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Rebecca Pardon

Journalist and magazine editor based in London, UK. 

My Articles

Communicate Magazine •

The trouble with Scope 3

Peruse any travel website ahead of an upcoming trip and, very soon, you will find yourself being offered residence at ‘Net Zero’ hotels. These lodgings come at a premium, and often with fewer amenities, but bring the promise of a fitful sleep, knowing your travels are actually benefitting the environment. But behind such claims is a complex reality.  
For most companies, the bulk of emissions sit not within their own operations, but across vast, opaque expanse of their far-reaching supply chains...
Communicate Magazine •

Why we crave a good speech

I’ve spent much of the past few weeks thinking about language. Partly because I’ve lately swapped contemporary writers for classical works, such as Tolstoy’s tomes, out of a craving for the idiosyncrasies modern language has long shed. It is also partly because of King Charles’s speeches on his recent state visit to the US, which were filled with references to historic events, quotations from Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare and the elegance of making a subtle dig covertly, under the guise of flatter...

Inside the private email threads shaping London’s e-scooter trial

Along the roadsides of most large European cities lie the mangled limbs of electric scooters, loved for their convenience but discarded with ease, and seemingly some violence. In January 2024, a City of London resident tripped over an e-scooter left neglected on a pavement, causing bruising and swelling to both her knees, and difficulty walking for days following the incident. She emailed the council, imploring that it would investigate and address the broader issue of threat to public safety caused by the “proliferation” of micromobility vehicles.
Communicate magazine •

2025: an office odyssey

It is chirpy and charming, but is AI really transforming the way you work? Rebecca Pardon reports. This article is from Communicate magazine's print edition.
For even the most snobbish among us, it is difficult to not be impressed by artificial intelligence. When large language models have shaken off their hallucinations, they can very much feel comparable, if not preferable, to human conversation. Who would rather make staccato small talk with colleagues about the weather than be ceaselessly f...
Communicate magazine •

FTSE-100 firm trials agentic AI as vendors hype a workplace revolution

Despite regulatory uncertainty, big corporates are already quietly incorporating the technology into their teams.

An anonymous FTSE-100 company is already implementing agentic AI technology, according to a senior data leader, who emphasised the technology is complementing, rather than replacing, humans.  
At this year’s Big Data LDN, the exhibition spaces thronged with vendors promising to ‘liberate’ and ‘democratise’ corporate data. The technology at the centre of this hype is agentic AI, an...
Communicate magazine •

"Corporate culture isn’t set at the top anymore. It’s shaped in real time": NAACP communications chief Aba Blankson

Ahead of her talk at Cannes Lions, Aba Blankson, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chief marketing and communications officer, on the absence of DEI at the festival, and what this means for the industry.

At Cannes Lions this week, Richard Edelman shared latest findings from Edelman Trust Barometer, showing people trust brands more than any other institution: 80% of people trust the brands they use, compared to just 54% for government and 55% for media. At same...
Communicate magazine •

Cannes Lions 2025: ‘Being human is hard, but this is helpful’

Against a background of sun-soaked superyachts, the blending blues of pale waters and paler skies, and the battle between technology and human expertise, Apple sought to dispel the marketing industry's AI anxieties at Cannes Lions.

"There is no technology capable of making us feel emotion better than the human mind can," Apple's vice president of marketing communications, Tor Myhren, told Cannes Lions attendees this week. Myhren’s session, opening the festival, sought to reassure an audience...
Communicate magazine •

The role of risk in the energy transition

Exhibitors at this year's Innovation Zero World Congress event are urging political and business leaders to embrace risk and invest in sustainable innovation.

One of the main themes for the sustainability industry is risk. To achieve climate goals, political and business leaders must be prepared to invest in innovation.
One of the main messages coming out of the Innovation Zero World Congress is that "the race for net zero is a race for investment". Without collaboration between public and pr...