Archive: April 2017

Two weeks after United’s reputation, and stock price, took a hit after airline security forcibly removed Dr. David Dao from a flight, it was American’s turn to deal with a passenger crisis. On April 21, a young mother was reduced to tears during an argument with attendants. The incident—which included a fellow passenger nearly getting into a physical altercation with an attendant—was captured on video and quickly went viral. But unlike United’s response, American quickly apologized, suspended the attendant and didn’t blame the victim.

How can brands that supposedly lack a visual element create community and engagement on Instagram? One way is to expand the kind of content the brand provides. For example, ForRent.com at its essence is a large search engine for those seeking apartments and homes. On Instagram, though, it offers content about home decorating, entertaining, recipes, fitness and more, its AVP for social explains.

At some brands, PR and social media are part of the same department. At others, the two mix as easily as oil and water, which is to say almost never. Allen Plummer of Vanguard argues, though, that PR and social media departments need each other to provide optimal return to a business. He provides useful lessons that Vanguard has learned as a result of integrating the two.

In our regular feature on trends in PR, an Aflac executive whose portfolio includes reputation building discusses how brands are putting increasing importance on reputation and CSR activities. He provides a look behind the scenes of how Aflac improved its reputation scores by expanding perception of its CSR activities.

Our regular weekly roundup of trends, stories and personnel moves in PR and communications. This week’s stories feature the FTC’s 90 letters to brands and influencers about disclosure, the spin on Bill O’Reilly’s departure and the battles facing internal communications.

As we know, communications has changed greatly with the rise of social media. It’s the same with crisis management, argues Daniela Peting of Motorola Solutions. Several maxims for crisis management from the pre-digital days may not work as well in the digital era. In fact, they could do more damage than good. Peting explains how listening via social media can benefit your crisis management experience.

Each fall, PR News recognizes the best and most innovative marketing, communications and PR campaigns of the last year with its Platinum PR Awards program. The winners of awards in categories like best Social Media Campaign, Blog, Annual Report and many more have gone on to launch even more successful campaigns in following years. Some Platinum PR Award winners, like Happy Family, have taken successful campaigns and repurposed them as evergreen content.

How do you create the perfect dashboard? Does such a thing exist? And if so, will it change your life as a communicator? Probably not, Katie Paine of Paine Publishing and Johna Burke of BurrellesLuce say during PR News’ Measurement Conference in Washington, D.C. Dashboards can make your life easier and should, but they’re not the silver bullets of PR. The human element and the insights you can glean from dashboard are far more important, they say.

Twenty-six words. That’s all it took for 21st Century Fox to announce star host Bill O’Reilly’s departure from Fox News on April 19: “After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel.”

If you have more money than you know what to do with, you’re luckier than most of us, and you might be unconcerned about throwing your wealth around willy-nilly. For the rest of us, we want to know that we’re getting a solid return on our investment when it comes to paid social before we commit any cash. The first step to this is knowing your brand’s audience and where you’re already engaging them. Answering these ten questions will ensure you’re targeting the right audience for your brand and using your budget effectively.