Stories by Seth Arenstein

The Week in PR

With the emphasis on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, video and other forms of digital marketing, the basics of writing, editing and media training can get overlooked. In truth, as someone responsible for brand communications, your remit includes all this and more. Being asked to personify the brand you represent by speaking with groups or participating in a one-on-one interview with media, or preparing executives or spokespeople to do so, remain critical to communications. With this in mind, Melissa Baratta, SVP at Affect, a NY-based agency, shares tips for effective interviewing.

Most American adults know exercise and diet are critical to a healthy, fulfilling life. Still, only about half of us get the amount of exercise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends. It’s similar when it comes to PR measurement. PR pros know it’s important to measure, but measurement itself often is done minimally or skipped altogether.

Sometimes brands respond to an issue with a statement. Other times a good response is to monitor the situation and work behind the scenes. For most brands, it’s barely noticeable when Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers decides to eschew milk and cheese to gain strength, reduce inflammation in his joints, lose weight and extend his career. If you’re a Packers fan, who affectionately dons a cheese headpiece on fall Sundays, such intolerance for lactose is a concern. Should you happen to be from top U.S. cheese maker Wisconsin, whose license plates declare it the Dairy State, well, the 32-year-old’s oath could be tantamount to an affront to good manners. After all, for years Sargento, the family-owned, Wisconsin-based cheese maker, has been kicking in $1,500 after every Packers touchdown to charities feeding the needy.

Your brand can ignore Snapchat if it wishes, yet with 10 billion daily views and growing (it was 8 billion just a few months ago), concentrated largely in a very young, highly desirable demographic, it might not be the greatest idea. OK, perhaps your brand isn’t ready to join the Snapchat foray today. Fine. That’s reasonable, Gavin Donovan, digital strategy lead, Mission Foods, told attendees during a PR News Digital PR& Marketing Conference in Miami Beach June 7.

“The biggest takeaway I have for you today is to go to Google’s Analytics Academy,” Google’s Louis Gray, senior program manager, Google Analytics, said during “How to Make Google Analytics Work for Your Brand” at PR News’ “Google for Communicators Workshop” in Miami Beach, June 6.

The second chart in this series detailing engagement with U.S. B2B brands on Facebook continues several patterns we saw in chart 1 (U.S. B2C brands’ engagement on Facebook) ( PRN, May 30). First, B2B and B2C brands are finding video delivers engagement, according to Shareablee data provided exclusively to PR News. Second, brands are stressing quality over quantity as the number of total posts is flat or declining.

A harsh reality of the digital age is that excellent content can languish in obscurity owing to its creators’ lack of knowledge about search engine optimization. And desktop search is far from the whole story. In fact, ignoring mobile search makes no sense.

It’s a PR 101 conundrum: Charges are made against an important brand; the brand’s stature and the nature of the charges result in press coverage; the brand delays its response and a story is born. The brand then reaches out to the complainants and listens to their charges. Within a few days the brand investigates and concludes the charges are untrue. Some of the complainants agree with the brand’s assessment, while others say the investigation was faulty and demand increased transparency from the brand. The story results in many people thinking deeper about the brand and what it does. For some, the perception of the brand will change, if even just slightly.

This is a grossly simple way of looking at the story about conservative groups saying Facebook’s algorithm has been giving short shrift to stories with a conservative viewpoint. With 1 billion+ people using it each day, including 8 billion+ video views, Facebook arguably is the dominant social platform and a major component of brands’ social outreach.

There have been several years where the San Diego Padres haven’t been tantamount to futility in baseball. Founded in 1969, the club has managed 14 winning seasons and captured the National League pennant twice.

Still, reputations die hard. The Padres, who once played in embarrassing-looking chocolate-brown uniforms, did themselves little good over the weekend, botching an ostensibly positive show of diversity. The incident contains a plethora of PR lessons.