Who Needs Media? How many brands can unveil a major product and intentionally ignore a major constituency and source of earned media? That’s what premium cable programmer HBO did as it debuted season 6 of hit series Game of Thrones (GOT) April 24. Unlike previous years HBO dissed the PR playbook, failing to provide copies of new GOT episodes to television critics. Some context: One year ago, just 24 hours prior to GOT’s season 5 debut, that season’s first four episodes were shared illegally on BitTorrent. In fewer than 24 hours, nearly 1 million copies of the purloined eps were downloaded. Weeks before that incident HBO had sent physical “screeners” of the first four episodes to television critics for review. It’s unclear whether the stolen episodes were obtained from a critic or an HBO employee. Shortly after the incident, HBO halted shipments of screeners to critics and began offering its upcoming programs to critics for review purposes via a password-protected online system. Even before the April 2015 leak, though, GOT was known as the most pirated television show, with nearly twice as many people watching it illegally as legally on HBO. More context: GOT also is TV’s most viral series, which is not a coincidence. HBO’s PR and social team planted the seeds for the series with fans of George R.R. Martin’s novels, upon which the series is based, four years before the show hit the small screen. The network plotted its social media strategy 18 months prior to season 1’s debut, The Wall St Journalreports. Now GOT is the most talked-about show on Facebook and said to be the most tweeted-about series on Twitter. HBO’s social team tracks all this activity and primes the pump with influencers, offering tidbits of upcoming plot points, pictures, videos, prizes for contests and, of course, retweets. Another assist, to keep the twittersphere’s engagement at an apex, HBO debuts episodes simultaneously around the world, which also is said to be an anti-piracy measure. – Santy acquired fashion and action sports PR specialist S+L Communications. S+L will be known as S+L PR, a Santy Company. – The importance of communication rises to a higher level when it’s in response to health and environmental crises. A Rockefeller Foundation-funded report from PR agency KYNE and media project News Deeply urges governments, donors and organizations to recognize communications as a vital form of aid. Among its recommendations is investment in “research and evaluation of best practices in public health communication” and integration of “best practices from the private sector, drawing from the fields of marketing, public relations and strategic communication to shape more effective public outreach efforts.” The report notes “messages that do not effectively reach the public have been shown to impair emergency response, often at the cost of human lives.”
Foot Wear: Several shoes dropped in brand crises. In Volkswagen’s case, it was a costly pair of shoes. Late in the week the automaker agreed to a deal that will offer U.S. owners of nearly 500,000 diesel cars with software that cheats emissions tests a package of repairs, compensation and buybacks.
The cost? No hard figure yet, but it’s estimated to be in the billions of dollars. On top of this government fines are to be determined. Friday the company said it took an $18 billion charge related to the emissions scandal. The charge resulted in a lowering of its 2015 financials to a net loss of $1.8 billion. VW had anticipated setting aside about $7.5 billion to pay for fines and legal suits related to the scandal. – At our press time media reports had embattled Canadian pharma Valeant reaching agreement with Perrigo CEO Joseph Papa to replace ousted chief Michael Pearson ( PRN, March 28).
People: Gus Okwu joined FleishmanHillard as SVP and partner, financial communications, from Allison+Partners. Okwu began his career as a financial and debt analyst and banker. – TrendKite made three hires to support its growth. John De Oliveira was named VP of product, bringing experience in big data, natural language processing, machine learning and information products. He held positions at Dun & Bradstreetand Sprinklr. VP of people Jennifer Cantu comes over from Spiceworks. New marketing VP Russ Somers has 20 years of experience with companies like Dell and Dun & Bradstreet. – Marino named Jordan Isenstadt
VP. He was a spokesman for NY governors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson and had a stint at Edelman. – Kudos to our friend, PR News contributor and Finn Partners managing partner and global head of the health practice Gil Bashe for receiving the PRSA Health Academy’s 2016 Excellence in Public Relations award last week in D.C. Gil’s co-honoree was Mary-Fran Faraji, VP, communications and public affairs, City of Hope, the cancer center in CA. – WE Communications named Iris Laband EVP of its Insight & Analytics team. She comes from CDK Global.