients do they use? What’s the support for these devices/web clients?
3. What is the one thing you want your reader to do after opening your email? This is another key place to ask yourself if email is the right channel to use?

Think about the timing of your email send. Don’t just guess when the best time to send your email will be. Look back at previous send data and make a decision informed by this previous data. 5. Outline success measures before you start. Tracking things like downloads, clicks, opens, and revenue is great, but consider setting up A/B testing for different copy or segments.

By detailing the above into an overarching strategy before you start sending your emails, you can make creative emails whilst not going off-track with the email’s overall purpose – keeping you emails in sync and recognisable to subscribers.

What kind of language are you going to use?
The most important factor when writing copy for the email is that the wording should be authentic and reflect your brand. If you work for a B2B company whose target is senior executives write in an appropriate way for that audience. Authenticity is essential for building trust and ensuring that people know that what you are saying is legitimate.

Being able to personalise email content could also help build up authenticity and trust. Is there a way you can address an individual that takes into consideration the data you already have on them? Optimising your email by making it relevant to specific audience groups will also help. Think about geographical regions, types of customers, customer preferences, etc. That way you can deliver relevant messages to either audience as opposed to one blanket email.

Remember what your email’s primary role is too. Do you want it to be informative and supportive in building a relationship between you and your customer or are you more focussed on seeking instant clicks through to your website?

The winning formula for effective email design
Creating an email strategy also encompasses working on design guidelines. These are not just helpful for designers, but anyone involved in the email process. Guidelines can be a huge time-saver and enable you to produce high-quality emails without spending too much time going back and forth with your designer. You will need to consider ideas around fonts, colours, spacing and dimensions to keep your emails recognisable with your readers.

Ultimately the two key principles of email design are:
· Create something that is both beautiful and functional that will entice your recipients into reading to the end.
· Create a design that reflects your existing brand values, which are then consistent across every communication you send.

The answer? Use an email design system (EDS), where you can set up structured templates that empower your designers creatively, but at the same time enable them to work quickly and efficiently within set boundaries.

Once the structure is agreed you can work on the design elements and start to bring in other elements of your brand, such as bespoke imagery or illustrations, GIFs and embedded videos.

Consistency is king and the importance of branding
No matter who is making and sending your branded emails, they should always be consistent, even if you work with dispersed teams who are responsible for creating emails for different products or services.

Unless it is the first email you have sent, it won’t be seen by your reader in isolation. They will have seen and interacted with your branding on other platforms, so in order to strengthen your brands perception, your email design needs to be consistent with these.

Creating a library of assets your team can use to speed up email creation whilst adhering to consistency will help. If you have a core EDS for all parts of the business, updating brand assets will be much more manageable and spotting anomalies will be far easier. You could also look into building a set of sub-templates for each product or service within the brand, with altered footers, contact details and logos, so anyone creating an email will have the elements they need to create something aligned with the brand.

Navigating the minefield that is dark mode and accessibility, and how to get it right
One of the biggest challenges for email designers is to create striking emails that also work in dark mode – the extension that helps you quickly turn the screen (browser) to dark at night-time.

To ensure your emails adapt to recipients using dark mode, you may want to consider using transparent PNGs and add a white outline around elements in your EDS. You will want to think about designing your default images for dark mode, such as social icons, logos, link colours etc. and how they’re going to contrast with the dark background.

You will need to think about accessibility too. Smaller text and thin fonts might enable you to pack more into your email, but if short-sighted readers can’t see what you have written then you have wasted your time. It is also imperative to avoid walls of text. If the copy looks too cluttered, try to split it into a few paragraphs.

Summary
Preparation, strategy and messaging are everything to an email marketer – giving customers a consistent experience regardless of where they see your brand. And if you can construct creative, yet stringent guidelines you will save yourself and your design team so much time.

Email isn’t a website, but it is a good opportunity to replicate key website aspects such as navigation and CTA style. The chances are, if someone has seen your website you will be retargeting them at multiple touchpoints. And email needs to sit within the brand framework to offer users the consistency they would expect.

Find the right journalists, influencers and high-profile people in politics to target with your upcoming campaigns with the Vuelio Media Database – find out more and book a demo.

How to get inclusion right in PR and comms

‘How do we get this right?’ – accessmatters with The Unmistakables’ Asad Dhunna

December 2, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, accessmatters, PR, Communications Media Database, Media Monitoring, Stakeholder Engagement, PR Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

‘How do you introduce yourself? Listing jobs and experiences, what that does is put a mask up over who I am as a person’ – for our latest accessmatters session, The Unmistakables’ Asad Dhunna talked how ‘not fitting in’ was a spark for him create space where everyone can.

‘Throughout my life, I recognised I didn’t really fit in. Right from Primary School. At home, my family pronounces my name in the Hindi way, so who I am in the world and who I am at home is different, automatically.

‘I did languages and people were like, “Shouldn’t you be doing Sciences or Maths?” It’s what people expected me to do. When I got to university, I had people say “Obviously, you’ll do accountancy” or “You’ll do law – something that’s expected of someone like you”. I realised by that they meant “Asian” or “of Indian heritage”.

‘That feeling of not fitting in carried on – I lived in Germany for a year and people would ask “Where are you really from?”

‘I went to work in marketing and comms. I had a push and pull – push of family saying “Really, you could get a job in a bank”. And I was thinking, do people like me belong in this industry; should I be here? In the early days of my career, I was trying to use “not fitting in” as a value rather than as a bad thing. Then I started to realise, as I became a leader, that people didn’t look like me, or have my experiences.’

The Past
The way the communications and media industries have tried to welcome people from communities and backgrounds other than the predominantly white, middle-class, university-educated and heterosexual mould has often been very well-intentioned, but not quite right.

‘Back then, people were starting to use “ERG”, “LGBTQ”, “BAME” and set up networks. I had this funny moment of people asking if I wanted to be part of the BAME or LGBTQ network – I thought I didn’t quite fit into either of these. And then someone told me about the word “intersectional”…

‘How do we make the industry more inclusive? People that look like me are more likely to set up a shop on the high street than set up an agency – I set up The Unmistakables.’

The Present
The world has had to change since the pandemic, forcing conversations that have previously been avoided or given short-shrift – businesses are having to do the work.

‘Having conversations with clients now: “how do we get this right?” – inclusivity is treated really differently today. The pandemic and George Floyd’s murder made us all sit up and engage with the conversation. Partly because we were stuck at home and we were all going through the same experience. The brutality towards marginalised communities and the systems in place made us confront that privilege is in how we live. Society has been structured in ways that doesn’t benefit all.

‘We realised the only way we could help with inclusion was an “inside-out” approach – campaigns backed by more inclusive cultures. Marketing and comms is what we see in the world, how we are communicated to and how culture evolves. And within businesses, how do employees feel with their inclusion levels? You might be really good at your job, but you might not feel included. We spent a lot of time trying to work that out.’

The Future
The Diversity & Confusion Report, released by The Unmistakables this year, found that people are more comfortable taking about death than topics like race and sexuality at work.

‘Language is always changing – people don’t know how to talk about this. 40% of professionals in our industry are afraid to use the word “black”. Why? There are political nuances with that term, so some people don’t feel comfortable using it. People are also afraid to use the terms “gay” or “disabled”. One-in-six fear that they could lose their job if they use the wrong terms. If you’re in marketing and comms, fear is the biggest thing that stops creativity.

‘We also found that people would rather use the wrong term than say what they mean. We hear “diversity” a lot – our question to those we work with is, what do you mean by “diverse”? Is it background and class, sexuality, race? I always like to encourage people to see what’s inside of that word.

‘We’re at a time where we’re rethinking a lot and we don’t want to go backwards. There’s a curve of change, and not everyone is going to be on top tomorrow, but we’ve got an opportunity to think how we want to do things differently.’

For more from our accessmatters sessions with The Unmistakables’ Asad Dhunna, read his five tips for creating inclusive campaigns.

Find influencers and media professionals to work with on your upcoming campaigns with the Vuelio Media Database and keep track of your stakeholder relationships with our Stakeholder Management services – find out more here.

PR Interview: Alex Silver, director of Alex Silver PR

November 30, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR Spotlight Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Moving from a career as a Junior Sister in the Casualty Ward to beauty PR extraordinaire probably isn’t the most common way of getting into comms, but it’s led to 25 years of industry success for Alex Silver and her beauty, celebrity and digital agency Alex Silver PR.

Having started her business from her kitchen table, Alex has been at the forefront of many star-studded events, red carpet moments and headline campaigns over the years. Alongside a passion for building start up brands into household names, Alex also happens to be the publicist for some well-known and long-established clients (including Dame Joan Collins, no less).

Read on for the lessons she’s learned on building strong relationships with the media, why inclusivity is so important for success, and what to do if your client hasn’t been behaving quite as they should…

What are the main lessons you’ve learned through your career?
Always have a plan B! Things can change with the drop of a hat so having a backup option and being able to think on your feet is essential in PR.

It’s not a done deal until the papers are signed – contracts and agreements can still fall through, even at the last stages of negotiations.

Credibility is everything – bringing credible experts to a campaign is like gold dust.

Don’t skip the venue recce. Even if you’ve been recommended a venue by a reputable source, I always recommend popping down to map out your event – you don’t want any nasty surprises on the big day.

How do you think the pandemic has changed comms, and are the changes here to stay?
Well, we’ve certainly all mastered the art of zoom-events, but joking aside, I believe the pandemic has helped shape a modern communication approach in many ways. Many companies (including press houses) are still testing the water when it comes to their new hybrid working arrangements, and I don’t think we’ll fully see the outcome of this until the dust from the pandemic settles.

In the meantime, communications should accommodate both in-person and online arrangements across meetings, events, launches, briefings and so on. Journalist contacts have shared that they enjoy online events as they don’t lose precious time travelling to/from venues and a recent influencer poll that we ran showed a 50/50 split in their popularity.

Celebrities are being increasingly held to account for bad behaviour/outdated views – what approach would you take with a high-profile client that runs into trouble with this?
Crisis management is at the core of many PR campaigns, whether you’re working with a celebrity or not. The art of addressing issues in a sensitive, effective and timely manner is an art that takes a carefully thought-out strategy.

It’s a case-by-case issue but sometimes it’s simply best to hold up your hands and apologise. Education and information on the topic at hand is key here – why has this caused upset and how can the talent become informed on this so that this doesn’t happen in the future.

Which high-profile celebrities/politicians/brands do you feel have really great PR teams (apart from your own clients, of course!)?
People change teams often and can make a blunder at any point so it’s hard to say, however I did see something recently that I was impressed by! At the end of October, Chief Exec and Founder of Spanx surprised employees with two first-class plane ticket and $10,000 each to celebrate the company’s $1.2billion deal with Blackstone. The announcement was filmed live on Instagram and showed employees crying with happiness. The news was quickly shared around the word on national news sites such as The Independent, Good Morning America, MSN and the New York Post. I think this was a very clever, effective, and of course, generous communication strategy. It certainly grabbed the headlines!

Which campaigns have you seen from big brands that have made you think ‘I wish I’d worked on that’?
I really loved the recent Dove Self Esteem Project. The campaign aimed to bring light to young people’s self esteem and help to raise awareness of the pressures that social media puts on developing minds. With a 15-year-old daughter, this really resonated with me and I’d loved to have been part of this campaign with Dove’s aim to have helped a quarter of a billion young people with educational courses by 2030.

Over your time in the industry, how have things improved for women practitioners?
Working within the beauty sector, the industry is saturated with women so, luckily, I haven’t felt being female ever held me back. I understand this is a big contrast to other sectors and that while some areas have drastically improved, there is still a lot to be done in order to close the gender equality gap.

What more needs to be done to make the industry more inclusive and welcoming, on gender, race and class?
An inclusive workplace culture is essential for a strong workforce of empowered employees. It needs to come from the top and I think the more people in power address these issues, speaking about them openly, the bigger changes we’re going to see. There’s so much that can and needs to be done. Everything from integrating inclusivity into core company values to building trust by encouraging a culture of frequent check-ins and creating safe spaces. There are small changes that everyone can do, no matter their company structure, and I think smaller companies need to incorporate this as much as larger ones.

How do you maintain good relationships with journalists?
Do your research! Journo friends often share frustrations at being pitched stories and items that would never fit within their column space. Keep up-to date with what your target journos are writing so that you can make your communications relevant and targeted. Building relationships is a hard balance in today’s climate; journalists are under more pressure and time constraints than ever. A catch up over zoom/coffee, carefully curated pitches and developing events/mailers that will attract attention, all go a long way.

It can be hard for people in PR to keep a healthy work/life balance – how do you manage this (If you do…)?
While there’s definitely a work-hard, play-hard culture in PR, I think it’s about striking balance in all areas of your life. I like to get up earlier in the week so that I can have a bit of ‘me’ time, I’ll kick off with a run around Primrose Hill with my puppy Bella or a yoga session. In the evenings you’ll either find me catching up with a friend over a cocktail (or two) or unwinding with my latest book in an aromatherapy bath. My advice? Find what works for you and block out that time for yourself!

What do you think the big trends will be for comms and PR in 2022?
Honesty, transparency and sustainability. Gone are the days when we printed out press releases and posted them out in thick paper packages! Journalists, influencers and celebrities are rightly conscious of the packaging brands are using. It’s the PR’s job to advise on the most sustainable, eco-friendly ways of gifting and sampling products. This is a theme I expect to see become even more prevalent in 2022 with brands delivering what consumers are striving for – products which don’t harm the planet in their making. Online sharing of files and information is here to stay. In the same vein, while gifting can be a super effective way of communicating new launches, USPs and brand values, items should be considered, useful and something that the receiver will actually want or use. We’re increasingly seeing brands choose to give a charitable donation in the receiver’s name and I think this is another trend which might grow in popularity next year.

Authenticity is also a big theme in beauty. Consumers are highly informed on ingredients, ethos and social purpose. PR communications need to be carefully structured to authentically convey what the business stands for. I believe this movement for transparency, equality and positivity will continue to snowball in 2022. Good PR teams will set out guidelines and continue to learn, grow and adapt as the year progresses.

Monitor how your brand or clients are faring in the media with Vuelio Media Monitoring and get deeper analysis from our Insights team – find out more here.

5 tips for creating inclusive PR and communications campaigns

5 tips for creating inclusive campaigns

November 29, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications, PR Club Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Our latest accessmatters session focused on inclusivity and featured Asad Dhunna, founder and CEO of The Unmistakables. Recognised as a marketing industry changemaker and thought leader, Asad shared his experiences as someone who ‘didn’t quite fit in’ and decided to help with creating spaces for everyone.

Here is just some of the advice Asad shared for bringing inclusion into organisations and campaigns to represent and engage every audience out there…

1) Make space to make change within your organisation
Asad spoke about the importance of ‘inside-out inclusion’ – ensuring your own team is inclusive will build inclusive-thinking into your work, right from the start. Even the upcoming Christmas party brings opportunities to think about making changes for the better:

‘In my team, we’ve been talking about the Christmas party – the organisation of that can rely on what we’ve done previously – but how and who will feel included?

‘Take the time to ask yourself and not rush. If an event is centred around alcohol, will everyone be comfortable, will people feel safe? Create some space to think about this – how do we do things differently now?’

2) Market to your leadership team, too
‘If leadership don’t see a problem with inclusion at your business, show and frame it in a way that will be in line with what they’re thinking about.

‘If you work for an agency – you need to win new business. More and more, clients want to know what businesses are doing about this. If you’re taking a stance, this will attract new clients.

‘If you’re selling, how do you reach more people? If it’s a charity, how do you reach more donors. There is always a link between the bottom line and D&I.’

3) Support your organisation with long-term thinking
‘In marketing, we get addicted to the dopamine of “we’ve done something!” But how do you make inclusion a strategic priority?

‘Do a vision-setting exercise – what are the metrics we’d use as part of that? The sceond thing is to set those metrics, what are the KPIs? Ask, when we work with boards, is this a recurring item?

‘Because the change takes time and we live in an attention-deficit world, we want everything tomorrow. But we need to celebrate the small wins – we’re getting there. That helps keep the energy up.’

4) Avoid tokenism by amplifying the right voices
‘One way to avoid tokenism in campaigns is to define what we mean by ‘representation’– representative, of what, of where? If you’re targeting a certain demographic, is what you’re doing representing them, or the people you’d like to buy the product. How do you bring those people into the process?

‘Ask yourself what kind of representation you’re striving for. Is everyone on the team aligned on that? How does casting sit with the brand and who you’re trying to reach?’

5) Tell authentic stories
‘I think sometimes in the campaign development process, people can get attached to trends, and the latest influencers. It’s crucial to strip it all back – what’s the story? Who is telling it, and do they have the right to tell it?’

‘A past HSBC campaign I was involved in centred on transgender and nonbinary people being able to change their account details. They weren’t the first bank to do this, but their campaign told the story of Stuart, the person training employees on this. We didn’t put lots of bells and whistles on it – some people were going to hate it, because they hate the issue, but others would really love it. That’s how you do the authentic bit – tell the story.’

Find out more about our accessmatters here and catch up on some you may have missed this year in our round-up of previous sessions with industry thought leaders including Manifest’s Julian Obubo, The Social Mobility Foundation’s Sarah Atkinson and Taylor Bennett Foundation’s Melissa Lawrence.

PRCA AND ECI collaborate on nation-specific ethics insight

November 24, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) and Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) have rolled-out their collaboration on nation-specific ethics and compliance data, featuring commentary and insight from PR industry experts.

The data, pulled from the ECI Global Business Ethics Survey (GBES), will form country-specific fact sheets to be published over the following months. Each will highlight five key metrics: ethical culture strength; pressure to compromise ethical standards; observations of misconduct; reporting misconduct; and retaliation perceived by employees after they report misconduct.

The countries to be profiled are Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. With the mix of data and insight, the PRCA and ECI hope to start conversations on, and the adoption of, ethical management and strong standards across the global PR and comms industry.

ECI CEO Dr. Patricia Harned, who also serves on the PRCA Ethics Council, said:

‘Findings from the GBES provide indications of the strength of efforts by organisations to reduce wrongdoing and to promote integrity. To that end, we are pleased to partner with PRCA to distribute these profiles, and we hope that they will inspire authentic conversations in workplaces around the world.’
PRCA Director General Francis Ingham also commented:

‘The PRCA is committed to a truly global remit of elevating standards in the PR industry and beyond, inclusive of diverse nations and cultures, and with an understanding that PR ethics dialogues should not transpire solely through a Western construct. We share ECI’s commitment toward a data-centric approach, and the PRCA is most pleased to partner with the ECI team on this particular project, in service to the PR industry worldwide.’

The publishing of country-based GBES data with PR insights will begin this month and continue through the first quarter of 2022. The PRCA and ECI are also set to field GBES among PR/Communications professionals in 2022, with the results expected to be shared by April 2022.

With future GBES research projects, ECI aims to expand the quantity and diversity of data sets, with global inclusion. Find out more about the research here.

Sustainability Initiatives and the Impact on Businesses

November 16, 2021/in Media Monitoring /by Pierce Johnson

ESG press coverage reveals how brands and organisations are communicating and being discussed in the media, which shapes their public perceptions.

This case study by Vuelio Insights looks at two specific sectors: Banking and Meal-kit retailers, which are both facing unique challenges in their approach to sustainability and wider ESG risk management.

Download the report to see messaging tactics, and their success, sentiment and the top media outlets covering sustainability and ESG.

The rewards of net zero

October 13, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

The relatively short break the climate got from harmful emissions during lockdowns across the world is over – the planning for net zero has to start now. That ‘E’ part of ESG planning – environment – is of even more importance for government, organisations and individuals worldwide as we get closer to November’s COP26.

Both corporate and consumer-focused businesses have big decisions to make on what their role will be on climate change – what are the potential risks, and rewards, of leading on environmental action?

The New Statesman panel ‘Making Sense of Net Zero – Corporate rewards of being in the climate action driving seat’ featured advice from contributors Luke Herbert, Communications Director for The Climate Group, JLL’s Global Chief Sustainability Officer Richard Batten and Vuelio’s Insights Lead Amy Parry on the considerations and consequences for decision makers tasked with making change – here are some of the key takeaways…

Revenues and rewards
JLL is a worldwide real estate organisation with what its Global Chief Sustainability Officer Richard Batten calls a ‘strange footprint’, yet the organisation has already made its 2040 net zero commitment.

‘If you’re thinking of going down this route, take small steps. You need to feel your way in – you have to get the data and analyse it. Start projecting what you can do, then you can start pushing the envelope. It’s a bit like peeling an onion – it takes time to understand your business.

‘There’s no doubt there are financial rewards to aiming for net zero, and it helps with the strategy of your business,’ added Luke Herbert, who works to drive change with The Climate Group.

‘Not long ago, we had Brexit, Trump and the start of COVID-19 hurting comms and PR team abilities to plan for the future – but now there’s a path; we have to go renewable in this decade. That gives a lot of clarity – you’re going to be pretty much future-proof if you do this. If you’re behind, you’re at risk of disturbance.’

‘If the financials are there, you will be able to influence your board members’.

Vuelio’s Insight Lead Amy Parry agreed on the rewards of net zero when it comes to positive influence – for all stakeholders.

‘For internal stakeholders, the rewards are in future proofing and knowing where to invest money. For consumers, it’s that feel-good factor – the more that consumers feel that they’re buying into something, that they’re doing good, it’s going to result in better sales. That’s really important… alongside the goals of climate action itself, of course.’

Reputation
ESG action (or in-action) is already impacting the reputations of companies worldwide and Amy had data for organisations who don’t yet have the right plans and promises in place:

‘Our media and insights team examined case studies around climate action and how that impacts government and organisations – we looked at banking, which is more traditional and institutional. Historically, it’s already seen negativity for supporting areas like coal financing. We also looked at a very different sector – meal delivery services in the UK; a very modern service that’s grown during the pandemic.

Read the Vuelio Insights case study Sustainability Initiatives and the Impact on Businesses.

‘We were surprised by some of the similarities in coverage for the two very different sectors. Around 23% of all banking mentions in the media were linked to sustainability – that’s tens of thousands of articles in a short time. 37% of meal service mentions were linked to those topics. Across both sectors, initiatives and coverage fell into two pools – sustainability as a vehicle for change and as a vehicle for business growth. The first lends itself more to the corporate side; abolition of pollution financing, for example. The second is aimed at consumers – green bonds and business loans. There are reputational opportunities in sustainability topics for both sides of business.

‘We found that organisations that made more press announcements through traditional press releases weren’t necessary getting more coverage, however. Sometimes, maybe, it’s possible to push the message too much. It’s action and delivery on promises that will work.’

The right thing to do
‘We have hundreds of businesses who are signed up to science-based targets… but there are hundreds who haven’t,’ said Luke.

‘We can’t just do this in 2029 when it’s too late – this needs accumulative reduction. Most of our conversations with businesses are constructive, but the challenge is those are that aren’t engaging with the issue.’

‘The biggest argument for working towards net zero, aside from reputation and revenue, is that we have to do it; the world has to do it, else we have a problem,’ said Richard.

‘We can’t tell our clients what to do. But we can make some decisions about which clients we want to work with going forward. Until then, we have to collaborate. If you’re already on top of your own business, you shouldn’t need too much persuading.’

For more insight on how policy impacts your business sector and for tracking your organisation’s own reputation, demo Vuelio’s Political Monitoring and Media Analysis services.

Further information on research from the Vuelio Insights team mentioned during this session can be found in the Vuelio case study Sustainability Initiatives and the Impact on Businesses.

‘This is where we all can make a discernable difference’ – accessmatters with Cassius Naylor, Proud FT

September 30, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, accessmatters, PR, Communications, Media Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

While the UK PR, comms and media industries are making efforts to improve on inclusivity, one marginalised group in particular is the focus for Cassius Naylor in his work as chair of the Financial Times employee network Proud FT. Empowerment, support and protection of transgender and nonbinary people working within the FT structure, and fair representation of the community in the press, is a passion for Cassius, who shared his experiences and advice in our latest accessmatters session.

Watch the full accessmatters session with Cassius Naylor here.

Proud FT is working to lead the way and model how the UK media should be supporting transgender and nonbinary people. As Cassius highlighted during the session, the reporting of transgender and nonbinary-related issues in the mainstream UK press right now needs to change, very drastically and very quickly.

‘This community is the most at-risk and marginalised, yet we’ve all seen how trans issues are being reported in the UK right now.’

Those who work with the media can make a difference – especially those who engage with the public to drive opinion and tell stories. What can the PR industry do to fight transphobia and better represent transgender and nonbinary people?

The inclusion of pronoun information on social media is particularly popular among Generation Z – ‘Gen Z are getting queerer and more liberal because they’re plugged into others’ experiences. Culturally, with my younger brother, for example – it’s like he’s from a different planet. He came out at the age of 15 – if I had, I wouldn’t have got through school’. Pronouns frequently receive scoffing comments on social media platforms. Is pronoun information on social media useful and worth adding?

‘Absolutely,’ says Cassius.

‘We need to engender a place where pronouns are as normalised as sharing names. “Not seeing gender” is not helping to dismantle structural transphobia. It’s like those who say “I don’t see race” – that’s not helpful, at all’.

‘I’m a bisexual man and secondly a disabled man, but I’m still learning the lessons of inclusion, too – I’m still trying to get better at this. There’s nothing wrong with getting it wrong – it’s okay to be on a learning curve. Yes, pronouns are very important.’

That’s a small thing that can help with your outward-facing communication, but what about within the workplace? Gendered language seeps into work speech without us even realising it – starting a meeting with ‘Ladies and Gentleman’ (that does not cover everybody) or ‘Guys’ (sometimes used as a gender-neutral term, which it obviously is not).

‘There are many non-gendered alternatives – I go with “Hi everyone” or “Hi all”,’ says Cassius. ‘Those are easy to adopt – just adjust and move on. Practice, practice, practice.’

The recognition of phrases that are used to disempower – dog whistles – are also worth listening out for and actively questioning. ‘Recognise where that kind of language – “gender critical”, “biological female”, etc. – is being used; it’s insidious and it’s subtle.

‘Listen to your transgender and nonbinary colleagues – don’t talk over them, don’t talk for them. Cisgender people can use our privilege to create spaces of safely for our trans colleagues. If you see someone being dogpiled on Twitter, a simple DM or tweet of support can change things for people – it’s a real battle ground out there.’

If this conversation is new to you and you want to learn more, there are many resources you can engage with to empower yourself with the right information to go on and empower others. Influencers are already sharing what you need to know – ‘There’s so many people out sharing insight,’ says Cassius. ‘The internet is both a wonderful and occasionally terrible thing. It’s given us access to the breadth of human experience’.

Cassius advised following Abigail Thorn – ‘look up the speech she did at Trans Pride this year – an inspiring moment of defiance against transphobia’, Kat Blaque, and Jay Hulme. Groups like Gendered Intelligence, GenderGP, Stonewall and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau have even more information.

‘Take a holistic view of this. It’s a worldwide struggle to be intersectional while making sure we treat everyone’s experiences as individual. Filling your space with the richness of other people’s experiences helps.

‘There’s an endless web, a massive community,’ says Cassius. ‘Make sure you’re not just absorbing white voices and male voices. Go out there and absorb and amplify the multiplicity of experience.’

For more from our accessmatters session with Cassius Naylor, read our write up for journalists on the ResponseSource blog.

Want to watch the full session and catch up with past accessmatters videos? Check out the accessmatters hub here.

4 Reasons Why Introverts Make Great PRs

September 27, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR Club Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

This is a guest post from Prezzybox PR & marketing executive Alex Spencer.

It can sometimes feel like the world of PR is reserved for the extroverted, that those who need time to recharge after social gatherings, events or team meetings aren’t best-suited to this competitive environment.

But while I had my reservations when I started my career in PR, as an introvert who much prefers a night in with a blanket, hot chocolate and Netflix binge to a night out, I quickly realised that the qualities I thought would hinder my progress can actually be huge assets.

Here’s four important reasons why introverts can make wonderful PRs.

1. Introverts are great reflectors
When starting out in PR, it can seem like charging ahead at full speed is the best way to get your clients or the brand you’re working for noticed.

But I quickly learned that this really isn’t the case. At Prezzybox, we’re big believers in not doing something just because we’ve always done it. Instead, we slow down, taking the time to reflect on what’s worked well in the past, what hasn’t, and how we make things better.

We used to send untargeted press releases to hundreds of journalists at a time, resulting in, unsurprisingly, little interest and lots of unsubscribers. We learned from our mistakes and now, we take a more methodical approach to outreach.

Reflecting is what introverts do best, and this is key to honing your communications strategy.

2. Many journalists are introverts too… obviously
It’s not that I’m completely against giving a journalist a call. In fact, I’ve had some very productive conversations with journalists by phone, and some where we compare notes on our incredibly ungrateful cats.

But it’s obvious that many journalists prefer to be contacted by email only, and that can be for myriad reasons. Of course, their day is jam-packed and an email usually fits in better with their hectic schedule than a call. But, like the rest of us, all journalists are different. Some will love attending events, meeting PRs and the social side of their job. Others are pretty happy to communicate by email only, and need time, like I do, to spend time alone and recharge.

I’ve seen many journalists request no calls on their profile because they don’t like talking to people. And I don’t think many of us would blame them.

3. Introverts are great listeners
Social listening is key to the success of any communications strategy or PR campaign. And if introverts do anything well, it’s letting others do the talking. Listening is especially important at events and whenever you’re meeting journalists in person, like Prezzybox will be doing next at our first in-person event since January 2020. It can be incredibly tempting to use the short time you may have with them pitching your product, brand or campaign at full speed, with a few short breaths in-between your spiel to avoid collapsing in an exhausted heap on the floor.

But while you certainly need to make the most of the time you have, communicating the salient points in a (hopefully) engaging way, being talked at isn’t fun for anyone. Introverts are great at two-way communication, watching for subtle signs in body language and intonation that tell you when you need to slow down, pick up the pace, change topic or let the other person do the talking.

It goes without saying that asking journalists what they’re looking for is crucial, before you spend ten minutes pitching your health and wellness brand to a finance journalist.

4. We think before we speak!
They say all press is good press. But brand sentiment is a fragile thing, with one wrong move having the potential to push you off the top spot in minutes. It’s wonderful to see so many brands disrupting the market with innovative campaigns, but these have to be well thought-out. Introverts are brilliant at thinking before making moves, and this is exactly what PRs should do in this fast-paced, competitive world.

Thierry Alain, Head of Data Insights at Rise At Seven, shares some brilliant insights into brand sentiment and how quickly this can change over on Twitter. It demonstrates the power of thinking before you speak. Burger King might have gone viral with their ‘Women belong in the kitchen’ tweet, but it didn’t quite have the effect they were hoping for.

The Takeaway
PR is now much more suited to communicators on both sides of the introvert-extrovert spectrum, with the focus for many brands shifting to digital PR and building links. People from all walks of life, with different communication styles will love a career in PR, if they’re tenacious, enthusiastic and, perhaps most importantly, resilient. We all know the knock-backs can be tough…

And introverts can bring special qualities to the plate when it comes to getting amazing coverage. Our ability to reflect, to connect with others and think before we speak make us great communicators, and therefore, great PRs.

Provided we’re given plenty of time to recharge our batteries, that is. Cuddles with the office dogs also help.

For more on how to engage with journalists in ways they find useful, download our How to Pitch to Journalists white paper here.

Want a more methodical approach to media outreach? Try the Vuelio Media Database, which includes how journalists like to be contacted, the topics they cover and recent article information. Social listening part of your campaign planning? Try out Pulsar’s platform of products.

How to strengthen connections to your brand with neuro PR

September 9, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Marketing, Webinars & Videos Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Using neuro connections to form unconscious and potentially unbreakable bonds between brands and consumers – sounds kind of sci-fi, perhaps. But don’t be worried – it’s perfectly natural.

Why are we drawn to particular cans of baked beans when we’re shopping, even if we don’t care what they taste like? Why is it so automatic to blurt out a certain chocolate bar’s tagline when someone mentions ‘taking a break’? This is the power of the subconscious and it’s something Harvey & Hugo PR’s managing director and Leader of the Pack Charlotte Nichols believes all PRs need to be aware of as part of their work.

Leading our latest webinar Neuro PR: Strengthening the Brain and Brand Connection, Charlotte showed that good PR takes the way our minds work into account and works with it. If your mind is now conjuring up those old stories of cinemas splicing pictures of popcorn into the adverts before films to boost concession sales, certain scenes of similar splices in Fight Club or the messages hidden in billboards in They Live, be assured that neuro PR isn’t anywhere near as nefarious – it’s just very clever.

Here are some of the useful ways Charlotte shared for creating memorable campaigns and locking in loyalty with brain science…

Get eyes, and brains, on you
‘We don’t see with our eyes, we see with our brain. We think we’re in control of our focus – we’re not,’ said Charlotte.

‘For example, think of ‘the cocktail party effect’. You’re deep in conversation with someone. All of a sudden, you hear your name from somewhere else in the room. Your subconscious scans the room all the time, no matter where you are, and picks up little alerts.

‘When you say “I’ve got a feeling about it”, it’s actually your subconscious. Often, we make decisions with our ‘gut feeling’, then use our rational thoughts to justify our decisions.

‘In the marketing sector, people say that “adverts don’t work”. Sometimes you can’t remember the adverts, sure, but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t gone into your brain. It’s always there, in your “gut feeling”.’

Attract the right kind of attention
Full attention from an audience can have its drawbacks. According to research, there are negatives that come with ‘high involvement attention’ – watching a perfume advert – versus ‘low involvement attention’ – checking your phone while the ad plays on a TV on the other side of the room.

Perhaps while watching a perfume advert, you realise you don’t like the model or actor chosen to represent the product. This can cause ‘inattentional blindness’ – ‘where you’re so distracted by one thing, you miss the message,’ says Charlotte. Letting messages seep through into the subconscious may be more effective. Certainly better than a potential customer watching an expensively-produced commercial with an internationally-famous actor and only thinking ‘Ugh, I really hate that guy’.

Enhance powerful emotions
‘Emotions exist to move us as humans,’ says Charlotte. ‘We feel first and then the brain interprets it.’
‘Feeling is an unconscious experience – you cannot control the way you feel. We frame things with our rational conscious thought, sometimes even doing that can’t take away the feeling of it.

‘There are also sematic markers when we feel emotions. Sweaty palms – that happens before our brain registers that emotion. We start running from a bear before our brain processes what’s going on. We feel first, and then our brain interprets it. That’s why all these small touch points add up to a massive experience of emotions.’

Brands that are making good use of their customers’ emotions right now that we can learn from? Charlotte pointed to McDonald’s current focus on friendship groups meeting up again after the isolation of lockdown: ‘They’re doing really well with their recent ads, it appeals to your emotion – wanting to meet up with your friends… and maybe you just really want chips, too.’

Show your brand’s personality, story and purpose
While brands like Tesla push brand personality first and foremost in campaigns focusing on sustainability, there are some standard personality traits that are tried and true, whatever your brand, product or service.

‘Listen and engage,’ says Charlotte.

‘You don’t always have to be doing anything. It can do your brand so well to just listen to your customers – social media is great for this. It helps build that emotional connection.’

Make good memories and good first impressions
‘The language we use is so important. We’re told imagery is more important, but never underestimate the words we use.’

‘As PRs, we are the artists of semantic memory networks. You can change these networks, it just takes a long time to do.’

The saying goes that first impressions are particularly important and, as Charlotte showed, there is evidence to back this up. Brains don’t always want to work so hard – ‘the brain uses 25% energy at rest,’ shared Charlotte. ‘You won’t remember something that’s really hard to understand, so don’t underestimate the power of a catchy tagline’.

Use your brain
After all this talk about other people’s brains, don’t forget to make the most of your own. Take time to think and really ruminate about the projects you’re working on.

‘Our subconscious is so powerful. As PRs and marketers, we can be guilty of measuring results the same way, over and over again. Meditation will boost creativity and it’s just good for our health.

‘I believe in the future we’ll be doing more of this to get to know ourselves, and our brands, much more.’

Watch the webinar here.

Want help listening to your audience to make connections? Try out Pulsar’s social listening solutions and the Vuelio media database.

Vuelio joins AMEC

August 18, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Media and Entertainment, Communications, Media, Political Updates Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

The measurement and analysis of communications data is vital for understanding the strength and impact of PR and determining future plans for campaigns and the direction of business, which is why Vuelio is proud to join AMEC as a Full Member.

The International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) is the leading international professional body for media intelligence and insights, and a renowned mark of excellence with a 25-year record of representing specialists in media evaluation and communications research. Vuelio joins AMEC’s membership of over 200 organisations and 1,000 professionals, which spans more than 86 countries worldwide.

AMEC’s ongoing international education outreach, strategic partnerships with associations including PRSA and ICCO, and the sharing of industry-wide best practice includes its ‘Say No to AVEs’ campaign, which advocates a move away from the use of Advertising Value Equivalent (AVEs) in PR and communications work. This commitment to fairer and more accurate measurement within the industry is something Vuelio supports and bolsters with Vuelio Insights, which uses a mix of qualitive metrics, enriched data monitoring and tailored reporting for strategic recommendations.

‘Evaluating key comms activity accurately – making judgements on which parts of your business and strategy are working effectively – is complicated. Gone are the days of meaningless AVEs and vanity metrics; forward-thinking organisations demand communications measurement that directly impact business goals and moves the dial forward’ says Vuelio Insights lead Amy Parry.

‘As advocates for strategic planning based on true performance and actionable insights, we’re truly delighted to be members of a community dedicated to valuable and data-driven research and evaluation.’

AMEC global managing director Johna Burke says: ‘We are delighted to welcome Vuelio into the AMEC Member Community. The team’s expertise and enthusiasm will enrich the discussions and make us all the better as we tackle the challenges of measurement and evaluation of communication.’

For more on Vuelio’s media monitoring and analysis solutions, click here to book a demo/consultation with the Insights team.

Fairer representations of disability in PR: starting the conversation with Mark Webb and Sudha Singh

August 5, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications, Media Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

‘It feels like disability is last to the table at any diversity discussion. If it gets there at all. And yet we’re the biggest minority’ – as the host of the PRCA’s new podcast Disability@thetable, Mark Webb is making sure hidden and visible disability is part of the inclusion discussions happening across the industry.

Launched as part of the PRCA’s recently-rebranded Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council’s new initiatives, Disability@thetable shares stories and best practice advice to push conversations forward. ‘It’s some peoples’ calling to chain themselves to railings to drive change. And there’s a definite place for that, but I’m hoping to help push the story from another angle,’ says Mark. ‘A happy, positive, “look what you’re missing” tone.’

Including everyone at the table
That PR and comms so often misses out consideration and representation of disability is a severe failing – not just of the audiences we seek to address and engage, but of our workforce and its future. As quoted in this 2016 piece from Ashley Phillips, PRCA’s UK PR Census that year found that just 2% of the 83,000 practitioners working in PR were disabled people. This isn’t representative of society at large and can be incredibly isolating, as InFusion Comms’ founder and managing director Sara Hawthorn shared in an accessmatters session last year about her own experiences as a deaf person in the industry:

‘I worked in the media on and off since I was 17. There was a point before starting InFusion Comms where I had never come across another media or PR professional with a disability or impairment at all, and I’d never spoken to anyone else in the industry who was going through anything similar. I thought; this must be something missing from our organisations. Who’s missing?’

While visibility is slowly increasing in some areas of the media – Channel 4 has promised that disabled people will make up at least 70% of its presenting team for the Paralympics this year (‘lovely,’ says Mark, ‘big, positive gestures can only help nudge the diversity and disability dials’) – there’s far to go.

‘Things are getting better’, says Mark. ‘But way too slowly.’

Authenticity over tokenism
‘The comms industry can only speak from a position of knowledge and authenticity if we stop being tokenistic and become more intentional about our journey to equity and inclusion,’ believes Sudha Singh, co-chair of the PRCA Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council (EIAC).

Rebranded this year, the EIAC’s new name reflects its new, more inclusive, purpose: ‘For the longest time, organisations have been focusing on diversity as a way to correct institutional and historic inequalities,’ says Sudha. ‘Referring to people as diverse actually “others” those who don’t belong to the dominant group/privileged groups. We deliberated on the name change – it now reflects our purpose – who we are and what we are trying to do.

‘We want organisations to focus on the equity inspired designs for bringing about that change – to create equitable workplaces where talented people can thrive, no matter where they come from, what they look like. And this will require organisations to actually identify the problem areas and it is not helpful if you are determined to treat everyone equally. Inclusion of course is an outcome and has diversity at its core – do people feel valued, can they bring their true self to work? What is their experience of the workplace? Do they belong?’

Initiatives and progress
The work to ensure everyone can belong within our industry is well underway – the EIAC recently hosted its first ever #ChangeforGood Conference, supported by APCO, with over 20 speakers covering Gender, Social Mobility, Race and Disability, with more initiatives and partnerships to follow.

For Mark, the Disability@thetable podcast will be leading the charge:

‘Dream guests that won’t happen? Michael J Fox, the Back to the Future legend, now with Parkinson’s and doing amazing advocacy and fundraising work. And – showing my age, here – Gloria Estefan. I worked with her briefly in the early 90s, just as my Multiple Sclerosis was about to start sneaking up on me. Her family has been impacted by MS too. Both great communicators!

‘Aiming high but vaguely feasible? The likes of Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Rory Cellan-Jones, Frank Gardner. All of them living a good, positive, public eye life and not defined by their disability.

Booked in already? Talented, brilliant communicators and PR people either living with, or impacted by disability… And I’m hoping I can tease out others.’

While big brands are doing their own long-overdue work on inclusivity, it has to be done properly, something Mark acknowledges is likely to be difficult going for some:

‘It’s a horribly fine line for any brand to be treading,’ says Mark. ‘It’s a strange kind of gold-rush going on in the desperate bid to be inclusive, “politically correct” and all too often, tick-box. I will single out Lego positively, for their work across pretty much all flavours of diversity. And I dine out on stories of how brilliant the senior team at Dixons Retail, then Dixons Carphone, were with me. But listen to our podcasts for that!’

The first thing organisations can do to be more inclusive of disability within their teams, their campaigns and their creative? Join the conversation that’s happening now. ‘Consult with us, engage with us’, says Mark. ‘Don’t just assume job done by slapping a wheelchair into something you’re up to.’

Find out more about the Disability@thetable podcast and more PRCA Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council initiatives here.

For more experiences from people working across the comms industry, catch up with our accessmatters sessions.

Seeking: the right brand ambassador for long-term engagement

July 30, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Advertising, Media and Entertainment, Branding, Charity, Influencers Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Is there a public figure you just can’t stand? Or a celebrity you’ll go and see in anything, even if it’s likely to be terrible? Are you more likely to give a new product a go if it’s introduced to you by a face you know and trust?

Parasocial relationships – ‘that feeling of closeness and authenticity’ you can build with a person you don’t even know, as YouTuber: How YouTube shook up TV and created a new generation of stars author Chris Stokel-Walker put it – are a powerful part of modern-day brand awareness and engagement. There’s no escaping its influence if you engage in media of almost any type.

Type ‘George Clooney coffee’ into Google, for example, and you’ll find that People Also Ask ‘Does George Clooney own Nespresso?’, ‘How much does George Clooney get paid for Nespresso?’ and ‘Why does George Clooney do Nespresso?’. No, he doesn’t own Nespresso, but we associate him with the brand closely since he began working with them in 2006, and he is said to have earned over $40million from a recent campaign. Why? Because brand partnerships can pay off, for everybody involved.

The financial pay-off for brands, and their ambassadors, is undeniable – ‘parasocial interaction mediates the relationship between celebrity images and purchase intentions […] It has significant implications for marketers and academicians,’ reads a study from the University Business School in India from May. ‘Status affect[s] the strength of parasocial relationships, source credibility, and evaluation,’ finds a report published in the International Journal of Advertising earlier this year.

For which brands are making smart choices for their ambassadors – and potential subjects of parasocial engagement – right now, you need only watch the adverts between shows on TV/before YouTube videos/in pop-ups. We’re mid-Olympics 2020, and Dina Asher-Smith is busy creating with Muller. Lynx has teamed up with boxer Anthony Joshua, YouTubers Calfreezy and Chunkz, and rapper Aitch. Tapping into niches, subcultures and fandoms can also attract consumers to a brand – Subway is acknowledging its passionate-about-plant-based clients by teaming up with vegan Grime artists, and Star Wars’ Adam Driver is doing brand ambassador duty in a new campaign for Burberry Hero.

The consumer, the follower – those watching and engaging – can benefit from brand ambassadorship, too. It’s the consumers’ choice, after all, whether or not to engage in a one-sided, fully-voluntary parasocial entanglement with Tom Hiddleston over breakfast – plenty of consumers were happy to be the recipient of a plate and a Centrum from his hand, just as others suddenly weren’t very hungry, actually.

Studies show that parasocial engagements like these provide feelings of companionship, as well as ‘affection, gratitude, longing, encouragement, and loyalty’. It’s that careful back-and-forth that makes ambassadorship so powerful for building long-term relationships with a customer and a reliable, resilient consumer base.

Understanding which media personalities would be most likely to engage an intended audience, and keep on message authentically, was a key part of Zero Waste Scotland’s Scotland is Stunning – Let’s Keep It That Way award-winning campaign of last year. ‘Influencers were essential to this campaign, in particular for the under-25 audience,’ said communications programme manager for the campaign Claire Munro. ‘We wouldn’t have been able to reach them as directly or persuasively via traditional media channels, stakeholder channels or traditional toolkit. They gave the campaign real pop.’

‘When deciding on an ambassador for your brand, look at who their audience is and what kind of content they use,’ says Claire. ‘Does that marry up with your values and your objectives?’

It’s an important question to ask, as ‘authentic’ personalities, and the choices they make, can cause real problems. There are plenty of examples where brands and ambassadors didn’t make for ideal mixes. While Scarlett Johansson claimed to have ‘no regrets’ over her decision to work with SodaStream (a company headquartered in Israel with a factory on the West Bank) in 2014, the Hollywood actress stepped down from her ambassador position with Oxfam following its criticism of her affiliation with the drinks brand. Popular YouTuber Shane Dawson, who had found success across a range of mediums and with many brands, over many years, was swiftly dropped by both Target and Morphe after controversy surrounding his older videos resurfaced.

‘It’s important that PR people fully appreciate who they’re representing, their personality and what is a good or bad endorsement for them,’ says Stokel-Walker. ‘An influencer’s stock in trade is their authenticity, but any bad decision an influencer makes to support or endorse a product will be picked up on very quickly.’

Want to start your own meaningful relationships with perfect brand ambassadors and a loyal – perhaps parasocially-tinged – customer base? Make sure you pick the right people, that share your purpose, aims, ethics, moral outlook and your brands’ plans for the future. After all, it could be the start of a long and meaningful relationship, to everyone’s benefit.

For more on influencer culture, read our feature on Chris Stokel-Walker’s YouTubers: How YouTube shook up TV and created a new generation of stars. Find out more about choosing the right brand ambassador for your campaign with our interview on Zero Waste Scotland’s campaign ‘Scotland is Stunning – Let’s Keep It That Way’.

Understand how your PR compares to the competition and prove ROI with Vuelio Media Monitoring.

Freedom or Freedumb Day: how the media and the public reacted to 19 July

July 28, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications, Media Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Have you embraced the increased flexibility post-Freedom Day in the UK, or were you more skeptical of the Government’s decision to relax COVID-19 restrictions on 19 July?

Freedom Day has been a busy conversation across both traditional and social media. Here we take a look at the reaction from the public across social platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and what topics the media focused on with data from Vuelio and Pulsar from Saturday 17 July (two days before ‘Freedom Day’) to Friday 23 July.

Did the UK see Freedom Day as a shining beacon for #freedom, or a darker display of #Freedumb?

#FreedomDay versus #Freedumb
Away from each of our carefully curated online echo chambers, what were the most popular hashtags leading up to, and just after, Freedom Day? Unsurprisingly, the #freedomday hashtag was being used a lot, followed by the more critical tags of #freedumbday, #novaccinepass and even #johnsonvariant.

However, the biggest engagements went to posts offering competition prizes – always a draw, whichever way you lean politically – as brands jumped on the exposure opportunity for travel and holiday giveaways. Also drawing big online engagement – a cautiously optimistic tweet from digital channel Dave and a just-plain-cautious tweet from Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on COVID cases numbers.

What were we planning to do with our freedom?
For the places we were most looking forward to returning to – or most tentative about – it was Nightclubs (26.8%) and Retail (13.4%) that took up most of the conversation across social media channels.

Perhaps surprisingly, international travel wasn’t a chief concern (maybe the UK heatwave helped), with Airports being only 1.2% of the location conversation. However, potential holidays were more interesting to post about than fitness, with Gym talk taking up just 1.1% of the posting on social media.

School was a chief concern for many (10.2%) as well as the office/working from home (12.8%). How we’d travel to these newly-opened locations was also on our minds; 7.6% of the social media conversation was taken up with Public Transport.

Did the media predict which locations we’d be most concerned about? Largely, yes – Vuelio data shows Nightclubs as the location most written about (21%) regarding Freedom Day, while Retail only got 8% of write ups. Almost taking up another fifth of media content, however, was returns to the office/WFH. Did the media overestimate how much the public would be concerned about work? Or would people just rather not think about it when on social media?

Most influential?
When it came to sharing links and information across social media, The Guardian was the most popular news outlet according to Pulsar data. It was followed by the Mirror, the FT, the Telegraph, the Independent and the BBC (its placing in this list is surprising, given the size of the broadcaster).

While these were the most shared outlets, we know from the Vuelio data that they were not the most prolific in their coverage. That title goes to MSN UK closely followed by MailOnline, each publishing over 30 articles about Freedom Day. We can also see a large number of local sites in this list, many of which carry syndicated news based on popular topics.

Which political figures were being talked about?
The orchestrator/announcer of ‘Freedom Day’, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was also the politician with the most mentions across social media – well over half (69.3%) of social media posts talking politics were focused on him. Second most popular was health secretary Sajid Javid – who was recently diagnosed with COVID-19 himself – with just under a quarter of the politician conversation online. Taking a much smaller bite of the attention apple were Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (3.8%), Labour Leader Keir Starmer (2.1%) and Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty (0.7%).

While Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer only got 2.1% of the draw on social, 10% of the coverage on political leaders focused on him across the UK media. Boris Johnson was the subject of 55% of news and features, and Sajid Javid another fifth (22%). Rishi Sunak took up 12% of the UK media’s reporting on political leaders.

When comparing the data regarding Freedom Day, it’s clear that the UK press continues to be a reliable signifier, and influencer, of the public discourse. We also know that for publishers, high quantity doesn’t necessarily lead to high engagement, which is an important consideration for PRs and their media outreach.

Want to understand your audience more, and track trends in real-time on social media? Check out Pulsar. And to find the publishers and outlets that will work for your pitching, check out Vuelio.

2021 trends so far in PR and communications

July 26, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Back in December, we asked a selection of thought leaders working across PR and communications for their predictions on the big trends coming up for the industry in 2021.

Ethics, fake news, the growth of digital and opportunity in disruption were some of the topics that came up at the time, so we caught up with Sarah Waddington, Shayoni Lynn, Stuart Thomson, Kerry Sheehan, and Tolu Akisanya to see how things have panned out so far…

Upcoming areas of opportunity – healthcare, policy and change
‘COVID is nowhere near over and businesses have never needed professional comms support more. Specific industry experience will be a huge boon as the economy opens up further. Those with experience in healthcare comms and economic development will continue to do particularly well.’
Sarah Waddington, Astute.Work and #FuturePRoof

‘It seems that, under Boris Johnson at least, interventionist governments are here to stay. There are very few areas of life that the Government doesn’t seem to have an opinion, or policy, on. The big opportunity, and threat if not addressed, is for organisations to engage with Government to ensure the policies work. There will be no more obvious policy area where this applies than climate change. With COP26 coming, the Government will need to make some big policy announcements to accompany the impressive targets it has set. Engagement will be critical throughout and beyond this time.’
Stuart Thomson, BDB Pitmans

Digital data is an essential part of the modern PR toolkit
‘Data, digital and understanding of human behaviour will continue to be an important driver for effective, strategic communications. Why are we doing it? What do we want people to do? How will be measure it?’
Shayoni Lynn, Lynn PR

‘Because of the pandemic last year, brands and organisations have had to shift their attention to digital; I think there will be a conscious effort to continue this, with a focus on building online communities. There’s an opportunity here for strengthened loyalty, genuine interaction, and not just for our clients but also with peers and the wider industry. Ariatu PR’s work with new authors is a great example of this; working with new authors, from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds, raising awareness for these authors (that statistically would have been overlooked in the past), creating new communities and reaching new audiences. The organisation also has built a great interactive community online, with other PR professionals, journalists, and the wider industry and created a strong reputation of being knowledgeable, approachable and impactful.

‘Some other great examples over the last few months include the fantastic Weetabix x Heinz Twitter thread, and Marcus Rashford’s School Meals campaign, both of which started online and went on to captivate the nation, lead to wider discussions offline, and ultimately changed behaviours.’
Tolu Akisanya, Ariatu Public Relations

Accountability and ethics
‘For public affairs as a profession, there is no doubt that the texting habits of politicians, for example, have adversely impacted on our reputation. The rules that he [David Cameron] put in place, which everyone said were lacking at the time, did not prevent him from doing whatever he wanted without fear of retribution.’
Stuart Thomson

‘There has been an increased expectation for accountability. Last year, there was pressure for brands and organisations to be seen saying the right (socially conscious) thing, this year they have been asked to show the work behind their public claims. It’s no longer enough to pay lip service to global issues, organisations and brands be must be seen to authentically follow up with real-life changes and examples, and not just performative PR activities, they must work much harder now to be genuine and transparent to build trust and relationships with their audiences.’
Tolu Akisanya

The fast pace may not ease up
‘We’re returning to urgent planned and unplanned work, and supporting organisations, businesses and brands to move to a place of not only surviving but thriving in their evolved ways of doing things and their accelerated transformation and innovation as a result of the pandemic.

‘Some are still trying to fathom this out and even though some economies have seemingly bounced back to a better than anticipated place at this stage, we are seeing behaviours continue to adapt and change at a faster pace than before. This continues to be a big challenge for us to ensure we can land our communication right to ensure the compliance, buy-in, take-up and so on we require.

‘There has been no let up. There never will be. Working at pace is the norm now.’
Kerry Sheehan, Business innovation and communication advisor

Big surprises of 2021 so far?
‘The refocus of gaining coverage in alternative media – which I love! Over the last year or so, one of the biggest challenges was being able to effectively cut through the global stories dominating the news in hand with changes in content consumption. Many practitioners were able to quickly pick up on this and pivoted, to utilise smaller, more localised and niche media outlets, to reach their target audiences.’
Tolu Akisanya

‘The way that the Government has tried to shift the Covid-19 public inquiry off until mid-2022 is surprising given that another wave of infections are widely expected for later in 2021. The political imperative of putting the findings of a public inquiry off until some future date seems to have outweighed the potential health benefits of learning lessons sooner rather than later. If you want a prediction for 2022 then it will be how much the inquiry will dominate public life as the evidence starts to be heard.’
Stuart Thomson

‘The amount of communicators tuning into and building on their emotional intelligence, and using this to build relationships. The need for emotional skills, the cornerstone of employee and audience engagement but also competitive advantage, will continue to grow and could even outpace the demand for cognitive skills in the future.’
Kerry Sheehan

PR continues to show its value
‘COVID-19 may be one of the worst natural disasters global society has faced in recent years, but it has been good for the public relations industry which has been able to pretty bullishly demonstrate its value to business, not least through stakeholder engagement and internal comms. The biggest challenges have been managing demand and helping the hardest hit industries get back on their feet, closely followed by a talent shortage at the account manager level. The ongoing concern is how to keep PR in front of management teams so they continue to appreciate what it delivers and invest appropriately.’
Sarah Waddington

‘Public sector comms teams continue to knock it out of the park with COVID-19 comms – huge respect to everyone working through this tirelessly, especially colleagues in public health. This has contributed to our excellent vaccination numbers with more people than expected taking up the vaccine, helping us all move towards some sort of ‘normalcy’.’
Shayoni Lynn

‘Some of the biggest achievements for the industry this year – embracing change, mastering the art of the pivot, and finding new ways to be creative and communicate our products/services and clients. Despite starting the year in the middle of a pandemic we’ve really been able to highlight our value in our ability to adapt, be creative and deliver effective PR campaigns. The #GettyMuseumChallenge is a great example of pivoting, increasing brand awareness, and building a community of art-lovers from user-generated content on instagram.’
Tolu Akisanya

‘I am continually impressed by how resourceful people have been during the continued lockdown, on a personal and professional level. We all need picking up sometimes and my network across PR and comms has always been there. It is fantastic how many organisations really are thinking about the wellbeing, especially the mental wellbeing, of their people.’
Stuart Thomson

Looking for more from our PR and communications trends predictors?

Interview with Stuart Thomson about his PR & Comms Best Influencer win at the 2020 Online Influence Awards

Sarah Waddington’s #FuturePRoof Five

In the event of an emergency – communicating a summer of live events webinar

July 23, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Webinars & Videos, Communications, Webinars Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

For our latest webinar we spoke to the people behind the planning as we ready for the return of in-person events. Sharing the big challenges from the last year were Cheltenham Festival’s PR and communications manager Bairbre Lloyd and ME Travel founder Hannah Mursal, who have successfully battled through cancellations, changing restrictions and internationally-inconsistent rules on travel and event attendance.

Part of the relaxation of social-distancing rules in the UK is the uncertainty over what is to come over the next few months. Read on for practical advice on how to prepare for every eventuality regarding events.

Challenges of the last 18 months
‘It’s been tricky!’ said Hannah. Looking after every element of booking for ME Travel’s entertainment clients, their bands and their crew has required increased flexibility as well as patience.

‘In the UK and across Europe, it’s been quiet – people have been doing music videos and virtual performances instead of touring. In the US, it’s been more focused on domestic travel. They haven’t really stopped; people were still travelling to do gigs. We’re looking at the bulk of events coming back in September. It’s been a waiting game to book tours in and find new venue dates.

‘Restrictions are changing constantly, but it all depends on who’s going where. I’ve got Jamaican artists, but their crews are American, English, German. There are times where you could only get half of the crew there.
‘You have to know what every country is allowing in. Do they need forms, vaccination – you can’t really book in advance, either. You can’t book today to fly next week, because it will change by mid-week.’

Plus points of the pandemic (there have been a few)
For Bairbre, juggling different priorities has brought positives as well as challenges.

‘When you’re a location putting on a festival, you can make your own decisions but you have to think about the audience if you want people to come.

‘Some of our speakers were delighted to get out of where they were, and others were… not so keen. What it has opened up to us is the idea of dialling in. Our Literature Festival was a hybrid of a socially-distanced audience and streaming online. There were people on stage while guests from the US were able to join digitally. That will have repercussions in the future – when this all finally lifts. It’s another string to our bow. It worked for us.

‘Like a lot of our fellow cultural organisations found, there was a huge appetite for us to provide support for the community. Our Science Festival was a godsend to lots of parents schooling from home. Our audience has increased enormously and that’s something we want to develop.

‘It has been difficult, but it’s jump-started our digital ambitions. We had to do all of this in five weeks – it would otherwise have probably taken us about five years.’

Lessons learned
‘We were making decisions as late as possible to have maximum flexibility – we were on tenterhooks waiting for the go-head for things,’ said Bairbre.

‘While we brought in lots of technology, there wasn’t really time to test it. We could have done with more user experience for next time. It worked, but it was hairy.’

For Hannah, the importance of communication and relationships has been a main takeaway:
‘We were all in it together, we became a family – I know how my clients’ mums are doing, their dads. It was panic stations in the beginning, so it was good to keep that communication going. In terms of hotels, the entertainment reps were the first to lose their jobs. My contacts all got made redundant. It was important to keep in the loop of what everyone was doing.

‘It was useful to know when someone was in the studio recording – it tells me when things lift, they have an album to tour. Building these relationships lets me know when are going back to work.’

Contingency plans
‘We’re planning for a full capacity without social distancing for our next Literature Festival in October – we made that call fairly early on,’ shared Bairbre.

‘I think if restrictions are put back in place, however, we will go back to what we’ve done before. This will be the eighth festival we’ve done in lockdown – we can bring in distancing and Covid-secure measures. Our senior management team will be in HQ cooking up plans. We were lucky last year because we slipped in between lockdowns. And I think we were the first literary festival to do a hybrid version.’

‘Not to sound complacent, but I’ve done so many cancellation announcements that we have our contingency plan for if it’s needed. If you’ve got a plan written and ready to go, you roll that out; you know that it works. Having those comms ready to run, is the key for me.

‘People are still going to be a bit insecure with events. One of the things we were conscious of were that some people were going to be really gung-ho and ready to come out, some would be more cautious. You need to be really clear with everybody with how you’re managing your event. If the audience knows what to expert – that they’ve got to sit in bubbles, wash their hands, have e-tickets and wear masks – they will accept it. It’s the not-knowing that makes people angry.’

Practical tips for planning events during COVID-19
‘Have your communications plan ready in advance,’ advises Bairbre.

‘We went through looking at scenarios, what negative reactions we could potentially have to safety onsite. We thought about all the things that could be picked up on and made sure we were proactive with our safety measures. And with sending comms out, make sure your stakeholders are onboard and informed – artists, staff and suppliers.’

‘Insurance has been huge in my world,’ Hannah added. ‘It’s hard to get event insurance that covers COVID now. Make sure you’re covered with your suppliers.’

‘Be prepared; have that contingency plan. The rug may be pulled from under you at any moment.’

For more trends to prepare for when it comes to getting back outside, download our white paper PR & Media Travel Trends 2021.

‘Start by speaking the same language as the person you are talking with’ – Simon Mouncey, Transport for London

July 22, 2021/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, PR Club Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Everyone in society is different and has different experiences of the same things. This is a fundamental truth that everyone in PR must accept in order to design the right comms strategy and speak to the right audiences in the right way.

In this guest post, Transport for London’s communities and partnerships specialist Simon Mouncey shares the importance of listening to your audience and taking on new approaches to embrace inclusivity.

‘I’ve been in PR for as long as I can remember, indeed long before emails, when you used carbon paper and did things in triplicate. I even remember a training session on how to put the paperclip on the right way round so it didn’t catch with all the other memos in the tray. Thankfully most priorities have changed since then, from how you did things to making change happen. I can now say I have changed people’s lives for the better. That’s a nice feeling. It’s nice being able to say you did the right things than just did things the right way.

What is the right way now anyway?

Something we’ve learnt over the past year is there is a disconnect to what we believe to be true and what others know is true. This has turned into a discussion on inclusive leadership. Whatever you think inclusive leadership is, the bottom line is that you cannot possibly know what it is like to be judged unless you too have been judged the same way. So, decisions affecting people’s lives need to be made by the people whose lives are being affected. Call it Ivory Towers or call it what it is, a systemic failing in our society based on opportunities and therefore positions of power reserved for those who look and sound like the people who are already in those positions.

No amount of unconscious bias training or other gestures will change how you are hardwired; it is just another easy tickbox. As a society, we surround ourselves with people who reinforce our beliefs, values and prejudices. Real unconscious bias training will parachute you into a life totally alien to you, an escape room, where you have to find new friends and allies to achieve your aim. Maybe, subconsciously, that’s why escape rooms are so popular. But to be effective you will need to be with total strangers, randomly picked from society.

The place to start is speaking the same language as the person you are talking with. The only way you can do that is to let them do the talking and listen and learn. So, don’t restrict them to a survey with questions based on your own experiences, views, opinions, perceptions and so on. But also amplify their voice. If they have no experience of being listened to then you have to bring them up to the same level as you, in knowledge of what your outcome is, and skills in making it happen.

I learnt this very early on, when I was charged with implementing national policy for people with learning disabilities. I think being naïve back then I was given it not as a challenge but as something everyone else had turned down (I was asked to become a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate after that and turned it down, but that’s one of life’s crossroad moments). The policy was that adults with learning disabilities should be able to decide their own lives. They had new personal care packages known as Independent Living allowances, which is an income they could spend on what they wanted, like ice cream and holidays. But how do you know what they want if they have never been listened to before, been institutionalised, and had other people make decisions for them? Many of those living in institutional care had never had a voice and therefore never developed speech well enough to have a conversation. There are many aspects of society where that is still true today. Well, in this case a pictorial language was developed, that meant they could say what they wanted in a conversation and their voice was heard for the first time, unfiltered by other people who had their own values and opinions.

Zoom (pun intended) forward to 2021 and many have woken up to the realisation that so many are excluded from society by their voice being excluded from decisions and have therefore developed their own communication methods. That can be rage, a protest, a counter-culture or just opting out of society. All of them, whatever your perception or judgement is, are methods of communication because they aren’t listened to the way the decision makers will hear. I call it prismatic thinking, where all the colours of the rainbow are there but when you apply your own filter to it you see just one colour. When decision makers say ‘limit the right to protest’, they are in effect masking those voices. And glass isn’t just in ceilings, it is all around us, and we see what we want to see based on our own reflections.

What I’m looking for in someone to communicate for me when I can’t is sincerity and authenticity. They need to believe in the message and what they are trying to achieve, and they need to tell it how it is. And when they look for what comes back it needs to be unfiltered. When people talk about a Green future what they mean is panic; we are feeling the effects of climate change now and it will only get worse, do something now. Relate that to what we are doing to make people’s lives in London better. What is better for them? Is it to be treated fairly and equally, a home, a job, a future? So there is a disconnect between getting more people cycling and walking and what we really mean is that all our futures are at risk if we don’t panic.

As professionals we need to get across to decision makers that everyone is starting from a different place and you can’t apply the same policy to everyone. Someone reminded me recently of the big tent idea. Where, in our western colonial culture, we get all the friendly like-minded experts together to agree what needs to be done. When in fact the name originates from native Americans where to deal with threats, like to their way of life, they would bring all the tribal leaders together, most of them enemies, leave their weapons outside and not be able to leave the tent until they agree what they need to do.

I’ve always advocated for local decision making, so you give the problem to a local community, you give them the skills and opportunities to become leaders (which by default is inclusive leadership), any risks, constraints and a framework to reach a consensus – in other words, everything you do to reach your conclusion – and you help them make a decision. It has become known as Citizen Assemblies. But call it what it is; people deciding how they as individuals and members of a wider society will achieve the same future as everyone else wants. That could be cycling where you can, it could be driving just for essential trips, it could be anything the individual can and knows they need to do. But to get there you need to abandon the structures and processes put in place that limits their voice. Amplify the hardest to hear and turn the volume down on the loudest heard all the time.

Take the example of going cashless on London Buses. Just like when I was in social care policy, I leapt at the chance to do it. Only then was I told TfL had been trying to do it forever and no one had attempted it in case in went wrong. My first thought was what was ‘going wrong’; it shouldn’t be about image. Failure to me was someone being hurt because they were carrying cash. Or someone trying to get somewhere just in time only to have to wait for people paying their fare with pennies. Or the person who is just a few pence short but trying to get the bus to get away from being hurt. So it was presented to people as, these are your friends and family, your neighbours, your community. We will help you engage with them so you can tell us what you’ve agreed. We helped communities find their leaders and supported them. I called it Co-Production.

In a later project involving a school, the headteacher told me I had changed the life chances of the students involved in the project, their confidence, hopes and aspirations and how they had just expected to leave school with nothing but were now planning a degree, career and a future for themselves, as lawyers, engineers and business leaders to help their communities.

I don’t have any plans for the future; I’m a water sign so go with the flow. Who knows the next thing around the corner. Another pandemic, certainly. The warnings were given years ago that with the climate and ecological emergency there was likely to be more diseases jumping species. And then there have been record after record tumbling on temperature, drought, rain. My advice would be, be nice to people, open your heart and that will open your mind. Make friends with people who are really different from you. Take a leap of faith and trust people to do the right thing. Forget the hashtag and campaign slogans. Give them your knowledge and skills and watch people reshape society in everyone’s image.’

For more on communicating with different audiences, read insight from this year’s PRFest on keeping PR sustainable.

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‘This is where we all can make a discernable difference’ – accessmatters with Cassius Naylor, Proud FT

4 Reasons Why Introverts Make Great PRs

How to strengthen connections to your brand with neuro PR

Vuelio joins AMEC

Fairer representations of disability in PR: starting the conversation with Mark Webb and Sudha Singh

Seeking: the right brand ambassador for long-term engagement

Freedom or Freedumb Day: how the media and the public reacted to 19 July

2021 trends so far in PR and communications

In the event of an emergency – communicating a summer of live events webinar

‘Start by speaking the same language as the person you are talking with’ – Simon Mouncey, Transport for London

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