Browse PRNewser May 2012 archives - PRNewser

Bell Pottinger Founders Buying Firm from Chime

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:10:00 +0000

Bell Pottinger founders Lord Bell and Piers Pottinger (also the names of my neighbor’s cats!) and other firm execs plan to pay £19.6 million in cash and company shares to purchase the namesake firm from Chime Communications. Shareholders will have their say on June 18. Talk about a buyout started a few months ago.

Shares of Chime stock increased nearly 10 percent with the news, though Sir Martin Sorrell, the WPP CEO whose company is the largest shareholder in Chime, is opposed.

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Mayor Bloomberg Says No to Soda, Yes to Doughnuts

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 16:33:42 +0000

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is known for trying to force New Yorkers to be healthy with smoking bans and calls for the outlaw of artificially trans fatty foods, is now on the attack against oversized sweetened beverages. He’d like to do away with the sales of sugary drinks bigger than 16 ounces at restaurants, food carts, arenas, and movie theaters. You would still be able to buy these ginormous drinks at grocery stores and convenience stores.

Some question whether this sort of thing will actually make an impact on the obesity epidemic in the U.S. But when you have people ordering Mountain Dew/orange juice mixed drinks for breakfast, you’ve got to do something.

Responding to the controversy over this proposal, the Mayor said, via video, at the All Things D conference, “This is something we think we have the legal authority to do. Obesity is a local problem for us, and that’s why we’ve addressed it.”

At the same time, he will be supporting National Doughnut Day, which is tomorrow. Doughnuts every day please.

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PRNewser Poll: Should the ‘I Love NY’ Logo Be Changed?

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:47:00 +0000

As we mentioned in the Ticker this morning, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo has launched a $5 million tourism campaign that will change the iconic “I ♥ NY” logo in order to reflect the many wonderful things there are to do in the state.

“You still have the icon but you have to bring it back to New York. You have to reimagine, you have to reenergize it,” said Gov. Cuomo. The folks at ad agency BBDO agree the logo has been diluted by co-opting and overuse.

Ordinary people are being asked to submit their ideas for what the new logo should look like. An ad (available after the jump) changes the heart to, among other things, a roller coaster, wine, and Niagra Falls.

Business Insider has done a number of stories about the evolution of long-standing and well-liked logos. But the decision to rebrand in this way is a major one.

For today’s PRNewser poll, we ask, “Should the ‘I ♥ NY” logo be revamped?” Click through to vote after the jump. The poll closes tomorrow at noon.

And in the comments, we invite you to share your thoughts about when a business or organization should redesign their logo.

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Waggener Edstrom Acquires Munich Firm

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:51:28 +0000

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide has acquired Patzer PR, a Munich-based firm specializing in healthcare PR and services for the OTC pharmaceutical industry. Patzer will keep its name for the time being, but the team will be pulled into WE’s existing renewable energy, tech, and healthcare groups. Patzer is among the most recognized healthcare PR firms in Germany.

The move will double the size of Waggener Edstrom’s Munich office.

In March, the firm entered the South Korean market with an investment in Shout. The firm has also expanded in Australia, Belgium, and South Africa.

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Now You Can Schedule Posts on Facebook

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:10:05 +0000

Big Facebook news today, totally unrelated to stock price: You can now schedule posts! Hooray!

Our AllFacebook colleagues have got a breakdown of the instructions, which look pretty clear cut and simple.

Facebook has also introduced the ability to give different admins different roles. With many people working on a Facebook campaign, this could be plenty useful for PRs. A how-to on that is available here.

Also from Facebook: the company introduced a Promoted Post function yesterday that gives users the ability to highlight big happenings, like a marketing push or event. More detail about that here.

And what about the stock? Well. That’s not doing so good at moment, falling below $28 by midday. But at least Facebook is getting credit for bursting that tech bubble.

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APCO HQ Has a New MD

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:41:58 +0000

Mike Tuffin, EVP of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade group that reps the health insurance industry, has been named the MD of APCO Worldwide‘s Washington D.C. headquarters, starting June 25. He’s replacing Robert Schooling, who has been appointed president of APCO Americas.

Tuffin joined AHIP in 2005. Prior to that, he was a VP at APCO, where he worked with pharmaceutical and other healthcare clients. He has experience with political campaigns, grassroots advocacy, media relations, and other areas of communications.

The Washington D.C. office has 200 staffers.

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Havas Takes Majority Stake in Creative Lynx

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:21:44 +0000

Havas has taken a majority stake in European digital health and wellness comms firm Creative Lynx. Creative Lynx is a 25-year-old firm with clients like Johnson & Johnson, GSK, and AstraZeneca. It’s based in Manchester, England.

The firm, led by MD Neil Martin, digital director David Hunt, and healthcare director David Whittingham, will work with the Havas Worldwide Health network. That network has about 30 clients, including Pfizer and Novartis. It encompasses Euro RSCG Life, Health4Brands, Euro RSCG Life PR, and Euro RSCG Worldwide PR. According to a fact sheet we received, the network has achieved more than 10 percent organic growth so far in 2012.

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Political Gaffes Adding to the News Clutter

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 11:26:45 +0000

So the Mitt Romney team is trying to pull a Bieber. When his app’s epic fail became a trending topic on Twitter (spelling “America” “Amercia”), his team set up a promoted tweet so that everyone searching for the gaffe would see a tweet from @MittRomney stating, “.@BarackObama is spending your tax dollars to create jobs. How’s he doing? Solyndra isn’t even half the story mi.tt/Ko291P.” Trying to be all social media savvy.

Romney is the official GOP nominee, so now things are getting serious. Or maybe not, to the dismay of some. But really, they are. And the noise has gotten so loud that these sorts of gaffes become a very large speed bump in campaign progress.

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The Ticker: Instagram demand; NY’s logo; Sorrell’s pay raise; PR careers; Fox video criticized

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 31 May 2012 09:02:41 +0000

Adweek: Instagrammers in Demand By Major Brands

CapitalNewYork: I hate New York’s nonsensical new tourism campaign

The Guardian: WPP investors put on high alert over sir Martin Sorrell’s 30% pay rise

Council of Public Relations Firms: A Letter to the Class of 2012

The New York Times: Obama Video on Fox News Criticized as Attack Ad

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The New AP Stylebook is Here

Tonya Garcia — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:56:42 +0000

The 2012 edition of the AP Stylebook was released today, and it includes a new chapter on broadcast, and more entries for social media and fashion.

The social media chapter, which was added in 2010, now includes “direct message” and “modified tweet.”

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Kentucky Wants You to Visit the ‘Hatfields & McCoys’

Tonya Garcia — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:35:02 +0000

The second of the Hatfields & McCoys three-part miniseries aired last night on the History Channel, and, once again, ratings were a winner. After getting about 14 million viewers for Monday’s installment (making it the highest-rated non-sports program in the history of basic cable), it snagged another 13.1 million viewers last night.

Telling the story of the legendary feud between the two families, the blockbuster viewership came as a surprise, even to History Channel president Nancy Dubuc, who told the New York Times that she “would have been happy with three million viewers.”

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Tech Roundup: Bitly Rage, Hitch up Your ‘Sidecar’

Celeste Altus — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:59:54 +0000

Twitter page loading is getting snappier, thanks to an engineering change that reworks hashbangs, or those tags that look like this: !#. The pages are said to load five times faster, which enables more Tweets to come through in real time. This is especially good news for those who like to Tweet live events.

Things may be speeding up at Twitter, but they are slowing down at Bitly, where users are having to go an extra step to shorten links now. Reaction was, to say the least, not good. Movie critic Roger Ebert (why does he have to always get his two cents in on totally unrelated events?) tweeted “bitly flooded with howls of complaint after incomprehensible and catastrophic redesign.” Incomprehensible and catastrophic? It is more annoying and irritating, an improvement only for the programmers there at Bitly and not the users.

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‘Skepticism’ Is One of RIM’s Many Problems

Tonya Garcia — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:13:55 +0000

Research in Motion has got 99 problems and satisfying demand ain’t one. (Ha… groan.) Bloomberg reports that weak sales are leaving BlackBerrys and PlayBook tablets in warehouses to collect dust, the value of that inventory reaching $1 billion last quarter. Layoffs are in the offing. Losses are coming. They’ve hired JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Canada to reassess its strategy. Maybe they can do something about this.

Yesterday, trading on RIM stock was halted while CEO Thorsten Heins delivered some bad news. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that RIM is having a very hard time keeping up with Apple and the other competition. The company is promising a new strategy, but an underlying issue the company has to overcome may be more insidious than the already huge business obstacles: “skepticism.”

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Roll Call: MWW Group, NatGeo, Weber Shandwick, and more

Tonya Garcia — Wed, 30 May 2012 12:27:49 +0000

David Herrick (left) has been promoted to COO at MWW Group, working with the firm’s senior leadership team to manage the firm’s culture, client service offerings, and overall growth. He’ll also continue as the GM of the New York office, a position he’s held since joining the firm in 2010.

Jennifer DeGuzman, previously the senior director of consumer PR at AOL, has joined National Geographic as VP of comms. While at AOL, she also worked on strategy for, among other things, the AOL/HuffPo lifestyle sites. DeGuzman has also previously worked for Bravo, also as comms VP, and MTV, where she spent 13 years. NatGeo has also promoted Dara Klatt to senior corp comms director. And Erin Griffin has been promoted to associate director of comms and talent relations. [via]

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The Ticker: Tim Cook at D10; Salesforce to buy Buddy Media; MundoFox; Facebook stock; Syria

Tonya Garcia — Wed, 30 May 2012 08:56:29 +0000

D10Video: “Stay Tuned” for Apple and Facebook

AllThingsD: Salesforce.com Set to Snap Up Facebook Friend Buddy Media for More Than $800 Million

TVNewser: Coming Soon: A New Spanish-Language Evening Broadcast From Fox

Reuters: Facebook shares plumb new depths, valuation questioned

The New York Times: Western Nations, Protesting Killings, Expel Syrian Envoys

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