Stories by Nicole Schuman

PRNEWS welcomed Aba Blankson, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the NAACP, as the keynote speaker for this year’s Media Relations: Next Practices Virtual Event. The NAACP thoughtfully handled a barrage of communications challenges in 2020, from COVID to social justice and race relations, always keeping in mind the needs of its audience—the Black community and its advocates. 

It might be the last month of 2020, but that’s not slowing big-time fast-food marketing campaigns. If anything, it might ignite chains’ last gasp for relevance, and, of course, sales, before the year comes to a close. Just in the past week we’ve seen an emergence of some fun and unique campaigns that many consumers may still be talking about as the calendar turns to 2021. McDonald’s, KFC, Chipotle and others continue to stretch the boundaries of branding genius. 

Flexibility requires brands to treat the holidays a bit differently than in years past. With more families staying home to avoid the COVID-19 spread, ecommerce has become the buying method of choice. How can brands stand out in a sea of online options? Creative content can help. 

Unfortunately for many organizations that use the MobileCause platform, its GivingTuesday outage caused challenges. Worse, it took too long to find out what was wrong on the biggest giving day of the year. While the company provided updates via Twitter, it did not release its first email statement to users until hours later.

This week PRNEWS Live welcomed guest John Kell, media lead at Chobani, to chat about 2021 communications trends.

Most media relations pros have a favorite way of connecting with writers. How about building relationships with media staff whose names rarely appear on bylines, such as editors? A veteran editor provides insight in this brief Q-A as we get ready for the PRNEWS Media Relations Next Practices Virtual Event Dec. 8-9, 2020.

For most people working in PR and communications, 2020 will forever be known as a crisis. That’s it. Continual crisis. And while crisis stymied many industries this year, it made communication more essential. When clear delivery of information becomes a necessity, the communication industry should grow. While the advertising world watched agencies shrink due to client losses and budget cutbacks, some PR shops expanded. We look at several examples of growth.

Sherwin-Willians seems to have missed out on a primary opportunity to not only utilize clever content, but promote employee creativity. The 154-year-old paint company surprised many consumers, not to mention Tik Tok users, when it fired a college senior after he garnered a large social media audience with paint-mixing videos. 

For many in PR, because of their own day-to-day experiences, the thought of accessibility for an audience may not register when strategizing communications. But the truth is that 61 million Americans live with a disability, according to the Center for Disease Control. And that is a sizable number to acknowledge when trying to release important information. 

‘Tis the season to break out of the COVID-19 doldrums and deck the halls. The holidays seem to be arriving even sooner, as many look to find joy via decorating, music and fixating (or trying to) on the spirit of the season, rather than 2020’s awful news. Queue the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, which arrived a bit worse for the wear. So, do you ignore its raggedy appearance or lean in and have fun?