Self care is the practice of taking an active role in preserving and protecting one’s own personal wellbeing and happiness.
Established in 2011, International Self Care Day was introduced to raise awareness of the benefits of self care, and to exhibit it as a cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle. Interestingly, the date, 24th July, was chosen specifically to remind people that self care can be practiced “24 hours a day, 7 days a week”.
Our wellbeing team, Winning Minds Matter, have been speaking to people across the agency to ask what self care practices they engage with in order to ensure that their mental and physical wellbeing is cared for. Here’s a selection of their responses.
Hannah’s Tomato Time
“Self-care for me means looking after my tomatoes. Planted from wee little seeds and now 36 strong plants. I love the time away from screens to be with my plants and clear my head.”
Finn’s Cooking Up A (Calm) Storm
“Cooking is the main thing I do to unwind, especially after a long day at work. It’s a bit like meditating for me, I leave my phone in another room and put some tunes on. Plus you get something delicious at the end, which is another win!”
Fi’s Veggie Empire
“The veggie life is the best way I can take care of myself. Putting my time and energy into all of my veggies (potatoes, courgettes, apples, raspberries and more!) really looks after my mental energy.”
Em’s Escapist Reads
“The best self care in the world for me is to get away to a quiet bit of nature, where almost no one is around, and lay in the sunshine with a book. Preferably a fantasy novel, so you can really double down on escapism. It’s just so peaceful to be alone with the birds tweeting and the grass beneath your fingers and just have some time to leave the world behind.”
Ibby’s Sound Baths
“After yoga classes, I like to go to a sound bath, which is a bath that does not involve water! It’s a restorative practice, where various sounds, like singing bowls, wash over you and help calm your mind.”
Exercising with Bella
“Honestly going swimming or for a run is my self care. I love it because it gives me time to be away from my phone or any screens really, and just focus on the activity. It’s great for mindfulness or sorting through your thoughts.”
Charlotte’s Cross Stitch
“It’s extremely easy to pick up, and since it requires so much concentration it’s actually very meditative. Plus you can find so many fun patterns online now – it’s a fun way to express yourself (And sometimes it’s just cathartic to stab something 1000 times).”
An overwhelming show of hands closed out our AI event. Host Martin Veitch had asked the room of assembled B2B marketers to raise them if they had started to introduce generative AI tools at work. When he asked the opposite – if anyone was planning on steering clear – all hands remained in laps.
Clearly, AI is more than just a news story. Unlike the Metaverse, tech’s last big ‘disruptor’, AI is actually in use, now, by real people doing real work. Its adoption is only going to accelerate, but brands aren’t uniformly confident about how to proceed.
As more AI tools are launched, and campaigns like WWF’s AI-generated Future of Nature make headlines, B2B brands are left wondering what they should be doing, what they need to know, and what pitfalls they need to avoid.
Unlimited B2B hosted an event to discuss just that. Our panel was composed of UNLIMITED’s technical director Tom Wilks, the antagonist speaking on behalf of the robots, while neuroscientist Dr Cristina de Balanzo from the Human Understanding Lab argued for the ongoing benefits of the human touch. They were joined by Susi O’Neill from Kaspersky, and Cristina Tudorascu from Canon Europe, in a panel moderated by acclaimed tech journalist Martin Veitch.
The fast-paced discussion lasted for an hour and a half, and generated lively interactions from the gathered B2B professionals. For those who couldn’t make it, or those who want to reminisce, here are five of the key takeaways:
Brands Have Started Experimenting
Along with contributions from several attendees on the floor – who are already using SEO-driven content for websites, and adopting tools like Copilot for Microsoft Office 365 – we heard from panellists about the progress they’ve made so far in implementing AI tools.
“When it comes to content creation at Canon Europe, we have already started to incorporate AI technology as part of our content journey,” said Cristina Tudorascu. She spoke about how the company has introduced both a translation AI tool, and a voice-to-text generator to capture insights from SMEs in the business.
Neither, she pointed out, are perfect. “The system is still struggling with some elements that are quite important for us – like people’s names, product names – and there is a little bit of difficulty around different accents.”
These initial struggles aren’t putting them off from expanding their AI toolkit, though.“We understand that this is only a little bit of AI technology that we’re currently using, but this is the first step – and we’re looking forward to understanding even more, and making these tools work for us even better.”
The Compliance Question is Looming
One term, in particular, seemed to haunt the discussion: compliance. Never mind what AI can do – how useful is it? What can brands actually, legally, use it for? How does copyright work? What do lawsuits like those being waged by Getty Images against Stability AI, and Sarah Silverman against OpenAI mean for the use of AI in branded materials? Is there any such thing as brand safety with generation AI?
“Technology is moving much faster than regulation,” said Susi O’Neill. “It’s a totally grey area.”
Brands have to balance the potential risk against the possible reward. She went on to add that, “right now, if you’re using generative AI, even if you’re taking those images and manipulating them, changing them, you don’t own the copyright on that. So it’s about where you are on your journey.”
And this ‘risk versus reward’ debate looks very different for businesses of different sizes – especially given the limitations of AI creativity. “I don’t want to feed out a content mine of a trillion different formulaic pieces of information that have already been covered. For me, generative AI isn’t going to generate anything new that’s worthy of an award.”
“If you need to scale, and you don’t have very much legal risk – say you’re a start-up, or you work with very niche audiences – maybe it’s fine to go ahead. But if you’re a big corporate, you’re taking on a lot of legal risks. Now is maybe not the right time.”
Collaboration is Key
Good news for creatives – most attendees were in agreement that while AI is likely to be useful for undertaking menial tasks (like transcribing event recordings, for example), it can’t generate truly creative ideas. At least – not yet.
What it does have is “66 billion different data points, able to be retrieved within seconds.” Tom Wilks pointed out how AI “can democratise access to technology. You don’t have to figure out the best way to search any more, you type the question however you want it – and you’ll still get the information back.”
Finding the right question, or prompt, is likely to become an incredibly valuable skill, and one developed entirely in response to the rise of AI tools: prompt engineering. Dr Cristina de Balanzo spoke about the importance of human insight to this role, and explained how “the power of context will massively influence decision-making.” The context within which a question is asked is vital to getting the correct answer. This, she explained, is something AI tools – which function “more like a two-and-a-half year old” – don’t have.
What they can do, however, is provide a starting point. Susi O’Neill explained, “If you’re a business and you can’t hire the best talent, say you don’t have the best budgets, can you use prompt engineering to get to certain styles with the right kind of training? Yes – but you still need that human edge. You still need those senior writers and creatives to twist things and say ‘that word isn’t quite right’, or ‘that doesn’t sit well in the advert’, ‘that works in one language, but in another is not quite edgy enough’.”
“It’s about using the tools that are out there when we have gaps in resourcing or can’t hire the best people to get us a bit further along.”
If that thought still fills you with dread – you’re not alone. Our resistance to fully embracing AI isn’t particularly unexpected, according to Dr Cristina de Balanzo. “Human beings are very resistant to change, because it’s physiologically painful – but if machines can do the jobs that we don’t want to do, they can make life better,” she explained.
Beware the ‘Brain Drain’
Working together with AI to check its work and build on its foundations seemed a popular approach amongst attendees, who largely agreed that AI could be put to good use in creating first-draft content, or providing a starting point for a human to then adapt, edit and improve.
But Susi O’Neill warned that, if we allow AI to take the position of entry-level creatives, the industry could soon find itself with a lot of high-level workers and nobody rising up to replace them.
She explained, “You need junior writers to learn from the seniors, and be able to build up their craft. When I see some of the first passes of ChatGPT, it reminds me of the junior writers I’ve worked with. It’s no worse – but it’s also no better. We still need people to come into our industries who are going to learn crafts and learn how to improve. But potentially, some of those roles are the ones which may be made redundant.”
AI is Only Young
Given the vast impact AI has already had on the market, you might be forgiven for forgetting that it’s still a young technology. Every day, new tools are released, and those that exist become smarter and smarter.
According to Tom Wilks, we haven’t even started to touch on the full range of AI’s capabilities. Soon, he said, AI will even learn to mimic human creativity – which he was confident will happen “probably quicker than most people expect it to. In some creative mediums, we’re already pretty close to being there.”
“The scale and the scope of what we are on the cusp of being able to achieve is unlike anything we’ve been able to see before,” he said. “We have to be open to the point that we may not be the top intelligence on the planet in some of these areas for much longer.”
One thing that all of the experts could agree on was the fact that AI is here to stay – and it’s us humans who’ll have to adapt to deal with it. But whether that’s by creating and implementing robust data protection and copyright policies, or via the creation of entirely new roles (such as prompt engineering), the road to embracing AI will be far from smooth and straightforward.
And it’s only just begun. Martin kicked off our session by reminding attendees that ChatGPT has only been live since November 2022. In just shy of eight months, it has already upended the way many B2B brands think about content creation.
What developments could the next eight months see?
To derive the most value from an AI-powered future, B2B brands must establish clear guidelines for when, and how, to use AI tools – and when to revert back to the human element.
Meet Callan, the latest to scoop the prestigious Winning Minds Award (alongside Ibby). Callan’s been a Bostocker for a year and a half now, during which time he’s demonstrated some incredible examples of news hijacking, and landed his clients in the nationals. He’s definitely a Winning Mind!
Why did you pick a career in PR and Communications?
I fell into PR by chance whilst studying Media and Communication at university. After completing several modules learning about the TV industry, I decided I wanted a change and to try something new. After weighing up my options I thought PR sounded interesting and decided to give it a go and the rest is history.
What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you?
Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.
Tell us a bit more about your interests – how would you spend an ideal Saturday afternoon?
My ideal Saturday afternoon would most likely consist of getting out of the house, catching up with friends, exploring new places, trying new and exciting food, or taking my dog on a long walk around the countryside – stopping at a pub or two on the way.
And what are your hobbies?
I have quite a few, I’m really into music and love going to gigs and festivals whenever I get the chance. I also really enjoy painting, cooking and going to the pub – if that counts.
What’s one thing that people should know about you?
I’m a pretty good cook.
What’s one thing that would surprise people about you?
I actually used to row when I was at uni – although it has been a while since I’ve actually been in a boat.
What makes you a Winning Mind?
It was a surprise to win to be honest. But I try to show proactivity on my accounts, looking for other opportunities to achieve coverage for my clients.
Any advice for future Winning Minds contenders?
It’s so easy to get lost in your day-to-day work but taking a step back to keep up to date with the news and the world around you, might just open you up to more opportunities to deliver excellent results for your clients.
Today, we’ve launched Unlimited B2B – a new integrated agency partnership, designed to deliver a complete buyer experience across PR, comms and marketing.
In the new world of communication, the need for all organisations to portray themselves in a consistent manner has never been more important. That means integrating skillsets across strategy, creative, marketing, PR and social media. And when you’re working with multiple separate agencies that don’t talk to each other, that’s extremely hard to do.
Which is why we’ve teamed up with TMW Business – the leading B2B marketers within UNLIMITED, to create Unlimited B2B. We provide our passion for communication and storytelling; they bring marketing creativity and strategy. The result? The complete package for you; Human Understanding, Storytelling and Content Experience, all with the aim of helping B2B buyers to buy.
It’s important to know that this isn’t a rebrand for Nelson Bostock. Our Winning Minds will continue to be here, in their current form. Instead, Unlimited B2B is an overarching agency. We’ve always been brilliant at building brand and belief for our clients – now we can go even further in building business too.
And as always, everything we do will be underpinned by the Human Understanding Lab’s insights, so you can be sure there’s evidence-based science at the heart of your campaigns.
We’re excited to get started with our new colleagues and we hope you are too!
Trans activist Rio Amani opened a seminar I attended on Trans Allyship in the workplace with this impactful statement. Whilst it may sound like a bleak start to a blog about Pride, our current social climate has shown us that, even 53 years after the first march, Pride still has an important role to play.
For the fourth year running, the UK has fallen down ILGA – Europe’s rainbow ranking, which ranks European countries on the basis of their legal and political situation for LGBTQ+ people. Moving from 10th in 2021, to 14th in 2022 and sitting at 17th for 2023, this ranking is a bleak reminder of the difficult realities of being LGBTQIA+ right now.
As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I’ve found the recent years increasingly tough. Look at the news most days, and you’ll see stories about shrinking rights and people facing discrimination, abuse, and even death. It’s upsetting for anyone – but for many of us, it’s our life.
It’s also why vocal support matters so much.
In light of this, our DEI committee asked the question, “What can we do to make sure we continue to show support beyond Pride month?” We have a Belonging Commitment that ensures we create a safe space for every employee, client and partner, but we know it’s a constant evolution. To learn more about how we could do better, we attended WorkPride, a global Pride event which focuses on how companies can help the LGBTQIA+ community be safe in the workplace.
Education is integral
One of the key takeaways from this event was how integral education is for inclusion. This can come in many forms, such as engaging with educational and inclusive tv programmes, bringing in speakers, reading books, and more. Education is one of our Belonging Commitment pillars – our Book Club has just read ‘We Have Always Been Here’ by Samra Habib, a memoir which discusses the author’s experience of being a queer muslim. As well as that, our Film Club watched Pride!, which looks at when the queer and mining communities joined forces to protest against laws brought in by Margaret Thatcher. We come together to talk about the themes, our takeaways and what we’ve learnt.
It’s a good starting point, but the modules from WorkPride gave us more specific ways that we can actively encourage education in the workplace.
The first was an elearning module which tracks how far along employees are in their allyship journey, with categories ranging from ‘learner’ to ‘activist’. The second focused on reverse mentoring, with the aim of encouraging education around LGBTQIA+ issues by pairing senior members of staff with more junior members, usually from the LGBTQIA+ community, or another minority group.
The aim of reverse mentoring is to break down workplace hierarchies by allowing the senior staff member to be in the position of learning. This vulnerability and openness helps create a safe space where the needs of a minority community can be heard by someone who holds the power to implement change – an important step in creating true inclusive leadership. It’s given us real food for thought, and we’re going to explore how we might bring a reverse mentoring programme to our agency.
The importance of allyship
Whilst these modules usefully demonstrated how we can ensure our workplace is more inclusive, it was the modules on allyship that really stayed with us. One, on trans allyship, opened with a remembrance of the trans lives that have been lost to anti-trans violence this year. It was a sobering memorial that reminded us of the terrifying realities that this community faces every day
It may have begun on a serious note, but the session was a crash course on how to become an active ally with a memorable acronym:
Acknowledge Recognise that every community faces different struggles – and the only way to truly understand is to listen to them.
Learn Take this opportunity to educate yourself – there is so much information out there in many different forms – books, music, film, podcasts, the list goes on.
Level Up Leveling up is about evening social inequity. Raise up those from communities that have been disproportionately affected by discrimination to give them opportunities that they otherwise may have been excluded from.
whY This is a chance to reflect – what did you learn by being an ally, whether this be through education, speaking out or otherwise. Did this benefit the community? If it didn’t, that’s okay. All you have to do is learn from this experience and try again.
We were left with a quote that struck a chord with all attendees:
“If you’re not standing close enough to a marginalized group to be hit by the rocks thrown at them, you are not standing close enough”.
We felt that this quote rang true for what allyship is all about. It’s about standing together and using your shields to protect those without any – especially important when those people are under attack.
Typically, during Pride Month, corporations throw up a rainbow logo, and call themselves allies. This ‘rainbow washing’ ignores the realities that members of the LGBTQIA+ community still face today. Nelson Bostock has committed to being better. As a company, we recognise that we are not perfect, but we are committed to continual improvement, and will try as hard as we can to support all of our staff – even when the rainbow logos come down.
We’re an agency driven by a passion for new technology and we’re used to staying on top of cutting-edge tech innovations, so it takes a lot to make us step back and have a truly ‘wow’ moment.
But that happened this week with the launch of the Apple Vision Pro headset at the company’s WWDC event.
Rumours have been circulating for a very long time that Apple would enter the mixed reality space, and so expectation was high. After all, we’re used to Apple breaking the mould, selling us products we don’t yet know we need, but that have the potential to totally shake-up not only how we engage with technology and consume content, but also how we live.
This felt like the next big shift.
In the run-up, it felt like we’d been here before. At NB, we worked with HTC in the lead-up to the launch of the Vive headset and were involved in arranging hands-on demonstrations for journalists. I remember being totally wowed by the experience and with all the content available around the launch.
Coming eye-to-eye with an enormous blue whale as it swims past in an ‘under the sea’ experience is something that sticks with you.
I’ve personally dabbled a little more in VR at home. Earlier this year, my family and I had our first look at our new kitchen through a VR headset in the showroom. My 5-year-old daughter had the chance to see how it would look and walked around the virtual space before we agreed to the final design. It helped her to get excited that all the disruption would be worth it. She now asks when we can go back and do it all again (we can’t!).
Apple’s Vision Pro goes way beyond that experience. Even in the kitchen showroom that day, we still risked walking into walls or desks if we didn’t heed the warning that we were stepping out of the defined area quickly enough. I’ve heard personal stories of friends’ kids nearly taking their grandparents out at Christmas because a boxing game got a little too close for comfort. (Thankfully no grandparents were seriously hurt in the encounter.)
At WWDC, Apple showed us how their approach is different. It takes into account that there’s currently an invisible barrier where the real and digital worlds collide, and so has been developed to look at the experience as a whole.
Spatial computing, they say, aims to provide a seamless experience which bridges both worlds, and so avoids some of the pitfalls with the current technology.
While the concept of engaging with someone (even one who can see your eyes) through a headset has received mixed feedback so far, it’s exciting to see that Apple has tried to push the mixed reality category beyond some of its current limitations.
It’s clear that a lot of work by developers, content creators and Apple’s marketing machine will need to happen now to create the breadth and depth of experience needed to excite consumer appetite and give this technology real use-cases. We’ll certainly be watching with interest to see what else emerges in the realm of spatial computing.
The official theme for 2023 is “Strength in Solidarity” – inviting us all to celebrate not only the power and resilience of the LGBTQIA+ community, but also the incredible positive change that can be made by uniting together.
In a world where platforms of hatred and violence are upheld and often even celebrated, Pride seeks to illuminate the good that can, and has been, accomplished by those uplifting and supporting one another.
With this in mind, our DEI committee asked our colleagues to name and celebrate the voices of LGBTQIA+ people who have inspired them, highlighting the ‘queeroes’ who have impacted our lives…
My ‘queero’ is probably novelist Sarah Waters, whose works often feature lesbian protagonists/storylines (Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith, etc.). She’s an amazing writer who brings queer love stories to the masses.
Marsha P. Johnson was one of the most influential figures in the Stonewall uprising[HM1] that transformed the queer liberation movement in the twentieth century. That ‘riot’ is also sometimes cited as ‘the first pride’, since the marches take place every year in June to mark the anniversary. In short, without Marsha, there would be no pride! She is definitely a queero.
Poet & activist Audre Lorde (1934-1992) dedicated her life to challenging racism, sexism, and homophobia – describing herself as a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” I remember reading “Sister Outsider” when I was in university, and it had a dramatic impact on me – particularly her radical self-acceptance (which felt totally alien), and her commitment to intersectional activism. Throughout her life, she inspired generations to fight against all forms of oppression, reminding us that, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” She is one of the 50 pioneers inducted on the National LGBTQ+ Wall of Honour within the Stonewall National Monument.
Samo is an artist from Southsea. I met Samo years ago when he ran PlayDead studio, a gallery space used to raise the profile of local and emerging artists. Playdead sadly closed during the pandemic, so Samo now uses art and activism to educate and celebrate trans lives. He also uses his Instagram to tell his personal, frank and moving experience of gender transition.
Tom Daley has been a leading light for the LGBTQ+ community in the sports sector. Recently, Tom released a documentary called ‘Illegal To Be Me’, in which Tom took a journey to some of the Commonwealth’s most homophobic countries to ask what the sporting world can do to help. The film culminates with Tom taking a very public stand at this year’s opening ceremony, in a powerful statement against homophobia. Tom has provided a manifesto to the Commonwealth Games Federation, written with contributions from LGBT+ people across the Commonwealth, to create meaningful, long-lasting change that ensures major sporting competitions are open to, and safe for, everyone.
Magnus Hirschfield was a German sexologist and an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ+ rights during the Nazi era. He is best known for his subsequent theory of sexual intermediaries, which held that there were many types of naturally occurring sexual variations found across the human population, such as hermaphroditism, homosexuality, and transvestism. In 1897 Hirschfeld established the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee with Max Spohr, Franz Josef von Bülow, and Eduard Oberg; it was the world’s first gay rights organisation. Its main goal was to fight for the abolishment of Paragraph 175 of the German Imperial Penal Code, which punished sexual contact between men. In 1919 Hirschfeld opened the first sexology institute in the world, the Institute for Sexual Science, in Berlin; the institute and the considerable holdings of its library and archives were destroyed by Nazi demonstrators in 1933. In 1934 he fled to Switzerland with the remains of his archive and the queer family he formed at his Institute.
Today, the LGBTQ+ victims of the Nazi regime are remembered by the Pink Triangle symbol. The pink triangle was originally sewn onto the shirts of LGBTQ+ people to identify and further dehumanise them. However, in the 1970s, activists reclaimed the symbol as one of liberation.
Jessica is a YouTuber and online influencer who (in her own words): adds “vintage lesbian fabulousness to a life with disabilities and chronic illnesses.” Her content is educational and uplifting, with some regular series (like ‘Queer History 101’) delving deeper into certain terms, historical moments, and notable figures.
Ocean is a poet & novelist who won the T. S. Eliot prize in 2017. He writes about his experience of life as a gay refugee in America – but also about relationships, and what it’s like to lose your mother, or survive a war. Reading his work is like listening to a friend who really gets you – I recommend everyone going through a tough time reads ‘Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong’!
‘Winning Minds’ is Nelson Bostock’s company ethos. It guides us to deliver the best work we can for our clients. It means we are bold and ambitious, experiment with different tactics, and explore diverse and new ideas.
It helps shape our agency culture, so we can all be the best we can be. It means we focus on training and coaching so our people can learn and develop new skills. It gives us a North Star to come back to when celebrating successes.
It also means we prioritise mental well-being. Our team of Winning Minds are smart, creative, collaborative, and emotionally intelligent people. And their Winning Minds matter to us. So much so, we’ve got a working group – appropriately named Winning Minds Matter – dedicated to ensuring we continue to prioritise well-being at work. The team is made up of people from across the agency, in different disciplines and levels of seniority.
Ahead of Mental Health Awareness Week(MHAW), I asked the group how we should honour it this year. Set up by the Mental Health Foundation, MHAW takes place every May to encourage people to think about mental health, tackle stigma, and find ways to protect our mental well-being.
In 2021, the theme was nature, so we ran a photography competition to get our people enjoying outside spaces. Last year, we switched to the written word and created a poetry e-zine against the theme of loneliness.
This year the theme is anxiety, something that impacts millions of people in the UK every year, yet still holds a huge amount of stigma. We brainstormed as a team what we might do to increase people’s awareness and understanding of the topic.
There are lots of studies that identify a connection between colouring and relieving anxiety. So we took a bit of time out of our week to create a collage which will now sit proudly in our office as a reminder of the importance of prioritising mental health. We also held a quiz which raised money for Mind so others can get the help they need.
But perhaps even more important was our #AnxietyStories initiative.
Through opening up the conversation, we quickly realised how many of us have experienced anxiety, in different forms, in our lives.
So this week, some brave people across our business have been sharing their stories of living with anxiety. The aim was to break down barriers, trade coping mechanisms, and create a safe space where we can be honest and open with each other.
The impact has been far greater than we had expected. It’s not only raised awareness of a mental health issue, but also brought us closer together as a team.
I’m proud of the individuals who have shared their experiences, and proud to work in a business that cultivates a culture of belonging all year round.
After all, Winning Minds matter, this week and every week.
In recent months we’ve watched ChatGPT bring artificial intelligence into public consciousness, seen the biggest tech companies making widespread layoffs and witnessed the rise of health tech. It’s easy to feel that we’re living in an age where we’ve already achieved ultimate digital literacy. But the truth is, technology is evolving beyond our imaginations, and we have to strike the balance between keeping up with the opportunities presented by tech, and keeping mindful of the implications and risks too.
A few of our team members were lucky enough to attend TMW x BIMA’s breakfast event (you read that right – that’s our friends over at TMW Unlimited!) to recap their experience at South by Southwest back in March. South by Southwest is a music, film and technology festival held in Austin, Texas, each spring, bringing over 300,000 people to the state’s capital to celebrate all things tech, media, and culture. The TMW team, beyond hosting and attending events, went to scope out the latest tech trends, and brought back their findings to share. We came away from their BIMA Breakfast event with a myriad of different learnings on the importance of hanging onto our humanity in a tech-driven world.
The overall message was that it can be tricky to separate tech from ourselves, and that’s something to be mindful of both as a marketer and as a consumer. So here are four key ways to use rather than be used by tech:
Upskill yourself
Don’t let artificial intelligence pass you by. It’s a bit marmite at the moment – it’s hard not to be impressed by the capabilities of ChatGPT, for example, and how much easier it makes certain tasks, but tech leaders are concerned about the risks AI could pose to society. And with good reason: it accelerates the digital literacy divide, making the gap between those who have and those who don’t cavernous, and encourages the loss of critical thinking skills. It has been reported that AI could even be doing some of our jobs for us in the near future. So it’s important to learn how to use it to amplify our own capabilities instead of watching it overtake our abilities. Try using tools to do the drudge work, leaving more time for us to imagine, create and direct. Don’t get left behind. Don’t let AI pass you by.
Think about your tech health
How many times a day do you hit ‘accept cookies’ without really thinking about it? Do you wear a smart watch? Do you use apps like MyFitnessPal, Flo and Strava? Private data about us is everywhere – and do we really know where it’s going? It might seem inconsequential, but being mindful of the wider impact of this data is vital. Flo, for example, stores data on menstrual cycles to help people manage them better – but surely that means it holds onto data around pregnancies too. In a time when abortion rights are seemingly vanishing in some places, mismanagement of data like this could be catastrophic for users. So we need to be as aware of our tech health as we are our physical health. So much of tech conveniences us, but it’s important to consider the risks to our data, and society, too.
Take care of your ‘self’
Tech can be a health hazard or a health hero. The bad news is it can desensitise our reactions and emotions and can reduce our sense of self. If you’ve ever spent a day mindlessly scrolling TikTok and struggled to regulate your mind afterwards, you’ll know what I mean. Tech detaches us from the world around us, and numbs the risk and friction we experience, which are important aspects of feeling things, whether it be love, hate, boredom, excitement, joy or sorrow. But on the other hand, advances in tech are making genuine inroads to improving our health too; wearable tech can detect atrial fibrillation and enable people to get treatment quickly, for example. Wellness apps like Headspace and Thrive are bringing tactics for supporting our own mental health to us whenever we need them. Tactics for enhancing our health and wellbeing are all-the-more accessible and we’re living longer, so we need to be embracing the opportunities tech gives us – but ensure we use it wisely in connecting with ourselves, rather than numbing our sense of self.
Make informed choices
We already know that sustainability is a growing factor in the decisions customers make. But how much of that is rooted in real knowledge? What does sustainability really mean in your industry? Businesses are often accused of greenwashing, creating cynicism for some consumers and downright confusing others. So transparency is key – and we need to know not only how our tech habits impact the environment, but also how innovations in tech can inform our climate knowledge. Consider the impact of churning through iPhone after iPhone every two years: aside from emissions from manufacturing and delivery, how many tangled sets of earphones lie in landfill? And what about the emissions that result from cheap Amazon phone cases being imported from the other side of the world? But it’s not all bad news. AI, for example, can be used to track carbon emissions across the planet, which can be used to inform renewable energy infrastructure. Tech can also be used to make global supply chains more transparent. And as sustainability continues to grow as an area of concern, all of this helps us to reflect and react to take meaningful action – both as marketers and as consumers.
Above all, the key takeaway that has been stuck in my mind ever since the TMW x BIMA event is that we need to be one step ahead, because tech desensitises us to our capabilities. Consider how many skills and activities can be performed by tech now – we’re hurtling towards a future where technology can outsmart the human mind. It’s hard to comprehend how terrifying that is! And the more we blindly rely on technology, the more we forget how incredible humans can be.
Of course, being one step ahead is easier said than done. We’re all busy people, and who has the time to sit through endless AI courses? But if you pause and consider where your data is going before you automatically hit ‘accept cookies’, or if you stop to reflect on whether an app has become too addictive to you, you’re already on the road to mindfully using tech.
Ultimately, the greatest innovations in technology should enrich our humanity and enhance our skills – rather than eliminating them altogether.
Check out SXSW 2023 event coverage to find out more about trending tech: https://www.sxsw.com/
PR professionals have had a busy couple of weeks – though perhaps not quite as busy as the Chancellor. Hot on the tails of the dramatic collapse of SVB and rescue of its UK arm (a story that hit tech like an earthquake) came Jeremy Hunt’s long-awaited Spring Budget announcement on Wednesday 15th.
So much change is dizzying. You’d be forgiven for holding your breath and waiting for it all to play out. But for the ambitious and brave businesses out there, the angles and opportunities are almost limitless. We’ve seen proactive comment shared on everything from the Budget’s ‘levelling up fund’ to the new ‘plan for quantum’, or otherwise offering opinions on the leadership failings of SVB.
Why is it important? An announcement as significant as this has enormous implications for the next few years at the very least, and an effect on a huge number of people and industries. It’s an opportunity to connect to wider and new audiences, and contribute to the debate. As both the press and public seek out expert commentary, our clients have a great opportunity to step forwards.
To do this well and respond – in near real time – to big political moments, you have to be mindful of the life cycle of the story. And remember this timeline – it might save your left one day:
1. BEFORE: do your research
The good news is that announcements as big as the Spring Budget require the government to undertake a lot of forward planning. That means you can be certain of a fast-moving rumour mill to help inform your research.
Contention creates news – and journalists are always willing to hear a different perspective. So, in the run up, ask yourself what aspects of the announcement could be controversial? What claims may need verifying? What are the main sources of debate?
Until the news breaks, there’s no certainty that what you’re hearing is entirely correct – but that doesn’t mean you can’t prepare. In the days (and sometimes weeks) before a big announcement, keep an ear to the ground and an eye on the news.
Ideally, you’ll have a pre-approved comment on standby prior to any announcement going ahead. Stay on message, but remember that from a journalists’ point of view, the bolder the better. To cut through the noise on such a competitive hijacking opportunity, insights need to be fresh, consequential and even divergent from the main narratives.
Planning ahead allows you to respond quickly to the news when it does land – and that responsiveness pays dividends when it comes time to pitch.
2. DURING: have someone ‘on the ground’
If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that none of us can truly predict with any certainty what’s around the corner. No matter how prepared you are, or how comprehensive you believe your research to be, it’s vital to have someone watching the announcement in real time.
If you’ve drafted a comment beforehand, you’ll be in a better position when most are scrambling to respond – but you still need to be ready to react to any surprises, additions, or last minute changes.
Additionally, with less pressure on the need to draft and communicate with clients, this time can be used to study the wider context – to stay mindful of the response the news is receiving, and use this understanding to guide your comms.
Remember to consider what isn’t being said. Sometimes silence on a particular topic speaks volumes – another potential source of debate.
It’s undoubtedly a delicate balance. Being aware of the wider context around an announcement – and the optics involved – are just as important as the message you craft, especially considering the often divisive nature of such political announcements and news stories.
3. AFTER: don’t lose momentum
As the ripples from the initial announcement begin to spread, opportunities to comment often pick up, rather than slow down.
In the days and weeks after any announcement there’s a huge opportunity to take advantage of additional news hooks. This is also the time to tap into editorial opportunities, and land bigger features.
As the political opposition, industry leaders, and individual organisations measure the impact of news, you’ll often find a wider debate beginning to form. Think feature pieces, letters to editors, and comments on the wider industry are often sought after, provided you have something unique to add.
As momentum builds, and stories spread, it becomes more vital than ever to keep focused in order to capitalise on opportunities as and when they arise.
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So there you have it. Don’t shy away from political moment. Navigate them well and your impact can be stratospheric.
Have a comment that needs to be heard?
If you’ve got something to say – let’s talk. We’ll help you define your voice, sharpen your story, and get your messages out there.
