🥝 News from New Zealand

🎓 Jacinda Ardern | New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has just won a resounding re-election victory. Why am I leading a public relations and communication newsletter with a story about politics? It’s because Jacinda is one of us. She is a PR graduate and holds a Bachelor of Communication Studies (BCS) in politics and public relations from the University of Waikato. It might explain why she’s good at taking difficult decisions and communicating them well.

Photo by Dan Whitfield from Pexels (because on slow hotel wifi I couldn’t quickly find a royalty free picture of Jacinda!)

📊 Stickybeak funding | One reason we know she is excellent at communicating is she consistently tops the poll in global research conducted by Stickybeak amongst senior PR and communication professionals. Not bad for the PM of a small country a long way from the traditional centres of power. Stickybeak is a New Zealand start-up cofounded by ex-Edelman supremo and non-executive director of Enero (owner of Hotwire and Frank) David Brain; along with market researcher David Talbot, who runs polling, research, and strategy for Jacinda Ardern; designer Kyle Hickey; and technology specialist Brody Nelson. The big news from Stickybeak this week is it has raised its first investment round of $555,000, valuing the company at $3.55 million.

💻 Digital and social

🔍 Share of search | For years I have been a huge advocate of using search trends and volumes as a proxy for interest. I’ve done a lot of work in this space, as has Andrew Bruce Smith who is one of my fellow PR and digital trainers at the CIPR where we both include it on many of our courses. This week there has been a lot of chatter and attention to this article by Mark Ritson arguing that ‘Share of Search’ should replace ‘Share of Voice’. I have lots of thoughts about this. Too many to share here, so I’ve already started writing a longer article. It’s also worth watching this video where Les Binet, head of effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, talks about share of search as a predictive measure.

Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels

🤼 Facebook groups | Facebook has released new research confirming what many of us already knew - Facebook groups are growing and thriving. Lots of interesting stats. 77% say the most important group they are part of now operates online. Of these, over the next 12 months, 86% say they will continue engaging online either about the same (48%) or more (39%). I’m an admin of a local community group and its growth and activity has been exploded this year (in more senses than one!) I also participate in two excellent groups that started this year. The first is ‘Remote Speaking’ started by Alan Stevens which in just seven months now has more than 2,000 members and the second is Stephen Waddington’s ‘marketing, media and PR community of practice’ which has nearly 900 PR and communication practitioners.

🔢 Research and reports

📘 Comms in Covid-19 | In the UK the Government Communication Service has published the COVID-19 Communications Advisory Panel report. The report includes insights into the impact of the pandemic on communications professionals and some of the learnings. It also highlights skills utilised during the initial phase of the pandemic, which should be considered the focus going forward.

Alex Aiken, executive director, Government Communication Service

🧥 Communication and training

👂 Bespoke training | This short blog post from media trainer Guy Clapperton hit the spot for me. I do lots of bespoke or tailored in-house PR and communication training workshops with clients. Sometimes my clients think that tailored training means I give them exactly what they want. I respectfully disagree. It means I give them what they need to fulfil their learning objectives. Guy explains in this great little article.