Davos - PR, puppies and penguins

Now I've got your attention with a cute puppy photo and penguins in the headline (you've got to read on to find out why), I want to talk to you about IRL. In Real Life is back! In the last two weeks I've attended, not just one in real life conference, but three! Conferences are now just like buses and they all come at once.

The first was the DataComms Conference where I was one of the speakers. I was there with Tim Bailey, my Purposeful Relations co-founder. It was a fantastic conference (well done Andrew Thomas and the Communicate magazine team). We both got a buzz out of being in the same room as people again, after so long spent in Hopin, Airmeet, Zoom and Teams. I won't ramble on about it here, as I've written a blog post about the DataComms Conference.

Last week I did two conferences in two days. The first was the Guild Community Summit in London, then dashing back to Leeds for the CIPR Volunteer Conference the next day.

Professional communities are BIG!

I was already really excited about the potential of professional communities, and then I attended the amazing Guild Community Summit (well done Michelle Goodall and Ashley Friedlein) with Tim Bailey. We were both blown away by some of the fantastic case studies and can't wait to get working with more clients to help them to create and build their own communities. I've written a (long read) summary of the Guild Community Summit on my blog.

The popular trope is of PR being non-stop parties. The reality is the PR industry is often late to the party and largely missed out on the potential of social media and SEO. PR shouldn't miss out on the opportunities in professional communities where our expertise in people and relationships makes us perfectly placed to provide every aspect of community management services including strategy, engagement, content, moderation, technology and measurement.

Do you want to join our community?

Earlier this year, we launched our own professional community on Guild. It's free to join, but is a closed community with membership restricted to senior in-house professionals responsible for public relations, communications or corporate affairs. We already have nearly 100 members from more than 20 countries. We've got members who work for Bayer, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge University, Coca-Cola, Deepmind, DHL, Fast Retailing, HM Revenue and Customs, Honeywell, Jaguar Land Rover, McKinsey & Company, Ofcom, Ofwat, RingCentral, Royal Caribbean, Siemens, Swissport, Tata Steel, University of Southern California and many more.

The picture of cute penguins is meant to get your attention and encourage you to join our community of senior in-house PR and communications leaders. Get in touch with me if you think you're eligible to join.

It's World Economic Forum time again when the great, the good and the unspeakable meet in Davos

Well I'm not in Davos for the World Economic Forum, but I have been several times for the World Communication Forum. In 2015, I was the moderator of the main World Communication Forum in Davos, and I've also spoken at WCF summits in Moscow (won't be doing that again anytime soon), Kyiv (can't wait to do that again as soon as possible) and Prague. That's why I'm delighted to have just been elected to the global Executive Committee of the World Communication Forum Association (WCFA).

The WCFA has been formally re-registered in Davos and relaunched with some exciting and ambitious ideas for global expansion of members and activities. If you want to know more about how you can get involved, then please get in touch. Hopefully, later this year or next year we'll be back in Davos with another amazing in real life summit.

We can't go to Davos, so join our free online summit

Until then, we've got the Davos Online Communications Summit on Tuesday 7 June. It's free to attend and speakers include: Francis Ingham (ICCO chief executive and PRCA director general); Maxim Behar (president of WCFA and M3 Communications); Arun Sudhaman (editor-in-chief and CEO of PRovoke Media), Aaron Kwittken (founder and CEO of PRophet, and chair of KWT Global); Saurabh Uboweja (MD of BOD Consulting in India); and me (sorry if you've had enough of me!)

Do you subscribe to PR Futurist?

What? Of course, you do if you're reading this. Well, actually, no, this is my personal LinkedIn newsletter which is an irregular four to six week round-up of stuff. The main PR Futurist newsletter is published every fortnight and is an unmissable (it really is!) curation (with snarky, informed commentary) of what we think is the most interesting news and research impacting the future of PR, communications and corporate affairs. You can subscribe to PR Futurist by email or by RSS (remember that?) if you prefer to read it in a news app.

• If you're not subscribed then you've missed some humdingers of stories. Some of the most clicked were 30 crazy social media facts marketers need to know, Gartner research on the growing influence of CCOs on the C-Suite, global PR heads predict measurement and analytics technology will have the greatest impact on the PR and communication industry's future (we can help you with that!), and our own Purposeful Relations article on understanding regression analysis for PR and communications data yes, really! It's exciting reading... well maybe not exciting, but certainly very informative.

Worried about issues and crises?

I've always done lots of crisis communications and issues management, but over the last four to five years there has been a huge increase in demand from my clients and from referrals. The main things I do are running crisis communications training (for both PR/comms professionals and for CEOs and the C-Suite), reputational risk assessment and crisis communications planning, and providing practical support during a crisis.

My most successful blog post of the last couple of years was a few weeks ago when I did a 'hot take' on P&O Ferries sacking its entire workforce. Many of you might already have read it because both the original blog post, Crisis communications lessons from P&O Ferries, and the LinkedIn post both got lots of attention. It resulted in a BBC interview, which created even more attention.

I also recently recorded a webinar for the PRCA (Public Relations and Communications Association) on Crisis Communications in Sport. Mine is the second part after Katy Markham and starts at about 27 minutes.

What do I actually do?

I sometimes ask myself that, so it's little wonder that friends, colleagues and acquaintances sometimes aren't sure what I do and how I might be able to work with them. I've actually missed out on working with people as they didn't realise that's what I do, or that I might have capacity to help. The fastest way to find out if we can work together is simply ask. If I can't help then I can usually (always?) recommend someone I trust who can help.

I've refreshed my websites to try to make it easier for people to understand what I do and how I might be able to help them. Let me know if you've got any questions... or if you want to have a chat about working together.

Personal website

My new personal website is stuartbruce.info with links to my two businesses, my blog and a round-up of all the places you can find me on the internet - Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, newsletters, podcasts and my new favourite, TikTok and my least favourite - Instagram.

Book a PowerHour

It's also where you can book a PowerHour - a one-hour one-to-one video call to help you with your professional challenges. Use your PowerHour to discuss an urgent or challenging issue, brainstorm ideas, prepare for a meeting with the board, or simply have a private and confidential conversation where you can receive expert advice and counsel. It's something that has been successful on an ad-hoc basis previously, so I've now launched it as a new service.

Crisis communications and reputation management

The Stuart Bruce Associates company website now focuses more on reputation management and crisis communications.

Digital transformation for communications

The Purposeful Relations company website provides information on CommsTransform™, our digital transformation platform for in-house communications teams and PR agencies.

My PR blog

I've been publishing my stuartbruce.biz public relations blog since 2003. It was one of the first 10 PR blogs in the world and one of the few to still going. It's had several platforms moves over that time and lots of different 'looks'. I've recently refreshed it. Let me know what you think.

That's all folks!

That's all folks. As usual please don't hesitate to get in touch if you're interested in a quick chat about how I can help you with consultancy or training.