Latest Posts

Within a month of taking leadership, Jodi Brooks led what Harold Burson calls one of the most significant new business wins in the history of Burson-Marsteller. And at SAP, Atle Erlingsson drove an internal campaign on gender pay equality and a successful media campaign that garnered coverage in Forbes, Fox, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, helping the company to be named for the first time to Fortune’s Top 100 workplaces.

During a morning session of last week’s PR News Media Relations Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, attendees were asked to discuss professional pain points. In a late-afternoon session, the attendees, working in groups, spent a few minutes thinking about solutions to the issues discussed during the morning session. Here’s a summary of the issues and the ideas proposed for solutions.

When it comes to holiday tweets, should brands play naughty or nice? Netflix’s snarky tweet, calling out fans of its program “A Christmas Prince,” begged the question. In a statement to PR News, Netflix wrote: “The privacy of our members’ viewing is important to us. This information represents overall viewing trends, not the personal viewing information of specific, identified individuals.”

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in communications, marketing and PR. This week’s stories include Mario Batali’s unsavory behavior, federal politicians caught in #metoo and FleishmanHillard has a new tech leader.

For the third article in this five-part series about measurement-related issues, PR News and partner PublicRelay, a media monitoring and analytics firm, held a Communications Leadership Roundtable in New York during this holiday season. One dozen senior communicators discussed the challenges of refining and cleaning data, among other measurement-related issues.

Kate Hardin has a passion for working with corporate healthcare clients and has turned that passion into a highly profitable group within the corporate communications practice at Ruder Finn. And, At Burson-Marsteller, Jane Madden holds a unique position offering clients strategic counsel and acting as an internal expert on CR and sustainability, allowing her to direct new business initiatives.

What’s the proper protocol for brands when an event like today’s attempted terrorist attack in New York City occurs? Should a brand go silent and stop sending out any social media promotions as the dust settles or is it best to send out thoughts and prayers in a show of solidarity?

Artificial intelligence and the growing list of voice assistants (from Siri and Alexa to Bixby) may not be of immediate concern to you when it comes to the future of PR and marketing. But Michael Delgado, director of social media at Experian, says these features are changing newsrooms for journalists, and will also change the game for PR and marketing pros.

Crisis management, our author argues, is itself in crisis. The causes of this crisis in crisis PR include challenges in philosophy, technology and ethics, not to mention that some crises (see Lauer, Matt and Rose, Charlie) begin and end so quickly that crisis PR barely has time to roll up its sleeves. What’s a company or a brand in crisis to do?

Stacey DePolo, social media manager at GoDaddy, Claire Baumann, head of public affairs and digital marketing and senior editor at the UN Foundation and Jasmine Atherton, head of social, Americas, at Airbnb share their insights into producing effective live videos.