Hill+Knowlton Strategies announced that Sergio Morales has been appointed U.S. practice leader for consumer and marketing communications, effective immediately. In this role, Morales will be responsible for providing strategic counsel and oversight on consumer and marketing communications clients, as well as building and strengthening client relationships within the practice. He will report directly to Dan Bartlett, president and CEO of Hill+Knowlton Strategies U.S. (Release)

Simon & Schuster recently restructured, promoting Brian Belfiglio to vice president and director of publicity of both the Scribner and Touchstone publicity departments. Touchstone director of publicity Marcia Burch will depart on February 11. Both moves were part of a reorganization that began at the publisher in October. (GalleyCat)

Charlie Anderson joins Project: Worldwide as senior vice president, shopper marketing. Prior to this new role, which he assumed last week, Anderson spent 13 years at Saatchi & Saatchi X. (AgencySpy)

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Lori Robinson, Director of Marketing and Business Development, told PRNewser that Hill & Knowlton has been involved with the committee, “for a couple years now” starting when they did the initial bid for the U.S. and then up to the IOC. “The Chicago bid has helped re-shape Chicago’s image globally and helped put them back on the international map,” Robinson said, while admitting that she was trying to try to look at the positive in the situation.

Hill & Knowlton’s contract is reported to be more than $3 million. Ogilvy also received more than $500k to handle “technology and new media.”

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The White House is now posting the administration’s communications focus, along with talking points, daily on the Whitehouse.gov blog. In the first post today, White House Online Programs Director Jesse Lee wrote, “It’s no secret that institutions of all stripes focus their communications on certain messages day to day. We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day, along with any related articles, reports or documents.”

Has this ever been done before, and what are the implications for PR?

“It makes a lot of sense and I’m not aware of it ever being done before,” said Don Goldberg, partner at D.C.-based Qorvis Communications and former Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton. “When I was in White House, we would have daily meetings on message and you would basically have conference calls…If the weekend was coming up and you had talk shows you were worried about, you would make sure all Democrats on the shows had the same points. The Obama administration is bypassing traditional media as much as it can anyway, so why not provide them with ‘message of the day’ type of details. Why not try to reach out to everybody?”

Stacie Paxton, former national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee and now a Vice President in Hill & Knowlton’s Washington, D.C. office, said that providing White House talking points online, “shows a level of transparency previously unseen by other Administrations – Republican or Democratic. It gives extremely valuable insight into thinking at the White House at a critical time. Anyone with a stake in the health care debate or any other pressing issue would be foolish not to read this blog daily.”

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