Waggener Edstrom Worldwide has hired Suzanne Zurn as vice president, digital advocacy. Zurn will focus on public affairs in her new role, which she took on earlier this month.

She has worked at Washington, D.C.-based Xenophon Strategies, at The George Washington University, and on the campaign staffs of Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

She has also consulted for clients including ExxonMobil Corp., Southwest Airlines Corp., Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc., Air Transport Association of America Inc., Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, American Academy of Family Physicians, Associated General Contractors of New York State and AOL Inc.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Kekst founded the firm 40 years ago, and sold it to Publicis Group SA two summers ago. Publicis combined its PR holdings including MS&L Worldwide, Publicis Consultants Worldwide, PublicisLive, Publicis Meetings, Emotion, Freud, and Kekst & Co under the name MS&L Group last November.

Full text of the Rand and Kekst’s memos to staff are after the jump:

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I can say from personal experience that donning a suit and tie to see a client in 100-degree heat is an exercise in futility and torture. Utah firm Richter7 agrees, and for the third summer in a row is forcing staffers to drop trou in the name of comfort.

The thirty five employees must wear shorts to work, and to client meetings or face a 25 cent fine. All donate at least one pair of pants to charity during the four week period ending August 20th.

We checked with partner Tim Brown to see what clients think of the policy. After some brief awkwardness, they all come around. One client, the Healthy Marriages board now refers to the firm as the “shorts people.”

[Photo: Richter7 creative directors Ryan Anderson and Gary Sume, sans pants]

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Here are this week’s PR and media highlights from mediabistro’s Revolving Door Newsletter:

Deborah Needleman has been named editor-in-chief at WSJ. She had been consultant for The Wall Street Journal.

Monica Herrera has been named news editor at Billboard.com. She had been associate editor there.

Ellen Rosenbush has been named editor at Harper’s Magazine. She had been acting editor there.

Aaron Gell has been named managing editor, online, at New York Observer. He had been editor-in-chief at Hemispheres.

Click here to receive mediabistro.com’s Revolving Door Newsletter via email.

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DJ Steve Porter has done it again. We loved his “Jam Wow” whack at Vince Shlomi, the ShamWow king (and Lizzie Grubman client). We really love his latest look at the theater that is sports press conferences and faux-angry, faux-remorseful superstar interviews. Above you’ll see LeBron’s “descision” and Tiger’s apology mixed with classics of the past. Enjoy, be a man, put your name on it.

RELATED: LeBron James’ Publicist Speaks

[h/t Deadspin]

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Frank Eliason, Comcast’s Senior Director in National Customer Operations, or as he’s better known, the man behind @comcastcares on Twitter is leaving the company to join Citigroup.

His employees put together this farewell video for him, which even includes Comcast founder Ralph Roberts.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The FDA has hired Paul Buckman as division director, office of communications. He comes to the FDA as it looks at launching a drug safety blog and Facebook page, according to reports.

He last worked at Scripps Interactive, where he was director, broadband video programming and original content. He has previously worked as senior producer at MSNBC.com, and as a Fox News field producer.

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Investopedia: The Biggest Corporate Image Catastrophes

WebNewser: About.com Making B2B Push

Poynter.org: Debunking 5 Myths of Entrepreneurial Journalism

NYTImes Media Decoder: Sherrod Announces She’ll Sue Breitbart

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The makeup, the clothes, the style… Glamour has it all and now you could be a part of its top-notch team. The Conde Nast title is in search of an associate director of public relations to devise and execute PR strategies for the monthly magazine and its daily website content.

If hired, you’ll pitch story ideas to media, and partner with the mag’s online and marketing departments on press plans, brand extensions and more. You’ll handle all the media events for the title, book national TV appearances for editors and be responsible for training and cultivating on-air talent. Nothing you can’t handle, right?

If you have a solid background in PR, consumer magazine experience and an enviable database of contacts, this could be the perfect fit for you. Already a subscriber? Even better — you’ve already done your homework. If this sounds like your dream job, apply here.

RELATED: Attend Mediabistro Career Circus on August 4 in New York City to find out where the jobs are, develop a career plan and engage with media peers and leaders.

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Here’s some proof that it’s ok to have a social media ghost writer. [We kid!] The President has one, obviously. President Obama appeared on ABC’s “The View” today, and talked a bit about his social media presence.

“I don’t tweet on a regular basis,” said Obama. “I think there’s an official president’s tweet, but some 20-year-old is doing a lot of the tweeting.”

In the video above, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer explains the decision making behind Obama’s appearance on “The View.” TVNewser has more.

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Publicis Groupe, owner of global PR network MS&L Group, reported second quarter organic growth of slightly more than 7 percent today.

The company also said that 47% of first half of 2010 revenue came from its specialized agencies and marketing services division, of which MS&L Group is a part.

“Without lapsing into the euphoria that these halfyear results for our Groupe might warrant, I remain firmly convinced that Publicis Groupe will succeed in outperforming the market in terms of both growth and margin,” said Publicis CEO Maurice Levy in a statement.

In a press release, MS&L Group highlighted key client wins including What’s on (India), World Gold Council (China), Central agency for national insurance (France) and National Defense Ministry (France). No key wins were listed for the United States. Overall, Publicis said it added $2.1 billion in net new business during the first half of 2010.

RELATED: Publicis Q1: Revenue Up, Growth Returns

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It’s always amusing when web ad targeting goes wrong. Today’s example: Wired magazine contributing editor Matt Honan makes fun of a bad press release/pitch on The Awl, and the post is surrounded by ads for Vocus that say “Distribute your press release.”

This happens a lot, as we’ve noted before.

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Hilary Rosen, one of Washington D.C.’s best known communications strategists, is leaving her post as managing director at Brunswick Group to join SKDKnickerbocker in the same role.

“SKDKnickerbocker is thrilled to welcome one of the best strategists in the country as we further develop our public affairs practice – offering clients consistent hands-on engagement from the best practioners like Hilary, combined with full service public affairs capabilities,” said Josh Isay, managing director of SKDKnickerbocker in a statement.

From the release:

The announcement follows the return of Principal Anita Dunn, who had recently been on leave from the company to serve as President Obama’s Communications Director. Rosen will join one of the most experienced teams of high-level strategists in the country led by Bill Knapp, Dunn, Chris Cooper, Jay Marlin, Jim Mulhall, Karen Olick and Alex Slater in Washington DC; Isay, Jennifer Cunningham and Stefan Friedman in New York.

At Brunswick, Rosen had been working on the BP account, among others. Rosen previously served as th chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, and has also held the roles of political director and editor-at-large for The Huffington Post and on-air political contributor for CNN. She joined Brunswick group in November 2008.

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Interpublic Group of Cos.’ (IPG) posted solid Q2 earnings today, beating analyst expectations. The holding company reported profit of $82.5 million, up from $27.8 million from the same period last year.

Revenue increased almost 10% to $1.62 billion. In Q1 2010, IPG reported slightly increased revenue, but also a loss of $64.6 million.

The Constituency Management Group (CMG), which houses Golin Harris, MWW Group and Weber Shandwick reported revenue of $ 242.0 million, up 6.7% from the $226.2 million reported for the same period in 2009, and up approximately 9% from the $221.8 million reported in Q1 2010.

CMG revenues for the first half of the year were $463.8 million, up 6.2% compared to $436.6 million for the first half of 2009.

“At CMG, we are fortunate to have exceptional agencies such as Weber Shandwick and Golin Harris in the PR space that consistently deliver great thinking and programs to our clients. Our results demonstrate that we are winning share in this space. We are also seeing a great deal of digital activity in PR and all of the marketing services agencies within CMG are building best-in-class social media and word-of-mouth practices,” said IPG CEO Michael Roth on a conference call.

“What we’re seeing is a real return to growth,” said Harris Diamond, Weber Shandwick and CMG CEO in an interview with PRNewser today. “These numbers far exceeded what I would have projected in December,” he said.

Diamond also added that growth still came primarily from existing clients, although new business started to pick up in the latter part of May into June. He also added that social media is “driving a large part of incremental spend” by clients.

We’ve posted the company’s investor presentation after the jump.

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It pays to work at New Media Strategies. The Washington D.C.-based social marketing agency recently rewarded employees with hefty bonus checks of around $100,000.

Our sibling blog FishbowlDC had the scoop this week, and Advertising Age confirmed with agency CEO Pete Snyder [pictured] that the bonuses had been awarded, although he wouldn’t confirm specific numbers.

Meredith Corp. acquired the agency in January 2007, and at the time Snyder and agency founders set aside some money to an employee stock pool, which has appreciated since then.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.