TWTWTW #5 Research, creativity, learn
Strategy, purpose, hype, disruption, people, reputation
Research
🏥 Strategy | Real public relations is about influencing the outcome of decisions before they are made, not simply communicating after decisions have been made. The NHS Confederation and Centre for Health Communication Research have published a fascinating research white paper on 'The rapidly changing NHS - communication in the age of the coronavirus'. One of the most important findings was that 84% of NHS professional communicators felt they had been more influential during the pandemic and were "more involved in helping to inform and shape organisational decision making" and "getting a seat at the top table and a more strategic role."
🎯 Purpose | Enacting Purpose within the Modern Corporation is a new research report that provides guidance to boards of directors on how to enact purpose. This is exactly what senior PR professionals should understand and be able to counsel boards about. It helps organisations govern and articulate purpose more clearly using the SCORE framework. It is published by the Enacting Purpose Initiative which is a partnership between the University of Oxford, the University of California Berkeley as well as companies and professional services firms. The chair is Rupert Younger who is always worth listening to and learning from.
Creativity
💩Hype | Good public relations is about communicating clearly and cutting out the hype. This might be advertising, but does get to the point. It was shared by Andrew Allsop on LinkedIn.
🎮 Disruption | I still can't decide what I think of this advertising campaign. The main reason I’m interested in consumer marketing is to see if I can apply ideas to corporate communication or public affairs. I’m often left cold by what I see is fake creativity - that’s creativity for the sake of it rather than actually to achieve something. I don’t know what impact this Ogilvy campaign had on Burger King sales, but it certainly ticks the boxes for being creative and disruptive. However, I’m still uneasy about the idea of a brand hijacking organic content and community in order to sell burgers.
Learn
🏢 People | It’s no longer a question of if some companies will work from home forever, but how many will do so. There are lots of challenges with this, and we must ensure it happens in a way that is in the best interests of employees and not mainly to benefit employers. I believe the hardest two challenges to overcome are how first jobbers can be introduced to work and how to onboard new starters. This Diginomica article provides practical HR tips from Saleforce’s experience of doing this. It’s by Jenny Shiers, the senior director of employee success at Salesforce UK, which in 2020 Great Places to Work was named the number one best place to work in the UK for the second year in a row and the UK’s best workplace for women.
🏆 Reputation | An interesting article by The Nudge Factory founder Az Chowdhury in which he explores why when working with individuals it is better to focus on reputation rather the concept of personal brand. The reason is simple. At the root of reputation is behaviour. What you do is always going to be more important than what you do. When you read the Enacting Purpose within the Modern Corporation report do you think it’s going to be about how you tell people about your corporate purpose? You have to walk the talk first.
That Was The Week That Was
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