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Lauren Herchert has counseled H+K’s largest clients throughout her nine-year tenure with the agency, establishing a reputation as a compassionate and inspiring team leader, leading internal coaching and training programs and building H+K’s client roster with significant new business wins.

Veteran PR pro and former journalist Arthur Solomon continues his series of communications lessons pulled from 2017 news headlines. In this edition, Solomon concentrates on lessons learned from crises that involved Equifax, BP and the White House.

When Lacey Haines joined HP in 2016, she saw an opportunity to reinvent how the company approaches product reviews by expanding the scope of the program to include lifestyle media. In short, Haines created HP’s consumer media program, building it into what it is today.

Historically, content marketers and communicators have been frustrated by separate, disconnected content marketing analytics. There are different systems to measure SEO, social sharing, engagement and quality of content. Enter Christopher Penn, who created SCALE on behalf of SHIFT Communications to solve this problem. SCALE, short for Shared Content And Link Evaluation, is a cloud-based software package designed to ingest URL-based marketing data from multiple, disparate data sources, unify the data and, leveraging best-in-class analytics engines, provide actionable insights from data.

Over the past two months, the #MeToo movement has sparked a long-overdue national conversation around sexual harassment. And now, one of the nation’s biggest companies is moving beyond talk to action. Microsoft has announced that it would end the common corporate practice of “forced arbitration,” which requires victims of sexual harassment to settle cases privately rather than through a court of law. Will other companies follow its lead?

The fires in California have brought devastation to people, property and animals in the Golden State since the beginning of the month. While some fires continue to rage, those in the area of the Ojai Valley Inn have been contained. Faced with a large clean-up, the Inn refused to cut corners and instead will remain closed into 2018, resulting in a large financial loss as it will miss prime holiday weeks. Its decision to remain closed is firmly rooted in its brand promise.

Amtrak is facing a crisis after a derailment caused at least three deaths and dozens of injuries in Washington on Dec. 18. And in the early aftermath, the organization has done an exemplary job of crisis communications, providing frequent updates on social media, opening a microsite for more information and offering transparency by holding a conference call soon after the accident.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in PR and marketing. This week’s stories include an unsavory dish cooked by Chef Mario Batali, Tavis Smiley says he wasn’t involved in unsavory activities and will PR pros need to pay for the privilege of pitching?

Brian Kelley’s passion for PR and outside-the-box approach have contributed to a noteworthy year for him and Sage Communications. Just one of his special talents: taking clients from media obscurity to being featured on national broadcast and print coverage.

Starting today, Facebook will demote what it calls “engagement bait,” posts that lure users into interaction by explicitly asking for likes and shares without offering editorial value. The posts are one way that brands can take advantage of Facebook’s (ever more discriminating) News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement to gain more organic reach. But the platform is taking action in response to widespread complaints, likely forcing some brands to rethink their approach.