Election Projection

A year out from Election Day 2024, a few of us with backgrounds covering or working in politics visited clients in our Chicago office last week to talk about how to navigate the upcoming political climate.

What to watch for:

• It’s very possible the presidential election won’t be decided on Election Day. Results could take days, if not weeks, to come in, creating an opportunity for the public to challenge election integrity.

• No matter the election outcome, a large portion of the country will feel “robbed” while another portion will feel “vindicated.”

• AI has the power to supercharge misinformation and deepfakes, prompting concerns from the public and policymakers and a greater distrust of the democratic process.

What do organizations need to do?

• Keep a careful read on what’s on the mind of your stakeholders.

• Align rhetoric and actions to be consistent with and grounded in your organization’s values.

• Be thoughtful and careful – the risk of becoming political fodder has never been higher.

Remember a lot can change in a four-year term, but an organization’s core principles do not.

As COP28 approaches, our subject matter experts are reflecting on key considerations for several major programmatic areas to help businesses connect their program and media engagement to the official conference agenda. This week we’re looking at opportunities in Food and Agriculture with Partner Grant Leslie.

What is the main challenge? 

In the last few years, our food system has seen increased stressors, including a global pandemic and the resulting supply chain disruptions, a war in Ukraine that has impacted global food prices, fragile global food security and the impacts of climate change. This moment requires significant investment in a global food transition.

But the level of investment needed from across the food ecosystem – both public and private sector – has not been met. As a result, we have not yet seen rates of long-term adoption of new technologies and practices at the farm level that we need.

Reaching the required levels of investment will enable farmers and the rest of the agricultural supply chain to adapt and integrate climate change mitigation and innovative, climate-smart technology into the already fragile food system.

Who are the key actors to watch?

Both legacy and up-and-coming companies in the food and agriculture industry are looking to scale up new, innovative technologies that support farmers and drive climate solutions across the sector. These innovations are going to be critical for the sector to meet our collective climate goals. Governments will play a pivotal role as well, as they implement measures that incentivize climate-aligned action.

What are the opportunities for corporate engagement?

The food and agriculture industry represents an underutilized but meaningful investment opportunity to improve our health, communities and environment. The entire food and agricultural ecosystem must work together to support the transition that we need. Corporations have an opportunity to drive those partnerships and provide the much-needed market signals that will help incentivize long-term public and private sector investment.

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LinkedIn has quietly tweaked how link preview images display in posts.

Previously, link preview images would populate the full width of a post. Since LinkedIn allowed users to submit custom images as link previews, they allowed companies and other users to include images that provide more context about the page they link to.

However, since October, LinkedIn has started to display link previews purely as small thumbnails on the left side of the post across both desktop and mobile version of the platform (an example is here).

For users and companies that relied on preview images to provide users with additional context and drive clicks through to another destination, this is likely a blow, especially as promoted posts do not appear impacted by the change.

It’s not clear whether this is a permanent change or merely an experiment. But going forward, it will require social media professionals to adapt to rely more on images—rather than link previews—or on greater use of paid promotional activity on the platform.

This move follows Xmaking changes in a different direction to remove metadata from link previews, leaving behind only an image.