Vice President Kamala Harris is using her remaining time on the campaign trail to remind undecided voters about why they rejected former President Donald Trump at the polls four years ago.

With Election Day just two weeks away, most polls have the presidential race as a 50/50 contest. The Washington Post has Harris ahead in four of seven key battleground states, but the leads are tight.

In an effort to sway undecided voters, Harris’ camp has teamed up with Republican Liz Cheney and made efforts to reconnect with Black male voters, according to the New York Times. But the Democratic nominee has spent much of her time trying to paint Trump as unfit for the job and dangerous to the country. She’s doing so by using his own words against him.

“See for yourself,” Harris said during a recent campaign stop in Wisconsin before pointing to a screen that showed a 40-second video featuring Trump boasting about overturning Roe v. Wade.

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“Harris’s attacks on Trump are intensifying as she tries to catch up to his lead on the economy, a key voter concern,” per the Times report. “Her campaign is reaching out to groups that might be turned off by Trump’s divisive style.”

Why it matters: Harris’ messaging strategy aims to frame her opponent as an unacceptable alternative.

While Trump’s remarks have raised eyebrows, Harris is spending crucial time highlighting what Trump doesn’t offer rather than presenting what she offers.

Opinions on Trump are mostly set. The New York Times reported that Trump’s advisers are urging him to focus on key issues and avoid personal attacks against Harris because they feel it could hurt him among female voters. However, his aggressive style and boldness seem intentional and resonate with some voters. His communication approach focuses on projecting strength and confidence, and it’s helped him gain ground among Black and Hispanic voters.

While Harris is trying to lure back some of that support by highlighting Trump’s negatives, she also needs to commit time to present more about her vision for the future. Harris did some of that during her recent interview on Republican-friendly Fox News, but she doesn’t have many remaining opportunities to generate support among could-be voters.

From a branding perspective, it’s crucial to focus on a product’s strengths, rather than just the drawbacks of the competition. People often prefer to buy into – or vote for – something they genuinely believe in and want. It’s hard to get excited about something presented as the little more than the best available option.

Editor’s Top Reads

• The NFL is taking a long game approach to developing markets around the world before rushing into true global expansion. The approach involves a heavy dose of relationship building and a development of brand loyalty. The league is doing so through a number of in person events, such as watch parties, athletic clinics and working with local business leaders. In Germany, for instance, the league has developed an alliance with Bayern Munich, a powerhouse in other football. The NFL hosts a handful of games around the world every year, in places like England, Germany, Brazil and next year, Spain. But the goal is “not to be the traveling circus and turn up and then go away again,” Henry Hodgson, who oversees the NFL’s operations in the United Kingdom and Ireland, said during an 800-person watch party for the Pittsburgh Steelers in Ireland. Instead, the league makes sure it has strong, proven relationships with sponsors, media partners and a large number of fans before deciding where it plans to host a game. Ireland, which last hosted an NFL preseason game in 1997, has an estimated 350,000 fans out of roughly 7 million residents. “It’s about putting roots down,” Hodgson said. The NFL’s approach to growing its global brand is worth considering, even though it’s a unique product. When introducing a product or campaign, it’s essential to think about long-term growth, as you can’t relaunch it twice. Rather than pushing a product quickly and hoping it works, taking the time to understand your audience can lead to better results in the long run.
• Chick-fil-A plans to launch a new app featuring original, family-friendly media content, including animated shows, scripted podcasts, games, recipes and e-books. This content, designed for kids under 12 and their parents, will focus on themes like generosity, friendship, problem-solving, creativity and entrepreneurship. By taking control of its brand and storytelling, Chick-fil-A is working to forge emotional relationships with their customers that they hope will lead to increased sales. The app aims to keep the brand top of mind, even when customers aren’t visiting the restaurant, by providing engaging content that families can enjoy together. This push toward branded storytelling and content allows organizations to own brand perception from end-to-end in a way that feels organic and embeds the brand into daily life.
• The producers of “Alien: Romulus” are planning to release the sci-fi film on VHS. Yes, you read that correctly. Gizmodo reported that the video will feature the film only and come with no special bells and whistles. But the release will surely inspire film buffs and collectors of a certain age to consider purchasing it. The decision is an homage to the original “Alien” movie that came out more than 40 years ago. Beyond inspiring nostalgia, the approach aims to renew interest in the overall film franchise, which is set to have at least two more films in future years. It’s a unique throwback idea that piggybacks on nostalgia for watching grainy videos on a small screen – and it’s garnering plenty of earned media too for the quirky stunt.

Casey Weldon is a reporter for PR Daily. Follow him on LinkedIn.

The post The Scoop: Harris’ finishing strategy is using Trump’s words against him appeared first on PR Daily.

Corporate and institutional reputations can sometimes be entangled in a painful past. Some organizations rebrand for a fresh start. Others put the scars of old wounds on display — a difficult step when brands today risk being “canceled” over their public, and even private, positions.

Look no further than Volkswagen for proof. The global auto giant’s roots are in Nazi Germany, a fact the company puts front and center in the first paragraph of its company history. The company even set up a memorial to the concentration camp prisoners and laborers forced to work in one World War II-era plant.

In a polarized environment, many public conversations focus on what keeps people apart rather than what brings them together. And when groups can’t even agree on the facts, communicators must decide: Are past stories worth retelling?

For Tara Roberts, storyteller, adventurer and a National Geographic Explorer of the Year, now is precisely the time to dive deep – literally.

Roberts, the first African American female explorer featured on the cover of the magazine, is now telling the story of Diving With a Purpose, a group of underwater explorers on a mission to find and preserve the submerged evidence of the estimated 1,000 ships that wrecked over the course of the transatlantic slave trade.

Her pioneering work shows how companies can use the power of keeping and telling stories to have productive conversations about emotionally charged topics.

Taking ownership of the past begins a more productive conversation

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, more than 12 million Africans were enslaved and brought to the Americas on the 12,000 ships that sailed from Europe to Africa and the Americas. It’s estimated that as many as 1.8 million died in transit.

Acknowledging that past and honoring the pain it continues to cause is a first step in moving beyond the feelings of pain or guilt. It’s also the beginning of a shared understanding. Roberts explained how Europe, Africa, North America, South America and the Caribbean are deeply interconnected because of the slave trade.

“With this history, we’ve been afraid to really see it and look at it,” she said. “If we approach it from a loving perspective, we’re also seeing that this can be a history that brings us together instead of a history that pulls us apart.”

Finding your purpose

Becoming an undersea explorer and adventurer is an unlikely outcome for a bookish kid growing up in landlocked Atlanta in the 1980s. Roberts’ story begins with her mother, a reading teacher who would often return from conferences with boxes of books.

Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” was a favorite. Like all good storytellers, L’Engle created connections with readers.

That early influence grew into her ambition to tell stories of her own and eventually led her to the work she’s doing now. Roberts wants to bring those stories back into memoryand broaden the historical perspective of the slave trade.

“We look through a sort of singular lens,” she said. “But this is complicated, nuanced, ambiguous history that is served best when you’ve got a lot of voices in the room telling their own truths.”

Roberts is now at work on her next project, “The Return Expedition,” a reverse journey by boat that recreates the route of the transatlantic slave trade and will travel to 27 countries over the next year and a half.

It’s a story that resonates for communicators today who find themselves confronting topics like race and responsibility as business views on DE&I and ESG policies become more difficult.

Moving beyond blame and division with storytelling

For communicators, the message is to acknowledge what employees may be feeling and provide channels with clear guidelines for people to express those feelings. Discomfort is a necessary part of the process.

“When you are looking at the broad strokes of things, it’s so easy to see people in stereotypes,” Roberts said. “But when you start to deal with people individually, it is a whole different ballgame.”

Developing historical storytelling skills can help guide people through difficult conversations and create a shared purpose and vision, if they’re ready to embrace the opportunity.

Choosing to keep those stories alive may be risky, but it is also a reclamation of integrity. As with many challenges, the journey begins with a question, Roberts said.

“Who are we being inside of those companies and how are we using the resources that we have to really move forward this conversation in the world right now?” she asked.

Tara Roberts, National Geographic Explorer in Residence, will be speaking at the Ragan Communications Leadership Council Member Retreat in May. For more information on becoming a CLC member, visit commscouncil.ragan.com.

Mike Prokopeak is director of learning and council content for Ragan Communications. Follow him on LinkedIn.

The post How retelling historical stories helps communicators navigate difficult topics appeared first on PR Daily.

So you want to write a story. Or shoot a video. Or even create a social media post.  

Slow down. Before you start writing or shooting, you need to set yourself up for SUCCES. 

No, that’s not a typo. It stands for Simple, Unexpected, Credible, Concrete and Emotional Story.  

These are the elements that every tale communicators tell should include.  

Content needs to be simple so it can be consumed quickly by busy people who may not think they’re interested in what you have to say. 

It needs to be unexpected so people keep reading or watching to see how it all turns out. 

It must be credible so they have a reason to believe. 

Concrete so they understand what’s happening and what you want them to do. 

Emotional so it sticks with them long after the last word or final frame. 

And a story so it can be shared with others. 

In the comms industry, it can be easy to get sucked into quickly creating content that winds up being little more than a recitation of facts cobbled together.  

But by working through these hallmarks of good storytelling, we can practice our craft more effectively and achieve our goals. 

This worksheet will help. Print out a stack and keep it next to your workspace. The next time you’re getting started on a new storytelling venture, scribble down a few answers.  

It’s a great, simple way to set yourself up for succes. 

Er, success. 

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Ketner Group’s newly named President and CEO Catherine Seeds, has more than 24 years of experience working in B2B tech PR agencies. 

Seeds, an integral part of the agency for over 20 years, will build upon Ketner’s success and uphold the agency’s commitment to fostering a robust culture. This dedication has been acknowledged by Ragan’s Top Places to Work, where the agency has been recognized for three consecutive years. In addition, the agency has been honored as one of PR Daily’s Top Agencies for 2023.

In her new role, Seeds will oversee the agency’s business development, partnerships, HR/operations, client success, and agency culture initiatives alongside her senior leadership team. However, she is also taking on the role of parliamentarian at Cedar Park High School, where she plans to contribute to the community that gave her daughter her education and where her son will be joining next year as a freshman.

As Seeds takes on these two new exciting roles, we wanted to get her thoughts on the future of the communications industry.

What book, podcast or other media do you recommend to other comms pros?

My favorite podcast right now is Mobituaries, hosted by Mo Rocca, who is also a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning.

I highly recommend this podcast for all communications pros! The concept behind Mobituaries is so simple, yet so brilliant. It takes a closer look at “dearly departed” people and things that were never really given their moment in the spotlight. As Mo puts it, “Even if you know the names, you’ve never understood why they matter until now!”

I think my love for this podcast stems from my childhood, listening to Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” radio segments with my mom during the summer while we went on her Meals on Wheels drop-offs.

Both Paul Harvey and Mo Rocca are master storytellers. As a PR professional, I am always on the hunt for a good story or someone who can capture a room’s attention with their ability to serve up a great story!

What’s your favorite tool you use regularly for work? 

 Other than my cell phone, I (and the rest of the agency) use a tool/platform called Qwoted nearly every day!

 In short, Qwoted is a platform that connects brands with journalists. It allows our team to set up profiles for each of our clients’ spokespersons so that we can get more tailored opportunities for them and get notified on a daily basis regarding dozens of media opportunities. Qwoted also allows us to see who else is pitching a specific opportunity and get alerted when our clients are covered in the media.

The platform has made such a huge difference in finding the best media opportunities for our clients, not to mention a wonderful vehicle to develop better relationships with key trade and top-tier reporters and to stay on top of trending industry news.

What excites you most about the future of communications?

I am excited, and hopeful, for PR professionals to maintain positive relationships with the media. There is no denying that the last few years have been hard on journalists and the newsroom, which makes PR pros more important than ever. It is our job to be the go-to resource for media when writing stories, not to blast them constantly with irrelevant pitches.

Tools like Qwoted and even Twitter are great platforms for us to find opportunities, but you cannot replace genuine relationships with key media in your clients’ space. This is the basis of media relations, and I’m excited to see how we as a profession grow to meet the short- and long-term needs of our peers in journalism.

What communications challenge keeps you up at night?  

Honestly, what keeps me up at night is also the thing that excites me about the future of communications.

It seems like every day on Twitter our team sees another journalist who has complained about something a PR person sent them. And it is completely justified! I worry that a few bad apples, or those who just don’t know any better, are creating more of a crack in the important relationship between PR and the media.

PR is simple in concept, but it does take work, research and strategic thinking on the part of a PR professional to make sure what they are sending to a journalist is relevant and actually newsworthy.                                                                       

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome in your career?

For me, the biggest challenge has been years in the making – that is being a working mom and working my way from being an account executive to an agency owner. I have been a mom for 18 of my 24 years as a PR professional, so I certainly have had my fair share of late nights, working on weekends and trips on which I missed kid things.

I am blessed to have a wonderful husband who’s a true partner in all things and is supportive of me and my work, but there is no denying mom guilt! My two children are a bit older now – my daughter starts college and my son starts high school in the fall – so it is a bit easier now.

As hard as it was at times, I was really lucky to have had the best of both worlds and my children got to see first-hand the aftereffects of me working for a family-first and employee-first company.

What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

My parents have been a huge inspiration for me my entire life, and have given me tons of life lessons that I carry still today.

First, my mom always taught me to do the right thing, even if it really sucks to do so. Ha! She would always say, “Our family always does what’s right, even when it’s hard.”

My dad, he always reminded me to slow down and think things through. I was a huge worrier–still am!–but if you really take the time to slow things down and think through a problem, the right answer will come along. 

Isis Simpson-Mersha is a conference producer/ reporter for Ragan. Follow her on LinkedIn.

The post 6 questions with: Catherine Seeds of Ketner Group appeared first on PR Daily.

A comms department is full of hard-working professionals looking for creative ways to get the word out about their brand, boost public perception and keep the conversation flowing among stakeholders.

During a Ragan Strategic Communications Conference event, Build a Better Newsroom: Steps to Create Powerful “Storytelling at Scale,” Jim Ylisela, co-founder and senior partner at Ragan Consulting Group, talked about boosting PR content by developing a brand newsroom.

Ylisela said that in a brand newsroom, the content is not a press release or content marketing, though those have their place.

“It’s good storytelling,” he said. “It’s graphics and images and good video, but it’s about you. It’s about the audience. It’s about the issues.”

“Brand journalism is storytelling to raise awareness, to inform, to enhance your reputation,” Ylisela said, adding that organizations are full of experts “who know a lot of stuff.”

“It would be nice to get them out there for the audience. That does a lot for your reputation,” Ylisela said, noting how brand newsrooms stand out from others. “Part of the difference is that you’re doing real storytelling. It’s why it’s called brand journalism. It’s journalism, but it’s not mass media journalism. It’s journalistic techniques.”

Why you need a brand newsroom

“These days you have to be a publisher,” Ylisela said. “Everyone is a publisher.”

He added that organizations have to go directly to audiences and connect with them and produce meaningful content along the way.

“You can’t rely on anyone to do it for you,” he said, especially of traditional newsrooms.

Ylisela said that more people are getting their news from digital news sites or company websites.

“Not just mass media, you,” Ylisela said of brands. “What that means of course is it’s got to be the right content. It’s got to be good. It has to rival a news site and there has to be a reason for it.”

Ylisela added that PR pros have to encourage higher-ups worried about budgetary and time constraints that a brand newsroom is a good idea.

If a brand does not have a brand newsroom pumping out content, they are likely to get passed over by consumers who will look elsewhere for their content, he shared.

“The consequences are you fall behind,” Ylisela said. “Everyone else is creating these digital platforms.”

Putting in the work

Ylisela added that creating a brand newsroom takes “an enormous amount of work.”

PR pros won’t be writing all day, however.

Companies could tap a core team with writers in different areas to contribute a couple of stories a month, Ylisela suggested.

“If every one of these people contribute a couple stories a month you’d have a lot of copy,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to do – not easy because of the whole silo thing, but you can get there.”

Ylisela added that the marketing department needs to be pulled in, too, because they’re “invaluable for this.”

“I always think about how marketing, PR and internal comms – marketing kind of lives in the future,” he said. “Marketing is thinking about events, promotions, things that are coming up down the line. As a brand journalist, I want to know what those things are, so that I can create content that is complementary – not just, let’s do a piece about the event we’re having. But let’s do a story that ties to the event. And that furthers the conversation of whatever we’re doing.”

Ylisela also said that internal comms is a great way to tap into story ideas, too, “even though sometimes internal comms is treated as the poor stepchild of communications.”

“It used to be like this: PR hates marketing. Marketing hates PR, and they all hate internal comms. We’ve changed that. We’re actually working together in harmony sometimes,” he said, also noting that the brand newsroom is about gathering ideas and topics, hashing them out, prioritizing them and communicating with everyone about it internally and externally.

Use an editorial calendar, discuss who is doing what and connect with the marketing department to translate their work into content to support what they’re doing.

Ylisela added that the work is not easy, but it’s worth it.

“It’s a shift in what you do,” he said. “It means reconfiguring your newsroom, dismantle the silos, connect with others and get to the stories that matter.

“We’re going to tear down the silos and a big part of having a digital newsroom is to create an editorial team, a structure and an editorial process where you can tap into what everybody is doing.”

Sherri Kolade is a writer at Ragan Communications. When she is not with her family, she enjoys watching Alfred Hitchcock-style films, reading and building an authentically curated life that includes more than occasionally finding something deliciously fried. Follow her on LinkedIn. Have a great PR story idea? Email her at sherrik@ragan.com. 

The post How a brand newsroom can amplify your comms strategy and bust silos appeared first on PR Daily.

About five years ago, Spotify realized they needed an owned hub that could act as a source of truth for audiences ranging from prospective employees to financial institutions to people who really enjoy listening to “Midnights” on repeat while crying. Spotify went public at that time, which meant it was vital that shareholders have a reliable source of news, but at the same time, they realized that formal press releases were delivering diminishing returns.

The answer to both challenges was an owned company blog — For the Record.

But as the brand newsroom marks its five-year anniversary, it extends beyond a single website and into a strategy, according to CJ Stanley, co-head of Global Communications at Spotify.

“The value of creating an owned ecosystem — for us this goes way beyond our For the Record website to include multiple social channels and podcast,” Stanley wrote in a recent email interview with PR Daily. “There are so many creative ways to reach our priority audiences when we really lean into the unique power of each channel and think about it as a broad ecosystem working together.”

While Spotify has the advantage of having a cool product the general public is inherently interested in — it is, after all, where all your favorite music and podcasts live — the lessons they’ve learned over the last five years of brand journalism are applicable for a wide variety of brands and industries.

How to build a brand newsroom

When For the Record launched in 2018, it was tasked with serving a huge range of audiences from journalists to creators to financial stakeholders to people who love “Crime Junkie.”

But over time, Spotify began to implement more segments to meet each of these groups on their own terms. This resulted in several sub-sites aimed at different audiences — Life At Spotify, Spotify for Artists, Spotify for Podcasters, Engineering at Spotify — as well as additional social channels with targeted content for each audience.

Stanley wishes they’d implemented these changes sooner in their brand newsroom journey.

As a company that’s all about listening, podcasts are also a vital part of their overall communications strategy and are integrated directly into For the Record and the sub-blogs, offering an auditory experience for different audiences, with the For the Record podcast aimed at business types and investors, Discover This aimed at consumers, and Mic Check for younger listeners seeking to discover new music and content.

Social media is also a key driver to the newsroom — but it also serves as a hub for earned media.

“A lot of our content on For the Record is also part of a broader communications strategy for an announcement or campaign so earned media coverage often drives back to For the Record for more details,” Stanley said.

The content itself is created by a “small but mighty” editorial team. “This team works hard to deliver content daily and is made up of experts in the space from former audio producers and journalists to social experts and much more,” Stanley explained. They also draw on subject matter experts, writers, multimedia producers, graphic designers from across the company to flesh out offerings.

No single story better shows the integrated nature of the blog than its approach to Spotify 2022 Wrapped, the ubiquitous readout of each user’s listening habits that takes over social feeds towards the end of the year.

A visual takeover and deeper features led the blog, while the Discover This podcast fulfilled Spotify’s auditory mission with interviews with popular creators and live reactions, Stanley said. Finally, owned social channels spread the content far and wide through fun, innovative sharing.

“We’ve experienced year-over-year growth on all channels and significant engagement, so we feel like that’s a strong metric of success and we’re on the right track,” Stanley said. And while reach is a critical metric, Stanley said that creative content is equally important.

Tips for getting started

Stanley offered four tips for other organizations looking to start brand journalism initiatives.

• Align priorities early.
• Get leadership and stakeholder support.
• If your project is a web platform, invest in technology and user experience.
• Priorities like audience and topics to cover can serve as a filter on what to cover and what doesn’t need to be a stand-alone story.

Whether you’re one of the biggest music apps in the world or a staid B2B organization, these tips will serve you well when telling your story.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post What you can learn from Spotify’s brand newsroom appeared first on PR Daily.

TD Stories’ goal was encapsulated in its tagline: “enriching lives one story at a time.” That meant creating content that builds relationships with customers by being interesting, informative and/or entertaining. The team’s strategy was to tie content to timely themes — think taxes and holidays — major world events like the pandemic, and the intersection of money, personal relationships and goals.

This was helped by a redesign that modernized the site, incorporated SEO best practices and research, and expanded distribution to more than a dozen channels. Multimedia content like video, photography, podcasts and infographics supplemented the words at the heart of the strategy.

That’s earned them a nod for PR Daily’s Social Media and Digital Awards for Online Newsroom/Brand Journalism.

While TD is the second-largest bank in Canada, it’s still working to raise its profile in the U.S, so its strategy needed to serve both a developed and emerging market. TD Stories offers geolocation that targets content for each of the countries it serves.

Since its launch, TD Stories has published 89 stories, leading to a year-over-year pageview increase of 125%, and to more than 1 million total pageviews, bolstered by SEO and paid search efforts. The team also saw more than 11,000 social media engagements.

TD Stories owes its success to Chad Mitchell, Lisa Hodgins, Matthew Hartley, Carmen Paul, Michael Rothman, Anthony Quintano, Judy Mignogna, Sylvia Pinsonneault, Grace Ben and Hailey Boccone.

The post Ragan Awards: How TD Stories made leap from outdated newsroom to storytelling success appeared first on PR Daily.

Google is once again updating the algorithm that dictates what we see — and indirectly, what we click on — when we go looking for information on the ubiquitous search engine.

This one is especially focused on the actual content we put on our sites rather than site architecture or keywords, so it’s of particular interest to comms pros.

The good news: All you really need to do is keep creating great content that keeps people, not machines, in mind.

Google’s Chris Nelson explains the changes in-depth, and you should go read it in full. Why don’t we just summarize or quote it extensively here? Because that’s exactly what Google is saying not to do.

This update is aimed at those sites that seem to churn out stories that are naked grabs for SEO traffic. Maybe it’s thinly veiled plagiarism from another site that leaves you hunting out the full story. Maybe it’s a story that promises to tell you when a movie will be released, only to find out that the date is actually TBD. Or maybe it’s just otherwise thin content that doesn’t really help people.

As Nelson puts it: “The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”

That sounds great as a visitor. But as a communicator, you need to know that if Google determines your site has a high proportion of “unhelpful content,” it will penalize your entire site — including helpful content. So even if your brand newsroom is doing great work that hits all the search engine marks but your marketing department is churning out automated articles designed to attract SEO, you could be in trouble. Even if you remove the unhelpful content, Google says it could take months to bounce back.

So it’s time to bust silos and make sure everyone is current on SEO best practices, which means putting people first.

The update will start rolling out this week and will affect sites in English first.

The post What comms pros should know about Google’s new search update appeared first on PR Daily.

Brand journalism is one of the fastest growing segments of communications, and according to Ragan’s 2022 Communications Benchmark Report, professionals only expect this sector to keep growing.

But one of the biggest challenges is that while brand journalism can absolutely return results tied to business objectives, that usually doesn’t happen overnight. Some executives can get a little squeamish when asked to commit to the long-haul.

How can you keep them satisfied while you ramp up?

Chad Mitchell, vice president and head of content and digital platforms for TD Bank, is one of the pioneers of brand journalism, including at Walmart. He’s seen brand journalism through from inception to success and is currently building that apparatus at TD Bank.

At Ragan’s Brand Storytelling 2022 Conference, Mitchell shared tips on getting buy-in even when you don’t have hard results to share — yet.

‘The flea on the back of the flea’

Mitchell knows first-hand how hot brand storytelling is right now. But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy sell.

“Brands are investing in it, but how do you prove something like awareness? How do you prove something like brand favorability or brand consideration? And those are tougher questions to answer,” he says.

But corporate communications is used to having to prove its worth.

“I used to think that corporate comms was like the flea on the back of the flea on the flea on the back of the dog,” Mitchell explained. “Marketing has got all the money and corporate communications has to continuously prove its value and tie our storytelling back to impact.”

Proving worth

Let’s be clear: You won’t have data to prove brand journalism is working on day 1. Or maybe day 100. You do need to gather a decent amount of both content and data to be able to evaluate success. But Mitchell and TD Bank have taken a few steps to lay the foundation.

First, they worked with publishing partners on brand lift surveys to study consideration, favorability and unaided brand awareness. Early returns showed increases in all categories — some by double digits.

“All of a sudden we’ve got a metric that we can put in front of leadership that says hey, on this platform, these stories are working and we’re driving deeper consideration,” Mitchell said.

They also are of course taking the step to measure sentiment beyond pageviews. For TD Bank, this means working with a partner to put a card on every piece of content that asks customers questions like, did this story lead you to have a more favorable opinion? Or, do you better understand TD Bank’s commitment to DE&I? That’s then combined with metrics like visitors, average time on page, responses, positive responses, and a recirculation multiplier.

“This all gives dashboard to put in front of leaders to show story we told if people left having a more positive opinion,” Mitchell explained. “This is going to start to allow us to extract those sentiments.”

This yielded insights that, in some cases, went against conventional wisdom. For instance, listicles are king on sites like Buzzfeed — but not for TD Bank. In fact, articles of more than 1,200 words performed better than their shorter counterparts.

But it all adds up to start creating a picture that can help leaders understand their investment and the progressing payoff.

“When we have enough data for me to start making strategic decisions, to be able to walk into any C-suite meeting and say, here’s the data, and I can prove it,” Mitchell said. “And our content is moving the needle, and while I can’t yet prove conversions to business outcomes, which is ultimately where we’d like to go, I can start to prove reputation, I can start to prove that we’re driving customer consideration and that is when we no longer become the flea, we become the dog, we get well-funded, and we get that attention that all of us want as brand storytellers.”

To watch Mitchell’s full presentation, join RaganTraining.

The post How to prove brand journalism’s value before you have hard results appeared first on PR Daily.

Brand journalism is a new frontier of PR, one that pros only expect to grow in coming years.

But when you’re launching your newsroom, it can feel overwhelming.

Don’t worry. You got this.

Ragan Consulting Group has put together a checklist to help you break down the task into smaller steps. This isn’t a fast or short process — this certainly isn’t a checklist you’ll complete in a day or even a few months. But use it to stay on track and guide your work overtime and you’ll see that this is completely doable.

It starts with understanding what you currently are doing and what your audience needs in the future. You’ll assess your current people resources and figure out how each will contribute to this newsroom, whether as a full-time job or as an occasional collaborator.

You’ll move on to setting up your editorial processes and understanding how work will flow from reporters to editors to the public. Will editors assign stories? Will reporters pitch? What is the editing process like? Will freelancers be involved? This is the time to work out all those details.

Then it’s time to make sure everyone has adequate training on all the things they’ll need to be successful, from writing to videos to the all-important measurement.

Next, consider where all this content will live. Will you revamp your current press site? Build something entirely new on a standalone platform? And how will you change your media relations strategy in light of this new tool?

Finally, it’s time for the good part: testing, a rollout plan and introducing your plan to the world.

Adapt this checklist for your own needs. Don’t be afraid to scale up or down based on your own ambitions, budget and staffing. Then get out there and tell stories.

Discovery and organization

1. Audit of current channels
2. Analysis of audiences
3. Assessment of news team
   1. Newsroom structure
   2. Skills and training needs
   3. Roles and responsibilities
4. News desk set up
   1. Monthly, weekly and daily participants
   2. Collaboration with marketing and internal comms

Editorial process and policy

1. Assignments, deadlines and editors
2. Editorial standards and guidelines
3. Freelancers
4. Approvals and workflow

Training and execution

1. Practice, practice, practice
   1. But with real stories
2. Writing and editing training
3. Video training
4. Infographics
5. Measurement

News platform

1. Concept and design
2. Features and navigation (including a name)
3. News Feed
4. Integration with other channels
5. Revised pitching strategy

Testing, marketing and launch

1. User testing
2. Marketing plan
3. Soft launch internally
4. Full launch

The post Checklist for launching your brand journalism newsroom appeared first on PR Daily.

For the team behind Discover Puerto Rico, it’s always been a challenge to educate consumers about the island’s unique travel offerings.

“As a territory of the U.S., there is an inherent challenge that I think has been in place for a long time, which is just educating people on the U.S. mainland that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.,” explains Leah Chandler, CMO for Discover Puerto Rico.

And that’s a missed opportunity in the luxury travel market, where visitors can avoid the hassle of getting a passport and exchanging currency to simply sit on a beach.

“They think there’s a lot of barriers to entry when in fact traveling to Puerto Rico is super accessible and easy with over 200 direct flights a day,” Chandler says. That’s the challenge that faces the comms team, even more so than the need to rebuild trust and identity for an island that has come to be known by its devastating losses during recent hurricanes.

The keys to audience education are continuity and innovation, says Chandler.

Chandler says continuity is shown by stressing the message about Puerto Rico’s accessibility in every piece of communication the team creates, from press releases to TV ads. For instance, every TV spot has a stamp that reminds viewers “no passport required.”

Rebranding an island

Puerto Rico has always been a bit of an underdog in the destination marketing game, Chandler says. Apart from confusion over its American status, Puerto Rico has also had more than its fair share of crises.

Whether you look at the effects of Hurricane Maria, where island residents were without power for months, or devastating earthquakes— not to mention a global pandemic — the travel destination needed a fresh start.

While working to bring Puerto Rico to new audiences, the team was simultaneously looking to update the crisis playbook — a familiar endeavor for communicators in 2022.

Discover Puerto Rico is a fairly new marketing office, opened in 2018. The good news when the office launched was that most consumers didn’t have a negative view of the island. They mostly just didn’t have much knowledge of the island and its offerings at all.

“Puerto Rico was sort of a shoulder shrug for the consumers that we were testing,” says Chandler.

But the island was also unprepared should a new crisis hit. There wasn’t an official crisis comms playbook for the tourism industry in Puerto Rico before Discover Puerto Rico’s launch in 2018. Creating that playbook was the second big undertaking for Chandler and her team after doing market research about consumers and their knowledge of the island.

“It really is a Bible for us,” Chandler says. “I think we have 25 scenarios, from natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes to shark bites and bomb threats. It is something that we take very seriously.”

And Chandler maintains a good crisis playbook should never live on the shelf for too long, even if you don’t have a reason to use it.

“It’s something we kind of live and breathe,” she says. And because the team was constantly working on their playbook, they were more prepared for COVID-19 than some.

“Because of the impact of Zika in 2015 and 2016, we actually had an air pathogen play in our playbook,” says Chandler. “We had a plan for airborne illness and contagion that we were able to immediately pull.”

The pandemic was still unprecedented, she agrees, but having that chapter in the playbook allowed her team to get a head start and move faster when the crisis first started to disrupt travel in 2020.

Getting creative

And as an underdog, Chandler says her team was forced to work smarter than other destination travel operations.

“We’ve really have to push on innovation and make sure that we’re bringing concepts to the table to reach people in unique ways and really disrupt the regular tourism advertising sea of sameness,” she says.

One example of innovation is the activation around its campaign “Sunshine to Spare.” Working with PR agency Ketchum, the team looked to leverage the sunshine and warmth of Puerto Rico into a recognizable brand.

“We partnered with a climatologist at the University of Puerto Rico, who actually helped measure the sunlight in Puerto Rico and assign a value to it that we were able to derive into our own unique color,” explains Chandler. That color was then branded by Pantone.

Now with its signature color, Puerto Rico can enter conversations that aren’t specifically about travel to the Caribbean. Perhaps a consumer wants to choose the color of the Puerto Rican sunset for a special room. The color also appeared at New York Fashion Week through a partnership with designer Christian Cowan.

Live Boricua

In its latest campaign, Discover Puerto Rico is hoping to set itself apart form other travel destinations by highlighting what it sees as its best competitive advantage: its culture.

The campaign, which it calls “Live Boricua,” hopes to highlight the special mix of African, Native American and Spanish heritage that defines Puerto Rico. (Boricua is a word for someone of Puerto Rocan birth or descent.)

The campaign also marks a return to normal operations for Discover Puerto Rico after years of pandemic crisis response.

“We are kind of getting back to basics,” says Chandler.

“The essence of Live Boricua means to ‘live like us,’ and promises a deeper and more meaningful experience for travelers,” says Jean Paul Polo, Emmy-award-winning director of creative strategy for Discover Puerto Rico. “It was incredible to work with fellow Boricuas, from renowned director Mariem Pérez Riera and award-winning still photographer Steph Segarra to my colleagues at Discover Puerto Rico and the local talent we cast as this is our moment to define what it means to experience our way of life and have it become part of the everyday vernacular outside of the Island.”

And the tag line “Live Boricua” offers yet another opportunity for educating a target audience. The term “Boricua” is familiar to Puerto Ricans and the diaspora that still have strong ties to the island. “They know what Boricua means and, and their hearts are filled with pride when they hear it,” says Chandler.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it’s an opportunity to be introduced to something new, while still holding onto some of the expected parts of the pitch: the white sand beaches and the colorful iced beverages.

To reach these two audiences, the team is executing a two-pronged strategy. For markets that need less of an introduction to Puerto Rico — New York, Orlando or Miami — the Puerto Rican culture will be proudly on display. And for audiences that are still learning that the island exists, the campaign will have more of a traditional destination marketing feel with images of beaches and the expected Caribbean vacation panorama.

But soon, those markets too will be introduced to the Boricua lifestyle. For Chandler and her team, the hope is one day that everyone will know exactly where Puerto Rico is and can’t resist the urge to “Live Boricua.”

The post How Discover Puerto Rico is educating audiences about island heritage appeared first on PR Daily.

Netflix’s week was a series of unfortunate events. They announced they’d lost subscribers, would be canceling many programs and, finally, that they’d laid off staffers with Tudum, their brand journalism arm launched just seven months prior.

At least 10 contractors and staffers, many women and/or people of color, were laid off April 29 and given two weeks of severance less than a year after being aggressively recruited by the streaming giant with six-figure salaries, according to a slew of stories reporting on the changes.

“Our fan website Tudum is an important priority for the company,” the company said

Whatever Tudum’s actual fate will be, there are lessons that savvy communicators should learn as they consider their own brand journalism efforts. According to Ragan’s Communications Benchmark Report 2022, pros expect to see this sector continue to grow in the coming year. Whether you’re considering your existing efforts or looking at standing up a new initiative, keep these items in mind to avoid some of Tudum’s mistakes.

1. Make sure everyone understands the purpose.

According to The Daily Beast, the project was launched with a set of promises to staffers that seem, from the outside, too good to be true.

Although Tudum launched as part of Netflix’s massive marketing division with the goal of promoting the company’s titles, writers were promised editorial freedom — as well as dream working conditions like astronomical pay and no story or traffic quotas. “I was just like, man, it’s like we’re being treated like magazine writers from 50 years ago,” another source recalled.

Yet, Netflix corporate and Tudum’s journalists seemingly had different ideas about what “editorial freedom” meant. Staffers complained they weren’t permitted to write critically about Netflix shows, The Daily Beast reported. And NPR says that mentions of films not in Netflix’s collection were deleted from the site.

Indeed, while it seemed many staffers expected to continue doing more traditional journalism, the launch video for Tudum from December reveals plans for a site that allowed you to “discover more about your Netflix favorites.” The ad’s focus on a search bar where “users” type in questions about Netflix shows indicates an initiative more focused around SEO and branded content than deep dives into culture and themes.

And indeed, if you look at Tudum today, that’s what you’ll find.

Whatever staffers were told in the hiring process, it appears there was a disconnect that was never corrected. As one staffer told NPR, “They started tightening up little by little. And then just it became clear. It’s a content marketing job, essentially. That would have been fine if from the get-go they made that clear.”

And as The Daily Beast reported:

Writers and editors previously told they could write about anything they want allegedly found themselves assigned to arbitrary beats like crime and science fiction. And suddenly everyone’s work had to be “title-focused,” one source said — whereas originally, teams like culture and trends had been encouraged to focus on meatier work that went beyond straightforward promo.

Hiring former journalists is a good way to ensure quality content on your site. However, journalists must understand that the world of branded content isn’t the same as traditional reporting and that no matter what’s promised, they will have to serve the needs of the organization first and foremost. Likewise, companies shouldn’t tell job candidates what they want to hear to get them to sign on the dotted line. Clear expectations serve everyone in the long run.

Most important, work must be tied to measurable goals that feed the company’s goals – Tudum workers say they never had firm metrics to hit – and everyone must be on the same page about what those are.

2. Give teams the resources to succeed.

Everyone agrees that Netflix built a talented team for its venture and paid them well. However, that doesn’t mean they had all the resources they needed to succeed. From The Daily Beast:

It didn’t seem great, for instance, that no one at the top apparently thought to have a Twitter account for Tudum ready at launch — or, really, to promote Tudum and its content at all. The content management system couldn’t embed trailers or tweets, and the site launched without author pages or an archive. How did Netflix, a company with a small army of engineers at its disposal who specialize in keeping eyeballs on screens, think this would work?

Any successful brand journalism venture needs a CMS that fits their needs (and embedding tweets and playing video should be standard), as well as promotion. Content for content’s sake doesn’t serve your audience or your bottom line.

But perhaps the biggest resource that Netflix withheld from Tudum was time. Most staffers reported being hired just seven months ago; the social media launch announcement came less than six months ago. That isn’t enough time to let a new publication find its footing, voice and audience.

Granted, Netflix’s business woes threw it some curveballs that were likely unexpected. Still, even with a clear vision and goals, most branded journalism initiatives won’t bear fruit in less than a year. Make sure you’re in this for the long haul.

3. Diverse hiring isn’t laudable if the jobs aren’t real.

Netflix hired an incredibly diverse team to run Tudum, including a Black woman as its head. However, that also means that they’ve now laid off a diverse team without giving the initiative a true chance to succeed, in many cases drawing those staffers away from other jobs and prompting cross-country moves.

The Daily Beast reported:

By making such hires, Netflix built cachet for both itself and this new editorial arm — and by putting them first in line out the door as the company’s stock plummets, the streamer has made clear how little it actually valued their work.

“I feel that we were led astray and that we were taken advantage of because we were mostly a team of color, mostly women,” one of the former staffers said.

While most companies are rightfully emphasizing DE&I in hiring, they must also look at how they treat those people, and how others will perceive mass layoffs of a predominately diverse group. Hiring for diversity can’t just be a PR move completed in a branch of your company that seems easy to cut later. It must permeate the entire organization. And if mass cuts are required in a heavily diverse department, think hard about what your messaging will be.

The bottom line: If you’re going to do brand journalism, commit to it with strong goals, a long timeline and a clear value proposition to those you hire.

The post What you can learn from Netflix’s brand journalism layoffs appeared first on PR Daily.

Of all the duties charged to communicators, from diversity to sustainability, thought leadership is among the most vexing and worthwhile.

More than ever, employees, customers and the general public expect your organization’s top executives to be front-and-center on important topics, not just in your own industry but on the social issues of the day.

It’s not automatic. CEOs and other leaders, including your subject matter experts, come in all shapes, sizes ― and temperaments. Most of the ones I’ve encountered are smart and thoughtful, but that doesn’t make them natural communicators or instant video influencers. That, as we like to say, is where you come in. Here are five ways you can help:

1. Start small, with what you know best. Your leader’s first foray into thought leadership doesn’t have to be a Ted Talk on the state of civilization. Begin with what you know in your own shop. If you’ve developed a good company culture, for example, tell us how you did it. (By the way, everyone wants to hear this in the age of hybrid work.)

2. Follow the news. A basic tenet of thought leadership is that executives should be timely and topical. People will follow you because you have something to say about the news of the day, and that you will “advance” the story with your insights, adding explanation and context.

You can do this by pitching your experts to media, as a source for stories or as a guest on a news program. If you have a good brand journalism site, you can publish that story yourself ― and then pitch it. The Statement, the brandjo platform for BOK Financial, does this regularly with Steve Wyett, the company’s chief investment strategist, among other experts.

In a recent post, Wyett offered perspective and a calming voice on a story about the market reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And when the head of your university happens to be the former undersecretary of the U. S. Navy, you’re in a great position to showcase her expertise. That’s what led Janine Davidson, president of Metropolitan State University of Denver, to preside over a panel discussion on Ukraine for the Council on Foreign Relations.

3. Get more at-bats. It’s hard to be a thought leader if your thoughts are restricted to once a month, or every once in a while. Reporters and editors often search Twitter looking for outside experts to quote in their reports. LinkedIn provides the perfect platform not just to display your own leadership content, but to comment and share the work of others. Write an intro that adds your perspective, then post the story. Done!

4. Share the wealth. Thought leadership comes in a variety of ways. Sure, we want the CEO commenting on voting rights and Black Lives Matter. But the other part of thought leadership is expertise. You have smart people who aren’t in the C-suite but are experts in their field, and they can be good explainers about complicated issues.

Case in point: John Avolio, value chain manager at Nova Chemicals, brings a great voice and presence to this LinkedIn post about innovations in plastics recycling.

5. Make use of all the tools ― especially video. LinkedIn is quickly becoming a go-to platform for thought leaders. Your brand journalism site means a content platform that is easy to find, breaks news and offers both expertise and thought leadership. Video, of course, is a great way to go, by offering:

• Short (1 minute!) videos, with impact.
• Satellite media tours, from our partners at DS Simon Media. Get your executive in multiple media markets for interviews on the topics of the day, or in your industry.
• Pitching your expert to relevant news programs.

It’s confusing, distracting and noisy out there, especially on social media. Position your thought leaders to offer clarity ― and calm ― on the issues people want to hear about.

Jim Ylisela is co-founder and senior partner of Ragan Consulting Group. Schedule a call with Tom Corfman to learn how we can help you improve your communications effort with training, consulting and strategic counsel. Follow RCG on LinkedIn here and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

The post How to make your boss a thought leader appeared first on PR Daily.

You can trace the evolution of the modern brand journalism playbook through Chad Mitchell’s career.

The VP of corporate & public affairs and head of content & digital platforms for TD Bank, Mitchell has experience on both the brand and agency side, as well as experience with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He is also a member of the PR Daily Leadership Network.

A native of the Washington, D.C. area, Mitchell caught the politics bug early in life, and as a kid thought he wanted to be a writer. “I think I wanted to be a sports writer,” he says, remembering fondly his experiences helping to cover local high school athletics as a stinger for the local paper. But that changed when he got to college.

While covering an event, he got the opportunity to speak with Sen. John Heinz, a well-respected lawmaker from Western Pennsylvania. Confessing his waning interest in journalism, Mitchell asked Heinz for some career advice.

Mitchell remembers Heinz’s advice as “stick with journalism and come intern in my office — and I’ll show you what you can do with a writing degree.”

Mitchell never got the chance to work for Heinz, who died in a plane crash the very next day after that conversation, but the advice to focus on writing has paid dividends for Mitchell’s career.

“Once they find out you can write, you’re pretty indispensable,” Mitchell says.

Telling brand stories

Brand journalism has changed a lot since Mitchell’s time at Walmart where he helped develop a strategy that they borrowed from Coca-Cola.

“Brands were ditching their digital newsrooms and moving to storytelling sites,” says Mitchell, and he was inspired to follow Sam Walton’s infamous adage, “Steal shamelessly.”

“I stole [Coca-Cola’s] Ashley Brown’s entire playbook and said, ‘I’m going to do the same thing,” Mitchell says. They built “Walmart Today” using the same CMS and while Mitchell admits the effort wasn’t particularly original, the Walmart team was still early and was able to try a bunch of different things, from podcasting to social media targeting.

After a brief stint back in the agency world after Walmart, Mitchell landed at TD Bank.

At Walmart, the work focused on trying to fix reputational damage as well as wield the assets of a Fortune 100 corporation to tell your story. TD Bank is more a challenger brand, explains Mitchell, one that is explaining its value to an audience that might confuse it with TD Ameritrade.

And yet, both challenges require some of the same tactics: standing up a team of talented storytellers and writers, telling a story and getting it out there.

What’s changed in 2022

How has brand journalism shifted from Mitchell’s time at Walmart in the 2000s to now?

His first observation: “Everyone is doing it.”

When thinking about your competition as a brand journalist, you might think you are only up against the other players in your industry. But Mitchell says, that’s a misguided assumption.

“While Gatorade’s trying to sell a drink and I’m trying to get you into Walmart, there’s only so much that people can absorb,” he says. That means that brand journalists are competing against everyone, all at once, for attention and engagement. And that competition has forced brands to become better at telling their stories.

On the other hand, it’s become easier to recruit top journalism talent as traditional newsrooms have eroded and some of the stigma around brand journalism has worn off. Where before, a journalist might have worried about their credibility after writing for a Walmart or Coca-Cola brand site, writers now assume they can make the leap in and out without repercussions.

Even the focus of brand stories has improved. While in the early days of brand journalism, the brand was always the “hero” or a story, brand websites are now focused on telling stories about employees and communities.

“It’s using the power of their brand to elevate and tell the story for others,” Mitchell says.

One thing that has perhaps gotten worse is the quandary over how to distribute the content you create.

“One of the biggest challenges in our craft is: How do you stay on top of all of the changing trends, especially when a lot of the platforms we use are basically rented space and they change the algorithm and everything we do is out the window?” says Mitchell.

Podcasts and TikTok are just a couple of examples of the tools that weren’t a priority — or even a possibility — in the 2000s that have now become essential pieces of the puzzle.

For Mitchell, it’s the “wickedly creative” who will be best suited to break through the noise and reach overwhelmed audiences.

To read the full story, join the PR Daily Leadership Network, an exclusive membership for pros working in external communications.

The post How brand journalism is changing, according to TD Bank’s Chad Mitchell appeared first on PR Daily.

April Fools’ Day posts can make or break a brand’s social media presence. The idea of outright lying to your audiences in the name of a joke holiday makes some consumers furious, while others appreciate the attempted levity.

Here are some of the best — and most questionable — April Fools’ Day brand campaigns we’ve seen this year.

“Meat Sweats”

You’ve heard of anti-perspirant, but what about a product that does the exact opposite?

Omaha Steaks, “America’s Original Butcher,” wants to keep its customers smelling like a well-cooked steak all day long — and with Meat Sweats Perspirant, you can do exactly that.

The Meat Sweats: a well-marbled roll-on perspirant with powerful 24-hour non-protection. Available in 3 scents: Original Beef; Lighter Fluid; and Mesquite. pic.twitter.com/qpOZ6f7Yb5

— Omaha Steaks (@OmahaSteaks) April 1, 2022

Of course, this isn’t real. That would be disgusting. But Omaha Steaks is offering 50% off online purchases today, so you don’t have to break a sweat to find a good deal on some meat.

Hay-cation

Budweiser wants you to spend your precious PTO getting up close and personal with its famous Clydesdale horses.

That’s right, for the low price of $1,876 per night, you can cuddle up to the Clydesdales in Budweiser’s hay-filled Stables for a night.

Want to go on the ultimate hay-cation? Book our NEW Budbnb: and enjoy your stay with the World-Famous Budweiser Clydesdales!

That’s right, we've transformed the Stables into a one-of-a-kind hotel experience. Learn more in this thread. pic.twitter.com/LN6c8MhGsm

— Budweiser (@budweiserusa) April 1, 2022

The “Budbnb” features a fully stocked bar, hay beds and “discovery around every corner.” We’ll assume it’s an April Fools’ joke until an influencer posts a vlog titled “My Morning Routine With Budweiser’s Clydesdales.”

Cranberry supremacy

Cranberry products company Ocean Spray is taking a page out of luxury streetwear brands’ books with its new line of merch.

“Spray. The Bog Collection 2022” features T-shirts, hats and sneakers emblazoned with the word “spray” in a font reminiscent of luxury brand Supreme’s signature red and white label.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ocean Spray (@oceansprayinc)

“Comment below if you’re fool enough to model,” beckons the brand’s Instagram post.

“Respect the drip? More like display the spray,” one user commented.

Mandela effect madness

Fruit of the Loom’s logo always featured a cornucopia behind a variety of tasty fruits …. Right?

Nope. That’s your alternate universe self talking. But the brand took advantage of the common misconception this April Fools’ Day with a subtle update to its logo, as seen on Twitter:

Anyone got any good pranks planned?

— Fruit of the Loom (@FruitOfTheLoom) April 1, 2022

TheChive effectively captured the full rundown of the Fruit of the Loom Mandela effect saga a few years ago.

What’s that smell?

Following in Omaha Steak’s smelly footsteps, Pringles announced this morning that it would venture into the realm of bath and body products with the release of its first-ever body wash — scented like its signature Sour Cream & Onions chip variety.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pringles (@pringles)

If you’ve ever wanted your whole body’s scent to remind you of that bad date you went on in high school (fajitas with extra onion? What were you thinking?) then this is the body wash for you.

Hold the cookie, please

If you enjoy consuming just the sweet, white creme (cream? crema?) in between what is arguably the better part of the iconic Oreo cookie (the chocolate wafers are superior), then you’re in for a treat.

Heinz announced it will now manufacture just the Oreo creme, sans cookie, to be sold in a ketchup-style packet.

You asked for just the creme & @HeinzTweets helped us make it happen pic.twitter.com/9kX63BeS2Z

— OREO Cookie (@Oreo) April 1, 2022

Sorry — not a treat, actually. An April Fools’ Day trick.

No, Twitter is not adding an edit button

There’s just no way this one is true.

Twitter tweeted (say that five times fast) this afternoon that it is working on an edit button:

https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1509951255388504066

It’s something users have been asking for for years, with no real answer from the social media giant.

Hi, we’ve been trying to reach you concerning your lack of Duolingo lessons

Everyone is scared of that Duolingo bird, right? The menacing figure that threatens us through push notifications when we don’t complete our language lessons on time?

Now, victims of the Duolingo owl have some recourse:

The bit builds on several years of April Fools’ jokes from the language learning app, all of which center around its menacing mascot. Most recently, the brand’s TikTok account took off in popularity thanks to videos featuring a live-action Duolingo owl threatening people in real life.

Drink up, boys

Tom Brady’s sports and lifestyle brand, TB12, introduced an enormous water bottle today, meant to help health and fitness enthusiasts get their daily eight glasses of water in without breaking a sweat:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by TB12 (@tb12sports)

The photos feature Brady drinking from and holding laughably large bottles, which aren’t actually that much smaller than the largest bottle the brand offers.

The post April Fools’ Day 2022: PR Daily’s roundup of the best and worst brand pranks appeared first on PR Daily.

As any editor working in a brand newsroom will tell you, brand journalism and content marketing are not mutually exclusive. That doesn’t mean your brand journalism stories should read like advertisements, either.

It’s on communicators and branded content editors to tell brand stories that provide value to audiences on par with a straight news story. But in a time when real-time global conflicts place added pressure on brands to tell stories rooted in the moment, populating your brand newsroom with timely stories can feel overwhelming.

Ahead of her session at Ragan’s Brand Storytelling Conference on April 13, we caught up with Ally Hirschlag, branded content editor at The Weather Channel, to learn how she launched her first major brand campaign for Weather.com in a rush and what it taught her.

Ragan: What do you consider the most crucial elements of an effective brand story?

Hirschlag: A truly successful brand story doesn’t feel branded. The more you can make it fit in with the editorial content that you might find on your site or elsewhere, the more likely it is to attract attention, and, in turn, promote the brand.

Today’s audiences can sniff out advertising much better than they could even 10 years ago. And when they do, they tend to turn away immediately. The elements that help mitigate this effect are the same elements that make impactful, non-branded editorial content: clear, compelling storytelling, an angle that hooks an audience within the first few sentences and characters with whom people can relate and care about.

Ragan: You were tasked with building out your first major brand campaign for Weather.com in a rush. What was your first step?

Hirschlag: Since I was working by myself and largely without the support of staff writers, I quickly began building out my roster of freelance writers I knew could bring their A-game to this campaign.

The goal was to highlight grassroots efforts to combat the global water crisis, so I knew I needed seasoned environmental reporters. Thankfully, I’d worked with several previously who were pros at finding and crafting underreported sustainability stories. I was lucky that enough of them were interested and available for the assignment on short notice.

Ragan: What’s the biggest storytelling lesson you learned from that speedy win?

Hirschlag:  I learned the importance of stepping back and trusting the talent I had brought on to deliver what I knew they could.

It can be tempting to micromanage writers when you’re working on a high stakes campaign on a tight deadline. That’s not to say I didn’t provide editorial guidance when they needed it or nudge them if they fell behind on a draft update, but I really tried to minimize my hand in everything.

Ultimately, we wound up with 18 truly distinctive, fascinating stories, and I don’t think that would’ve happened if I had excessively streamlined the drafts. The cohesion came from the overarching water scarcity theme, while the variety of writers’ voices gave the campaign the uniqueness it needed since we were covering such a wide spectrum of environmental solutions.

 Hear more from Ally Hirschlag during Ragan’s Brand Storytelling Conference on April 13. Learn more and register here.

The post Trust your talent: How backing off micromanaging makes for stronger branded stories appeared first on PR Daily.

Hello, communicators:

Country music legend and America’s sweetheart Dolly Parton announced she is partnering with Duncan Hines on a line of specialty cake mixes and frostings.

The company offered a limited-edition preview of the line for $40 on its website, which has already sold out. Parton’s products, including coconut cake and banana pudding cake mix, won’t hit store shelves until spring.

(Image via)

“I have always loved to cook and, growing up in the South, I especially love that authentic Mom and Pop kind of cooking,” Parton says in the press release. “I am excited to launch my own line of cake mixes and frostings with Duncan Hines, bringing that sweet, Southern-style baking experience I enjoy to others.”

Here are today’s other top stories:

Google increases parental leave, PTO in benefits expansion

Google announced yesterday that it will expand its employee benefits, increasing parental leave and additional vacation time for workers.

Here are some notable changes:

• Parental leave is now 18 weeks instead of 12.
• Parental leave for employees who give birth increases to 24 weeks.
• Caregiver leave now eight weeks, up from four.
• PTO is now 20 days a year instead of 15.

Business Insider reports:

“’More than 40% of our employees are in the ‘sandwich generation,’ where they might find themselves both bringing up their children and caring for aging family members,’ Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, wrote in an emailed statement on Thursday.

“’We want to support our employees at every stage of their lives and that means providing extraordinary benefits, so they can spend more time with their new baby, look after a sick loved one or take care of their own wellbeing,’ Cicconi said. ‘Today we’re announcing increases to our global leave benefits to ensure that parents and caregivers have more time to spend with their families and loved ones, and to encourage all Googlers to take more time for themselves, too.’”

Why it matters: If your organization’s benefits are lacking, it’s time to get with the program: Companies are offering more comprehensive and attractive perks—on top of health care and PTO—to hook new employees and keep existing workers from jumping ship.

A new study from LinkedIn found that Gen Z workers want meaningful benefits like schedule flexibility and mental health support. Already offer a full slate of benefits? Great! Now’s the time to publicize your investment. Don’t be shy. Maybe even use the #showusyourleave hashtag?

MEASURED THOUGHTS

A new report from ListenFirst shows that many brands just haven’t figured out the “metaverse” yet. Relatable, right?

(Image via)

The study surveyed brand marketing and analytics professionals about the future of social media marketing.

More than 20% of respondents answered “no” when asked if they understood the metaverse and how it might impact their brands. Just 18% answered “yes,” while the majority of respondents answered “somewhat” or “unsure.”

In short: If you haven’t figured out the metaverse yet, you’re not alone. Try taking a gander at these tips on how to see through the hype and know when to get on board with the new trend.

Check out more from the ListenFirst 2022 Social Media Marketing Trends Study here.

TAKE OUR SURVEY

We want to know about your career as a social media professional.

How big is your team? Are you valued at your organization?

If you’re interested in helping benchmark the career path potential of social media professionals and shedding light on how social media is internally managed, viewed and evaluated, take our survey. The 2022 Social Media Career survey is a follow-up to a 2020 report by the Institute for Public Relations, Ragan Communications and the University of Florida.

Whether you’re in charge of company social media or involved in social media for a client, we welcome your participation.

Respondents will receive a full report on the findings, which will also be shared on PR Daily.   Responses will remain confidential.

Glossier announces layoffs amid concerns it expanded too fast

Makeup and skincare company Glossier laid off more than 80 of its employees this week, a move that CEO Emily Weiss chalked up to the fact that the organization “got ahead of ourselves on hiring.”

In an email obtained by Modern Retail, Weiss announced the layoffs and admitted to “some mistakes,” writing: “We prioritized certain strategic projects that distracted us from the laser-focus we needed to have on our core business: scaling our beauty brand.”

Weiss wrote that many of the eliminated positions were from the brand’s technology team, representing labor that will be outsourced moving forward.

Business Insider reports:

“During the pandemic, it permanently closed its LA and New York stores, leading to staff layoffs. Toward the end of 2021, however, the company started to refocus on brick-and-mortar retail. It opened new locations in LA, Seattle, and most recently, London. The company raised $80 million in funding to do so.”

Why it matters: When sharing unpleasant news with stakeholders, honesty is the best policy. CEO Emily Weiss’ ability to acknowledge the mistakes that led to Glossier’s restructuring is a clear example of transparent leadership communications.

By explaining how the brand was invested in the wrong ventures, Weiss is able to position the layoffs as a step towards a more profitable future—essential messaging for an investor marketplace that is increasingly concerned about bad debt on company’s books.

Announcing the PR Daily Leadership Network

PR Daily is launching the PR Daily Leadership Network, a unique membership group from Ragan Communications offering peer-to-peer advisory and team training along with a unique slate of resources and events to help public relations professionals break through the noise, increase their visibility and forge meaningful connections.

The Network provides daily insights and coverage on a range of topics including media relations, social media, measurement, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, branding, thought leadership and crisis communications.

“The fast pace of change coupled with the demand on public relations professionals to protect and sometimes defend their company’s reputation make it imperative for leaders to tap into the wisdom of other communicators and continue to learn and grow,” says Diane Schwartz, CEO of Ragan Communications. “The PR Daily Leadership Network provides the answers but also encourages members to question the status quo and push for positive change.”

Visit leadership.prdaily.com to learn more.

The post Google upgrades family leave perks for workers, brands flummoxed by the metaverse and Glossier lays off 80+ following 2021 expansion appeared first on PR Daily.

If your audience doesn’t trust you, then nothing you sell, publish or share will really matter.

Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer found that, globally, government and media institutions are seen as divisive and untrustworthy—no surprise, given the last several years of political tumult and the lasting consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And while global trust in business has increased, Americans’ faith that businesses are doing the right thing is down five percentage points from last year.

Tonia Ries, Edelman’s global executive director, calls the United States a “poster child” for what’s happening in many western-style democracies: People don’t trust their governments to protect them. They don’t trust the news to hold people in power accountable or trust businesses to actually “walk the talk” when it comes to social issues and values.

Edelman researchers have dubbed this the “cycle of distrust.”

The Trust Barometer shows that people actually want more from businesses when it comes to engagement on social issues. In most cases, respondents said, companies aren’t doing enough to address things like climate change or economic inequality—which contributes to the lack of trust.

Given this bleak snapshot of the American psyche, how can PR pros earn back trust from their audiences?

1. Know your audience.

Ries says knowing your customers and employees is the first step to building trust in an organization. She emphasizes the importance of starting locally—which isn’t the same thing as starting small.

“If we say, can we partner with government on a program—or NGOs—it doesn’t always have to be a big national thing,” Ries says. “Sometimes those local, community-based initiatives can be so much more powerful in building trust and building those bonds. So, think locally in order to build and amplify from there.”

2. Identify your company values and act on them.

Not every organization can take a stance on every issue, so it’s important to pick and choose wisely.

Before you can consider changing your messaging, it’s worth taking a step back and identifying the core values of your company—and then evaluating how your current comms strategy reflects those values.

It’s not an easy task, Ries says, but a very necessary one.

“[That] creates a very tricky line that CEOs and communicators need to walk in making choices about which issues, how do you engage, without being seen as politicized?” she says. “Because one person’s policy discussion is another person’s politics. So, that definitely presents a lot of challenges for communicators, but I don’t think it’s a challenge that they can ignore.”

3. Avoid “trust-washing.”

According to Ries, the action that you do decide to take based on your values matters. It matters a lot.

She dubs virtue-signaling action “trust-washing.”

“If you only show up one day a year, to make a statement and pat yourself on the back, you clearly are not authentic, sincere and committed,” Ries says. “And, in fact, you risk having the opposite effect; people will just further write off whatever else you might say next month, because you’re seen as ‘trust-washing,’ or rather, I should say, insincere and inauthentic in your communications.”

Companies must be able to back up their messaging with concrete action. For example, if you’re sharing a post about Black History Month, then you should be able to point to action your organization has taken to fight systemic racism.

What steps does your organization take to build and maintain trust from your audiences?

The post How communicators can help break the ‘cycle of distrust’ appeared first on PR Daily.

Hello, communicators:

PepsiCo announced that it will award $5,000 to 40 community organizations focused on the outdoors as part of the MTN DEW Outdoor Grants program. The soda brand launched its grant program in 2020 as a response to the uptick in outdoor recreation during the pandemic as outdoor organizations struggled with declines in funding.

Applicants who received the grants shared how they or their favorite community organizations positively impact their local outdoor spaces. Recipients were selected based on their efforts to preserve and protect the great outdoors and get people outside through conservation or infrastructure initiatives.

“We’re proud to invest in the work of even more diverse, local organizations who are helping the great outdoors be even better for future generations,” PepsiCo Beverages North America, Central Division CMO Jill Abbott said in a press release.

MTN Dew says it will consult the recipients later in the year to share how they spent the grant money at their organizations, offering ongoing storytelling opportunities. Contests, awards and grants also set precedents for future partnerships.

Here are today’s top stories:

Microsoft explains Activision Blizzard acquisition

Microsoft announced that it will acquire video game publisher Activision Blizzard in an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion, acquiring hit franchises including “Warcraft,” “Diablo” and “Overwatch” in the deal. The company said that Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick will stay on as CEO until the deal closes and focus on strengthening the company culture. Microsoft said that the announcement is part of its commitment to the future of gaming.

According to its press release:

“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.”

News of the acquisition came just days after reports that Activision Blizzard terminated dozens of employees over workplace misconduct, the company’s latest response to a series of sexual harassment allegations that were addressed by Kotick in heavily criticized employee memos. Kotick previously vowed to take a pay cut until the company’s recently set DE&I benchmark goals were met.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

An Activision spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, confirmed that 37 people have “exited” and 44 have been disciplined as part of the company’s investigation. In a statement, she said employee comments included statements on social media, and the issues raised ranged from what she described as benign workplace concerns to “a small number” of potentially serious assertions, which the company has investigated.

What it means:

As some reports suggest that Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard was motivated by the latter company’s workplace problems, Nadella’s words emphasize Microsoft’s values on safety in the workplace. The acquisition comes as Microsoft has announced its own internal review of sexual harassment policies and safeguards.

The messages from Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are reminders of the many opportunities to emphasize your organizations’ values and commitments to employees.

MEASURED THOUGHTS

A new report from Twitter found that 61% of its users said brands should acknowledge crises in their advertising and communications as they are occurring, while 60% said they want to hear from brands on sensitive cultural or political topics. Forty-eight percent said that it is more important for brands to support economic, social, political or cultural issues compared to a year ago.

Courtesy of Twitter

Twitter’s latest research challenges the practice of staying silent amid a brand or national crisis in hopes it becomes buried in the news cycle. It also suggests that Twitter users equate authenticity with vulnerability, whether a company is commenting on its own troubles or addressing a sensitive topic of national conversation.

Partner with your social media team to find a balance between being vulnerable and open with digital audiences that still stays true to brand voice.

Check out the full report here.

TAKE OUR SURVEY

If you’re looking to further your understanding of your industry to navigate what’s ahead in 2022, lend us a hand—and help yourself and your peers identify shared benchmarks in areas such as budgets, team structure, ESG and DE&I efforts, and more. Participate in Ragan Communications Leadership Council’s 2022 Benchmark Survey, a comprehensive look at how to negotiate budgets with your executives, how to best reach deskless workers and foster culture among a hybrid workforce, and more.

Both internal and external communicators are encouraged to participate.

By taking part, you’ll be entered to win one of three $100 gift cards. All who complete the survey will receive a full report on the findings. Responses are anonymous.

Survey takers will receive an executive summary of the findings.

SOCIAL BUZZ

After outdoor workwear company Carhartt sent an employee email reinforcing its commitment to employee vaccine mandates was shared on Twitter, several customers weighed in on whether Carhartt’s messaging was in line with its brand identity and target audience.

Several Twitter users supported the messaging:

Wow @Carhartt I’m impressed and I will be purchasing from a company that cares about protecting all its workers. Thank you for not making this issue political & for believing in science. We need more companies like yours! pic.twitter.com/Vs4ae9s4Nl

— Babetta (@babettalane) January 18, 2022

Proud to support good corporate citizens like Carhartt. pic.twitter.com/pD1Myhn6er

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) January 18, 2022

Others attempted to start a boycott on Carhartt products:

I’m done with Carhartt. drop pic.twitter.com/0OC79J04dN

— Brent Terhune Bloomington IN May 3&4 (@BrentTerhune) January 18, 2022

I spend thousands a year on @Carhartt hoodies, jackets & winter gear. Today that ends. I guess I am looking for alternatives. Seriously, this is insane given their target market. I am done purchasing any of their stuff and giving them thousands in free advertising. pic.twitter.com/kyHaNwlO6c

— TheQuartering (@TheQuartering) January 18, 2022

PR Daily reports:

Amy Hellebuyck, Carhartt’s senior public relations manager, confirmed that the email—from CEO Mark Valade—was legitimate and accurately represented the company’s position on vaccines for employees. Hellebuyck notes that while the email to employees was not originally intended for an external audience, the team anticipated the possibility.

“While a company may not intend for its internal communications to be shared publicly, communications professionals are always aware that the possibility exists,” she says. “Which is why at Carhartt, our communications team works hand-in-hand to ensure that our messaging is consistent, regardless of the channel.”

Hellebuyck’s statement is a reminder that what is internal always has the potential to become external.

Announcing the PR Daily Leadership Network

PR Daily is launching the PR Daily Leadership Network, a unique membership group from Ragan Communications offering peer-to-peer advisory and team training along with a unique slate of resources and events to help public relations professionals break through the noise, increase their visibility and forge meaningful connections.

The Network provides daily insights and coverage on a range of topics including media relations, social media, measurement, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, branding, thought leadership and crisis communications.

“The fast pace of change coupled with the demand on public relations professionals to protect and sometimes defend their company’s reputation make it imperative for leaders to tap into the wisdom of other communicators and continue to learn and grow,” says Diane Schwartz, CEO of Ragan Communications. “The PR Daily Leadership Network provides the answers but also encourages members to question the status quo and push for positive change.”

Visit leadership.prdaily.com to learn more.

AT&T and Verizon announce limits to 5G services around airports

Telecom giants AT&T and Verizon have announced plans to temporarily limit the larger rollout of their 5G networks within 2 miles of airport runways. The decision is the latest in a series of concessions the companies have made to delay the 5G rollout after airlines issued previous warnings about the widespread disruptions that 5G would cause to flight operations. The carriers did not specify which airports would have limits imposed on them.

CNBC reports:

“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and our nation’s airlines have not been able to fully resolve navigating 5G around airports, despite it being safe and fully operational in more than 40 other countries,” Verizon said Tuesday afternoon in a statement announcing a temporary limit in service around some airports.

AT&T said Tuesday that it had agreed “to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry and the FAA to provide further information about our 5G deployment, since they have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment.”

“We are frustrated by the FAA’s inability to do what nearly 40 countries have done, which is to safely deploy 5G technology without disrupting aviation services, and we urge it do so in a timely manner,” an AT&T spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We are launching our advanced 5G services everywhere else as planned with the temporary exception of this limited number of towers.”

Why it matters:

The blame shifting and deflected responsibilities between telecom companies and the FAA amounts to a missed opportunity for partnership between the two groups. Verizon’s statement demonstrates how your messaging can put public pressure on a partner by comparing their handling of a crisis to other organizations in the same industry.

AT&T’s statement demonstrates how that pressure can also be applied by sharing a clear timeline, which also helps to align any frustrations with those of external stakeholders to drive toward a meaningful solution.

The post Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard, audiences expect brands to acknowledge crises, and mobile providers limit 5G near airports appeared first on PR Daily.

Outdoor workwear company Carhartt started trending on Twitter on Jan. 18 when a screenshot of an email sent to associates regarding its standing COVID-19 vaccine requirement began making the rounds.

Amy Hellebuyck, Carhartt’s senior public relations manager, confirmed that the email—from CEO Mark Valade—was legitimate and accurately represented the company’s position on vaccines for employees.

The memo states that while Carhartt is extending its deadline for workers at two of its locations to get the jab, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for large employers did not change Carhartt’s policy.

From the email:

We, and the medical community, continue to believe vaccines are necessary to ensure a safe working environment for every associate and even perhaps their households. While we appreciate that there may be differing views, workplace safety is an area where we and the union that represents our associates cannot compromise. An unvaccinated workforce is both a people and business risk that our company is unwilling to take.

Speaking of “differing views”—some Twitter users had a lot to say. Some were in favor of Carhartt’s messaging:

Proud to support good corporate citizens like Carhartt. pic.twitter.com/pD1Myhn6er

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) January 18, 2022

http://twitter.com/Rebecca4Georgia/status/1483407499860529152

Others were not:

Wow @Carhartt is subjecting their employees to medical abuse. Very bad look. Definitely should stop buying their products if you do pic.twitter.com/OyBdzQjwIK

— E (@ElijahSchaffer) January 18, 2022

I spend thousands a year on @Carhartt hoodies, jackets & winter gear. Today that ends. I guess I am looking for alternatives. Seriously, this is insane given their target market. I am done purchasing any of their stuff and giving them thousands in free advertising. pic.twitter.com/kyHaNwlO6c

— TheQuartering (@TheQuartering) January 18, 2022

YouTuber and standup comedian Brent Terhune posted a TikTok calling for the boycott of Carhartt products:

I’m done with Carhartt. drop pic.twitter.com/0OC79J04dN

— Brent Terhune Bloomington IN May 3&4 (@BrentTerhune) January 18, 2022

Hellebuyck notes that while the email to employees was not originally intended for an external audience, the team anticipated the possibility.

“While a company may not intend for its internal communications to be shared publicly, communications professionals are always aware that the possibility exists,” she says. “Which is why at Carhartt, our communications team works hand-in-hand to ensure that our messaging is consistent, regardless of the channel.”

Carhartt also shared a statement with PR Daily via email further reinforcing its stance on the COVID-19 vaccine and echoing much of the language from Valade’s original email:

Carhartt made the decision to implement its own vaccine mandate as part of our long-standing commitment to workplace safety. Our recent communication to employees was to reinforce that the Supreme Court ruling does not affect the mandate we put in place.

Carhartt fully understands and respects the varying opinions on this topic, and we are aware some of our associates do not support this policy. However, we stand behind our decision because we believe vaccines are necessary to protect our workforce.

Despite the social media hubbub, it’s important to remember that less than 25% of Americans actually use Twitter—and research shows that even stinging op-eds about a company don’t always end up affecting brand perception in a negative way.

The post Carhartt doubles down on vax policy amid leaked memo, Twitter debate appeared first on PR Daily.

As the movement to embrace comprehensive paid family leave gains momentum in the U.S., companies are beginning to institute—and advertise—their own leave policies.

In late 2021, digital media company theSkimm asked its readers to share their stories and experiences concerning paid family leave (or lack thereof). TheSkimm created a hashtag campaign, #ShowUsYourLeave, under which users are sharing everything from back-to-work horror stories to tales of how their employers supported them through times when family mattered more than work.

“As a nonpartisan company geared toward millennial women, theSkimm has always discussed issues impacting women in the workplace,” the company’s website states. “But, this isn’t just a women’s issue. We’re launching the #ShowUsYourLeave movement because not only do we need to get loud about the struggles we’re faced with in navigating new parenthood and how paid family leave, or lack thereof, has an impact, but we also need resources and solutions that we can utilize to create change together.”

The company also shared highlights from its own leave policy to its social media platforms using an easy-to-read graphic:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by theSkimm (@theskimm)

Other organizations have since followed suit, including Pinterest and health care tech company Ro.

Hey, @theskimm we saw your #showusyourleave post and hope more companies will do the same. So here's ours. Moms, have you encountered a paid leave benefit or policy from a company recently that you'd like to see more of? pic.twitter.com/cWEFa2qybc

— The Mom Project (@The_Mom_Project) December 13, 2021

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Leaf Group (@leaf_grp)

TheSkimm is also promoting a Change.org petition urging business leaders to sign and commit to expanding the conversation around paid family leave. Current U.S. law, encoded in the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), entitles eligible employees to 12 unpaid work weeks of leave per year, to be utilized only in very specific circumstances.

Those circumstances are as follows, as detailed on the Department of Labor’s website:

• the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth
• the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement
• to care for the employee’s spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition
• a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job
• any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse, son, daughter, or parent is a covered military member on “covered active duty”

The law also provides for 24 weeks of unpaid leave per year for employees who are caring for a servicemember who is injured or ill

(Image courtesy of TheSkimm)

A gender gap

Lack of mandated paid family leave disproportionately impacts female employees.

According to a fact sheet from the National Partnership for Women & Families, new moms who take paid leave in the year following a birth are 54% more likely to report wage increases than moms who don’t take paid leave. Additionally, women aged 50-plus who leave the workforce early to care for an aging parent are estimated to lose more than $324,000 in wages and retirement.

An employer’s reputation is a key factor in helping to draw in talent. By supporting causes that champion the rights of employees, it’s easy to show potential new hires that taking care of workers is a priority.

Publicizing employee handbook policies like paid family leave and other benefits might seem counterintuitive to building a strong reputation. But sharing a simple graphic with just a few of your organization’s most invaluable benefits—and hopping on board a social media trend—can help solidify your stance on social issues and impress both your desired audience and potential employees.

Will your organization commit to sharing its paid leave benefits?

The post Pinterest, others show support for paid family leave on social media appeared first on PR Daily.

Editor’s note: This article is a re-run as part of our countdown of top stories from the past year.

“Emotional storytelling is the best way to truly connect with your audiences,” says Brandon Daniels, currently a motor oils product manager at Marathon Petroleum.

“Without it, your speeches, presentations or YouTube videos will fall flat,” he warns.

He speaks from experience. Daniels previously worked as a spokesperson and social media manager at Marathon, where he was heavily involved in video production and multimedia project development.

“People laugh and cry when they watch movies, because they identify with heroes on the screen and get to go on a journey,” he said in a recent Ragan workshop. “So we always made sure to apply Hollywood storytelling norms when we created our best videos.”

Here’s his advice for matching the film industry standard—along with insights from an actual Hollywood insider:

1. Watch movies…seriously. “As a communicator, you’re also a storyteller—just like producers making movies,” says Daniels. “The similarities are definitely there.”\

For example, “We used a traditional scripting format,” he says. “We storyboarded, we had production meetings and we edited using Avid Media Composer and After Effects.”

His advice: “Watch movies with a more critical eye. Analyze structure, character journeys and how directors frame shots,” he says. “Treat it like an opportunity to learn.”

His quick tips for creating better corporate videos:

For testimonial videos:

• Never script.
• Keep questions simple and open.
• Change camera angles at consistent points.
• Structure questions around an outline.
• Symbolize backgrounds.
• Give interviewees a security blanket.
• Don’t rush the process.

For narrated/fiction videos:

• Always script.
• Keep the primary purpose at the forefront.
• Use it as an employee engagement tool.
• Storyboard first.
• Shoot to the edit.
• Know your limitations.

2. Understand the psychology of why people share. “For most of PR’s history, we’d pitch the press, write releases that sounded like news stories and push out cold, lifeless, dry facts,” Daniels says. “Well, that’s just boring!”

His point: “Thanks to social media, we can now connect with our audiences directly. That can be a very powerful connection—if we understand that sharing is an innate human need, whether it’s an opinion or a story.”

Source: I-Scoop: “Content Sharing and Storytelling: Why and How People Share Content.”

“People share your content because it’s personal to them,” Daniels explains. “If they’re moved by it, they’ll share it to feel more understood and heard by others.”

3. Personify, personify, personify. So how do you find the emotional buttons to influence your audience?

“Not by accident,” Daniels says. “It’s built around a storytelling strategy where your brand or product personifies and embodies someone we want to connect with.”

His advice is to find someone like a product engineer or even customer who:

• achieved something
• found something
• discovered something
• overcame something

“Then build your post or video around that person,” suggests Daniels. “Interview them and capture the journey they went on. Now you have something to work with.”

4. Study the “Hero’s Journey.” “Movies are about watching people becomesomething, not be something,” agrees Tim Albaugh, who’s an executive producer at Royal Viking Entertainment, consultant for Disney/Pixar and co-founder of ProPath Screenwriting.

This storytelling principle is at the core of Hollywood’s “Hero’s Journey” narrative framework. It’s also core to marketing’s “buyer’s journey,” where prospects are “characters” moving toward satisfying their wants or needs with your product.

“Your product (or service) helps others achieve that goal or solve a problem,” Albaugh says. “In Hollywood screenwriting, that fulfills what we call the ‘mentor’ role.”

While the Hero’s Journey may be a reach for most communicators simply looking to shoot a great video or file a quick post, Albaugh’s next point isn’t.

“Pressure is essential from a storytelling perspective. You can’t just focus on the positives, unless you’re writing a press release,” he says. “If you really want to connect emotionally, then your story structure needs to present and solve challenges.”

In other words, embrace conflict.

“Without it, there are no obstacles to overcome on the way to achieving a goal—and there’s no strong rooting interest,” Albaugh says. “The audience will keep asking ‘Why do I care?’ and you’ll lose them.”

5. Treat writing like it matters. “Great stories don’t happen without writers,” says Albaugh. “Writers don’t just dream up the big ideas. They bring them to life.”

It’s not a stretch to say that writing isn’t always given the respect it deserves.

This despite a recent report published by the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations, which found that “writing is the top skill PR firms look for in new hires” and that “while strong writing may be the skill most in demand, it may be the hardest to find.”

Similarly, PRSA continues to assert that “writing should be the most sought-after skill in PR. Strong writing skills provide a foundation for all aspects of public relations.”

Writing is hard. But worth the effort, if you want to connect with and move audiences like they do in the movies.

Which brings us to Albaugh’s final insights:

How to write like a screenwriter

• Write to connect. Strive for emotion.
• Know your Hero’s Journey.
• Keep the action moving forward.
• Keep the dialog natural.
• Remember your audience.
• Outline. Outline.
• ABC—always be cutting.
• All great writing, after all, is rewriting.
• And the best advice of all… dare to write badly—or you’ll never get started).

Brian Pittman is the Dean of Ragan Training and Ragan Communications event producer. Discover more new storytelling insights at Ragan’s March 31 “Storytelling in Uncertain Times” webinar (with speakers from Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, TD Auto Bank and the Brand Storytelling Network).

The post Create shareable content: 5 Hollywood storytelling tips appeared first on PR Daily.

In our work with communicators, we’re always offering sage advice like, “think like a reporter” and “write like a journalist.”

But what does that really mean? Here are five of my favorite journalism movies that offer great tips on reporting and writing:

1. “The Paper” (1994).

This entertaining, often-overlooked film takes place in one long, agonizing day in the newsroom of a fictional New York tabloid. Metro Editor Henry Hackett (Michael Keaton) is trying to uncover the truth behind two kids wrongfully accused of murder while weighing an offer to jump to a pretentious New York Times-like broadsheet and watching his wife and top reporter (the great Marisa Tomei) threaten to give birth in his office.

Chaos ensues as Keaton pushes to nail down the story before the presses run that evening. At one point, two rival reporters fight for dibs on the story, and one says:

“You wanna cover Brooklyn, then cover Brooklyn. But let me tell you something, it’s a little tough to do from a barstool in Manhattan.”

And that’s tip No. 1: Be a better reporter.

You can’t write like a journalist if you don’t report like a journalist. The best stories don’t walk into your makeshift home office and introduce themselves. Go find them—even if that means, in this COVID-restricted environment—working the phones like an obsessed telemarketer.

2. “All the President’s Men” (1976).

Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) are chasing the story of the Watergate break-in, and they’re stuck. Woodward heads to his favorite underground garage to meet his confidential source, Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), who utters his now-famous line to the perplexed reporter:

Deep Throat: “Follow the money.”

Woodward: “What? Where?”

Deep Throat:  “I can’t tell you that . . . Just follow the money.”

Enter tip No. 2: Make numbers your friends.

Communicators, like reporters, need to understand numbers, whether in a budget or the latest data on climate change that could affect your business and industry. Your organization holds a treasure trove of data. Identify a trend, find a human example, and you’ve got a story that would make even Ben Bradlee proud.

3. “The Insider” (1999).

Based on actual events, this tale of intrigue and suspense follows 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) as he tries to convince a Big Tobacco researcher Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) to blow the whistle on the industry’s efforts to cover up the health risks of cigarettes. Fearing a lawsuit, 60 Minutes pulls its punches on the story and is later castigated by The New York Times, leading to this dramatic moment:

60 Minutes Producer Don Hewitt: “It’s old news. We’ll be OK. These things have a half-life of 15 minutes.”

Mike Wallace: “No, that’s fame. Fame has a 15-minute half-life. Infamy lasts a little longer.”

Which leads us to tip No. 3: If your mothers says she loves you, check it out.

Communicators hate the approval process because it’s restrictive and cumbersome. Instead of waiting for rejection, try collaborating with the approvers. Let them know what you’re trying to accomplish, and ask for their help to follow the rules and still publish a story worth reading. Best way to earn their trust: Check your facts.

4. “His Girl Friday” (1940).

Adopted from the play, “The Front Page,” the film follows Morning Post Editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) and his former ace reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), who is also his ex-wife.

When Russell shows up to announce she’s getting remarried, Grant hatches a plot to win her back by enticing her to write a deadline story to save a wrongfully convicted man from the gallows. As the film hurtles to its hilarious conclusion, Grant hovers over Russell as she bangs out the story:

Walter: “Aren’t you going to mention The Post?”

Hildy: “I did that. Right here in the second paragraph.”

Walter: “Who’s gonna read the second paragraph?”

Which bring us to tip No. 4: Whatever else you do, write a good first sentence.

Our readers are easily distracted, so get the big stuff right:

• Get my attention with a compelling image.
• Make me to click with an enticing headline and teaser.
• Give me a running start with a snappy first sentence that will actually get me to that second paragraph.

5. “Anchorman” (2004).

He’s not Woodward or Bernstein, but Will Ferrell’s depiction of idiotic TV newsman Ron Burgundy is a classic. In one scene, the team discusses the need for more diversity in the newsroom, to which Burgundy offers his typically inane perspective:

“I could be wrong, but I believe Diversity was an old, old ship that was used during the Civil War.”

And here comes tip No. 5: You have important stories to write, so get at them.

There’s a lot of needless clutter in communications, but some topics demand your time and expertise, including these three:

• Company culture. After the trauma of the pandemic, the rapid transition to remote work and “The Great Resignation,” organizations are scrambling to recruit and retain talent. Tell that story—in meaningful ways.
• Diversity, equity and inclusion. Move beyond lip service paid to diversity, and write insightful stories about what DE&I means to your business, your industry and your workplace.
• Environmental, Social & Governance initiatives. Translate those dense sustainability reports into compelling stories that employees, customers and the news media care about.

Jim Ylisela is co-owner and founder of Ragan Consulting Group. RCG specializes in corporate communications training, consulting and strategic counsel. Schedule a call with Kristin Hart to learn how we can help you improve your communications. Follow RCG on LinkedIn here and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

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Hello, communicators:

Omaha Steaks launched a holiday campaign to emphasize e-commerce  offerings and guaranteed on-time delivery:

Citing several studies that audio is more memorable to audiences than video, Omaha Steaks also released a parody of the Christmas classic, dubbed “Deck the Steaks,” across streaming audio platforms along with content on TikTok and Instagram Reels:

“Our customers have trusted us for more than a century to deliver the perfect holiday meal experience with delicious steaks, premium proteins, easy sides and sweet desserts,” Omaha Steaks CEO Todd Simon said in a press release shared with PR Daily.

Omaha Steak’s effort to beef up its holiday campaign demonstrates how following the data around what resonates with users on various platforms can open your brand up to new and unexpected types of content.

Here are today’s top stories:

Metropolitan Museum of Art removes Sackler name from exhibit halls

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Sackler family jointly announced yesterday that the family’s name would be removed from seven galleries and wings in the museum. The announcement builds on the museum’s 2019 announcement it would no longer accept gifts from the Sackler family and follows a similar decision by The Louvre in Paris to remove the Sackler name.

The Met, along with other cultural institutions that bear the Sackler name, face continued public outcry over accepting philanthropic gifts from the family whose now-defunct company, Purdue Pharma, manufactured the opiate Oxycontin which many credi with fueling America’s opioid epidemic. In 2018, photographer Nan Goldin notably staged a demonstration at The Met’s Temple of Dendur wing, one of the areas that will no longer have the Sackler name on it, when she poured empty pill bottles into the wing’s reflecting pool.

The New York Times reports:

“The Met has been built by the philanthropy of generations of donors—and the Sacklers have been among our most generous supporters,” said Dan Weiss, the Met’s president and chief executive officer. “This gracious gesture by the Sacklers aids the museum in continuing to serve this and future generations. We greatly appreciate it.”

“Our families have always strongly supported the Met, and we believe this to be in the best interest of the museum and the important mission that it serves,” the descendants of Dr. Mortimer Sackler and Dr. Raymond Sackler said in a statement. “The earliest of these gifts were made almost 50 years ago, and now we are passing the torch to others who might wish to step forward to support the museum.”

Why it matters:

By removing the Sackler name from its hallowed halls, the Met tacitly acknowledges its cultural role as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. “We are seeing museums transition from gatekeepers of the elite to arbiters of social change,” editor of “The State of Museums: Voices from the Field” Dr. Rebekah Beaulieu told The New York Times. “There is an increasing expectation that museums are institutions held in the public trust, and therefore accountable to the general public.”

The Sackler’s statement tries to position the change as a positive for the museum and future donors, while sidestepping its reputational issues around the opioid epidemic. The Met’s statement acknowledges the Sacklers’ contributions to the institution while emphasizing how the value donors bring to the museum. This statement provides a textbook example of how to sever a partnership with grace, minimizing the noise for your organization.

 MEASURED THOUGHTS

A newly released study by HarrisX and Ragan Communications found that the areas of communications CEOs consider most valuable are executive comms, employee comms, reputation management and social media. CEOs at large companies consider Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) and investor relations to be the most valuable communications areas.

Courtesy of HarrisX/Ragan

Beyond emphasizing how CEOs’ expectations vary substantially based on the size of their organization, these numbers show that larger companies are increasingly expected to have an ESG communications program.

Check out the full study here.

TAKE OUR SURVEY

If you’re looking to further your understanding of your industry to navigate what’s ahead in 2022, lend us a hand—and help yourself and your peers identify shared benchmarks in areas such as budgets, team structure, ESG and DE&I efforts, and more. Participate in Ragan Communications Leadership Council’s 2022 Benchmark Survey, a comprehensive look at how to negotiate budgets with your executives, how to best reach deskless workers and foster culture among a hybrid workforce, and more.

Both internal and external communicators are encouraged to participate.

By taking part, you’ll be entered to win one of three $100 gift cards. All who complete the survey will receive a full report on the findings. Responses are anonymous.

Survey takers will receive an executive summary of the findings.

CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS

CEOs at Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Home Depot and more sent a joint letter urging Congress to pass legislation focused on combatting the sale of stolen, unsafe or counterfeit products online. The letter focuses on third-party marketplace platforms, but does not name any e-commerce sites in particular. Nonetheless, Amazon and other e-commerce sites took the opportunity to respond:

Insider reports:

“In the current environment, criminal networks and unscrupulous businesses have exploited a system that protects their anonymity to sell unsafe, stolen, or counterfeit products with little legal recourse,” the letter reads. “This lack of transparency on particular third-party marketplaces has allowed criminal activity to fester.”

Amazon introduced a live video and physical address verification method last year, allowing the company to verify sellers’ identities with their government-issued IDs, the company told Insider. The company also said it came out in support for the INFORM for Consumers Act in October.

“Amazon does not allow third-party sellers to list stolen goods in our store, and we work closely with law enforcement, retailers, and brands to stop bad actors and hold them accountable, including withholding funds, terminating accounts, and making law enforcement referrals,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to Insider. “We regularly request invoices, purchase orders, or other proofs of sourcing when we have concerns about how a seller may have obtained particular products that they want to sell.”

Despite not being mentioned explicitly in the letter, Amazon’s proactive response effectively acknowledges the industry-wide crisis and seizes the opportunity to reinforce its reputation and share how it polices third-party vendors on its platform.

Announcing the PR Daily Leadership Network

PR Daily is launching the PR Daily Leadership Network, a unique membership group from Ragan Communications offering peer-to-peer advisory and team training along with a unique slate of resources and events to help public relations professionals break through the noise, increase their visibility and forge meaningful connections.

The Network provides daily insights and coverage on a range of topics including media relations, social media, measurement, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, branding, thought leadership and crisis communications.

“The fast pace of change coupled with the demand on public relations professionals to protect and sometimes defend their company’s reputation make it imperative for leaders to tap into the wisdom of other communicators and continue to learn and grow,” says Diane Schwartz, CEO of Ragan Communications. “The PR Daily Leadership Network provides the answers but also encourages members to question the status quo and push for positive change.”

Visit leadership.prdaily.com to learn more.

Netflix launches brand journalism site “Tudum”

Netflix says it will expand its editorial output with the launch of “Tudum,” a brand journalism website named after the sound that plays over the company’s logo when a user logs onto the streaming service. The website will consolidate Netflix’s previous editorial channels, including “Strong Black Lead” and “Geeked,” into one central location alongside press releases about new shows, cancelations and more. Tudum’s content will be curated specifically to match a subscriber’s viewing habits if they are logged into a Netflix account on the same device.

Netflix CMO Bozoma Saint John explained her personal connection to the brand and Tudum, which will be run by her marketing division.

According to her blog post:

I’ve been obsessed with pop culture ever since my family moved from Ghana to Colorado Springs when I was 12 years old. While I didn’t feel that different, other kids my age thought that I was. And guess what I found was the best way to connect with them? Pop culture. In the ’90s, pop culture meant watching John Elway and the Denver Broncos, wearing acid wash jeans and listening to Paula Abdul and Tupac. Now, Netflix is a part of the cultural zeitgeist, and what makes my job so exciting is that through the work we do, I get to constantly connect with fans all over the world through their favorite shows and movies.

What it means:

While many consumer-facing brands still treat their newsrooms and brand journalism sites as separate monoliths, Tudum demonstrates how brands can take a cue from social media platforms and implement user data to better distribute communications and content through a streamlined, curated hub.

Saint John’s statement adds a human element to the announcement  by sharing her relationship to the pop culture and painting a picture of how Netflix sees its broader mission.

The post Met museum removes Sackler name, communications areas CEOs value most, and Netflix launches brand journalism site appeared first on PR Daily.

Freshwater scarcity is a serious concern, and The Weather Channel is doing its part to address this issue.

Launching on World Environment Day in 2019, its “Forecast: Change initiative” aimed to raise awareness for and support the 2 billion people who are directly affected by water scarcity. The program provided educational content, offered challenges to encourage commitment and action and, every time users checked their forecast on its app, people in need received a fresh water donation.

Its call to action: Check your weather. Unlock clean water.

The campaign included a live event in an Atlanta park; a temporary, unannounced name and logo change to “The Water Channel”; a new webpage; branded content; monthly conservational challenges; and weekly social media posts.

Its audience appreciated this, which is reflected in its 35% increase in brand affinity among app users.

Overall, its webpage, thewaterchannel.org, received 3 million visitors, and the campaign earned 522 million impressions; 2,000 people also participated in its conversation challenges through the program; and $1.2 million in donations were made, which was $20,000 more than the goal.

Congratulations to the teams at The Weather Channel, IBM Originals and The Garden Creative: Simone Scully, Ally Hirschlag, Sheila Cannon, George Hammer, JP Lespinasse, Chris Schifando, Emily Sohn, Kaley King-Balentine and Paige Burger.

Learn more about Ragan’s and PR Daily’s current and upcoming awards programs here.

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