FIR Podcast Network

Trust in media and business is not high, according to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, and public relations practitioners are usually stereotyped as unethical hacks attempting to clean up the image of a person or organization that has done something bad. Yet every communication organization — IABC included — has a code of ethics that is designed to set the bar for ethical behavior by its members.

New tools and technologies present a host of opportunities for ethical entanglements. Misinformation spreads through social media, sometimes pushed along by leaders of companies. The ability to create deepfakes quickly and easily poses another ethical dilemma. Forty percent of European communication professionals have never participated in any kind of ethics training, yet 65 percent of them say they encounter one or more ethical challenges in their day-to-day work, according to the 2020 European Communication Monitor.

In this lively panel discussion, four IABC Fellows explored the current ethical challenges facing communicators, discussed the role a code of ethics can (or cannot) play, and talked about how individual communicators can impact the public perception of PR and business through their own ethical behaviors.

About the panel

Todd “Tosh” Hattori — Leveraging 20+ years of leading in-house communication functions within a variety of organizations and industries, Tosh shifted his career focus toward helping organization leaders address business challenges by setting and implementing organizational excellence strategies. He is currently the continuous improvement lead for F5 Networks where he applies Lean Six Sigma methods to collaborate with cross-functional teams to eliminate waste and establish consistencies that deliver exceptional employee and customer experiences. Tosh also serves on the volunteer board of directors for the Technology Access Foundation, a national model / leader in providing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to students of color; and improving diversity, upward mobility, and retention of teachers-of-color in Washington.

Jane Mitchell’s career began at the BBC in London on live TV programs. She moved on to producing award-winning films and videos for public and private sector organizations and developed groundbreaking employee engagement programs. Since 2006 when she formed her own consultancy, she now guides organizations, (some of which have experienced cultural trauma), with embedding values and ethics through understanding culture and leadership and their link to high-performing sustainable organizations. She has worked with Top 100 companies across the world, is a regular conference speaker and writer, and is a Director of two highly successful UK-based agencies. Jane has been a member of IABC since 2008 and has had the privilege of serving on local, regional, and International IABC Boards. She was Chair of the 2021 World Conference and was awarded the honor of IABC Fellow in March 2021.

Barbara Puffer, MA, ABC, IABC Fellow, is the author of the Business Communications Ethics chapter of IABC’s new book, IABC Guide for Practical Business Communication. While first setting out as a journalist, Barbara quickly changed her path to the corporate side. Her communications management career spans 47 years, including work in banking, insurance, and telecommunications organizations. She has consulted as Puffer Public Relations Strategies for more than 20 years and previously was Corporate Communications Manager at Barnes Group for 13 years. While consulting, she was also associate professor of communication studies at UMUC University of Maryland University College (now called UM Global Campus) for 13 years, where communications ethics was integrated throughout the curriculum. In IABC, she has served as chairperson of the Ethics Committee and Research Foundation, among other leadership positions.

Jennifer Wah, MC, ABC,

In the wake of Facebook’s bad news month, we discuss the communications challenges the company faces. A blip? Or a step on an irreversible path toward becoming the new MySpace? The necessary impetus to increased regulation? And would a company with an army of lobbyists ever see a regulatory regime that actually curbs its freedom of action in any meaningful way? Is it really becoming the new Tobacco? And, most importantly, is its community decaying from the inside?

It’s hard to believe it’s been 12 years since Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs began their trends and insights report, but here we are. And what a year this 12th year has been!

The report looks back on the past 12 months, of course, and includes expectations for 2022. It also asked the impervious question: what did the pandemic change most about your organization’s content marketing strategy or approach? 

The key theme they found is that the pandemic awoke a sleeping giant in content marketing. Without in-person events and face-to-face selling, many who had previously paid little attention to content marketing suddenly became aware of its power. More content marketers got a seat at the table and helped keep many businesses on their audiences’ radars. Some discovered new audiences altogether.

The research also confirmed what many of us already know: content marketers are some of the fiercest business pros around. In the words of CMI in the report, “In the most difficult of times, they get the job done—and many come through more creative and stronger than before.”

Amen. And, because content is my first love, I love reading this report every year to see where my business is excelling and where we need to improve. It also gives us great fodder when discussing content marketing—or owned media as we call it in a PESO Model program—with clients.

This is why this is the topic du jour for today’s episode of the Spin Sucks podcast.

Resources Included

* CMI Report

* Spin Sucks Blog Post: Why Communicators Must (Finally) Embrace the PESO Model 

* Spin Sucks Blog Post: New Survey Shows the Top Challenges Communicators Face

* Spin Sucks Community

 

Gaming. Blockchain. NFTs. The Metaverse. They are all colliding, creating something bigger than any single one of these platforms. In the October episode of For Immediate Release, Neville and Shel talk about this phenomenon and some of the companies making it happen. Also in this month’s Hobson & Holtz Report, Neville and Shel discuss the rise of robo-voices, how some companies are taking a more authentic and organic approach to influence, the widening gap between employees and leaders when it comes to policies for returning to the office, ways to encourage employees to engage and share on an intranet, and whether now is the time to hire a chief metaverse officer. Dan York’s Tech Report looks at the recent Facebook outage, Facebook Reels, TikTok’s billion-user milestone, Slack Clips, Twitch’s code base, and Global Encryption Day.

Our FIR recording sessions are now being streamed live, because why not? We already stream it in order to capture a backup recording on YouTube; we’ve just been making these restricted streams. We have decided to make them public so you can watch and comment. Our next recording is scheduled for Saturday, November 20, at noon ET. You’ll see our pre-recording conversation as well as seeing how the sausage gets made. Watch live here.

(You can watch the video of the making of this episode, though it’s clearly too late to share comments we can read right into the show.)

We are hosting an FIR Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday during the stay-at-home period at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our Facebook group or send an email to [email protected]. Note, there will be no FIR Zoom Chat on Thursday, October 28, as neither Neville nor Shel will be available.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Neville’s link blog, Outbox, is available, as well.

Links from This Month’s Episode

* PoliteMail blog post on using empirical data to demonstrate the value of internal communications

* The rise of the robo-voices

* How brands are using TikTok to find super-fan content creators

* How influencers are helping cities attract remote workers

* How to Create an Epic Clubhouse Room and Attract Celebrity Guests Organically

* Remote-working jobs: Disaster looms as managers refuse to listen

* Is it time to hire a chief metaverse officer?

* NFT trading volume explodes 704% in 3rd quarter as blockchain games catch fire

* 7 projects at forefront of gaming metaverse movement...

Facebook knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions, and drafts of presentations to senior management.

Time and again, the documents show, the researchers at Facebook have identified the platform’s ill effects. Time and again, despite congressional hearings, its own pledges, and numerous media exposés, the company didn’t fix them. The documents offer perhaps the clearest picture thus far of how broadly the Facebook problems are known inside the company, up to the chief executive himself.

To boot, last week, a woman named Frances Haugen went on 60 Minutes to describe all of the documents she gathered during her two-year tenure. Haugen is protected as a whistleblower by the SEC and will continue to work with lawmakers to provide documentation and information as it relates to “the company’s lack of openness about its platforms’ potential for harm and unwillingness to address its flaws.”

And that, my friends, is what we’re going to discuss on this week’s episode of the Spin Sucks podcast.

Resources Included

* Wag the Dog

Frances Haugen

Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter to Employees

* Spin Sucks: How to Use Shared Media In the PESO Model Process

Brian Stelter CNN Transcript

* The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show

The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt.

The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead.

Have your web analytics changed in recent years? That is, despite your best efforts, has your organic traffic gone down? What about SEO for blog posts? Or engagement on social media?

Maybe digital media has become even more of a pay-to-play landscape than ever and platforms are expecting a higher price from organizations in order for them to achieve decent business results.

That’s what Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley and I talk about on Inside PR. Our conversation is based on a post by digital thought-leader Rand Fishkind called, ‘The Incentives to Publish No Longer Reward the Web’s Creators‘.

TL;DR version: Your content marketing strategy needs a balanced and integrated approach.

Have a read, then have a listen and let us know what you think.

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It’s your turn

We’d love to hear what you think and if you have any subjects you’d like us to cover in upcoming episodes.

Leave us a comment on the blog.

Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected],

Connect with us on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on Apple Podcasts

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our producer is Jacob Waxman, a talented musician, producer, and recording engineer. Jacob produced the episode and is also the composer of our new theme music. Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

About a decade ago, Robin Wauters, the co-founder of TechCrunch wrote a scathing article about a communicator who, in Robin’s mind, had violated every rule that is supposed to exist between PR pros and journalists. He said this communicator had abused Robin’s “extremely sweet and mild-mannered colleague.” Robin was so angry at this communicator that he called him out by name, called him a “PR disaster,” and printed only his emails (not the journalist’s responses). 

I remember being outraged at the time because, as Lindsay Bell-Wheeler used to say all the time when she worked here, “There are all three sides to a story: yours, theirs, and the truth.” They only told their side of the story and didn’t let this communicator defend himself.

I’ve always thought it to be pretty disgusting to call out people like that, and even more so when you are using a media platform to do so. Back in the day, when it was a thing to make fun of people by name on social media, I used to say, “Disrespect the idea, not the person.” I know that’s awfully Pollyanna of me, but I really believe it.

And journalists are held to an even higher standard. They should not, under any circumstance, become petty in that way. And yet…it constantly happens. No wonder trust in the media continues to decline.

And that, my friends, is the topic du jour on this week’s episode of the Spin Sucks podcast.

Resources Inlcuded

* Spin Sucks Blog Article: The Erroneous Reputation of the PR Industry

* Wall Street Journal Article

* Washington Post Article

* Mother Jones Article

This episode brought us together with Ruth Stevens, whose consulting firm, eMarketing Strategy, helps clients build customer acquisition and retention strategies along with other marketing programs. Ruth has had a distinguished career. She has taught marketing at the NYU Stern School, the Columbia Business School and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. Before that  she held senior marketing positions at Time Warner, IBM and other firms.

Back in the early 1990s Ruth headed up marketing for the Ziff Davis Computer Library, an early – and highly profitable – business that repackaged content from Ziff-Davis’ portfolio of publications and delivered it on a CD-ROM, if you can believe it. Ruth is an unabashed fan of B2B marketing with a wide scope of interests. As a blogger on Biznology.com, she has lamented the often toxic relationship between sales and marketing organizations and described tools for connecting with your website visitors that even our hosts were unaware of. 

Ruth is past president of the Direct Marketing Club of New York and was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Marketing by Crain’s BtoB magazine. She has written a number of books, the most recent being B2B Data-Driven Marketing: Sources, Uses, Results, which was co-authored Theresa Kushner. In a recent presentation, she talked about ways to plan your content marketing library. 

Among the topics we touch on in this interview is the value of account-based marketing, the importance of understanding the difference between lead quantity and quality, the mistakes that B2B marketers make that still drive her crazy and why B2B marketing is more complex, difficult and fun than B2C marketing. 

#738: Lucas Root and Mitchell Levy on Thought Leader Life Credibility Episode

Execute great ideas to help businesses succeed. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Lucas Root (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-root-5b7945b/), a fractional COO. Lucas is the co-founder of Goddess Provenance and Limitless Life Tribe, and the founder of SGIC Consulting.

With over 17 years of experience working on Wall Street for mergers and acquisitions, he has led numerous operations teams for various corporations. After establishing his impressive track record, he left his corporate job to set up his own consulting firm. Since then, he has served some of the world’s prominent brands, including Wells Fargo, AIG, Bird, and The Pokemon Company, just to name a few.

If you have great ideas but have difficulty executing them, you may reach out to Lucas Root by visiting his website, www.LucasRoot.com, his LinkedIn profile, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-root-5b7945b/ or his Instagram account, https://www.instagram.com/lucroot/.

Here are several AHA messages from this episode:

* Companies that have strong brands with great #Ideas should reach out to Lucas Root. https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/lucas-root-5b7945b @LucRoot

* I volunteer with VCs working with startups; what piques my interest and what I anticipate there is the strong feminine leadership that I am looking to support for growth, both in startups and in culture in general! #Ideas https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-root-5b7945b/ @LucRoot

* I take pride in being a part of my largest and longest-standing company, The Pokemon Company. I’ve been able to engage in a couple of different major initiatives. And things are still doing great with them now! #Ideas https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-root-5b7945b/ @LucRoot

* I get to work with brands that have engaged with the market already. They start to generate some really amazing #Ideas, but they don’t have the infrastructure to execute those ideas. And so, that’s where I come in! https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-root-5b7945b/ @LucRoot

* Spending two decades on Wall Street in mergers and acquisitions, I have learnt how to build companies. So, six years ago, I decided to take that wisdom and bring it to the market in terms of fractional COO work! #Ideas https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-root-5b7945b/ @LucRoot

To view the video interview click here.

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

The September installment of The Hobson & Holtz Report includes reports on these stories:

* Apple, Google, and Facebook are all in the news and none of it is good. In fact, some employees are up in arms.

* Gartner’s Emerging Technology Hype Cycle for 2021 is out.

* There are CEOs who won’t touch social media with a 10-foot pole. Then there are those who want nothing more than to post a meme that goes viral.

* Artificial Intelligence’s place in the Gartner Hype Cycle gets its own deep dive.

* People tune out bad news for a variety of reasons. Knowing why can help you overcome obstacles and get your message heard.

* There’s a wide gap between how executives think their companies’ cultures have done during the pandemic and how employees feel about it.

Our FIR recording sessions are now being streamed live, because why not? We already stream it in order to capture a backup recording on YouTube; we’ve just been making these restricted streams. We have decided to make them public so you can watch and comment. Our next recording is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, October 16 at noon ET. You’ll see our pre-recording conversation as well as seeing how the sausage gets made. Watch live here.

(You can watch the video of the making of this episode, though it’s clearly too late to share comments we can read right into the show.)

We are hosting an FIR Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday during the stay-at-home period at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our Facebook group or send an email to [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Neville’s link blog, Outbox, is available, as well.

Host Notes

* Neville and his co-hosts have recorded the 50th episode of the Small Data Forum podcast. It will be uploaded any day now. You’ll be able to find it here.

* Join Shel’s internal communication BEAM (a short-form social audio service); the app is available only for iOS (so far).

Links from This Month’s Episode

* How to Catch Up on Work Emails After Vacation

* Tim Cook says employees who leak memos do not belong at Apple, according to leaked memo

* Facebook Decries Wall Street Journal Reporting on Internal Research

* No More Apologies: Inside Facebook’s Push to Defend Its Image

* Facebook Quietly Makes a Big Admission

* Apple, Google Raise Concerns After Removing Russian Political Opposition App From App Stores

* 3 Themes Surface in the 2021 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

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