New horizons

I’ve started working with a carbon offsetting company, Thallo – it’s not an area I know much about but they want help with media relations, placing articles, and that I do know something about. Thallo uses blockchain technology to bring buyers and sellers of carbon credits together, so I’ve been reading up and can now (just about) explain blockchain to anyone who asks…

Channel 4 News has appointed a full-time PR Manager so, apart from the odd day of leave cover, my time with the programme has come to an end. It’s been a fantastic six months working with them. I’ll remember getting news lines out from exclusive interviews with former Deputy Chief Whip Anne Milton about the behaviour of Sir Gavin Williamson after which he immediately resigned, as well as news lines from former head of counter terrorism Neil Basu and MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

I was also in the C4 newsroom on the days that Boris Johnson resigned and then Liz Truss. The team were calm and efficient in covering the breaking the news and it was impressive to behold. I know they’ll continue to make waves under editor Esme Wren who took over the programme early last year.

As well as Thallo, I’m working with the HALO Trust and the CPRE Wiltshire branch. It’s keeping me busy. While also volunteering some time for the Broadcasting Press Guild and CIPR Wessex committee.

We’re, what, just over a week into February and on warmer days I can feel spring in the air. I’m inspired to get in to the garden and tidy up for the growing season (I did nothing to put the garden to bed last year, leaving it all for the birds over winter). And I’m counting down the days to the end of the financial year when I review my progress and assess the last two and a bit years in business as Lucecannon PR.

In other news

This is interesting about so-called ‘subvertising’, subversive ads from Brandalism, Extinction Rebellion and Subvertisers International subverting car ads to highlight potential greenwashing and negative impact of vehicles on the climate and society.

It came as I was getting my head around carbon offsetting and this investigation from The Guardian and others into possible greenwashing in the voluntary carbon offsetting markets. Suffice to say, the transparency and decentralisation of blockchain should help prevent greenwashing.

Regular readers will know that I love a story about attire, specifically office attire so I was drawn to this story from the Guardian about a law firm advising as if they were going to high-end club Annabel’s. I applaud the idea of letting people express themselves at work, but there is a difference between going to work in an office (for a law firm) and going to a nightclub, surely?

The more I read about the way Twitter is changing under Elon Musk’s leadership, the more I wonder when organisations will reconsider their use of Twitter as part of their comms strategy. The trouble is, we’ve become so used to being able to broadcast our messages for free on Twitter and to interacting with our Twitter audiences.

The Observer helpfully summarised some of the changes in this piece recently. Then The Guardian ran this piece about Twitter removing free access to an API used by the likes of Hootsuite – which I have often used to manage multiple social media profiles. I particularly noted the way The Guardian had tried to contact Twitter for comment, but there’s no Twitter communications department to contact and an email with press enquiries appears to have gone unanswered.

Then, on Thursday this week, the Guardian ran this story about an outage by Twitter on Wednesday night which prevented people from tweeting or re-tweeting. Things are just not going great at Twitter. That’s it for this month. See you in March.