Stories by Seth Arenstein

As you’ll see in this first of a two-part series on content for Snapchat, the advice is to continue to assume it’s best that snaps avoid feeling like ads.

Before the debate, some “experts” were advising Republican candidate Donald Trump to tone down his usual blustery public speaking style to sway undecided voters. Some urged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to attack vociferously, shedding her calming image as a champion of the poor and the middle class and as an experienced governmental actor. Neither candidate listened to the so-called experts.

With only this table of most-engaged B2C brands on Instagram for Q2 ’16 to guide you, one might conclude Instagrammers enjoy photos of cosmetics while quaffing coffee and energy drinks and decorating cakes. Seriously, it’s logical for cosmetics brands to dominate consumer engagement, or actions, on Instagram. A visual platform, Instagram was conceived to display photographs. Beauty is a visual business.

Snapchat is known for its informality and immediacy. For communicators seeking to control their brand’s messages, however, those two descriptors could be reasons to stay away from this hot, new tool. Sarah Maloy, director of social media and external video at Fuse Media LLC, the parent of cable music network fuse, has managed to meld (yes, we could have said fuse) Snapchat’s in-the-moment tone with various corporate strictures.

Wells Fargo became part of a club Sept. 9 that it had no interest in joining. For want of a better term, we’ll call it a crisis club, although the media and PR practitioners use that word too loosely when describing smaller issues and dilemmas. Full disclosure: The crisis club exists only as a conceptual construct. Sort of like the fake Wells Fargo accounts.

It’s hardly a surprise for loyal Data Dive readers that video is one of the main ingredients driving consumer engagement for B2C and B2B brands. Media companies are catching on.
The latest evidence is BuzzFeed’s reorg, announced August 23, when founder Jonah Peretti told employees, “Having a single ‘video department’ in 2016 makes about as much sense as having a ‘mobile department’… as digital video becomes ubiquitous, every major initiative at BuzzFeed around the world will find an expression as video….”

We’re pretty sure Wells Fargo didn’t commit its recent goof for the benefit of teachers at the nearly 500 colleges and universities in the U.S. that have programs in PR, advertising, strategic communications and integrated marketing communications. Still, the financial brand’s inexcusable print ads, which seemed to urge youngsters to forego careers in the arts in favor of positions in science and technology, provided excellent lecture material for instructors teaching the estimated 51,000+ students enrolled in PR, advertising and strategic communications courses.

No doubt, the Olympics was good for Instagram. We told you last week how Shareablee data provided exclusively to PR News Pro showed consumer actions, or engagement, with B2B brands grew 50% August 5-17. Actions are the total of consumer likes, comments, shares and retweets. B2B brands had 1.8 million actions; B2C had 213 million.

How does a brand, perhaps lacking a big budget for video production, enter the world of video on social platforms? Many experts say brands can produce videos relatively inexpensively. And while outstanding special effects and editing are no doubt attractive, many believe a creative concept and excellent storytelling can overtake expensive production values.

A roundup of the week’s top news and trends in PR. This week we look at more implications of FTC actions against paid influencers, the passing of Ed Block.