Five Things: TV, Radio, Mobile, Internet and Post

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Ofcom has published its 2018 Communications Market Report, which covers television, radio, phones, the internet, online content and post. It covers a lot and there’s a lot for the PR, communications and media industry to learn from it – and plan their future strategies – so, without further ado, here are five things you shouldn’t have missed from Ofcom’s report.

1. TV

TV stats

Broadcast TV is in decline, with revenue falling for the first time since Ofcom started measuring it in 2012. It is down from £14.2bn to £13.6bn. At the same time, online TV revenue has increased for the fifth consecutive year, up to £2.3bn from £1.8bn.

The number of minutes being spent watching TV per day has fallen, as it does every year. It’s now at 203 minutes per person (aged 4+), down from 240.7 in 2012. BBC One is still the most popular channel, followed by ITV, BBC Two, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

Across the four main genres Ofcom categorises programmes into – UK drama, sport, soaps and entertainment – the average age of the audience for each is between 54 and 57.

 

2. Radio

Radio stats

Radio is still a hugely popular medium, reaching 90.2% of the population (since 2012 it has always been about 90%), though each listener is spending fewer weekly hours tuning in, down to 20.8 hours per person a week – the lowest on record.

While the BBC’s share of listening is down to 51.9%, it is investing more in local radio and less in its flagship channels such as Radio 2 and Radio 5 Live.

DAB digital radio devices now have a record share of adult listeners, reaching 63.7% of adults up from 57.9% in 2017 (and 44.3% in 2012). Digital platforms also, for the first time, account for over half of all radio listening.

In terms of age, 29.4% of radio listeners are 15-34 and favour commercial radio; 33.4% of listeners are 35-54, also favouring commercial radio; and 37.2% are 55+ but favour BBC radio.

One-in-ten radio listeners use a smart speaker, such as the Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod.

Podcast listeners are also on the up, with around 11% of the population listening to a podcast each week. Two thirds of podcast listeners, who are generally younger listeners, are male.

 

3. Mobile and apps

Mobile stats

A whopping 96% of the population now has a mobile phone, but only 87% have an internet connection.

App usage is on the up, the average adult has 74 app sessions a day, each lasting over six minutes. For social media, the stats for the big four are quite varied:

Facebook is used seven times a day on average, with 18-24 year-olds accessing it the most. Sessions last on average just one minute, though for the over 55s it’s 75 seconds. While 71% of all adults have the Facebook app, 80% of women have it compared to just 66% of men.

There is no information for Twitter sessions but on average people spend 51 seconds each time they visit the Twitter app, with those over 55 spending 64 seconds. Only 37% of adults have the Twitter app, which breaks down into 41% of men and only 30% of women.

Instagram is used on average just three times a day, though 18-24 year olds use it five times. On average, adults are spending just 37 seconds on the app, though this rises to over 40 seconds for over 35s. The Instagram app is used by 39% of all adults, 47% of women and 34% of men.

YouTube is used in just two sessions per person per day, but on average adults are spending 85 seconds on the app, with 25-34 year-olds spending 103 seconds. Matching Facebook, 71% of adults have the YouTube app, though this is almost equally split between genders with 71% of men and  72% of women.

Unsurprisingly, the most popular apps are those categorised as communications or social.

 

4. Internet and online content

Internet stats

The internet continues to be the focal point for 21st century lives, with 42.42 million adults now regularly accessing it. For the first time in 2018, women spent more time online per day (206 minutes) than men (197 minutes).

A huge £11.6bn is now being spent on digital advertising, up from £10.4bn in 2016 and just £6.8bn in 2013. Paid-for search dominates this spend, taking just over 50%.

It is perhaps not surprising then that Google is the most popular site, with 41.9m monthly visitors, followed by Facebook (40.2m), BBC (29.5m) and Amazon (37.7m).

 

5. Post

Post stats

Fewer letters are being sent but more parcels are being sent. That’s the Amazon effect.

 

Did we miss something? Let us know on twitter @Vuelio. 

Diversity in Comms – How the PR and comms industry can improve

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The PR and comms industry is not diverse enough, but the Taylor Bennett Foundation is trying to change that. Taylor Bennett Foundation alumnus Kuldeep Mehmi tells his own inside story of diversity in the industry and what we can all do to improve it.

Listen to the recording to hear how Kuldeep has worked his way to the top and learn:

  • How diverse our industry truly is and why diversity matters
  • What the Taylor Bennett Foundation is doing to promote diversity and how you can help
  • How we can change attitudes to improve the PR and comms industry

Diversity in comms webinar

you shouldn't have missed

Five Things: Google fine, BuzzFeedNews, Trump, Top 50 and DJ D-Sol

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This week’s Five Things You Should Have Missed – sorry I meant to write ‘Shouldn’t’, rather than ‘Should’ – includes Google’s record fine, the new BuzzFeed News, Trump’s bizarre approach to communication, the Top 50 Blogs and DJ D-Sol.

1. Google’s Fine

Google fineLast week’s Five Things included a story on the fine Facebook had incurred from the ICO for breaching data rules. The £500,000 fee was just a drop in the ocean of Facebook’s earnings as it applied to offences committed before the GDPR came into force. This week Google has made the news for violating EU antitrust laws, which has led to a significantly higher fine of €4.34bn (£3.8bn or about 5% of revenue). As reported by the Guardian, the EU claims Google has carried out ‘serious illegal behaviour’ to secure the dominance of its search engine on mobile phones. Google search is the default on Android phones and the EU believes this doesn’t give people serious choice.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, said consumers ‘pay with their data. Or to slightly paraphrase what [US free market economist] Milton Friedman has said: “there ain’t no such thing as a free search”.’

Google plans to appeal as it believes ‘Android has created more choice for everyone, not less’. However, if Google doesn’t end its ‘illegal conduct’ within 90 days, it could face fines of 5% of its daily revenue (in excess of $15m) every day it is late.

President Trump has now waded into the argument, on Twitter (of course):

 

2. BuzzFeed News

Buzzfeed

BuzzFeed has created a new standalone website to house its serious journalism: BuzzFeed News. This new brand not only showcases its impressive journalistic content (it has been nominated for and won a number of international awards) but also makes it stand out from the content BuzzFeed is famous for, namely listicles and quizzes.

As reported by TechCrunch, Buzzfeed senior product manager Kate Zasada said the company’s own research has found that some readers ‘don’t completely understand’ that while BuzzFeed is famous for GIF-filled lists, it also produced ‘deeply researched and fact-checked’ journalism. The BuzzFeed main site will still host news content and BuzzFeed News will still link to the main site, but the entities are intended to be distinct.

BuzzFeed News’ design means content is not separated into traditional news topics, instead it is focused on trending and top stories as selected by the BuzzFeed News editorial team. The site will also eschew traditional sponsored posts that appear frequently on BuzzFeed. Currently the site is based in the US and covers US news – if successful it is likely to roll out to other BuzzFeed markets including the UK.

 

3. Trump Derangement Syndrome

President

President Trump has had a tricky week. While we could say this of most weeks of his Presidency, this week Trump has uncharacteristically backtracked, sort of.

After Trump met Putin in Helsinki, the pair gave a joint press conference during which Trump said he saw ‘no reason it would be’ Russia who had meddled in the US election. This flew in the face of intelligence from several American agencies and led to Trump being branded by some as a ‘traitor’.

Perhaps realising he had created a potentially career-ending remark, Trump made an incredible correction. Back on home soil, Trump said: ‘In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t”’. That means he meant to say he saw ‘no reason it wouldn’t be Russia’.  Though this doesn’t make much sense the context of the speech, it is very typical of Trump’s approach to comms, telling his own narrative and sticking to it.

His opinion on Russia since is very mixed, with some tweets suggesting the meeting was excellent and people hated that he got on with Putin because they had ‘Trump derangement syndrome’, and others suggesting he believes Russia meddled in the election. This week it was announced that he has invited Putin to the Whitehouse.

Adding more pressure to Trump’s bad week, Barack Obama gave a speech that was seen to target Trump even though he wasn’t named. Obama said politicians today lie, which isn’t new, but when they’re caught out, they keep lying. He also explained that it’s very difficult to engage with people who refuse to agree on basic fundamental truths. Watch Obama’s speech below:

 

4. Top 50 Blogs

The biggest ranking Vuelio publishes each year has once again found Guido Fawkes to be the number on blog in the UK. The political giant, whose posts literally have the power to shape Government, is enjoying a boom time as Brexit makes politics a daily news factory. This is reflected by the other political bloggers in the list: ConservativeHome (7), Wings Over Scotland (12), Politicalbetting.com (14), LabourList (15), Bella Caledonia (21), Left Foot Forward (24) and Slugger O’Toole (30).

As always, football and automotive blogs have done very well, the former no doubt boosted by this year’s World Cup. Outside of these dominant categories, the Top 50 shows great variety with bloggers covering everything from fashion and beauty to crafts and photography.

Find out how Vuelio decides its rankings here.

 

5. Wicked, Wicked, Goldman is Massive

Goldman Sachs

A surprising bit of news from Goldman Sachs has been a boon for its PR this week. While most new CEO announcements are dry affairs, Goldman Sachs’ appointment of David Solomon has brought an added bonus. The new boss, who will take over the top job in October, is also a DJ, who goes by the stage name DJ D-Sol. No, really. Check him out on Instagram or Spotify.

This has made the corporate giant seem that bit more human, young and interesting this week – something Goldamn Sachs perhaps didn’t need but has certainly gained it an incredible amount of additional press.

 

Did we miss anything? Let us know on Twitter @Vuelio. 

Diversity in Comms

Diversity in Comms webinar: PR can change recruitment processes to improve diversity says Kuldeep Mehmi of the Taylor Bennett Foundation

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The PR and communications industry must change its approach if it wants to recruit people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, says Kuldeep Mehmi, a graduate of the Taylor Bennett Foundation and director at FTI Consulting.

Our recent webinar Diversity in Comms, highlighted the work of the foundation, which is the PRCA’s charity of the year. Kuldeep was our guest and he said: ‘I think that it is more of a question of how you attract your candidate base. There is a number of things you can do; look back at where you advertise – maybe you can advertise in different places for the role, for example through a diversity charity like the Taylor Bennett Foundation.’

He also suggested that if using an external recruitment agency, employers should ask their recruiters to provide a more diverse candidate shortlist.
For the wider industry this might mean recruitment processes have to change as the challenge is attracting people who are ‘not going to actively seek out the communications industry’.

To do this, he added, the Taylor Bennett Foundation is actively seeking out speaking opportunities at Universities and schools to reach these audiences.

It also runs networking events and a 10-week ‘traineeship’ where the trainees get access to mentors in the industry and are taught about how different aspects of PR and communications work. ‘It was very intense and highly educational,’ Mehmi explained, having completed the course in 2012.

The traineeship helped him get his first role in PR with agency MHP.

‘It is very important to open those same doors for other people who want to enter the communications industry, people who don’t have a network to rely on,’ he said.

A recording of the webinar will be available next week.

World Cup

It’s coming home: England’s road to the final

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England’s first semi-final since 1990, with the opportunity for our first final since 1966. It’s coming home.

England’s road through Russia has been long and tough. But using the new Vuelio Canvas, it looks easy with match reports, news, tweets, posts, images, graphs and stats all in one place.

Check out the Canvas we’ve created for England’s Road to the World Cup Final > >

England World Cup

 

With our new and improved Canvas you can:

  • Showcase anything from news stories, social media activity, videos to charts, PDFs and reports – a visual presentation made in seconds
  • Share the content with your colleagues, stakeholders and the board with a single link, fully optimised for mobile
  • Create branded newsrooms with accessible, press-friendly content, easily embedded on your website

Five Things: MPs and the media, Eddie Mair, Pride, Copyright and It’s Coming Home…

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This week’s Five Things includes a top story from ComRes about where MPs get their news, Eddie Mair leaving the BBC for LBC, Pride in London, Copyright law rejected in the EU (for now) and football, which is, I believe the saying goes, coming home.

1. Where do MPs get their news?

PollsterComRes has asked 151 MPs for their favourite news sources to see where our leaders are getting their news. The BBC News Channel is the most popular news ‘programme’, followed by BBC Radio 4 and BBC 6 O’Clock News/BBC News at Ten. For Labour MPs, BBC News is the most popular but for Conservatives it is Sky News.

The Evening Standard is the most popular daily print newspaper, read at least twice a week by 45% of MPs, followed by The Times (36%), The Daily Telegraph (27%), Daily Mail (22%) and The Guardian (21%).

Online it’s a different story, The Times is the most popular site, followed by The Guardian, Mail Online and The Daily Telegraph.

In terms of blogs, it will perhaps come as no surprise that Guido Fawkes is the most popular political blogger – read by 28% of all MPs. It is far more popular among Conservatives – 50% read it – than Labour – only 5%. HuffPost is the second most popular ‘blog’, but only read by 7% of MPs (11% of Labour but no Conservatives). The rest of the list breaks down along party lines as you’d expect.

For favourite broadcast journalists – Andrew Neil is the most popular, listed by 21% of MPs as a favourite (though again, party lines means that’s 36% of Conservatives and only 5% of Labour). BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg is second on 17%, and the rest (from Peston through to Crick) all manage less than 4%.

And finally, for favourite print journalists, there’s less of a distinction among favourites; Quentin Letts tops the list being chosen by 5% of MPs, then Matthew Parris, Daniel Finkelstein and Fraser Nelson on 4%. Party lines split as you’d imagine.

 

2. Eddie Mair leaves the BBC

LBC

It’s the end of an era, you might say. Eddie Mair, long-time presenter of Radio 4’s PM programme, has announced he is leaving the BBC after 30 years. In a statement, Mair said: ‘I thought this was the appropriate moment to step out and give someone else a chance, before I’m so old my sentences make no lasagne.’

Shortly after the announcement, LBC confirmed Mair would be joining the station to host a new show from September. The talk-radio broadcaster continues to grow in popularity, with its highest ever listening figures recorded in May.

Despite suggestions to the contrary, Mair has explained the decision is not motivated by money, or anything to do with the BBC’s ongoing pay issues. The veteran presenter had even offered, in writing, to take a pay cut from his salary of £300,000-£350,000 a year.

 

3. Everybody Say Love

Pride

Tomorrow is Pride in London and to celebrate, Vuelio has published the Top 10 LGBT+ Ranking. We also spoke to a number of leading bloggers, including top spot Justin Myers, of the Guyliner, Kate Everall, one half of LesBeMums, and Jamie Beaglehole, one half of Daddy & Dad.

Also, this week, Theresa May announced an LGBT Action Plan to ‘end anti-LGBT hatred’. While it goes some way to tackle issues facing the LGBT+ community, our bloggers feel it leaves a little to be desired – Kate said: ‘It doesn’t take much research to see Theresa May’s voting history when it comes to LGBT+ rights’, and Justin said: ‘Some of these action points are just previous pledges rehashed’.

Pride was also celebrated this week with the first LGBT STEM Day, an international day celebrating LGBTQ+ people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

London magazine Shortlist has this week published its Pride issue, which required every advertiser to support Pride and have their adverts framed by a rainbow border. Other brands to get involved include for Pride include the RSPB, the Royal Mail, Senate House, Lloyds Bank, Crufts, Great Western Rail, Southbank, Lorraine and Skittles (by no means an exhaustive list).

And one final mention for DublinBus and its tear-jerker Proud Dads campaign:

 

4. Copyright law rejected

YouTuber

EU lawmakers have voted to reject changes to copyright law that would have meant tech companies had to share more of their revenues, and memes may have become extinct. The vote was 318 against and 278 for, so the battle for ‘internet freedom’ is by no means over, with a second vote due in September.

There are a number of articles in the law that have caused concern, including a ‘link tax’ where the likes of Google and Facebook would have to pay for showing extracts and snippets of publishers’ content in search results and on feeds; and the ‘meme law’ where platforms would be liable for content uploaded by users that infringed on copyright. The second one was seen, among other things, as the potential death of memes, which are often made from copyright protected material. There are a number of notable names on both sides of this argument, so expect September’s vote to start it all up again.

In a second piece of copyright-law-online news this week, YouTuber Paul Davids has been called out for breaching copyright on YouTube. Bizarrely, it’s his own content that he’s infringed, and someone else who stole his music is seen as the original creator. Paul has very magnanimously allowed the other musician to continue using his track – and thanks to this BBC article – everyone now knows the truth.

 

5. It’s coming home

It's coming home

In the UK, 23.6 million people watched England’s penalty shootout against Colombia (spoiler: England won – the first time it has won a World Cup shootout ever), making it the most-watched five minutes of television since the Olympics.

Whether you believe goalkeeper Jordan Pickford had all six infinity stones in his glove, or were just there for Gareth Southgate being a decent human being (check out #GarethSouthgateWould), one thing has been inescapable this week.

It’s coming home.

Did we miss something? Let us know on Twitter @Vuelio.

Crisis Comms – Lessons from Greater Manchester Police

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What if a crisis is a matter of when, not if? What if it’s both unpredictable and inevitable? What can you do to make sure you expect the unexpected?

Amanda Coleman is one person who knows how to stay cool in a crisis.

As head of corporate communications at Greater Manchester Police, Amanda has been through some challenging times, including last year’s Manchester Arena terrorist attack and the August 2011 riots.

Amanda has learned valuable lessons from every crisis she’s been through and will share all of them with you on an exclusive Vuelio webinar.

Crisis Comms webinar

Amanda Coleman

Crisis Comms webinar: People should be at the heart of your crisis communications says Greater Manchester Police’s Amanda Coleman

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People – and their welfare – should be at the heart of your thinking when reacting in a communications crisis says Amanda Coleman, the head of corporate communications at Greater Manchester Police.

Ultimately, if you consider your actions and the impact they have on people, then you are doing the best thing for your company, she told the audience of our recent webinar Crisis Comms – Lessons from Greater Manchester Police.

‘People have to be at the heart of what you are doing. Most importantly it is the people affected – by the incident – and the wider public. If you have people at the heart of your thinking, you are likely to make the right decisions,’ she stressed.

‘We talk a lot about the plan, processes and procedures – and they are important – but you have to have people at the heart of it all.’

Coleman, who has been in her role during some challenging times for Manchester – including the 22 May Manchester Arena terrorist attack last year – said the focus on people should include support for the comms teams working in a crisis.

Initially, as events unfolded after the attack last year, she explained that the comms team at Greater Manchester Police worked 12-hour shifts, were undertaking ‘draining and emotional jobs’ and needed to be supported too. They showed how resilient they were, she added.

She said that investigating the opportunities for further support from other police forces in the UK was part of her ongoing planning for the future.

In the webinar, Coleman set out the key principles of crisis communications and answered questions from the audience. Two key areas she covered were:

• Planning and preparation are essential for crisis communications but you have to be flexible if a crisis occurred. Lessons in communications were taken from other incidents in London, she said, but Manchester is unique and some things are done differently. ‘You can look at the risk areas but you have to have flexibility to adapt when you respond to a crisis,’ she explained.

• The importance of speed in your first response to breaking news. ‘When we had the Arena attack the speed of getting the first response out was crucial’, she said.

‘Crisis communications is such an important area and you do need to be ready for it’, Coleman added.

A recording of the webinar, together with copies of Amanda Coleman’s presentation, will be available next week.

Coming home

6 PR Goals for a winning 90 minutes

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Want to go one better than England? Score six quick PR goals in the next 90 minutes AND keep a clean sheet.

1. Research, research, research
No journalist, blogger, member of the public or politician is going to take you seriously if they don’t think you know what you’re talking about. In-house? Take 15 minutes to read the latest news and features on your company’s sector. Agency? If you specialise in a sector, great, take 20 minutes to read about the latest news – especially anything that’s about your clients. No specialism? Focus on just one area you have important clients in; you can catch up on the others later, tomorrow or next week.

2. Grow your network
Take 15 minutes to find new contacts that are relevant to your sector. Make sure their bio says they work with comms and check out their latest content to see if it’s a good fit for a future pitch (football or otherwise). If you grow your network by just five people each week, you’ll know an extra 260 people at the end of the year.

3. Send out a comment
It may be one of the simplest press releases to create, but journalists are always keen to hear from experts to add colour and richness to the news. If you work in sport, you should be all over this after the weekend saw the Queen’s tennis final, Lewis Hamilton’s victory in the French Grand Prix and signs from the World Cup that football possibly IS coming home. If sport’s not your thing, check out the political headlines, or any news headlines and see where your management or clients could intelligently add to the news agenda. And check what’s coming up; planned events (whether it’s the World Cup or otherwise) give you time to plan comments in advance.

Half time
Take a break and have lunch – you’re only human.

4. Check out the competition
Don’t make this an obsession; it can be easy to be so focused on your competitors that you lose sight of what you’re doing (and probably doing well). Take 20 minutes to run through your competitor monitoring, see what’s being said, and check if they’re controlling the conversation or if the conversation is controlling them. Staying on top of the competition is a great way to benchmark your own brand, spot opportunities and avoid abject failures.

5. Prove your worth
How often do we hear that PR and comms have to prove themselves to get a seat at the table? Why won’t the c-suite take our industry, and its value to their business, seriously? Take 25 minutes to prove your worth by putting together proof of your success, and show how you are meeting your objectives. Maybe you’ve achieved coverage, maybe you’ve got your CEO on TV, maybe sales have increased off the back of a viral campaign, or maybe your business is now the number one in your sector. Whatever it is, measure it and own it.

6. Call Vuelio – 0203 426 4125
We’re in stoppage time, but that’s okay because it only takes one minute to call Vuelio and get the software you need to achieve your goals. Want a database of amazing media and political contacts, with detailed bios to help you target them? No problem. Need a distribution service that targets your network and includes special features so you are GDPR compliant? Easy. How about monitoring that keeps track of your sector, your company and your competition so you know what’s being said and by whom? Certainly. And high-level analysis, showing levels of coverage and campaign success, with beautiful reports and presentations that can be shared with a simple link? Naturally.

Vuelio has everything you need to make your life easy and takes the pressure out of the game. Whether it’s our Influencer Database, News Distribution or Canvas – Vuelio’s integrated software is in your starting XI so you know you’re guaranteed a win.

Five Things: World Cup, Influencers, Goals, Trump & Trump

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This week’s Five Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed immediately breaks a promise we made last week, and features stories on the World Cup, influencers, brands using goals for donations and the two Trumps.

1. Most watched TV

World Cup

Last week, Five Things promised not to cover the World Cup because it was taking place across a whole month. This week, our top story is England’s opening game becoming the most watched TV event of the year, surpassing the royal wedding. Sorry for lying.

An average audience of 13.7m tuned in to watch England thrash* Tunisia 2-1, with a peak audience of 18.3m in the closing minutes. It was the most-watched England World Cup match since the famous* 2-2 draw against Sweden in 2006, and the ninth highest viewing figure for an England World Cup match ever.

Back of the net!

 

2. Unilever tackles fake influence

Unilever

Keith Weed, CMCO at Unilever, is no stranger to hitting the headlines, having recently threatened to withdraw the company’s digital adverts from platforms that fail to deal with hate. This week, Keith has attacked influencer fraud, saying: ‘The key to improving the situation is three-fold: cleaning up the influencer ecosystem by removing misleading engagement; making brands and influencers more aware of the use of dishonest practices; and improving transparency from social platforms to help brands measure impact. We need to take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever.’

Keith made three pledges:

  • Unilever won’t work with influencers who buy followers
  • Unilever has promised its own brands will never buy followers
  • The business will prioritise partners who increase their transparency and work to eradicate nefarious practices throughout the digital ecosystem

As the practice of buying followers and then selling your accounts as influential is fraud – the first two shouldn’t be surprising, though they are still likely to have an effect on the market. It’s the third one, and how Unilever plans on identifying fake influencers, that will really change influencer marketing around the world. While it is very unlikely to signal the end of influencer marketing, it is likely to cause a shift in the way businesses deal with the rise of the influencers, and it should be felt at all levels. Hopefully, it’ll just get rid of the fakers, but all remains to be seen.

 

3. Goal donation

Betting

‘Not ANOTHER World Cup story?!’ Again, apologies.

Two companies have recently hit the headlines for what, on the surface, seem to be very similar campaigns, but each has provoked a very different reaction.

Mastercard announced that for every goal scored by Messi or Neymar Jr (up until 2020), the company would donate 10,000 meals for children in Latin America and the Caribbean. The announcement was criticised by people who have compared it to the Hunger Games. As reported by Campaign, comments have been broadly negative, including: ‘This is the biggest PR own goal in a long time’.

At the other end of the spectrum is Paddy Power. The famously cheeky betting company has announced that for every World Cup goal scored by host nation Russia, the company would donate £10,000 to LGBT-related football causes. This not only fits in with Paddy Power’s existing marketing style, it also takes a hit at Russia’s anti-LGBT laws and raises money for good causes. The betting company has partnered with the Attitude Magazine Foundation in order to carry out the donation, which is again a shrewd move to make sure the campaign was received in the right way.

Paddy Power’s ‘From Russia With Equal Love’ donation is currently at £80,000, and the brand has personally thanked the top scorers for contributing so much.

 

4. I really don’t care, do u?

Flotus coat

Tone deaf or genuinely heartless? Melania Trump has been photographed on her way to see a ‘migrant child detention centre’ (think of that as a venue title) wearing a coat bearing the words ‘I really don’t care, do u?’. The jacket was a surprisingly cheap (in FLOTUS terms) $39 from Zara. Her spokesman said ‘there was no hidden message’ in the coat. Donald Trump then tweeted the message was about the Fake News Media.

The BBC has put together a list of five things (that’s our concept!) the coat message could be about: it is just a jacket, it’s about the fake news media, it’s a message to her husband, she was dressing down, or she actually doesn’t care about the children at the border. What is clear is that the move is a PR disaster that’s gained a lot of attention (again, this has been suggested as another possible explanation because it’s drawing attention away from the real issue: child migrants separated from their families at the border).

 

5. The other Trump

Time Magazine

Not to be outdone by another Trump, POTUS rounds off the top five. Time magazine has once again featured the President on its front cover, though this one is unlikely to be framed on his office wall. Featuring the President standing over one of the migrant children who was assumed to be in the process of being separated from its mother (now revealed to not be the case), the caption reads: ‘Welcome to America.’

The disaster that is child migrants at America’s border is catastrophic and, from a comms perspective, it’s one of the year’s most poorly handled crises (which is saying something). Trump is due to visit the UK in July, and this latest scandal has heaped more pressure on the UK Government to act. Roll on 13 July.

 

Did we miss anything? Let us know on Twitter. 

 

*Lols

you shouldn't have missed

Five Things – Trump, Vine, SNP, McDonald’s and M&As

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This week, Five Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed does not include the World Cup, despite Robbie Williams sticking his middle finger up to the world, because it’s going on for a month. We might mention the final (if England win). We are covering Trump meeting Kim, Jeremy Vine’s new show, SNP MPs pulling a stunt in the House of Commons, McDonald’s joining the anti-plastic-straw brigade and two massive mergers and acquisitions.

1. Trump Kim

Summit

Donald Trump had a whirlwind week – the man who turned 72 yesterday, insulted his allies at the G7 Summit, offended Canada and met North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. While the last of these was an historic occasion, Trump being the first sitting President to meet a North Korean leader, many have pointed out that Trump has signed an agreement with North Korea promising economic support (among other things), while all North Korea has agreed to is a plan to denuclearise. Which they’ve promised before. Twelve times. If you’re after some explanation about what’s going on and why it’s good or bad (seems to be mostly the latter), check out #BBCdad Robert E Kelly’s Twitter feed.

 

2. Through the GrapeVine?

Vine

Matthew Wright said his goodbyes this week after 18 years presenting his Channel 5 show, The Wright Stuff. All in all, it was an emotional affair. But fans of current affairs programming on weekday mornings fear not, for a new host has been revealed. Jeremy Vine, king of playing devil’s advocate on BBC Radio 2, Egghead host and election night cowboy, will take up the role from September. More details, including the title, are yet to be announced, but it has been confirmed that Vine will continue to present his lunchtime show on BBC Radio 2 (which means fans will be able to catch him for a couple of hours in the morning on Channel 5, listen to him over lunch on Radio 2 and then tune in early evening to Eggheads for their full daily Vine fix).

 

3. SNP MPs pull PR stunt at PMQs

SNP

SNP MPs this week brought Wednesday’s PMQs to more people’s attention than usual, by staging a walk out. After some disagreement with John ‘ORDER, ORDER, ORDER, ORDER, ORDER’ Bercow, Ian Blackford, the party’s Westminster leader, got kicked out (some have suggested on purpose) and was then followed by his cohort, who mockingly waved goodbye. There was a mixed reaction on Twitter as to whether it was a shrewd move (‘if you’re ignoring the Scottish people, we’ll not take part in the charade’) or a desperate act of attention seeking. Either way, as a stunt, it gave PMQs a lot of attention and the SNP MPs a voice to explain why they did what they did. Whether it makes a difference to anything, remains to be seen.

 

4. McDonald’s kills off plastic straws

Straws

McDonald’s has announced it will replace plastic straws with paper ones in all of its UK and Ireland restaurants from September. The move, which is a huge victory for Blue Planet II (and latterly Daily Mail campaigning and Michael Gove making his mark as Environment Secretary), sees the end of McDonald’s’ serious single-use plastic habit that is currently burning through 1.8m straws a day. That’s every day and only in the UK and Ireland. Paul Pomroy, chief executive of McDonald’s UK and Ireland said: ‘The Government’s ambitious plans, combined with strong customer opinion, has helped to accelerate the move away from plastic and I’m proud that we’ve been able to play our part’.

 

5. Mergers and Acquisitions

AT&T and Time Warner

American supergiant, AT&T, has had its $85.4bn takeover of American supergiant, Time Warner, approved by a judge. This is seen as a blow to Trump, whose administration is against the deal. It’s also considered a watershed moment, with the floodgates possibly about to open on giant M&As in the States.

You wait all Five Things for a mergers story and then two come along at once.

Comcast has launched its official bid for Fox, in an attempt to scupper Disney’s own efforts. It has offered $65bn, which is significantly higher than Disney’s $52.4bn offer. This will be a long, drawn-out process, which will end without a clear winner being discernible. But for now, it’s mind blowing numbers and the future of the media landscape that, one way or another, is going to change forever.

Did we miss anything? Let us know on Twitter @Vuelio. 

Webinar

How to improve your influencer relations

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Influencer relations is a vital skill for the modern PR professional. Influencers are often thought of as ‘new media’ – bloggers, vloggers and Instagrammers, but they can also be journalists, editors and broadcasters – anyone we work with who influences their audience is an ‘influencer’.

What traditional influencers have, though, is an industry and organisation behind them and their work. With established practices, and rules and codes to follow, collaborations with traditional influencers are generally straightforward. The rise of bloggers has brought new methods of collaboration to the industry and with it, uncertainty over what rules should be followed.

How to Improve Your Influencer Relations was our recent webinar that aimed to make these rules simple. With guest presenters Anne-Marie Lacey, managing director of Filament PR and Debbie Sharratt, independent PR practitioner and blogger at My Boys Club, we looked at the different rules that exist for new ‘influencers’ (from the CAP Code to Google SEO), and how to easily follow them for both bloggers AND PRs.

The webinar recording is now online, check it out here, to find out:

  • How to use the ASA guidelines, CAP code, Google rules and social media secrets
  • What paid-for content really means and when you need to disclose
  • How ethical relationships can boost your brand’s reputation and ROI
  • What to do if your influencers break the rules
Train

How integration improved Greater Anglia’s PR

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Public relations has never been an industry that relies on one skill set or a single speciality. As the PRCA’s recent census showed, PR and communications covers a vast array of disciplines from reputation management and strategy planning to writing articles, SEO and sales promotion.

Your role is increasingly diverse, so the last thing you need is lots of different platforms when you want to manage everything in one place. That’s why Vuelio is fully integrated software to cater for all your needs, whether it’s finding new influencers to build relationships with, monitoring your coverage (and automatically linking it to your distribution), creating reports and proving how awesome you are or managing relationships with the press, clients and public.

True integration takes the hard work out of PR. But don’t take our word for it – Juliette Maxam, media manager at Greater Anglia, told us how Vuelio’s integrated platform has made their PR ‘seamless’.

Find out more about integrated software

Greater Anglia

The problem
Before Vuelio, we were collating press coverage manually, reading everything individually and producing our own analysis – it was a hugely time-consuming process. Now, Vuelio has freed up our time so we can focus on the PR we want to do.

The solution
Vuelio has given us to ability to do a number of things on one platform.

We distribute press releases, which makes things much easier to send out, and the monitoring allows us to track our coverage back to the releases – it’s seamless. The distribution is also great for sending out pictures and video, and allows us to see who is opening and not opening releases, so we can better manage our follow up.

One of the best features is the media analysis and reporting – it is so flexible and allows us to drill down into so many different topic areas and analyse enquiries. Also, the charts are presented clearly in the graphic dashboard and we can customise different parts. So, with things like sentiment, we can tweak individual articles, which is much quicker than having to do each one manually (like we did before).

The reporting function is useful for a number of reasons, from when we’re internally asked how well a particular release or campaign has done, for example the new range of trains, to creating regular reports for different teams. And, because we can tag all our coverage, it allows us to easily report on different areas, like competitors.

We also use Vuelio to log press enquiries, giving us a record of what we did in the past. The media team finds it particularly useful as they can easily see what (and when) previous enquiries were made.

And we use Canvas, which we really like – it allows us to quickly and easily send a single link out with all our coverage in one place.

Joining Vuelio
With Vuelio, everything is all in one place, and everything is connected. We can see how much coverage we’re getting and for what releases, which will ultimately make planning future campaigns more successful.

The whole process of joining Vuelio, from our first point of contact, was really good. The Vuelio team worked really hard, especially as I feel like we were really demanding with what we wanted, including good value for money. The set up was also great; one of our requirements has been face-to-face customer support and that’s what’s happened – which is really important for us.

Vuelio is a really useful, efficient and smart way of distributing press releases, tracking enquiries and analysing our coverage.

Ready for integrated software? Fill in this form and we’ll be in touch.

Five Things you shouldn't have missed

Five Things: Arkady Babcenko, WWW, Madeley vs Williamson, Evening Standard and Roseanne

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This week’s Five Things includes the journalist who did(n’t) die, the world wide web, Madeley vs Williamson, accusations against the Evening Standard and the end of Roseanne.

1. Arkady Babchenko

Ukraine Russia

Arkady Babchenko is the Russian dissident journalist based in Kiev, who was in the news on Tuesday following his ‘assassination’. Less than 24 hours later, Babchenko made a shock appearance on a live TV press conference, to reveal the whole ‘murder’ had been a ruse to ‘foil a Russian assassination plot’. He was particularly apologetic to his wife, who was not in on the ploy and had believed he was dead after finding his bloodied body.

The cold war antics have jarred with modern day practices and Ukraine has been widely condemned for its part in spreading ‘fake news’. Harlem Desir, a representative from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said: ‘I deplore the decision to spread false information on the life of a journalist. It is the duty of the state to provide correct information to the public.’

Christophe Deloire, head of Reporters Without Borders, said: ‘Reporters Without Borders expresses its sharp indignation on learning of the Ukrainian secret service’s manipulation carried out as part of an information war’.

The good news is that Babchenko is still alive, Ukraine are claiming a victory having made an arrest and the journalist will now live under the country’s protection. The bad news is the continuing spread of misinformation has never been perceived as so damaging to society and this has only made that situation worse.

 

2. Half the world’s online

internet use trends

Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has released her annual report of internet trends. The presentation, made at the Recode conference, covers a vast array of internet-related stats from smartphone prices (down on average), to the importance of immigration to US tech companies. There are 294 slides to the presentation, but one of the biggest stats is that there are now more than 3.6bn internet users; for the first time ever, over half the world’s population is now online. Meeker noted that this may be a problem for internet service companies – ‘growth is harder to find after hitting 50% market penetration’ – but the graph is still showing a steady rise, with no signs of the ominous plateau.

Pew Research Center

And what are all these people doing online? Well, if it’s in the US and they’re a teenager, they’re probably on YouTube. A new survey from the Pew Research Center suggests 85% of teens use YouTube, whereas only 51% use Facebook. This huge decline in Facebook use (down from 71% in 2015), will be painful for the company although it is offset by the rise in popularity of Facebook-owned Instagram, which is used by 72% of teens, up from 52% in 2015.

The biggest problem for Facebook is probably the rise of Snapchat: it is now used by 69% of teens (up from 41% in 2015), and, perhaps more significantly, 35% of teens say they use Snapchat most often (compared with just 10% who use Facebook most often).

 

3. Gavin Williamson is shut up and sent away

Richard Madeley was applauded this week for getting fed up with Gavin Williamson, defence secretary, for not answering his question. Madeley, who was pressing Williamson on his ‘Russia should go away, it should shut up’ remarks, eventually cut Williamson off as the latter made no attempt to acknowledge the question. The next day, Madeley wrote a piece for The Guardian, ‘Cutting short Gavin Williamson was the most popular thing I’ve ever done’, which is hard to argue with.

Check out the full exchange below, and watch to the end for the elephant’s comic timing.

 

4. London Evening Standard accused of selling editorial

London evening standard

The Evening Standard has been accused by Open Democracy of selling positive editorial to a range of companies including Google and Uber. It is allegedly part of the Evening Standard’s London 2020 project, a means to bring in more money via sponsored content and events. Open Democracy says the project has gone one step further and is offering, ‘“favourable” news coverage of the firms involved, with readers unable to differentiate between “news” that is paid-for and other commercially-branded content.’

It also quotes an unnamed senior Starbucks executive who said: ‘Buying positive news coverage is PR death…something you might do in Saudi Arabia, but not here. This wasn’t right for us. We do engage in advertorial but that’s just marketing. We don’t need to buy our reputation.’

If true, this would seriously undermine the Evening Standard’s journalists’ authority and respectability.

The Evening Standard has denied the story. In a statement to The Drum, Jon O’Donnell, managing director at ESI commercial, said the idea ES was ‘selling news’ was ‘grossly inaccurate and a wildly misunderstood interpretation of the London 2020 project.’

He continued: ‘This will, as with all commercial content, be clearly identifiable as such. Under no circumstances have these clients been guaranteed news coverage for their own ends, nor would they ever be. Properly signposted commercial content within an editorial product is an accepted part of the news industry and is nothing new for publishers.’

Few publishers have run with the story and it seems like there’s little real evidence it’s true. Though eagle eyed readers will, of course, now be checking every Uber and Google story in the Evening Standard over the next few weeks to see if they’re fairly, or unfairly, praised.

 

5. Goodbye Roseanne

Roseanne barr

Roseanne Barr hit the news this week after a racist tweet, which she then seemed to defend, led to her hit sitcom ‘Roseanne’ to be cancelled. The star had made a racist comment about Valerie Jarrett, former advisor to Obama. In a victory for decisive crisis comms, ABC, the channel on which Roseanne is broadcast, announced it would not renew a second series as the tweet was ‘repugnant and inconsistent with our values’.

Roseanne, who blamed the racism on sleeping pills (no, really), begged for her job back, both on and off Twitter, but the decision stands. In her defence, the White House accused the entertainment industry of ‘hypocrisy’, suggesting ‘liberal TV stars’ suffered no consequences for saying ‘the most horrible things’ about President Trump. Roseanne is a high-profile Trump supporter and her character on the show also supported Trump.

Unfortunately, suggestions that the show could continue with a replacement for Roseanne are unfounded.

 

 

Something we’ve missed? Let us know on Twitter. 

Five Things: No influencers, New Look, Yanny, Lil Tay, and Zuckerberg and Leveson

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So much has happened that choosing Five Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed this week has been like deciding who will accompany Meghan Markle down the aisle, except we didn’t end up with Charles.

1. No Influencers Allowed

Blog Awards

The Vuelio Blog Awards are back, back, back! The biggest night of the year to celebrate bloggers is taking place at the Bloomsbury Big Top in London, on 30 November. Blogging’s best will be dressed to the nines enjoying live circus acts, fine dining and the greatest award ceremony on earth (probably). As part of the launch we have just one rule, which thankfully most bloggers seem to agree with: No Influencers Allowed.

 

2. New Look New Price

New Look fat tax

New Look were in trouble this week after being accused of having a ‘Fat Tax’. It was revealed that larger clothes (in the same style) were more expensive than their smaller version. A shopper spotted a pair of trousers in its Curves range, which were 15% more than a pair in the main collection. The story created a mini storm as many believed it was a tax on being fat, while others thought it was reasonable to charge more for using more material. New Look has said it is now reviewing prices and added: ‘We are proud of the ranges we offer to our Plus Size customers and value all customers, no matter what their body shape or size.’

 

3. Yanny or Laurel?

Yanny Laurel

Is it Yanny or is it Laurel? Different people hear different things and like ‘The Dress’, it’s divided the internet. Obviously, it’s Yanny, but some still insist on saying they hear Laurel. The Kardashians are debating it and Trump’s presidential team (including Trump himself) even joined in. You can decide for yourself by listening to the clip in the tweet below:

If you want to be really freaked out, check this out:

 

4. Lil Tay

Lil Tay Instagram

If you haven’t heard of Lil Tay, fair enough, but the nine-year-old ‘flexer’ has nearly two million followers on Instagram. Posting pictures and videos showing off her extravagant wealth, Lil Tay hit the news this week, not for being under age on Instagram (which says all users must be over 13), but instead for allegedly causing her mother to leave her job as a realtor. It turns out Lil Tay and her mother were using the boss of the real estate company’s car as well as houses they were selling as the backdrop to the videos. The mother seems to have been directing and filming, but the move has seemingly backfired. Whether Lil Tay now has enough momentum to support the family through Instagram remains to be seen.

 

5. Zuck and Leveson out (again)

Leveson

Last week we reported that the second part of the Leveson inquiry was voted down in parliament. This week we can report that the second part of the Leveson inquiry has been voted down in parliament. Yes, again. The Lords sent it back hoping the slim margin from the last vote could be overturned, but the Government were victorious once more (by an increased margin), so it looks like Leveson II has been well and truly defeated.

A few months ago, it was announced that Mark Zuckerberg would not attend the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee meeting to answer for Facebook, instead sending CTO Mike Schroepfer. The Committee have tried again but, once more, Zuckerberg has declined the invitation. As if to rub salt into the wound, a day later he accepted an invitation to meet the representatives of the European Parliament on a trip that will also take in French officials. It’s not clear why the UK has been snubbed in favour of its European neighbours.

 

Did we miss anything? Let us know on Twitter @Vuelio.

Vodafone

Vodafone’s #SleepLikeAHero fights cancer

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A new campaign from the Vodafone Foundation is harnessing the power of people’s smartphones to make a supercomputer to fight cancer.

DreamLab is a new app that anyone can download onto their phone. Vodafone is working with Imperial College London and is encouraging people to leave the app open while they sleep. The app will become part of a virtual supercomputer, which will be able to process billions of calculations needed for cancer research.

One PC running 24 hours a day would need 300 years to process the data required; 100,000 smartphones running DreamLab six hours a night could do the job in three months.

This is based on the same technology that has been hitting headlines recently for blockchain currency – but seems to be the first time a collective supercomputer has been used (voluntarily) for a good cause.

#SleepLikeAHero was launched with Star Wars’ John Boyega, who gets the call from his agent to be a hero. Check out the campaign video below:

Data will help Imperial College London match genetic profiles to cancer treatments, helping to find new combinations of existing drugs and ultimately enabling tailored treatments for patients. As a touch of genius, the data will be free for Vodafone customers – not eating in to their precious packages.

The campaign was created by Mischief PR and has already scored coverage across national print titles and online.

You can download the DreamLab app – and help fight cancer – on the Apple app store or the Android Play Store.

ethnicity recognition

AI and ethics

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Artificial technology has been in the news recently, for all the wrong reasons. Google naively showed off the functionality of its new Duplex AI, while NtechLab has announced a new product to identify ethnicities (unfortunately not a joke).

Google Duplex
Google Duplex is a new AI assistant that can handle tasks over the phone. That’s right, Duplex is able to make phone calls and book appointments on your behalf. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, showed the assistant off at its I/O developer conference, including a recorded example of Duplex calling to book a haircut:

In the clip, Duplex is shown to be indistinguishable from a human on the phone. The crowd, unsurprisingly, loved it – even whooping when the AI sounds most human saying ‘Mmm-hmm’ to acknowledge a point made by the hairdresser. It’s not surprising, this is Google’s I/O developer conference – for these people, super advanced AI is a great achievement.

Unfortunately for Google, a number of people and news outlets have now raised concerns over not being able to tell the difference between people and computers.

What Google failed to mention is that the AI would identify itself, so the person on the other end of the phone would know it was chatting to a robot – but even that throws up questions and concerns.

What if the AI doesn’t understand a question it’s asked, or an accent? How many times is a vendor likely to repeat themselves or reword queries if they know they’re talking to a machine? And what does it say about society that people are now getting machines to book haircuts on their behalf?

Google suggests it can be used by businesses to automatically take bookings, though how many people want to call up to book a table at a restaurant and be handled by a machine?

There’s also concerns over the data Duplex gathers on individuals – for this to work you have to tell Google an awful lot about what you want booked, when, when you’re free, alternative times for the appointment, the details of what you’re booking and why. Under the GDPR, if this data is processed by Google then you have to be informed – imagine the conversation with your AI assistant if they have to explain all the ways the data will be used!

Recognising ethnicity

ethnicity recognition
The other ethical AI story is even more concerning. Russian NtechLab is a group of experts in the field of deep learning and artificial intelligence; the website states they ‘like to invent algorithms which work in unconstrained real-life scenarios’. The only listed product so far is a facial recognition tool.

It’s the ‘coming soon’ section that raises concern, with a product called ‘ethnicity recognition’. There’s no further information, but the image suggests it will identify people’s ‘ethnicities’ based on their faces. It’s not clear why this would EVER be needed, nor how it could ever be accurate.

As Forbes points out, it’s amazing that these companies are able to create such tools, without seeing the ethical issues that are more obvious to those that don’t work in tech. Socialogist Zeynep Tufekci said: ‘Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing’.

Artificial intelligence is not bad, it makes all of our lives easier every day and, as the CIPR’s ongoing #AIinPR study shows, it’s of great benefit to the PR and communications industry. When developing AI functionality, companies need to consider their responsibilities towards data subjects and clients. The GDPR comes into force on 25 May and the automation of data, for the benefit of AI, will be under more scrutiny than ever before. It’s hard to see how an ethnicity recognition tool will pass the new stringent regulation requirements.

As for Google, the whole company is built on AI and for the most part, people are not concerned. Where Duplex has fallen down is by being too real. We’re not in Blade Runner* – society just isn’t ready for a world where it’s impossible to distinguish between computers and people, fiction and reality. At least, not yet.

 

*Insert your own favourite popular 80s’ sci-fi film here.

Five Things: Leveson II, Klout, This is America, Martin Sorrell and #FuturePRoof

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This week’s Five Things includes the demise of Leveson II and Klout, Childish Gambino’s This is America, the return of Sorrell and the launch #FuturePRoof.

1. Leveson II – the sequel that refuses to start

Lord Leveson
Leveson II, the second part of the Leveson Inquiry, was already stopped by culture secretary Matt Hancock (“Are you on Matt Hancock?”), at the beginning of March. Now the Government has won a narrow victory against a Labour move to force it to start. Ed Miliband tabled the amendment to the Government’s data protection bill but it was narrowly defeated by 304 votes to 295.

Ed Miliband’s impassioned speech highlighted David Cameron’s previous promise for Leveson II to be carried out. Refusing to give way to other MPs, he also said it was a matter of honour for all politicians and asked the Government, ‘How dare you?’. Hancock responded: ‘The choice isn’t between doing something, and nothing. It is between doing something, and something better.’

Following the defeat, Tom Watson chose not to push for a vote on section 40, which in part would have required publishers to pay legal costs of both parties in disputes no matter what the outcome. This is clearly flawed as both Leveson-backed IMPRESS and press-made IPSO already allow for low-cost resolution.

There’s already suggestions the Lords will push the amendment back to the Commons for a second vote as the first was so close. We might not have seen the last of Leveson yet.

 

2. Out of Klout

Klout ends

What’s your Klout?* Is a question that many people working in social media asked each other seven years ago, but recently your Klout score has gone the way of your follower count on Google Plus. One of the most popular ways of measuring influence online, Klout was founded in 2009 by Joe Fernandez, who apparently built it to get a job at Twitter. It was bought by a private company, Lithium, in 2014 for $200m and on 25 May it will be no more.

25 May, I hear you say, isn’t that date significant for another reason? Why, yes. But amazingly, Lithium failed to mention the GDPR as a factor in Klout’s demise in the official statement. Apparently, Klout no longer meets Lithium’s long-term strategy.

Incidentally, Klout has been used as one of the many metrics that makes up the Vuelio Influencer Score, but thankfully we use such a broad range of complex tools that the loss of Klout will not have a detrimental effect on our unique measurement. You can read more about our influencer rating here.

Klout, on its own, has been criticised over the years for its algorithm which has, on occasion, rewarded questionable people with more influence than others. The secrets of the algorithm may have been forced into the open by the GDPR, but now we’ll never know.

 

3. This is America

This is America

It’s hard to know where to begin with Childish Gambino’s (aka Donald Glover) latest release, This is America. To call it a song is insufficient; the music and lyrics are powerful but that power pales into insignificance when compared to the video:

Articles and essays have already been written on this overnight cultural phenomenon (it’s on 75 million views in under a week). Discussions about the video’s ‘hidden meanings’, from his confederate trousers and Jim Crow references to the Charleston church shooting and ‘Death’ riding a pale horse, have filled social media and the digital press. It’s particularly pertinent following Kanye West’s recent comments that slavery was ‘a choice’.

It also follows Black Panther, which itself was itself a cultural shift but in a Hollywood/Marvel superhero kind of way. What Childish Gambino has done means so much more. It’s a violent, compelling piece of art, that continues to produce meaning with every watch, and it will fuel sections of the commentariat for weeks to come.

 

4. Martin Sorrell to ‘start again’

Martin Sorrell

If only Klout would stick around, we’d be able to measure Sir Martin Sorrell’s when he ‘starts again’. That’s his vow this week, after abruptly leaving WPP. As reported by the FT, Sorrell was speaking at the technology conference in New York and said: ‘I’m not going into voluntary or involuntary retirement.’

As he never had a non-compete clause with WPP, Sorrell is free to set up a competitive ad company and target some of the $16bn business he helped build up over the last 33 years. He already has an idea for a new ad agency model, he said it would be: ‘more agile, more responsive, less layered, less bureaucratic, less heavy’. This is particularly surprising considering WPP’s hugely complex set up has been credited to Sorrell, and he was described as the only person capable of keeping it all together.

Sorrell said he would not wait long until he made his next move, so expect the new agency launch to appear in a future Five Things.

 

5. #FuturePRoof 3

3

Sarah Hall, agency owner and CIPR President, has released the third edition of her hugely popular #FuturePRoof series this week, a special edition marking the 70th anniversary of the NHS. Titled The NHS at 70 with Lessons for the Wider PR Community, the book features 25 chapters from 25 contributors, all of whom either work in or around comms at the NHS.

The health service is one of the UK’s most-loved institutions but is currently facing huge problems in terms of service delivery, funding and staff shortages. The book puts communications at the heart of the solution, championing best practice and excellent innovations to inspire the NHS to carry on fighting the good fight.

#FuturePRoof is also hugely inspirational to the wider communications industry with lessons across every communications discipline from internal comms and employee engagement to using new technology and measuring campaign results.

Find out more about #FuturePRoof online.

 

What did we miss? Let us know on Twitter @Vuelio.

*Me? My Klout score is 46 and I’m an expert in Blogging, Public Relations and Communications. And Buzzfeed, apparently.