Stuart Bruce

Thanks to John Johnston for the POLITICO Europe London Influence story on the training gap between white PR Professionals and those from BME backgrounds. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations State of the Profession survey showed that white practitioners are: - more likely to have received training in the previous 12 months (81% vs. 74%) - are more likely to have agreed training needs with managers - and are less likely to have had requests for training turned down (36% vs. 47%).   This represents statistically significant gap in the training experiences and opportunities of UK BME PR professionals compared to their white colleagues. Not only is training vital for an individual’s progression, and internal profile, as it can shape how an employer views their ability and seniority, lack of access can impact overall achievements as well as retention - a key point brought up by Matthew Otubu. And based on previous research and people's lived experience, it’s also a red flag for other missed work opportunities and unspoken barriers to fairness and inclusion. Sadly the training gap is not surprising but it is unacceptable and, in an age of skills shortages, inexcusable. #PR #Comms #DiversityandInclusion #Training https://lnkd.in/eCZypZM8

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Journos in my network: I read a report from MuckRack surveying the state of journalism in 2024. It has a US focus but I suspect the findings apply as much in the UK; would you agree? - About one-third of journalists express concerns about lack of funding and trust in journalism, consistent with last year's findings. - More than one-third report layoffs or buyouts, with 30% turning to LinkedIn for job opportunities.  - 64% work over 40 hours weekly, with 79% working after hours.  - Nearly a quarter produce 11 or more stories weekly, and about one in four primarily publish in legacy media, despite the digital shift. https://lnkd.in/eys6rqjH

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In an interview this morning, the Prime Minister said he “wasn’t surprised” that more than two million people had signed a petition calling for another election. Rachel Reeves is fighting the Government's corner at the CBI today, trying to convince businesses they can trust her. The list of complaints goes on and on. Take last week's protests from farmers across the UK. 🔣The Treasury, Defra, and the National Farmers’ Union had different figures about how many farmers would be hit by the changes. 📊The facts about why the government introduced the tax got lost, damaging an already precarious relationship with a group of stakeholders that are still warming up towards a Labour government. 💡The Government could have made better use of powerful arguments about the value of the land and big landowners vs family farms. This article in PoliticsHome by former Downing Street director of communications Lee Cain argues that the government has lost control of the narrative over why it is making most decisions and what needs to be done to repair it. In other words, more storytelling and less media management and containment. https://lnkd.in/edFCtSUM

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I first wrote on the subject of a coming “convergence” of internal and external communication more than 10 years ago.  It keeps coming up, like it did in Sophie Drummond’s piece titled "Rest In Peace, Internal Communication" in the newly resurrected EACD publication, Communication Directors Magazine (link in comments). Sophie makes a lot of solid points.  I don’t disagree, but I bristle at the idea that it’s internal communication that needs to be subsumed into external communication, a conclusion some might jump to if skimming her piece.  In fact, I’d argue the opposite, that internal communication should be seen as a fundamental driver of external communication - and as a discipline with its own distinct dynamics and leverage. Nevertheless, it’s also long overdue for today’s #internalcomms practitioners to get their heads around why the distinction between internal and external comms is becoming more permeable - and a lot more dynamic. My latest post on the Changing The Terms Blog: Internal Comms and External Comms are not the same. And never will be. https://lnkd.in/ercBY_Kq

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The impacts of the strengthening blizzard of noise/misinformation mean corporate decision makers are increasingly reliant on trusted sources to inform their future direction. Day in day out the FT delivers a level of accuracy that meets this requirement.

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ah the pitch process - contributed a few thoughts to the PR Week piece below - not sure an official code of conduct is likely anytime soon but here are my 10 Pitch Commandments that would make life better for all involved - thanks to Siobhan Holt for the opp 👇👇👇 1.   Timeframe to respond should be an absolute minimum of 10 x working days 2.   Tissue meetings should come as standard and be built into the process. 3.   Large competitive pitches are expensive to partake in – a fee contribution towards agency costs on detailed, resource heavy pitches should come as standard 4.   Pitches with more than 4 x agencies are a red flag - indicates the client hasn’t done their homework. 5.   There should be full disclosure if your agency is the wildcard entry. 6.   Internal budgets should be signed off BEFORE the pitch process begins. 7.   Non-disclosure of budgets is a non-starter. 8.   Decision makers should always be in the room when pitch takes place 9.   Post pitch feedback should be honest and given verbally - this should never be an email received at 5pm on a Friday 10.   Ghosting/avoiding agencies post pitch is never acceptable

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The agenda for this conference is fab! I'm looking forward to chairing so I can learn more and also dig deeper into the brilliant experts subjects. See you there?

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How to be a Civil Servant in the Disinformation Age In his keynote address to today’s Think Data for Government conference in Westminster, Charlie Boundy, chief data officer, Companies House, argues that civil servants need to ready to counter the destabilising impact of disinformation. https://lnkd.in/dGPZS5Pi #disinformation #transparency #data #thinkdata #government SAS Snowflake Elastic CGI Adobe CACI Ltd Mazepoint Ltd

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This is intriguing. In the past couple of decades The Guardian has built itself from a UK newspaper into a global media brand, winning Pulitzer prizes along the way. The flipside is that The Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, has at times looked unloved. The print edition has lost pages and supplements over the years and it doesn’t even have its own standalone website. Enter Tortoise Media. It’s a new-media success story, having persuaded people to pay for long-reads and deep-dive podcasts. Picking up The Observer would be a big gamble, not least given the fixed costs of printing a paper, assuming it doesn’t plan to immediately switch to online only. There’s a long tradition of investors spotting a chance to carve out an asset from a larger group and reap the benefits. Private equity firms have made an art of it. So there’s a big opportunity for Tortoise. If confirmed, it’d be good to hear from James Harding, Tortoise’s founder, about what he plans for such a famous asset. https://lnkd.in/ea66xmfH

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It's interesting to tinker with prompts for Claude.ai to summarise the main challenges and issues contained in the Chartered Institute of Public Relations State of the Profession 2024 report. And those challenges highlight significant hurdles facing PR professionals: 1️⃣ Diversity & Equity Issues: ▶ Stark differences in working experiences based on sector, age, seniority, and ethnicity ▶ Persistent gender pay gap, though smallest since measurement began 2️⃣ Training Disparities: ▶ In-house & not-for-profit pros 4x more likely to have training requests denied ▶ Significant gap in training opportunities between White practitioners and other ethnic groups 3️⃣ Skills Shortage: ▶ 75% of in-house and 60% of agency professionals identify skills gaps in their teams ▶ AI identified as the area with the biggest skills shortage 4️⃣ AI Adoption & Policy: ▶ Over half of PR pros using AI, but organizational policies lag behind ▶ Fewer agency/consultancy firms have AI policies compared to other sectors 5️⃣ Strategic Recognition: ▶ Not-for-profit/NGO professionals less confident about PR's recognized value ▶ Lack of clear success measures for PR in many organizations 6️⃣ Economic Pressures: ▶ Average annual full-time income decreased to £53,052 ▶ Over 1/3 report increased working hours ▶ Mixed financial outlook for agencies/consultancies 7️⃣ Recruitment Challenges: ▶ Filling vacancies reported as more difficult for agencies than in-house teams   ▶ Unexpected high involvement of junior staff in recruitment processes I find it disturbing that, with the exception of the emergence of AI, the issues that are highlighted come as no surprise. The fact that the survey references inequality, the gender pay gap, poor training, and the inability to demonstrate value in 2024 should be a clarion call for change. The great work of the CIPR, Socially Mobile, Asian Communications Network, PR Mums, AMEC Measurement and Evaluation and other campaigning groups must be better supported so that the profession takes the right positive steps to address the challenges in time for the next State of the Profession report. #PRChallenges #IndustryInsights #ProfessionalDevelopment #AIinPR Download the report here: 👇 👇👇 👇 https://lnkd.in/egPecrVu

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STOP! A new crisis tool for comms nerds 🤓 👇 No really - it's called STOP 🛑 More great thinking and content from the UK Government Communication Service - two observations: 1) Government can't help itself when it comes to acronyms but this one is brilliantly relevant and simple - Strategy, Tactics, Organisation, and People; 2) Given the shenanigans of UK Government(s) in the last little while, perhaps Plato was right and necessity really is the mother of invention 🤷 A great template to follow and very kind of the GCS to open-source this and so many other tools and templates 🙏 #CrisisCommunication #Government #Strategy Julia Schembri Benjamin Flores Tom Wald Alina Caballero Emily Rundle Julian Lee Kelly Goodwin Kiara Neasy Stephanie Madonis Janelle Neeve Alex Sévigny, PhD, APR Emma McMahon Alex Aloschi Luke Goldsmith Ashley Clarke (née Langton) Stavro Sofios Lisa Thomas Megan Bishop Natasha Mitchell Michelle Weiss Nina Macken Mitchell Compton Samantha Mattila Selena Adams Alex Cauchi Selena Li Adam Thompson Lynne Welch

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Public affairs types - I've a question. If you were wanting to establish what the baseline level of awareness of your charity/issue in this new parliament was, so you could measure the impact of different campaigns & engagement activities over time - - what questions would you ask? - what channel/s would you use? - how often would you review? - what would you do with the information? I've some ideas about how I intend to go about these, but thought asking around was a good idea - to sharpen my own approach, and to share out loud some of what lots of us in the field are wrestling with while the rest of the world has just realised there's been a change of government! Our questions are in ideation at the moment, but cover:- - do they know who we are, and what do they know about us - what their interest in ending poverty is, and how connected are they with the necessary resources to do so (local churches & charities addressing the issue on the ground, lived experience perspectives) - to what extent they think addressing poverty should be a priority for the Government Channel - the major polling firms run MP panels which while pricey can be effective (especially if you're super smart in your question writing). Would you use other channels, though? Writing directly to offices so you have real data and not a sample? Having established question sets for each parliamentary engagement whether in westminster or in constituency, via public affairs team or other departments? Planning to review annually as a minumum and after any major campaign activity (perhaps on a restricted question set) - would you go more often? Information - primarily to inform strategic planning, resource allocation, coordination of various teams and departments' own contribution to CAP's policy & advocacy work. Not really planning to try and generate any PR type headlines - but is that aiming too low? Looking forward to reading your thoughts!

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A very usefull Crisis Communication tool.

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"I do words, not numbers". 🤔 Well done Mandy Pearse MBA, FCIPR, FCIM on her latest Public Sector Digital Communications Benchmarking Report. A really important piece of work. One of the key findings is that measurement and evaluation remains simplistic, focusing on outputs rather than outcomes, impact and ROI. Mandy highlights Data Science and Analytics as one of the Top 5 training needs - and calls on Public Sector Comms Leaders to place greater emphasis on these skills. It fits with what we've heard from the likes of CoverageBook about levels of data literacy in PR and comms, and also from those involved in training public sector communicators on how to deliver successful behaviour change campaigns: Data literacy in comms remains a big issue. Yes, AI offers help and can do some heavy lifting, but it doesn't remove the need for a basic level of knowledge and understanding. Myself and Mandy are going to chat at the UnAwards - where Whetstone Communications is sponsoring the Best Useof Data Award - about ways we might help time poor, financially-constrained colleagues respond to the data skills challenge in 2025. Mandy's full report is available to those who are part of the Benchmarking Club, with breakdowns for NHS, Police, Fire and Rescue and Local Authority sectors available. #datainfornmed #datainsights #digitalpr #localgov

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When you have five minutes, read this blog post about how to use embargoes and NDAs to give your PR an extra gear. Some very interesting tips #PRtips #NewsEmbargoes #NDA

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I have spent a couple of decades in this market and helped many founders carefully introduce new 'scary' tech concepts to the world - from behavioural targeting to the need for cyber security. A highlight was launching the WiFi company The Cloud and handling a Panorama interview with a member of the public who insisted on wearing a tin-foil helmet to prevent the rays from "frying her brain"...(remember that Owen Geddes). The point is - outside this tech bubble, awareness, understanding and trust is low. The announcement today is awesome - so much potential for the UK to take a leadership role with this transformative technology. Talk of 'mainlining AI into the veins of this enterprising nation' miss the mark in my opinion. To build trust we need to tread a little more carefully and recognise this stuff can seem scary if you don't live and breathe it every day. #AI #comms #tech #vc

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