Archive: September 2016

You saw the headlines Sept. 8 and 9 discussing the record payment of $185 million Wells Fargo made to regulators. The basic details surrounding the reason for this fine also are well known: Some 5,300 bank employees allegedly created an estimated 2 million bogus bank and credit card accounts. Some were started with fake names. Others used identities and funds of unsuspecting Wells Fargo customers. The 5,300 employees were fired during the past five years, the bank said. How can the bank rebound from this hit to its reputation? We asked a specialist in crisis PR and one in reputation management. Both stressed honesty, transparency and accountability.

A recap of the week’s news in PR, including announcements about people. The lead item looks at how Twitter might have found itself a good niche live streaming NFL Thursday Night games. Another item notes that Heather Bresch, CEO of EpiPen maker Mylan, this week will be in the hot-seat on Capitol Hill explaining how her company can justify raising prices of the life-saving device by some 400%.

More than a billion people watch countless hours of video every day on the platform, making it one of the largest social networks around. But YouTube’s biggest flaw is that it’s never felt very social. That’s all about to change. YouTube announced the public beta for a new feature called “Community,” which aims to make the platform a much more socially engaging destination.

The next time you think you are having a tough day in PR dealing with media in the U.S., count yourself on the lucky side. You could be dealing with media around the world. Time zones, language, culture and other factors make dealing with international media much more complex and difficult than strictly doing U.S. media outreach.

At its Platinum PR Awards luncheon in New York on Oct. 19, PR News will induct four communications campaigns into its Platinum Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame honors communications campaigns or initiatives that have become inspirational benchmarks for other communicators. These are campaigns that have had a larger cultural or business impact than even their creators might have imagined.

It’s getting to the point where we should start to doubt whether digital privacy is a reliable concept anymore. For PR professionals in particular, it’s time to put that doubt into practice in their internal communications. Email and Twitter DMs are not mediums where one can safely blow off steam or otherwise behave unprofessionally.

Facebook announced several new features in its latest Messenger update, a few of which may make it easier for brands to get their Messenger accounts discovered. The update includes simpler in-app purchases, a sharing option for individual messages and an introductory screen when users begin a Messenger interaction.

Facebook, among others, is rapidly becoming a video-centric platform, and its algorithms are rewarding communicators who take the time to post video. But not all video is created equal, and you’ll find that those communicators who know how to play the game regularly see more views and more engagement with their video content than those who are fumbling in the dark.

Wells Fargo became part of a club Sept. 9 that it had no interest in joining. For want of a better term, we’ll call it a crisis club, although the media and PR practitioners use that word too loosely when describing smaller issues and dilemmas. Full disclosure: The crisis club exists only as a conceptual construct. Sort of like the fake Wells Fargo accounts.

It just got a whole lot easier for Twitter users to tune into Periscope live streams. Twitter announced a new notification feature that lets users easily sign up to receive alerts when someone they follow goes live. One of the reasons Facebook Live has found success is Facebook’s default enabling of notifications for live broadcasts. Now that Twitter has followed suit, brands now have a much better way to notify fans about Periscope streams through push notifications.