Bloody Mess: The media shouldn’t feel too badly medical-testing firm Theranos is ignoring it (PRN, Dec 21, 2015). Even Walgreens, which has a deal to set up thousands of Theranos blood-testing sites in its drugstores, received a cold shoulder. The pharmacist never even got a proper look at Theranos’ main testing device, Edison, The Wall Street Journal reported May 26 in a page 1 story. The device was said to be capable of doing multiple tests with just a drop of a patient’s blood and at a fraction of the cost. Earlier this month it was reported Theranos voided the results of some 2 million tests done by Edison (PRN, May 23). With that news, the other shoe dropped: lawsuits. A plaintiff whose blood was tested in a Walgreens alleges Theranos misled consumers about test results and falsely advertised Edison’s reliability. Filed in San Francisco, the suit seeks class-action status. Theranos responded, saying the suit “is without merit….”
M&A: rbb Communications acquired Miami ad and creative design agency OutOfTheBlue. It’s rbb’s second acquisition of 2016.
An Alternate View:Last week’s lead story discussed keeping paid social influencers within the law (PRN, May 23). Konstanze Alex-Brown, corporate social influencer relations manager at Dell, doesn’t worry about FTC regulations. Dell defines social influencers, on the other hand, as [people in a] “long-term, deeply trusted relationship [with Dell] that gets built up over time…[they] are not on any kind of retainer…it is very, very important to us that they remain independent so that there is no obligation on the influencer side to say something that they don’t feel comfortable with…their first priority should be...to their audience…the minute they lose their independence the whole goal of this relationship goes down the drain.” Brown feels influencers who work with Dell “highly value this relationship, I think, because it’s based on mutual value creation and not on us doing campaign-based initiatives and then dropping them again.” She says “I get calls quite a lot now from agencies saying, ‘We have a cadre of 1,000 influencers that we can rent out to you.’ I always say no because the relationship has to be owned by Dell, not by an agency…otherwise it gets diluted.” She admits Dell’s social influencer program was created through “a learning experience” and that there are benefits for both Dell and the social influencers. What does a Dell influencer do? Recently at Hannover Messein Germany, Dell hosted a roundtable discussion, which one of its social influencers moderated. “Other than saying that we wanted a discussion on top industrial trends, I didn’t tell [the social influencer] anything…he has the expertise…and we’ve built a relationship of trust,” Brown says. The cultivation of these social influencers takes about one year. It begins when Dell finds people who share its viewpoint on certain topics. These people then are invited to the brand’s largest event, Dell World, along with analysts and journalists, and exposed to executives, programming and tours. Other exposures occur, usually on a smaller scale, Brown says. “Then we see if this exposure results in a blog or an article.” From there perhaps the social influencer will be asked to join a conversation with a small group of Dell executives or to comment on “a solution we’re working on.” In the end, having independent social influencers “untainted by marketing dollars” is what, “from a brand perspective,” Dell desires. [Note: Brown will speak at PR News’ Digital PR conference, June 6-8.]
Platform Prater: A big week for Twitter, which said media attachments and user names would no longer count against the 140-character limit. An unconfirmed report said, Twitter’s abandoned development on its buy button and product pages.
People: We love to hear CEOs say, “Given today’s complex business environment, the need for effective communications has never been greater.” That’s what KPMG chairman/CEO Lynne Doughtie said as she named former MasterCard CCO and digital marketing officer Chris Monteiroher company’s new CCO. The 18-year MasterCard veteran is an Arthur W. Page member. – Michael Sneed knows what his new job entails. Promoted May 23, the newly minted Johnson & Johnson CCO has been on board since 2012 as worldwide VP of global corporate affairs, a role he’ll continue to play. He’s also been at J&J since 1983, so he knows the reputation issue attached to the brand’s baby powder, which has lost two recent court cases against plaintiffs who charged that talc in the product produced ovarian cancer in women. J&J was ordered to pay
Corporate Communications
nearly $130 million in those cases. Sneed replaces Maggie FitzPatrick, who’d announced she was stepping down. – Perdue Farms named Andrea Staub SVP, corporate communications. Previously she was VP, global communications, NBTY, the vitamin brand.