Stories by Seth Arenstein

Our weekly roundup of trends, news and personnel moves in communications and marketing. This week we feature stories about the Harvey Weinstein affair, a report about information overload coming from marketers and a shadow board coming to the PR Council.

You’ve heard the adage “timing is everything.” Well, it applies even to media pitching, says Jayme Owen, SVP, FleishmanHillard. The firm’s guidance, gathered informally, on best times to pitch and send news releases is shown on the accompanying chart.

Let’s make the alleged Tillerson “moron” comment a PR question. You are the person responsible for building and maintaining the reputation of a brand. A senior official makes a derogatory comment about the CEO that eventually becomes public. What do you do? If the senior official leaves the company shortly after making the comment, what message do you convey to staff and stakeholders to keep morale high? What if the senior official remains with the brand?

Integration of PR, sales and marketing remains a hot topic. Yet often integration seems to be more aspirational than actual. Egos, territoriality and budgets can get in the way. Moving beyond theoretical integration begins with meetings. Nikki Hotveidt of Dow Jones and the Wall St Journal provides tips for conducting silo-busting meetings.

For a change of pace we asked data partner Shareablee to look at influencers among U.S. athletes and their 360-degree opposites, geeks. In this case the geeks topped the jocks. Geeky George Takei’s post garnered more consumer engagement than those of LeBron James, the basketball star.

We’ve come to expect that social video is powering consumer engagement with influencers’ posts. Not so fast. In August, a traditional month for vacations, consumer engagement with Travel influencers’ content was heavy, but engagement with their videos was way, way off, according to data provided exclusively to PR News by Shareablee.

It seems to be all over but the shouting concerning the Graham-Cassidy bill, which was meant to replace Obamacare. Late last week TV’s Jimmy Kimmel mentioned a coalition of 16 healthcare nonprofits that fought against the measure. We contacted them to find out what PR tactics they used to mobilize their fans.

Our weekly look at trends, news and personnel moves in PR and communications. This week our stories include a questionable marketing pitch from Britain’s PR trade association; Uber’s good PR in London; Facebook tries to save face; and Equifax’s CEO is retiring immediately.

In our regular feature How I Got Here, we ask PR leaders to tell us about trends, people who has influenced their career, the best advice they’ve received and what advice they give students. This week we talk with Amanda Harris, senior director of PR & marketing at The Diplomat Beach Resort. Her secrets include being authentic and reaching out to influencers via telephone.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in PR and marketing. This week’s stories include another slap on the wrist for PewDiePie, growth at Finn Partners, a better emergency alert system for Facebook users and a less-than-folksy PR incident at Motel 6.