Stories by Seth Arenstein

A new study from PR News and Dataminr finds nearly 40% of PR professionals lack immediate access to breaking information. Roughly the same percentage admits developments about their brand caught them off-guard.

A few years ago it seemed breaking down silos between sales and marketing was one of the hot topics in PR. In a way, reducing silos also can be used to build an SEO team, as Randy Hui of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network argues. But don’t forget the importance of education, he adds.

Each month we ask communicators to turn over their toolkits and tell us what falls out. In other words, What tools and technologies are most effective to have when doing your job? We also ask

There have been a slew of PR crises this summer, so we asked Hill + Knowlton head of crisis/risk Kevin Elliott and kglobal crisis SVP Scott Sobel for their take on several: the response to the PA Grand Jury report; Les Moonves and CBS; MoviePass; Elon Musk: and the death of Jordan McNair, a football player at the University of Maryland. While Elliott and Sobel agree on the importance of a rapid response and transparency, the particulars of the responses and tactics in the various crises divided these experts in several cases.

Each month we ask communicators to turn over their toolkits and tell us what falls out. In other words, What tools and technologies are you using to do your job? We know few better to talk to about digital tools than than Michael Lamp, SVP, social & digital media at Hunter Public Relations and Brooks Wallace, the West Coast lead at Hollywood Agency.

It’s difficult to create a corporate culture. It might be harder to re-shape an established culture. This is what Whitney Drake, communications story bureau & analytics lead, General Motors, and Phil Musser, Boeing’s CCO and SVP of communications, are doing as they move their brands to embrace measurement and analytics. Recently they shared some experiences with PR News.

In each edition of PR News we highlight takeaways from select articles as well as additions to the PR News Resources Center, available to subscribers only. This edition highlights a new report from Yum! Brands and a short but terrific template for editorial submissions.

It’s easy to see why some members of the public view PR with disdain. Plenty of stories featuring unethical PR practitioners have clouded the public’s mind. While the majority of PR pros are ethical, this, ironically, might be an issue. The ethical PR pros we deal with daily have inured us to the sometimes-unsavory image of PR. A trio of communicators argues it’s important to constantly emphasize the truth in PR.

Patricia Bayerlein wrote about improving internal communications with an eye to better employee experiences in these pages in April. Today she offers methods and dashboards to measure how well a leader is doing in communicating corporate culture and values to employees.

With July 4 upon us it means summer vacation season also has arrived. The question, though, is whether or not communicators, who are responsible for safeguarding the reputation of brands, can ever truly be off the clock. We look at surveys about vacations and being able to log out from your PR job. Another topic surveyed is attitudes on branded content.