Digital & Technology

At this week’s PR News Measurement Conference in Philadelphia, there was a lot of talk about moving away from a media relations-based “coverage model” of communications toward a “community and conversation influencer” model, in which… Continued

Not every communicator has time to study the best technical practices behind creating an effective image, of course, but understanding why certain images engage the eyes more than others requires no advanced study. Having shot news events and concerts for the better part of a decade, PR News’ Justin Joffe shares some common characteristics among his featured images that have garnered the most love, shares and engagement.

As Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress, speculation is swirling as to whether Facebook will integrate portions of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into preventive measures it’s taking against future data leaks and election meddling. Brands operating solely in the U.S. now have strong reasons to fear (and begin preparing for) GDPR.

Marketers and communicators admit they don’t always know if their messages are reaching the intended audiences. Yet most believe those messages are relevant when they make it to the target audience. Uh, maybe not, according to a new Adobe survey.

The organization formerly known as the Arthur W. Page Society—now it’s simply “Page”— hosted its annual Spring Seminar this week at New York City’s Conrad Hotel, bringing together communicators from across the globe for two days of panels, keynotes and breakout sessions that addressed the theme “Are You Future-Proofed? Disruption, Innovation and the CCO.”

At SXSW 2018, thanks to immersive experiences showcasing the massive advancements in augmented reality and virtual reality, attendees were afforded the opportunity to experience firsthand how close we are to the seemingly distant future we saw in movies like “Back to the Future Part II” and “Minority Report.” That future now seems to be only 22 months away.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around since the 1950s, though you’d think it’s brand new judging by the number of recent news articles mentioning it. Communicators can take advantage of AI now and they needn’t be engineers to do so, argues Jared Carneson, global lead, social innovation, for FleishmanHillard. There is a slew of tools that flirt with the AI space that can ease communicators’ workload. Carneson offers a look at several and urges communicators to experiment.

As a communicator, you can have a powerful impact on just about every corner of your organization by using the platforms, relationships and knowledge that you and your PR team are uniquely positioned to leverage.… Continued

Legendary Hollywood director John Huston was fond of saying that he didn’t direct actors—he cast them. He would cast actors because they were right for a particular role, and that judgment alone was the limit of his direction of their performances. You can apply this same approach to the ways in which your brand works with influencers. The bulk of the job is in finding and vetting the right influencers.

If the fragmented media environment is a sick patient, machine learning may be the cure. That was the proposition Andrew Heyward, visiting scholar from MIT’s Media Laboratory and former president of CBS News, outlined in his presentation, “Can Robots Solve Your PR Problems?” at the New York offices of agency Makovsky on Feb. 6.