March 6, 2025
In this week's edition: Fixing social media's failures, counsel and comms, never wasting a good crisis, focus groups and AI, the state of create, the inattention pandemic, and much more...
Social Media Fails Many Users. Experts Have an Idea to Fix It - “People cannot tell whether the content they see is widely endorsed or just popular within their narrow community. This often creates a sense of “false consensus,” where users think their beliefs are much more mainstream than they in fact are.” (Time)
2025 State of Media & Readership Report - “An annual study of the media landscape and what people read about over the last year.” US-focused but some intriguing insights on the lifespan of stories and other things. (Memo)
State of Create - “The creator-fan relationship used to be the beating heart of the social internet. But today, fans’ feeds are increasingly filled with recommended posts for creators they don’t know, along with ads, sponcon, and ‘brain rot.’ What happened?” (Patreon, I think)
Why General Counsel and Comms Must Work Together - “Many companies still mistakenly view communications as a tactical function and an afterthought. Relying solely on legal-driven messaging can weaken stakeholder trust and brand credibility. Instead, legal and communications teams should collaborate more to craft narratives that are compliant and reputation-enhancing.” (Reputation Matters)
Quantifying PR's Impact on M&A Success - “A new academic study reveals how public relations advisors drive deal value - with returns that surprise even the researchers.” (Coverage to Capital)
AI unleashes a weird new genre of political communication - “Much is made of AI’s potential to spread political misinformation. The “Trump Gaza” video exemplifies a different use of the technology. Knowingly absurd, the video is a high-fidelity provocation perfectly suited to tickle Mr Trump’s fans and bait his critics. No one is being fooled by the video, but it seems everyone is talking about it.” (Economist)
Want to tell better stories? The answer is not story telling, but story finding - “People don’t share campaigns, they share stories, and you already have thousands of them. The challenge is how to find them.” (The Communications Network)
The Role of Law Firms in Crisis Management - “The survey highlights a clear need for stronger collaborative alliances between GCs, their organizations, their law firms and other expert advisors to avoid the preventable and overcome the unavoidable. The survey reveals a worrying trend: companies are least prepared for the crises that pose the greatest threats.” (FTI)
How Bybit didn’t waste a good crisis - “From a communications perspective Bybit's CEO Ben Zhou's leadership showcased exemplary transparency and resilience.” (Cryptoslate)
Using ChatGPT as a Focus Group - “LLMs are coming for qualitative research.” (James Breckwoldt via Matt)
The future of the internet is likely smaller communities, with a focus on curated experiences - “In this emerging AI era, the very ideas of community and human connection are poised for redefinition. Brands and platforms will weaponize the terms in a bid to capture the attention of their ideal audiences.” (The Verge)
2025 Employee Communications Report - A not-so-global survey of 2000 respondents on the trends, challenges and perceptions of internal communicators (Gallagher)
Coca-Cola Warns of Potential Negative Impact From DEI Changes - “‘If we are unable to attract or retain specialized talent or top talent with diverse perspectives, experiences and backgrounds that reflect the broad range of consumers and markets we serve around the world, our business could be negatively affected,’ it said in another part of the filing titled “risks related to our operations.” (Bloomberg - $)
The inattention pandemic - “The tyranny of social media has made us all minor celebrities: exhausted and narcissistic.” (The New Statesman)
A painful 30-seconds - “If you're appearing before a Senate committee, or doing a big media interview, work out in advance what you will say if you are asked the most obvious tough question.” There seems to be a lot of this these days. (Andrew Marshall)
And finally, the most popular article from last week was Monzo’s Writing Principles by, well, Monzo. And now I need to take a long, hot bath.