Topics

It may be difficult to separate personal feelings from professional ones when considering the story of Stephen Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist, being dis-invited to appear at the New Yorker Festival next month. Nevertheless, the incident provides several timely lessons for communicators in these uncertain times.

This past Labor Day, Nike announced Colin Kaepernick as the main face for the 30th anniversary of its “Just Do It” campaign. Heaps of praise, and condemnation, were immediate. #BoycottNike continues to trend, as conservatives across the country destroy the Nike goods they paid good money for in protest, and Nike shares took a slight dip.

Each month we ask communicators to turn over their toolkits and tell us what falls out. In other words, What tools and technologies are most effective to have when doing your job? We also ask

There have been a slew of PR crises this summer, so we asked Hill + Knowlton head of crisis/risk Kevin Elliott and kglobal crisis SVP Scott Sobel for their take on several: the response to the PA Grand Jury report; Les Moonves and CBS; MoviePass; Elon Musk: and the death of Jordan McNair, a football player at the University of Maryland. While Elliott and Sobel agree on the importance of a rapid response and transparency, the particulars of the responses and tactics in the various crises divided these experts in several cases.

For many communicators, September is the traditional kick-off for budget season. With this in mind, we departed from our usual roundtable format of a single question and asked senior communicators to discuss budget best practices and budget priorities and expectations for 2019.

A new study from PR News and Dataminr finds nearly 40% of PR professionals lack immediate access to breaking information. Roughly the same percentage admits developments about their brand caught them off-guard.

In each edition of PR News we highlight takeaways from select articles as well as additions to the PR News Resources Center, available to subscribers only at: http://www.prnewsonline.com/subscriber-resources/

A few years ago it seemed breaking down silos between sales and marketing was one of the hot topics in PR. In a way, reducing silos also can be used to build an SEO team, as Randy Hui of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network argues. But don’t forget the importance of education, he adds.

If you think you know what it means to be a CMO, think again. Big shifts in business have necessitated a reimagining of this role.

Communicators at colleges have had anything but a slow summer. None have had to work harder than those at Harvard, where the school is enmeshed in a lawsuit that claims it holds Asian-American applicants to a higher standard than those of other ethnic groups. The results of a trial, set for October, could reverberate around the country.