Better Business Outcomes is back!

Sarah and Stephen Waddington return with your favourite management communications and public relations podcast.

 ·      Socially Mobile, the not-for-profit PR school aimed at changing the leadership demographic of the industry, has launched a '25 for 2025' fundraising scheme. We’re looking for 25 leaders to donate £750 to help ensure we’re sustainable in 2025.

·      Both Sarah and Stephen spoke at the PRCA conference in London this week. It explored a range of issues facing practitioners from the challenging economy to diversity and from artificial intelligence to changing media consumption.

·      We knew the shift from traditional print and television news sources to digital was well underway, but digital has become the dominant source of news consumption for the first time, according to Ofcom data.

·      According to the CIPR State of the Profession report, practitioners are underpaid and working harder than ever but claim that management increasingly recognises their value. This may be wishful thinking.

·      Sarah is heading to India to speak at PRAXIS about the role of public relations as a force for good and the change practitioners can make to society through activist interventions such as the Asian Communication Network and People Like Us.

Presented by Sarah Waddington and Stephen Waddington

For more information visit https://www.wadds.co.uk/
With thanks to our production partners at What Goes On Media

Transcript

Sarah Waddington
Hey, you, remember us? It's Sarah and Stephen Waddington here and you're hearing this because you used to subscribe to our FutureProof podcast. Well, we're migrating that across to our Better Business Outcomes podcast and we're hoping that you're gonna join us. We're gonna be meeting on a 2 to 3 week basis and we're gonna be chatting all things management and communication and we'll have the occasional guest. So, what are you waiting for? Come on over!

Stephen Waddington
Hello Sarah, where have you been?

Sarah Waddington
Hi Stephen, yeah it's been a good few months since we've been behind this podcast desk but it's good to be back. I have to say it's been a busy old time. We've been busy helping agencies with sales, agencies to scale, talent management, all kinds of things. What have you been up to?

Stephen Waddington
That's it, isn't it? The market this year for public relations and communications is challenging, but within challenge lies opportunity. I've been focusing a lot on the in -house perspective, helping with performance in teams, helping with alignment with management, and then the march of AI into practice. But we're back here with Better Business Outcomes to talk about a number of things. So, Socially Mobile, PRCA Conference, Report from Ofcom, practitioners marking their own homework. Where shall we start?

Let's start with the Socially Mobile graduation this week!

Sarah Waddington
As we've always said, Socially Mobile is there to plug an industry gap. For those who are new to Socially Mobile, it's an online training program that we both devised to help people move from tactical to strategic roles and increase their earning potential. And the course is open to anybody, but we offer fully funded places to those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, our LGBTQ+ friends, those with disabilities, women returners, and our minority ethnic practitioners who also need a step up.

And it's been going on for two years, so we have the latest graduation, and it was just fantastic to hear the outcomes for people on the transformation that it's making in people's lives. One of the reasons we want to talk about it today is that, as Stephen mentioned earlier, the economic backdrop has been really tough for everybody this year. so investment and sponsorship has dropped into the program. And so we've just launched a 25 for 2025 fundraising campaign and we're hoping everybody will get behind it.

Stephen Waddington
You went to the PRCA conference in search of dollar, right? So we're asking for 25 comms, leaders, agencies or industry vendors to stump up 750 quid for 2025 to help us be sustainable. You spoke there for five minutes. Actually, we're almost halfway there. So incredibly encouraging.

So thank you to everyone that's got behind the campaign. And if you haven't, please head to Socially Mobile, check out the details and drop one of us a line. And we'd love to get you on board.

PRCA conference: obviously you went about Socially Mobile, what were the headlines from the conference though for you?

Sarah Waddington
Yeah - I have to say conflict of interest, I should declare that I'm on the management board there, but I have nothing to do with the conference. I was very grateful to be given space to talk about Socially Mobile, but I have to say, I thought it was a really well constructed agenda, really interesting, diverse, covered all the pressing topics of the day. I really, really enjoyed it. Obviously I was there to hype the program and press people for cash, but learned heaps and met a number of great people along the way.

First person that I was interested to hear from was Simon Whitehead at Burson about life post-merger and his take on the PR industry of the future. And that was quite interesting because they're obviously grappling with what the business looks like now. And also, how we can push into management teams so that PR is taken more seriously and gets more investment. But he was really good and he talked about how they're looking very much into data management and analysis. They're developing their platforms in creative strategy and direction and doing a lot in emerging tech and looking very much at new publishing platforms, which is worth thinking about and we'll come back onto later when we talk about the Ofcom News Report.

Stephen Waddington
One of the things that Simon discussed and a theme of the conference, if you like, was the march of AI. I spoke on a panel about that and how AI is pushing very much into practice. The industry moving at very different speed though. There's techno enthusiasts who are embracing the opportunity to use AI to help with data analysis, but also starting to use it for content creation…

Sarah Waddington
And then there’s people like me!

 Stephen Waddington
Ha. There's people like you that are waiting until the technology matures and the issues. And there are an awful lot of issues, which was also discussed at the conference, issues related to IP, to data protection, to copyright and to hallucination.

I argue that that gives us as practitioners a very good reason to engage with management around these issues, not only to look at our own practice and our own how our own practice can go through a modernisation process, but also how we can advise organisations on the broader context related to the implications for AI because as sure as night follows day, every organisation is going to have it's AI moment around one of these risk issues and it's a really really important issue for risk planning and foresight.
 Another highlight I guess that came out of the conference though - and this takes us really neatly into the report published by Ofcom on news consumption this week - is the different ways in which consumers are using news and we very firmly reach that crossover point now where online and digital news is consumed more than traditional media, so newsprint and TV.
 
 Sarah Waddington
Yeah, it's fascinating that. Obviously, you've written a blog about that, which we'll share. And it really put me in mind of another one of the speakers at the conference, George Montagu from FT Strategies, and they've got some really interesting insight into what young people want from you is based on some research that they carried out. And they say that the news provision is broken for young people. The people that they've spoken to, that their field of research demonstrates that young people are really desperate for trusted sources, but they're not the sources that people like you and me or the generation above would want. And they're looking for information that's significant to them.

Stephen Waddington
Come on, Sarah, you consume TikTok and Instagram just as much of any of us, right?

Sarah Waddington
Actually, I'm not on TikTok at the moment. I'm still a BBC girl, but it's Radio 1 admittedly, because I like to stick with the youngsters! That's the only way I do that. What was fascinating though is because the report was saying that they wanted trusted sources, information that's personally significant to them, and content in a range of storytelling formats. And I think that's really interesting. So the lesson is that brands need to show up in their spaces. And actually, the other thing that came out, which I thought was fascinating, is they want brands to provide their reporting entity and structure, but actually they don't want them to tell the story, they want that left to creators. So I actually think there's quite a few significant changes in approach that we as an industry need to adopt.

One of the other things I just thought was interesting, because it causes me grief day in, day out, when you consider some of the headlines that you read, like for example, during the recent riots and how that was reported. It heartens me a lot that young people want to understand a brand's motivations and where funding is coming from from their new sources and how that impacts reporting in terms of bias. So for me, that was a moment where there was some interesting insights in there but actually that one makes me feel really good about the fact that all is not lost because the youngsters are looking very carefully about who's saying what and why.

Stephen Waddington (09:04.503)
Yes, that very much reflects the data that came out from Ofcom this week. Well, I mean, we've known for 20 years, right, that there's this shift been taking place with the decline in traditional news sources, newsprint in particular, and the shift to digital. Well, now, Ofcom says we've crossed that threshold. 70 % of people are consuming online platforms versus 71 % for traditional. Hearteningly though, 96 % of UK adults do still consume the news media, which is why it's so important within public relations practice. It's very clearly a primary channel to reach consumers.


Very firmly though, brands and organisations are having to shift to a digital owned and social first and then earned media second often with video and mobile first. You mentioned that point, the really interesting point about how the younger generation, and obviously therein is the future of news and it's how newsrooms are having to modernise to serve that audience around video and mobile. They're very much looking to influencers, but a concern raised within the Ofcom report is influencers are a force for good as you've highlighted, but also very much, and we saw this with the riots in the UK, force of bad. So they can spread misinformation just as much as accurate information.

Sarah Waddington
Actually that's interesting because FT strategies made a distinction between influencers and content creators and actually young people look to famous people, they trust famous people more than influencers which I thought was quite interesting and I would love to delve deeper into that actually in terms of you know we know a lot of self -style influencers though don't we and you do have to apply some constructive thinking to their approaches!

Stephen Waddington
Yeah.

Critical thinking definitely and there's got to be some sort of regulation comes into play for and responsibility and maybe that will be voluntary maybe it will come through following The Online Harms Bill but you know this space does need tightening up.

Ofcom report: there's loads of information in there. As I say, we knew this moment was coming where traditional sources were going to give way to new digital sources. That moment has been passed. There's lots and lots of goodness in that report for practitioners. As I say, we've posted a blog on our website about it and you can go and find that.

I wanted to talk about the CIPR State of the Profession survey. My concern with this is it's the biggest survey we have within practice that reports on practice. 2000 individuals submitted responses to it. The headline from it is that management increasingly or practitioners report, there's the issue, practitioners report that management increasingly recognises the value of public relations and you know, hooray if that's the case, but I'm concerned that practitioners are marking their own homework here because – subhead: the average wage within a practice has fallen to 56,000, that’s 3 ,000 pounds down over the last two years and let's not forget we've had two extremely tough years of high inflation, double digit inflation. So actually the fall in real terms is probably even more.

And also we're working harder than ever. So 37 % of respondents have reported that they've had increased working hours over the last two years. Sorry, over the last 12 months. These two things just don't make sense, right? They don't square up, Sarah?

Sarah Waddington
No, this is such an important piece of work and I love it. So I'm going to start there. I also love the name because it's an important name and it describes what the report is, but I often come to the report and just shout ‘the actual state of it’. So for me, there's a double win. I think it's interesting and think there's further research needed. just, think everybody, we talk a lot about PR and how integral it is to organisational success, you and I, and we talk about the alignment with management and we believe in development of management skills for PR practitioners. We've done it ourselves, I'm a Chartered Director and I think all those things are great and good and it's good to see that there was a big push towards that. I think because of that the responses probably reflect where we would like to be, but we're not there yet. And there's no evidence within that report which says ‘actually it's true’. And as you said, there were some indicators that actually were not being as respected as we should as a profession.

The other thing that I would like to pull out from the State of the Profession report is what relates to our work with Socially Mobile in terms of that one of the findings is that white practitioners are more likely to have investment in their training and more likely not to have training requests turned down. Massive, massive concern. Past reports and others like the PRCA census have shown that PR is becoming a closed profession to those who are white, middle class, wealthy, networked, often male, as you get further up the career food chain. And obviously that's why we started socially mobile as a private intervention to try and change that.

But clearly, the culture change still hasn't taken place. We keep saying, ‘it's going to take a generation’, but I'm not seeing any of the change that's coming fast enough. At the moment, when you read stuff like that, you just kind of think ‘what is going on’. I do think there is an element of a generation of older practitioners, and this is going to be an unpopular thing to say, but need to move out the way, just get out the way and promote from within, from externally, not in the mirror image of them and I think that would do a huge amount to changing things almost immediately. When you talk to our graduates, they're moving into leadership roles and they're building businesses differently. They're recruiting differently. The internal culture is different in terms of, they're really very focused on inclusivity and what that means in terms of making people feel like they belong and taking their teams lead. And I think these are all changes that we talk about ad infinitum but don't really happen in practice. If they do, it's for a small amount of time when then everything shifts back. I would urge everybody to have a look at that, read about it and think about whether there's any truth in that for your own organisation and then what kind of change might be needed.

Stephen Waddington
There was a scepticism in the narrative of the report as well. The report written by Ben Verunger of Chalkstream, who's worked with the CIPL to produce State of the Profession for many, years, where he expressed concern that, again, practitioners mark ing their own homework related to AI, that they didn't necessarily fully understand the context of AI to practice, there was a training gap and a governance gap. So that also is an area clearly where there's concern.

I think if you take a media perspective or a communication perspective of public relations, then there is a lot of cause of concern and that's reflected in this report. I think though, if you take a relationship perspective as we would always suggest and align with management, then much more optimistic and that alignment with management means using data planning and insight tools that management understands, focusing on management and adhering to professional standards in the same way that other management disciplines do. There you go, quick plug for Wadds Inc if you need help in any of those areas, please get in touch with either of us.

You're heading to India, well you're heading to India, we are heading to India, I think I'm carrying your bags right? Next week, we've been invited back to practice,  you to Keynote, next week, what are you going to be talking about?

Sarah Waddington
Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to this. I was so bowled over by the conference last year, obviously, where you were speaking and another of the people that we rate highly. But it's such a wonderful conference, which is huge! And the appetite in India for professional development is just, it blew me away. I absolutely loved it.

This time, it's me speaking and I'm talking about the agency that we all have as PR practitioners and the change that we can make in society and the impact that we can have on the economy. And I think this is really quite interesting. I think people know that I'm a fairly activist. It's kind of built into my character. I can't not do stuff if I see something needs changing. And I obviously want to stand up for people a lot of the time, but this is really about how PR practitioners, think, sometimes, and we as individuals within society, can sometimes feel helpful in the face of big developments. Like we talk about all the turbulence that's happening with politics. We've got the big US election coming down the road. There are different wars going on. There's huge turbulence. And I want people to think about how taking action can help you manage the turbulence in this VUCA world.

So I'll be using Socially Mobile  as of the examples. I'll also be talking about the Asian Communication Network that was set up on the back of the riots and congratulations to Adrita Patel, Ashwini Lele and Farzana Baduel for taking the lead on that. I'll also be talking about people like us because these are all private interventions that have sprung out of people wanting to make change within their society based on what's happening in their communities and neighbourhoods. And I think sometimes as practitioners, we can forget that we can do that for ourselves and make an impact because we're so busy doing it for other third parties, whether that's other people as publicists, whether it's because we work for local government or because we work for other organizations and we're trying to help them achieve their goals. We can also do that and secure the respect and the credibility from the business community and other stakeholders at large. So that's what I'm going to explore and I can't wait!

Stephen Waddington
A brilliant, brilliant event that we're both delighted to have been invited back to, you know, 650, I think, practitioners over two days. Huge, huge enthusiasm, as you suggest, for professional practice. Do you know what? We should record a podcast from there, shouldn't we? Let's do that!

Sarah Waddington
Let's do that. There's going to be so much to talk about. And also it's great just to get the perspectives and enjoy a different culture and also better weather, right?!

Stephen Waddington
what a good place to end. Sarah, it's been good. See you in India!

Sarah Waddington
See you then.