Inside PR
Can you believe it's mid-December and another year is almost done? That can only mean one thing ... it's time for our annual episode where we gaze into the proverbial communications crystal ball ...
info_outline Inside PR 556 (Nov 10, 2021)Inside PR
On this episode of Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Joe Thornley, and Gini Dietrich discuss the importance of protecting your intellectual property, even for new business decks and website verbiage.
info_outline Inside PR 555: Facebook, decaying from the inside?Inside PR
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?
info_outline Inside PR 554: Content Meets the Sound of SilenceInside PR
Have you noticed your brand is no longer getting the type of engagement on organic social media or on your blog? Perhaps the digital world has become even more pay-to-play. Gini, Joe and Martin discuss Rand Fishkind's blog post, ‘The Incentives to Publish No Longer Reward the Web’s Creators‘.
info_outline Inside PR 553: Ethically, Legally, ResponsiblyInside PR
In this episode of Inside PR, we talk about the PR Writer's Code of Conduct and ethical communications. An evergreen topic.
info_outline Inside PR 552: Imagining Your New WorkspaceInside PR
Are you ready to go back to the office or would you prefer to work remotely or in some type of hybrid situation?
info_outline Inside PR 549: When PR People Do Bad ThingsInside PR
This week's podcast is based on a Washington Post story about a site that bills itself as an investigative blog. Turns out, it has financial ties to a PR firm and seems to focus on stories where the agency's clients have a vested interest.
info_outline Inside PR 548 (Jun 16, 2021)Inside PR
Gini, Martin and Joe talk about mistakes that employers are making in the post-lockdown period. Success in bringing employees back to the office will turn on effective communications. And effective communications starts with listening, understanding others' interests and objectives. And then speaking to their concerns, not just blustering forward with what you want and care about.
info_outline We Are Back - IPR 546Inside PR
We're happy to report that after a hiatus of around 20 months and all the things that have happened between then and now, Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley and I are back recording Inside PR.
info_outline Autumn Intent - IPR 545Inside PR
Yes, it's been a long time coming, a long time behind episodes. But we're back with Inside PR for another year. And we're getting back into the groove by discussing the things that we are looking at in the waning months of 2019.
info_outlineIn late January, Facebook launched a PR initiative that, on its face, appeared intended to reframe in 2019 the issues that got away from them in 2018, AKA Facebook's privacy offences that dominated the year since the Cambridge Analytica scandal became public. This week on Inside PR, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about this first phase of what by late February was unmistakably a concerted effort by Facebook to reframe the issues swirling around it.
Martin doesn't buy Facebook's argument that we are getting Facebook's service for free? Not for a second. We're paying -- and the currency is our data. Gini argues that we are the product when it comes to social media. However, she accepts Facebook's argument that they are not selling our data. Instead, she focuses on the need for each of us to make our own calculation about whether what we receive is a fair exchange for our attention and what Facebook learns about us. And Joe? Well he's not buying Facebook's arguments that they don't sell our data. They do sell the intelligence and insight that comes from possessing our data. And, as far as he's concerned that makes them "Data Launderers," the digital equivalent of money launderers.
Martin picks up on this and says that we can see Facebook as not necessarily selling the data, but being the agent by which our data is used and obtains the value of using it. And they can do this because they are so big. Perhaps too big. And, says Martin, all you have to do is look at what Facebook is doing with WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram -- rolling up the data each has about us. Different data from what we view as different platforms gives them an even more granular portrait of us that they can draw on to the benefit of advertisers. What of the trust we established with these platforms when they gave us the reassurance of remaining discrete and protecting us from being rolled into an even bigger data bank?
Gini brings it back to a pragmatic reality. Facebook has become so effective, so pervasive, so dominant, can an advertiser ignore them? And that leads us to accept their assertions of good intent.
Linkworthy
- Understanding Facebook's Business Model, Mark Zuckerberg
- What Kind of Internet Do We Want?, Sheryl Sandberg
- A Discussion with Nick Clegg
- The Facts About Facebook (paywall), Mark Zuckerberg
- An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor, book review by Tom Bissell
- The Digital Winter Turns Apocalyptic, Alex Pareene