Stories by Seth Arenstein

Social media is getting a bit long in the tooth, which has spawned many ‘rules’ about creating great content. Forget them, Lego Group’s social chief James Gregson told a Social Shake-Up session. Instead, focus on the basics. Social’s fundamentals have not changed, he said.

While you might not like the buzzword phrase “the new normal,” it signals that attitudes and behaviors have changed, at least in some areas. As PR pros need to gauge the zeitgeist as they craft tactics and strategies, it’s fortunate that a slew of surveys and polls are appearing during the pandemic. We offer a brief survey of surveys relevant to communicators and marketers.

You know it’s a slow news day when PRNEWS breaks out a story about the joys of embargoed stories. Seriously, we found that like most everything else, you can embargo well or embargo poorly. We also learned that the PR pro does not live by embargoes alone. Frequently, there must be exclusives or one-on-one interviews.

It’s not easy to compose a solid apology. Ellen DeGeneres infused hers with jokes and compromised the apology’s tone. Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf made a bad situation worse pretended the press hadn’t quoted his earlier comments about the diverse talent pool being small. He also loaded his apology with deflection.

Since 2012, the 4th Tuesday of September is known as National Voter Registration Day. Considering this country was born, in part, over the lack of voting rights, you’d think more of those eligible would vote. Finally, voter registration has its own day, though this year it’s sharing the date with elephants, diaries and white chocolate.

Last Thursday, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said the company this week will unveil changes to policy regulating how its employees communicate with each other. Is he trying to shield employees who don’t wish to engage in social-political discussions at work or reduce the chance staff will openly criticize Facebook? Maybe it’s both. It should be interesting.

Most of our stories about reputation and trust revolve around companies and organizations. How communicators can build and maintain the trust and reputation of a brand, for example. We’ll throw a changeup here and look at global trust and confidence in nations and their leaders. We found there are several similarities between communicators’ work with commercial brands and countries.

The House Transportation Committee report’s conclusions (Sept. 16) were unsurprising. The Boeing 737 Max 8 contained a system that overrode pilots’ control and plunged two of the aircraft downward, killing everyone aboard, 346 in all. Despite that unremarkable conclusion, there are a slew of PR takeaways.

No matter how you slice it, communication is a large part of the pandemic saga, at least that’s the way some communicators see it. The news today about HHS communicator Michael Caputo and Bob Woodward’s new book, with its revelations about the apparent discrepancy between the president’s private view and his public message, cement that view.

19 years after 9/11, communicator Rob Densen believes the lessons for communicators from that fateful day can be applied to other life-changing crises, such as the pandemic. The basics of crisis communication, which include leaning on your values and treating your team well, have stood the test of time, he tells us.