This month has seen a number of new initiatives in sustainability, CSR and corporate partnerships and sponsorships. In this review, we examine some of the news in this area from the past month.

The UK government wants to educate PR professionals on counter-terrorism. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the government’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) have partnered in producing a guide discussing the influence and value of communications “before, during, and after major incidents.”.

A recently distributed report concerning PR’s credit among executives has unexpected results as it indicates that 20% of executives do not know what PR stands for, and 40% fail to believe that it contributes benefits to their business. Releasd, a PR services firm, publicly released its study on 19 June after measuring a range of 300 executives with professions in an array of enterprises and divisions with over 1,000 employees.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most innovative novelties society has experienced since the Industrial Revolution, but the cruciality of being apprehensive towards this new technology is deservingly reiterated by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). A recently released skills guide from the CIPR refers to AI as “the ability to imitate human behaviour...and needs to be understood in many different ways.” In layman’s terms, AI software allows complex, data-packed duties to be executed more efficiently via repetition and data.

On 27 June, strategic communications consultancy Portland Communications released a study emphasising the value of effective communication of a company’s CSR and sustainability efforts. The Total Value Index has become “the first comprehensive framework to measure the total value generated by business[es] in Britain,” according to Portland Communications. The research came to a bitter conclusion that the majority of the nine assessed sectors displayed an immense disparity between what a company says about its own green credentials and public perception.