Stories by Seth Arenstein

A look at the top stories of the past week in PR. This week including the not-so-friendly visits to Capitol Hill by Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and Mylan’s Heather Bresch. Other stories include Facebook’s goof on how it measures time viewing videos, Finn Partners’s growth spurt and a new tech chief for APCO Worldwide.

In our weekly feature about PR trends, C. Mondavi & Family VP Marketing Paul Englert tells us he’s seeing a blurring of the lines between PR, brand communications and social media. As we reach out to a younger audience, and as society continues to evolve the way it communicates, we need to evolve our communication strategies. Much of what we once shared via press release, direct email and phone now is sent via myriad social media platforms and text. Our consumer-facing print and web messages are evolving in acknowledgement of the immediacy and brevity with which people demand information from us.

In this weekly feature we ask PR pros to spot trends and discuss how they are reacting to them. In this edition we hear from Stephanie Elsea, VP, communications, Southwest Affiliate, American Heart Association.

With 8 billion average daily video views on Facebook, 4 billion+ on YouTube and one hour of video uploaded to YouTube ever second, the path ahead for brand communicators seems clear: commit to video. But with that much video in the social ecosystem, how can you compete, especially when videos taken during a Beyoncé concert September 10 showing a pre-arranged marriage proposal for her dance captain receive more than 5 million views? We asked PR pros with video expertise and restricted the conversation to brand video on Facebook and YouTube.

Data can be sliced many ways. Below we see consumer actions, or engagement, with U.S. B2B brands on Instagram. Actions grew 159% between Q2 ’15 and Q2 ’16, according to Shareablee data provided exclusively to PR News Pro. The ratio of of Likes to Comments remained exactly the same. Astonishing.

You saw the headlines Sept. 8 and 9 discussing the record payment of $185 million Wells Fargo made to regulators. The basic details surrounding the reason for this fine also are well known: Some 5,300 bank employees allegedly created an estimated 2 million bogus bank and credit card accounts. Some were started with fake names. Others used identities and funds of unsuspecting Wells Fargo customers. The 5,300 employees were fired during the past five years, the bank said. How can the bank rebound from this hit to its reputation? We asked a specialist in crisis PR and one in reputation management. Both stressed honesty, transparency and accountability.

A recap of the week’s news in PR, including announcements about people. The lead item looks at how Twitter might have found itself a good niche live streaming NFL Thursday Night games. Another item notes that Heather Bresch, CEO of EpiPen maker Mylan, this week will be in the hot-seat on Capitol Hill explaining how her company can justify raising prices of the life-saving device by some 400%.

Do hiring practices change when building a digital team? We asked ESPN’s Paul Melvin, senior director, communications, what he seeks in a digital hire. Here’s what he said: “I think people make a mistake if they hire for a ‘digital’ or ‘social’ communications role based on the idea that criteria are fundamentally different than what you look for in any communicator. I always look for the ability to write, passion, a combination of self-confidence and self-awareness, and emotional intelligence.

One of the biggest trends PR faces is too much noise. I mean this for reporters who are inundated with pitches that might not be appropriate for them as well as the competition we face within the television industry for viewers. We’ve developed three strategies for facing this competitive environment.

We conclude our 2-part series about how PR and communications are taught in colleges and universities.
There was plenty of agreement between what our PR and communications pros told us and what the quartet of academics we interviewed said. Writing—specifically, writing for PR vehicles that is clear, concise, creative and persuasive—was among the skills both the pros and academics emphasized. Several of the academics said students lack familiarity with PR writing, which, they said, is different from writing term papers. Our academics said this is an area they stress extensively with students.