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Message testing is a valuable and essential part of communication strategy. Ensuring it is part of the planning process for a PR effort can make the difference between an effective campaign and one that fails to deliver.

PRNEWS welcomed Aba Blankson, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the NAACP, as the keynote speaker for this year’s Media Relations: Next Practices Virtual Event. The NAACP thoughtfully handled a barrage of communications challenges in 2020, from COVID to social justice and race relations, always keeping in mind the needs of its audience—the Black community and its advocates. 

It’s flattering when someone asks for your opinion, which essentially is what a media interview entails. PR pros can use that knowledge and two words that will bolster relationships with content creators. These two words also will increase response rate to media pitches, says Brandon Watts, who recently wrote an e-book that required a lot of pitching.

It might be the last month of 2020, but that’s not slowing big-time fast-food marketing campaigns. If anything, it might ignite chains’ last gasp for relevance, and, of course, sales, before the year comes to a close. Just in the past week we’ve seen an emergence of some fun and unique campaigns that many consumers may still be talking about as the calendar turns to 2021. McDonald’s, KFC, Chipotle and others continue to stretch the boundaries of branding genius. 

PR pros throw around the word authenticity with abandon. A better idea is to consider empathy when creating social posts, Cisco’s Carmen Collins writes. That means thinking not only about what you want to say, but also what the social media user wants, needs and feels.

Flexibility requires brands to treat the holidays a bit differently than in years past. With more families staying home to avoid the COVID-19 spread, ecommerce has become the buying method of choice. How can brands stand out in a sea of online options? Creative content can help. 

Unfortunately for many organizations that use the MobileCause platform, its GivingTuesday outage caused challenges. Worse, it took too long to find out what was wrong on the biggest giving day of the year. While the company provided updates via Twitter, it did not release its first email statement to users until hours later.

This week PRNEWS Live welcomed guest John Kell, media lead at Chobani, to chat about 2021 communications trends.

As our Media Relations Conference fast approaches (Dec. 8-9), we’re introducing readers and attendees to speakers lighting up our (virtual) stage. Here is a case study from Nerd Street Gamers and Brownstein, who will be sharing their local media approach during the conference.

A PR crisis is bad enough. It’s worse when one occurs on a holiday and potentially ruins your customers’ holiday. That’s the time to act promptly, apologize sincerely and attempt to win back loyalty and trust. Apparently, that’s not how Boston Market is managing its turkey of a Thanksgiving.