Stories by Seth Arenstein

Podcasts remain a niche marketing tool, though they can be an attractive element. Those who listen to them regularly often take in some 7 shows each week and tend to stick through the entire podcast. The demo is young and male, a marketer’s delight.

With brands and government finding their reputations on the wane, companies are turning to employee-advocates to augment their public relations. Executives from T-Mobile, Advanced Energy and Bloomberg discuss best practices.

Doing research via online surveys often is a critical part of a PR campaign. More than that, online surveys and forms are important vehicles for brands to learn about their customers. Getting people to return them, though, can be difficult, a survey about surveys shows.

Should your brand and CEO address a social or political issue? How about one that on its face seems to have little to do with your company? Last week during an IPR conference in Washington, D.C., Southwest Airlines’ CCO Linda Rutherford discussed a mechanism the carrier uses to advise its CEO about the social and political topics he should engage with.

The social trends of 2017 seem to continue into 2018. In our first look at U.S. B2C brands for 2018 we see companies generally posting fewer pieces of content, but gaining consumer engagement. The data provided to us exclusively by Shareablee shows beauty and fashion brands dominating the first quarter of 2018 in terms of consumer engagement with social posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Knowing your audience may be the first rule of communications and marketing. Part of that knowledge is understanding the type of messages your audience craves. A new study from Bain & Company collaborating with Google argues the best companies have added timing to their knowledge base. Using technology and measuring their results, they find the best time(s) to send messages to customers.

The key to Mark Zuckerberg’s fine April 10 performance before a Senate committee on Capitol Hill, which resulted in his becoming billions richer when Wall Street approved of what it heard, is something so basic it often is glossed over in PR training courses. While Zuckerberg’s vast resources no doubt helped his preparation, any PR pro can avail herself/himself of many of the same tips and tactics his handlers used.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel announcements in marketing and communications. This week we feature stories about Mark Zuckerberg’s cross-country trip, Fox News Channel’s vacation policy and the turning of a Page.

A memo from Nike’s HR chief admitted the company has failed to promote enough women and people of color to VP offices and above. This prompted us to assemble a roundtable of communicators to discuss inclusion, diversity and communicators’ role in building a culture of inclusion.

As we went to press Tuesday a slew of top-flight communications and marketing positions changed hands. The biggest was the move of Salesforce’s CCO Corey duBrowa to Google.