Digital & Technology

You think it’s too early to begin preparing for Halloween? What a ghostly thought. In fact, Halloween is a wonderful time to dig up some fun for your brand and its followers. Accordingly, here are three scary tips for injecting some excitement into your brand on October 31 that even the devil will find thrilling.

As digital devices lead us to unhook from traditional aspects of the American Dream, we now live in what Dr. Julie Albright calls the untethered society. Dr. Albright, the keynote speaker at our upcoming Digital PR Awards breakfast, notes, however, there are consequences. More and more data is generated. The data can help develop computerized behavioral models to persuade or even manipulate audiences based upon their likes, fears, and psychological profiles.

The public needs to know about the downsides of technology, of course. But it seems the media covers few technology stories that lack a bad actor or two. In this environment, it’s up to technology companies to communicate to the public that they can do the right thing, argues Alison McNally, FleishmanHillard’s tech sector lead for N. America.

Data integrity and privacy issues are ubiquitous, yet so few firms are addressing them. We asked Dan Linton, the newly minted lead of the global data privacy unit at W20 Group, what PR pros should be doing on data protection and data privacy.

The global vice chair of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Peter Zandan, PhD, argues that communicators must self-police themselves or risk the weaponizing of communications.

During Advertising Week New York, a panel that included Anna Bassi of The Week Junior, Dylan Collins, chief executive officer of SuperAwesome—the company leading the charge to make the internet safer for kids—and Dr. Alda Uhls, founder and executive director of the UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers, spoke to the differences in emerging generations and the importance of social impact-driven messaging.

There’s good news and bad news with AI. The technology is permeating and its uses are limitless. Unfortunately, the market is flooded both with brands using AI and communicators overusing the word AI. If everyone’s a leader in AI, nobody is. Here are tips and best practices for communicators to employ that will help you craft effective messages about AI.

While Europe holds responsibility for the creation of GDPR regulations, ripple effects can be felt around the world. “The right to be forgotten” allows the public to request that a company remove content deemed as inaccurate or old. These requests can be based on varying levels of offense, and without strict regulation could wreak havoc on not only the free press, but the heartbeat of content configuration—the Google search.

Organizations may work in a multitude of industries and locales, but all have something in common in a world where competition is on the rise: a growing need to put themselves in front of and promote themselves to rapidly changing client bases. From a social media standpoint, all face a pressing demand to redefine the shape of communications and outreach efforts to better meet these audiences’ changing interests and methods of interacting with an increasingly connected and social world.

With the continual introduction of new platforms and instant response, management and moderation becomes a key skill for any brand. Contrary to popular belief, the titles social media manager and community manager are not interchangeable. Both work towards the positive promotion of a brand underneath the direction of the marketing department, but the similarities really stop there.