In the last few episodes of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, we’ve been highlighting great examples of how organisations are engaging with employees, customers and other stakeholder groups during this time of coronavirus lockdown.
In this episode 195 for May that Shel and I recorded a week ago, the example of what the United Nations is doing captured our imaginations leading to a great discussion.
In a global call to action at the end of April, the UN asked for help in translating critical public health messages into work that would engage and inform people across different cultures, languages, communities and platforms. The shortlisted work would reach everyone, everywhere.
In a short few weeks, with the original call to action globally amplified across social media by Unsplash, there is now a library of artwork known as the United Nations COVID-19 Response Creative Content Hub containing works to educate, uplift, and inspire individuals and communities all across the world through this global crisis.
You can freely access the images directly via Unsplash at https://unsplash.com/@unitednations. The image at the top of this page is one from the UN collection there.
This topic is one of a number of themes that we talked about in this podcast, including:
- Online retailers go postal in the US
- The importance of being true to your brand purpose during the pandemic
- New tools on LinkedIn
- The evolution of brand movies
- How Skype faded while Zoom rose
Dan York reports on Facebook’s acquisition of GIPHY and the opportunities for communicators to learn more about live streaming.
Listen Now
Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.
Links from This Month’s Episode
- To All the Purpose-Driven Businesses: We Will Remember You
- How PepsiCo Partnered with Actor John Krasinski to Highlight CSR Efforts
- PepsiCo Foodservice Launches Four New Initiatives To Support Restaurant Industry COVID-19 Relief Efforts
- PepsiCo Finds Empathy Is The New Imperative for Marketers Amid Pandemic Uncertainty
- PepsiCo Helping Restaurant Workers Coping with COVID-19
- PepsiCo Is First Major Consumer Foods Name to Take a Big Dive Into DTC
- Popeyes Is Hiring Musicians to Record its Iconic ‘Love That Chicken’ Jingle
- Top AWS engineer Tim Bray quits $1m-plus job over Amazon firing employees
- Maintaining Healthy Reputations During a Pandemic
- 18 Brands Getting In On Virtual Graduations and Proms (With a Slew of Celebs)
- IKEA designs forts for children in lockdown
- Top 6 Gin Distilleries Making Their Own Hand Sanitiser
- LinkedIn adds polls and live video-based events
- Brand Film is No Longer a Niche Player
- Brand Film Festival
- How Skype Lost its Crown to Zoom
- Online Retailers Spend Millions on Ads Backing Postal Service Bailout
- John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” segment on the US Postal Service
- Unsplash Founder Mikael Cho’s Twitter Threat on UN visual crowdsourcing initiative
- United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives – help stop the spread of COVID-19
- Welcome to the official United Nations COVID-19 Response Creative Content Hub
- Unsplash Quarantine Images
- Unsplash’s United Nations COVID-19 Response
Links from Dan York’s Report
- Facebook to buy Giphy, keep its branding, integrate with Instagram; sources say the deal is worth ~$400M, while Giphy was valued at ~$600M in its latest round
- Facebook’s purchase of Giphy gives FB insight into how and where gifs are shared outside of its own apps, including device IDs and keystrokes in Giphy tools
- How Facebook Could Use Giphy to Collect Your Data
- Soundcloud to Launch Live Original Programming on Twitch
- Soundcloud on Twitch
- Anyone’s a Celebrity Streamer With This Open Source App
- OBS Studio
FIR Zoom Chat
We’re hosting an FIR Zoom Chat on Zoom each Thursday during the lockdown at 6pm UK time (1pm EDT, 7pm CET). For credentials, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our FIR Facebook group or send an email to fircomments@gmail.com. Spread the word to your communications community.
