WaddsCon: February wrap-up, March topics and speakers

events
Written By Stephen Waddington

A fast paced event with four inspiring speakers and a lively audience. The inaugural lockdown conference was educational and a hell of a lot of fun. Here’s what’s next.

It started as these things often do as a discussion on social media. What could we do to better support each other during the latest lockdown?

The result was a learning and development event with a difference.

The inaugural Lockdown Unconference exceeded expectations. Four inspiring speakers led conversations on race, talent, PR dashboards and the dark side of social media. More than 150 people turned up and engaged in the conversation.

Inevitably there were more questions than we had time. Each of the speakers has kindly responded to the questions that we didn’t cover in the blog post below. Thanks again to Barbara Phillips, Isobel Camier, Andrew Smith and Gay Flashman.

The format is tough for speakers. A maximum of three slides plus bookends, a five minute presentation and 10 minute Q&A with the audience. It’s a brutal level of abstraction.

We’re back 1-2pm GMT on Friday 26 March with presentations on SEO PR, search listening, research bots and the opportunity for PR post-COVID-19. You’d be welcome to join us.

  • Using bot researchers: the conversational benefits of research and using bots and modern media platforms to get rapid insights - David Talbot, founder, Stickybeak

  • Search listening and insights: listening to the internet – Stella Bayes, director, AnswerThePublic and CoverageBook

  • What's links got to do with it? Why PR is finally getting its share of SEO budgets - Angharad Planells, head of client success, Radioactive PR

  • PR unleashed: why the value of PR is being recognised by organisations in 2021 - Koray Camgoz, director of communications and marketing, PRCA

Please follow this link if you’d like to pitch to present at a future event. Meanwhile here’s a wrap-up of the conversations from February.

Thank you.

Why it's time to play the race card - Barbara Phillips, founder, Brownstone Communications

Jo-ann Robertson - What is the number one thing you think organisations should do to tackle the race issue?

Sadly there is no one and done action for racial equity. Certainly ask yourself the five questions in my presentation and look within your ranks of employees to see if there is a suitably qualified Black or Asian person ready to be promoted that has been overlooked because “they don’t fit” the usual profile of leadership (essentially being White and sharing your thoughts and behaviours). Then set them on the path for promotion just as you would any White employee with great potential. And to address broader diversity - you should have a psychologically safe culture and working environment. This means different things to different organisations. You should discover what that means in yours.

Ilonka Waterdrinker - How can you hold colleagues accountable when they are in a position of power, such as the managing director?

You should use all internal channels (suggestion boxes, Q&A with leaders, town halls etc) that link you to the leadership to express how a particular set of behaviours make you feel, especially if there is a conflict. Then you should get out the company handbook or whatever holds the mission statements and values and again use any direct or indirect channel, to ask how leaders can better demonstrate company values and behaviours. Use your Yammer, Slack etc to post internally and express how you feel and offer solutions and suggestions. You may find a few kindred spirits to give your concerns more weight.

As long as you are constructive and keep it focused on the impact of leaders’ behaviours, you should be fine. You might want to mention it to your line manager if you post internally. If you are sanctioned for expressing genuine concern about a toxic culture you may want to seriously consider how long you stay at that organsision. Unless you are earmarked for promotion where you can make more of an impact, the bad behaviour will start to weigh on you and may even affect your performance and mental well being. It is never worth staying!

Sophie Smith and Fabian Castellani - Increasing the diversity of students could help lead to a more diverse industry. How can we encourage potential students to study PR and comms?

This is a question I am often asked. First off I don’t think you need a degree in PR or comms to work in the industry. You do need the storytelling, relationship building, creative and analytical skills. These are present in lots of different degrees. Second, I don’t think you necessarily need a degree if you have a good command of your first language and demonstrate the earlier mentioned skills, A Levels and on the job training will be just as effective.

But more than anything else it is representation. The PRCA Census for 2020 showed 12% non White professionals in the industry. Pitiful. There are so few role models, leaders, success stories to encourage and inspire, from any of the nine protected characteristics. 

Sometimes, you have to see it to achieve it. Not to mention all of the horror stories that are being unearthed around race, and ethnicity pay gaps doesn't make our industry particularly palatable. So we need to clean up our act. Then work really hard at making students feel welcome and treat them with respect and kindness no matter how ‘different’ they may be.

Further reading

Nurturing tomorrow's leaders during lockdown - Isobel Camier, director, Camier Communications

Sophie Smith - What’s your advice for seeking internships/ any experience if we’re only just entering the world of PR?

Be able to demonstrate your interest in PR to potential employers. Listing your favourite campaigns of the last 12 months and why they were impactful is a good start but you need to highlight skills or experiences you have gained that show alignment with the industry. For example, gain experience with a group or society at university and do some PR for them, whether that’s for a virtual event now, a service they provide or a cause they’re fighting. Start a blog and manage proactive social media around it. Manage the social media for a sports team you are part of. For all of these things be able to demonstrate the value that you added so that when it comes to applying for internships or writing to companies that you’d like to do some work experience for, you’ll have some practical PR know-how and successes that you can point at. 

Piotr Boiwka - How do you show curiosity as a candidate for an entry-level job?

As a candidate, think about how you can apply curiosity at different points throughout the recruitment process; whilst job hunting, in your covering letter / email and during the interview itself. Doing this will ensure you’re researching the companies you’re looking at and this process in itself will lead you to be more curious about them. You’ll then be equipped to ask relevant and interesting questions which will make you stand out, spark debate and enable you to demonstrate your skills and knowledge.  

Further reading:

How to build a PR measurement dashboard - Andrew Smith, director, Escherman

Piotr Boiwka- Which data visualisation tool is the most worth to learn? Is it worth learning R or Python as a PR practitioner?

There are lots of tools available to both visualise data as well as report on it - in the latter case, Google Data Studio is an obvious choice.

Perhaps a better way of looking at this would be to learn what to visualise in the first place - and to make more informed decisions about the actual message/data narrative you are trying to convey and what might be best suited to expressing it.

In which case the following books are worth reading:

Is it worth learning R or Python as a PR practitioner? I’d suggest that having a basic understanding of Python is probably all that is needed - if nothing else to allow more customised data pulls from specific APIs that might be helpful eg Google Trends. But more often than not, the data you need can be exported to a spreadsheet which is more than sufficient for most PR measurement requirements.

Richard Bailey - Can we use dashboards to predict the future in PR, not just report on the past?

Dashboards are not digital crystal balls. And there is a limit to any kind of predictive or forecasting accuracy. For example, weather forecasting accuracy has improved considerably over the last 20 years - but even then, there are limits to the degree of accuracy and how far into the future predictions can be made.

The PR industry has got some way to go to emulate meteorology. For a start, we need to build better models and get more comfortable with using data to have any hope of any kind of predictive capability. Having said that, it doesn’t mean we can’t have any predictive capability - Philip Tetlock has shown that forecasting is definitely something you can train yourself to be better at:

But again - there will be a natural limit to exactly what and how much we can predict even with better models and data. 

Claudia Vaccarone - What are the top three indicators for measuring awareness?

Pre and post campaign audience surveys have been (and continue to be) a perfectly valid way of understanding whether a given group of people is “more aware” of what you want them to be aware of. The historical challenge has been the cost and speed with which these kinds of surveys can be conducted. However, for broad consumer style panels, options such as Google Surveys (not to be confused with Google Forms), provide quick low cost research that can be used for basic awareness tracking.

Google search volume has emerged as the key proxy measure for tracking awareness. Google Trends can be used to understand and track brand search - and by default relative levels of brand awareness. Les Binet is suggesting that search volume trend data can also have a predictive element to it as well.

Further reading: 

An unregulated eco-system: the darker side of digital - Gay Flashman, CEO, Formative Content

Sophie Smith - Do you think influencers have an impact on the amount of misinformation younger social media users see/ have access to?

Influencers with substantial numbers of followers, or followers with large networks will always have an impact on the way in which information is spread. However I would hate to suggest that all influencers spread misinformation - there are plenty of micro-influencers, and more successful influencers, who have huge followings and share solid, credible information. During the Covid pandemic, many doctors have started doing TikTok and using platforms in a more engaging way to share positive information around vaccines etc. The challenge is to encourage social media influencers to share and spread “good” - just take a look at this piece of pro-COP output from Blackpink (popular K-pop group).

Piotr Boiwka - Do you think there is any way to stop spreading fake news or we just have to get used to them and be able to identify them? 

Whilst it’s humans driving this activity, there’s obviously no way to counter this misinformation without meaningful action from the platforms. Some of this is being imposed by governments, albeit slowly and with no cohesive global approach:-

In the UK, the government will outline new powers for the media regulator Ofcom to police social media. 

Germany's NetzDG law forces platforms to set up procedures to review complaints and  remove anything that’s illegal within 24 hours.

The wider EU is considering legislating on terror videos and extremist content.

In Australia passed the Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material Act in 2019 introduces criminal penalties

  • Decisions by Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter in early January were a first step but there is sustained pressure on them to take more meaningful action.

  • YouTube just received accreditation  from the Media Rating Council in the US for its work to protect advertisers from appearing on or aligned to content deemed inappropriate for paid ads. 

  • WhatsApp has invested $1m in 20 different research groups to study how misinformation spreads; it also deletes around 2 million accounts a month.  

  • Facebook, has introduced a raft of changes over the last year  in a move to rid its platforms of hate, but progress is slow.  

  • In the UK, the recent launch of the Facebook News service is the first outside the US, a demonstration that the platform is prepared to doing deals with some local publishers.

Further reading

Stephen Waddington
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