Stories by Seth Arenstein

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg is no longer atop the world’s largest aircraft maker. That he survived this long offers hope to those who believe that crisis can be overcome by ignoring it. Or by insisting for as long as you can that your brand is not to blame. Communicators can add Muilenberg’s name as proof that those tactics usually don’t work for very long.

Girls and boys, it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for: Ashley McCown’s year-end video with her choices of the top PR crises for the final 6 months of 2019. So, fire up your Google machine and get ready for McCown’s eclectic mix of popular and outside-the-box PR crises. Hats off to those of you who can guess all five of her top picks before watching this video. Hint: Look for a clue in this post.

TV journalist Soledad O’Brien offered attendees at last week’s PRNEWS Media Relations Conference plenty of tips about storytelling and pitching. For example, when telling an ostensibly dry policy story, she looks for people whose lives are affected by the policy.

The expectation is that video will be about 80 percent of internet traffic in 2020. That means brands need to craft videos that are compelling enough to break through a great deal of noise. This mini-case study explains how a law firm’s marketing chief cleverly destroyed the recruitment video model. He also put a human face on what’s often perceived as a cold, impersonal profession.

Depending on where you live you might have the winter blues. Believe it or not, this is a real condition. As you will read in this case study, Arizona used the winter blues as part of a social campaign to encourage tourism. Turns out Arizona is the country’s sunniest state.

Our annual predictions for the new year. In 2018, when we ran predictions for 2019, trust and, in some cases, how to regain it, dominated. This year, as our 25 senior executives look to 2020, trust was an underlying element of PR. Personalization in various forms was the main theme.

This is the second in a series of Intrado Digital Media-sponsored articles about measurement. Intrado Digital Media president Ben Chodor discusses the importance of aligning your measurement efforts with business objectives. The first article in the series appeared in the November 2019 edition of PRNEWS.

Many business leaders believe they know how to relate to their millennial staff. They share a lot of material via social media and during town halls. While millennials will acknowledge the sharing, they’ll also say the messages shared seem inauthentic. To counter this, veteran PR pro Deirdre Breakenridge crafted her 12-part FEEL plan that helps build genuine communication between leaders and millennial staff. She discussed it during PRNEWS’s Top Places to Work & Agency Elite Awards in NYC earlier this week.

The media has a tendency to whack the federal government. On the other hand, when Washington does something good, and uses PR principles to do so, we feels it’s our duty to give props. That’s the case with the FTC’s clear, concise restatement of its influencer guidelines. There’s even a video.

November is PR and Communications Measurement Month. There’s plenty to celebrate about measurement. More communicators are measuring as they seek to meet the C-suite’s demand for data. On the other hand, many PR pros are measuring ineffectively, highlighting vanity metrics. It appears that colleges and graduate PR programs are largely ignoring measurement. And there are still a few remaining PR pros who steadfastly refuse to measure.