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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.

A memo from Nike’s HR chief admitted the company has failed to promote enough women and people of color to VP offices and above. This prompted us to assemble a roundtable of communicators to discuss inclusion, diversity and communicators’ role in building a culture of inclusion.

In our examination of the Restaurant sector, with Shareablee data provided to us exclusively, we find fewer pieces of content posted in 2017 resulting in a reduction in consumer engagement with the industry. This is a trend buster in that nearly all the industries we’ve seen have reduced content and gained consumer engagement.

As we went to press Tuesday a slew of top-flight communications and marketing positions changed hands. The biggest was the move of Salesforce’s CCO Corey duBrowa to Google.

In a video filmed at Robbins’ “Unleash the Power Within” event, the self-help guru told his audience of thousands that women were relying on #MeToo to “try to get significance and certainty by attacking and destroying someone else.” Audience member Nanine McCool is shown attempting to explain to Robbins that he misunderstood the importance of #MeToo before being interrupted by him with more provocative statements and actions. But is this purely bad PR for Robbins in this era?

PR News’ community on Twitter has been voting for the most overused clichés over the past several weeks—using the hashtag #WordsBracket—through five rounds of brackets. Apparently PR practitioners need a nice long break from hearing the word “engage” but, admittedly, it’ll be hard to find a workable replacement for it.

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.”

Is it better for a company to own a bad situation and communicate about the underlying issue or remain silent and hope it all goes away? That was the predicament for Morgan Stanley recently when a front-page story in the NY Times exposed the company knew a star employee was battling repeated accusations from multiple parties of physical abuse and stalking. Claudia Keith, chief communications officer of the City of Palo Alto, CA, argues Morgan Stanley’s response will hurt its reputation and bottom line.

More than 3,100 Google employees have signed a letter asking the company to halt its work on a Defense Department initiative. While the letter has made headlines, it also raises an important question for professional communicators: How should a brand prepare for the possibility that part of its workforce has a political or moral objection to some of its activities?

We’re down to just two contenders in PR News’ 2018 Most Overused PR Words & Phrases Tournament: “thought leader” and “engage.” PR News’ community on Twitter has been voting for the past several weeks through four rounds of brackets. This time around “thought leader” bested “industry-leading,” and “engage” edged out “elevate.” The shockers of this year’s tournament so far are the relatively early exits of “at the end of the day” and “quite frankly.”