Stories by Melissa Hoffmann

It was a quick switch. IHOP, a household name, became IHOb. Not long after, the ubiquitous pancake house went back to its roots. It was stunt perhaps worth replicating, because a few months later, people are… Continued

PR pros aren’t sweating the congressional scrutiny of social media and the push for new regulations, with some seeing the changes as beneficial to an industry that has long operated in opacity. The hearings last week saw Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testify on Capitol Hill. More regulation—both by the platforms themselves and external agencies—is likely to result. But this is not raising alarm among communicators.

Americans’ relationship with Facebook: it’s complicated. Six months after the revelations surrounding the illegal harvesting of user data to manipulate public opinion ahead of the 2016 presidential election, peoples’ trust in social media still suffers and companies and individuals have changed their online behavior in response to it.

If you think you know what it means to be a CMO, think again. Big shifts in business have necessitated a reimagining of this role.

It’s great when you’ve got a client who’s a leader in their market or whose product or service is a headline-grabber or springboard for social sharing. But what do you do with a smaller client who’s not a natural newsmaker and for whom PR may be at best, foreign and at worst, a distasteful chore?