Reputation

For Immediate Release 100: Locked and Loaded

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, Ethics, For Immediate Release, Marketing, Politics, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media, Social Networks, Society, Technology, Trends, Web
Using Twitter

In the August episode of The Hobson & Holtz Report, Shel and I talked about these topics: The Society for New Communications Research has launched an initiative to assess options for the communications industry to address fake news. An artificial intelligence bot can detect plagiarism (85% of the time). Supporters of US President Donald Trump are amplifying their tweets through a little-known Twitter feature that lets you create and name a Direct Message group. And let’s talk about that twice-daily folder the president gets filled with only positive coverage about him. Agencies are cropping up that focus exclusively on Generation Z. The Westin hotel in Buffalo, NY, is putting an Amazon Echo in every room. Ask Alexa for a toothbrush […]

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SNCR research initiative sets out to find solutions to address fake news

Neville Hobson 3 Comments Advertising, Business, Communication, Journalism, Marketing, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media, Society, Technology, Trends, Web
Truth

Hardly a day goes by without the topic of fake news becoming a news headline itself especially when it concerns Donald Trump. For most people, fake news is largely seen as a driver of distrust about what you read, see and hear online as well as a creator of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the sources that publish it. Earlier this year Tim Berners-Lee said that misinformation – or ‘fake news’ which is surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases – can spread like wildfire. And it does. For the past six months and more, it’s a topic that has been an ongoing primary discussion theme in the Small Data Forum podcast I co-host each month with Thomas […]

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For Immediate Release 96: The crisis that keeps on giving

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, Employee Communication, For Immediate Release, Marketing, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media, Social Networks, Technology, Trends, Workplace

In the July installment of The Hobson & Holtz Report, Shel and I talked about these topics: A 15-year-old participating in a work experience program took over the Twitter account of the beleaguered Southern Rail in the UK. The response to #AskEddie was undoubtedly a welcome break for Southern Rail’s social media team, but what did it ultimately accomplish? The online publication Quartz experiments with display-type ads in the text of stories that let users ask an artificial intelligence-based chatbot named Hugo for more information about just the stuff you’re interested in. Will artificial intelligence eventually take over the creative side of content marketing? Takata’s air bag crisis is in its second decade, leading ultimately to the once-mighty company’s bankruptcy. […]

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How to get the media on board to end AVE

Neville Hobson 1 Comment Advertising, Business, Communication, Ethics, Journalism, Leadership, Marketing, Professional Development, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media, Trends
Fearless Girl

One of the hurdles along the road of seeing an end to the “advertising value equivalence” (AVE) measurement metric that’s decried by many in the PR and measurement communities is persuading organisations to stop using it. The issue with AVE is well summarised in a white paper published by The Institute for Public Relations in 2003, in which this succinct text appears: We urge you to move away as quickly as possible from statements of the nature, “Our news coverage this quarter was worth $X million in advertising.” Instead, talk about how you achieved your prominence goal, how your coverage gained in prominence over the year, or how you beat out your competitors in terms of the prominence of your […]

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The big asks of British Airways

Neville Hobson 1 Comment Business, Communication, Public Relations, Reputation, Technology, Travel
British Airways Dreamliner

It’s hard to know what to fully make of the dreadful mess in which British Airways finds itself today. It follows over three full days of massive disruption to the airline’s business that has resulted in wide scale flight cancellations around the world, huge queues at terminals at the UK’s major airports and many in other countries, and a severe hit on reputation and trust that could cost BA dearly. According to BA, a computer systems failure led to all this. It was caused by a power outage at a data centre near Heathrow airport in London on Saturday May 27, they said. That event knocked out all the airline’s means of managing flights, aircraft movements, passenger bookings, check-ins, baggage […]

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