October 17, 2024
In this week's edition: Reddit and crisis comms, thinking about strategy, the art of saying "no" to media, Chief Metaverse Officers - where are they now, 2024 State of CommTech, and much more...
There’s a long but magnificent paragraph in one of the articles below that I think beautifully captures the chaos of our information landscape (particularly the final line). I feel I should impose it on you before you read any further. Honestly, read it:
“Nobody pays attention to the channels you control. Traditional media is fragmented and its audiences are diminished and hyperpolarized. Lots of people are watching TV but not the TV you need them to watch; everyone’s looking at their phones, but they’re not receiving your messages. Your posts on Facebook, which briefly assumed a role in basic civic communication across the country, are filtered through recommendation algorithms and submerged in slop. Your announcements on Instagram have no way to spread, and people aren’t looking for them anyway. Your posts on TikTok feel like a joke and mostly get distributed to random people in other states. Your posts on X, which used to be at least marginally helpful as a sort of straightforward institutional newswire, are barely visible and overwhelmed by conspiracy theories. It’s a little paradoxical and, if you’re in the business of communications, probably sort of discouraging: It isn’t just your propaganda machine that’s broken; it’s your basic means of reaching people in any way at all. It’s also darkly funny: Everyone can talk to everyone and now suddenly nobody can hear anyone.”
Global CommTech Report 2024 - “The number of PR folk now using AI tools is increasing and the areas of most use are being consolidated: content creation topping the list. More worrying, many professionals are still not working within an AI policy and there appears to be a lack of systematic training, although most now receive some.” Report here. (Anne Gregory)
Is Reddit the Future of Crisis Comms? “Reddit isn’t the first place you’d think to see official statements and news coming from the federal government, but today, The White House is on the site making posts… The Biden administration’s “whitehouse” account has new posts in subreddits r/NorthCarolina and r/Georgia to discuss the federal response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.” (New York Magazine/Intelligencer)
Using ChatGPT to make fake social media posts backfires on bad actors - “OpenAI claims cyber threats are easier to detect when attackers use ChatGPT.” (Arstechnica)
How GenAI makes foreign influence campaigns on social media even worse - “Of particular concern is that generative AI models can make it much easier and cheaper for malicious agents to create and manage believable accounts.” (Fast Company)
Press Releases Have Become Way Too Hyperbolic - “The risk of too much corporate cheer is that it turns off the very people it’s trying to win over: journalists. They don’t trust it. And if they don’t trust it, chances are they aren’t going to cover it.” (AdWeek)
On TikTok, pop culture prevails over news and politics - “TikTok is growing fast as a destination for news, but news and politics accounts make up less than one percent of accounts followed by U.S. adults, the Pew Research Center says.” (TechCrunch)
Why marketers are all about ‘nontraditional formats’ now - “These formats can range from PR activations (one recent example: Progressive’s brand mascot Dr. Rick became the first brand mascot to appear on the talk show Hot Ones) to long-form content to unusual brand activations (remember the hubbub around the Pop Tart bowl earlier this year?) to packaging innovation and other uncommon efforts.” (Digiday)
Thinking about strategy - "Marketers view strategy as more important than ever, but there’s tension in terms of communication and delivery because we are often conflating different types of strategy." WARC article here (Lindsey Slaby)
The art of saying ‘no’ to media requests - “Don’t do anything to hurt the relationship with newsrooms.” (PRDaily)
Power and influencers: CEOs on social media - “Pressure is growing on C-suite executives to raise their online game — but they must beware of oversharing” (FT - subscription may be req’d)
I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is - “As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis.” (The Atlantic)
Where Have All the Chief Metaverse Officers Gone? “As quickly as it had materialized, the excitement dissipated. Like Dorothy peering behind the curtain and finding the Wizard of Oz to be no more than a diminutive man pulling levers, the world seemed to have looked into the metaverse and found … not much at all.” (Wired)
Trustworthiness of news media worldwide 2024 - “A study examining perspectives on the news media from over 40 countries revealed that levels of trust differed notably around the world. Scandinavians in particular had greater trust in the news media than citizens from other parts of the world” (Statista)
And finally, the most popular article from last week was The new communications job description by Axios. IDK. Goodnight!