Solomon McCown, a Boston-based national public relations firm, announced the opening of its new office in New York City. Solomon McCown has a track record of working with clients in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., so the new office is a natural progression that will enable the firm to be closer to existing and prospective clients, as well as established real estate, financial services and healthcare companies, key growth areas for the agency. The firm has grown in the last two years, and has already hired 6 new employees in 2013. The new office will be led by Jonathan Pappas, a seasoned agency veteran who brings a compelling mix of agency, corporate, and real estate experience to New York City. (Release)

Ketchum has announced four new hires, three in Atlanta and one in New York: 

• Phil Swire joins as senior vice president, digital strategy & technology, New York. Phil Swire leads Ketchum’s development function in the U.S. and oversees technology strategy across the Ketchum network. A digital strategist, Swire joins Ketchum from PricewaterhouseCoopers where he was a leader in that firm’s digital strategy practice.
  
• Matt Browher is the new senior vice president, digital strategy, Atlanta. Browher has extensive experience in strategy development, team management and interactive marketing, having recently worked at Digitas and as the digital practice lead for FleishmanHillard in Atlanta.
• Amy Andrieux, the new vice president, multimedia content & strategy, New York, was formerly editorial director at MTV World. Andrieux oversees the Ketchum Digital video group, helps lead content strategy for the U.S., and helps to evolve Ketchum Digital’s multimedia capabilities. Andrieux brings a wealth of multimedia, video and content development experience to Ketchum from her experience developing and leading editorial strategy for MTV World online portals. 
• Kristen Massaro, Vice President, Digital Strategy, New York, supports a number of key accounts, including Michelin and Gillette, and lends support to other markets in the Ketchum network, with emphasis on the Southern U.S region. Massaro, who has deep expertise in social media engagement, was previously with with Emanate, a public relations sister agency to Ketchum, where she led the digital and social strategy specialty since 2011. (Release)

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We know that Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic earned its reputation as one of America’s best hospitals thanks to the tireless work of the many talented professionals on its staff — but there’s also a good bit of well-executed branding and PR at play. Case in point: this promotional video, released last month. A hospital is a relatively easy place to find touching stories of human perseverance in the face of adversity, but this is a real masterpiece in the “humanizing a brand” genre.

We’re not exactly sure who’s responsible for the video (though the Clinic hired Ketchum as its first AOR in 2012), but we think some credit needs to go to the institution’s communications team.

The PR lesson here: tell a story. In fact, tell several stories — especially if they’re as compelling as these.

We’re fascinated by the very concept of public relations in a formerly closed society like the one now run by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But the practice certainly does exist, and this weekend Edelman PR announced plans to continue the scheduled reboot of its Russian operations after facing some challenges that led the firm to liquidate its Russian acquisition Imageland.

In 2012 Edelman “ran into some problems” due to pushback from Russia’s Solidarity trade union, which encouraged laid off Imageland employees to form their own union and take legal action against the firm. That spat appears to have resolved itself; in an interview with The Holmes Report, Edelman Russia general manager Kerry Irwin confirms that the office’s staff will include several former Imageland executives who stuck around through a wave of departures.

Edelman represents brands like HP, Wrigley and Mars in Russia. The firm apparently does not plan to work directly with Putin’s government like Ketchum sometimes does, but the Kremlin could certainly use the help: Edelman’s own 2013 “Trust Barometer” study found that Russian citizens unsurprisingly report some of the world’s lowest rates of trust in their own government and media outlets. We’d suggest more Boyz II Men concerts as a good way to start winning the public back, because if there’s one thing pretty much everyone around the world can agree on, it’s the healing power of 90′s R&B.

Here’s a universal truth: many marketing and PR campaigns play on gender stereotypes. Two of the more popular tropes are “girls only like girly things” and “all dads are bumbling idiots.”

Things are changing, though–slowly but surely. Fathers, like mothers, are a little tired of being portrayed via dumb cliches, and they’re responding quite well to campaigns that feel targeted to them rather than their “nagging wives.”

At a recent “daddy blogger” conference in Houston, brands asked dads: “What do you guys want?” Their answer: we want to be treated as equals and competent parents, not mocked as clueless oafs who barely know how to use a microwave.

Dove Men+Care is one of the most prominent brands spearheading this trend by recruiting such “guy’s guy” dads as Shaquille O’Neal and a conveniently handsome “nonactor”/firefighter to let dads aged 35 to 44 know that it’s OK to use a facial scrub and a moisturizer.

As Jason Lin, VP and digital strategist at Ketchum PR, told The New York Times: ““The payoff is huge if you get dads right.” Can we think of brands beyond Dove that are getting dads right?

A few weeks ago we reviewed the Communist Party’s unique approach to PR damage control; today we observe the ways in which the Party ensures positive coverage in foreign media outlets.

In short: they pay for it.

We’re not talking about traditional Party mouthpieces like Pravda and The People’s Daily. This matter concerns stories carried by familiar American media outlets like The Huffington Post and CNBC, which recently posted op-eds by “independent” businessmen proclaiming Russia to be “Europe’s Bright Light of Growth”, calling the government’s approach to the worldwide recession “a model of restraint” and naming Russia “the most dynamic place on the continent.”

An investigation by ProPublica, a research organization dedicated to facilitating “Journalism in the Public Interest”, found that Ketchum planted these complimentary pieces in order to improve Western perceptions of two-time Russian President Vladamir Putin’s government and the nation’s business culture. Ketchum, one of the world’s largest PR firms and PRWeek‘s 2012 agency of the year, has represented the Kremlin since 2006.

Ketchum’s filings with the US Justice Department reveal that, while the company’s employees did not write the stories themselves, they did reach out to the authors and arrange for the placement of their op-eds on prominent websites in order to encourage “foreign investments” in Russian companies.

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Edelman has announced the launch of the Daniel J. Edelman China Group to oversee the expansion of its four service brands in China. Starting January 2013, the Daniel J. Edelman China Group will be comprised of four major lines of business: flagship agency Edelman, the newly created Edelman Digital, national firm Pegasus and sister agency Zeno Group, which is scheduled to open its first China office by the end of 2012.

The new group structure brings some staffing changes and executive appointments. Effective 1 January 2013: Steven Cao, current Pegasus president, is promoted to the new role of CEO, Daniel J. Edelman China Group. Kevin Wang and Tony Tao, Edelman’s managing directors in Beijing and Shanghai, will assume joint responsibility for the flagship agency’s China operations as co-presidents of Edelman China. Jeffrey Yu, Pegasus managing director, assumes complete responsibility of Pegasus China. John Kerr, recently appointed regional president for Zeno Group, will be responsible for assembling the Zeno China team. (Release)

Bob Pickard, Burson-Marsteller‘s Asia Pacific Chief Executive Officer, has tendered his resignation, and will be stepping down from his leadership role to pursue another opportunity to be announced in the coming months. His last day with the firm will be December 31st. In his place, Patrick Ford has been named interim Chair for Asia-Pacific. Ford has been with the firm for 23 years and is currently the firm’s Worldwide Chief Client Officer. He will continue in that role, focusing on driving growth among Burson-Marsteller’s largest clients in the Asia Pacific region as well as around the world. Ford served as the firm’s U.S. Chief Executive Officer for five years before becoming a Vice Chairman in 2012. He has been working from Hong Kong for the last several months. (Release)

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Ketchum has promoted partner Amanda Sefton to director of its Global Healthcare Practice. Ms. Sefton will remain in London and will assume her new role on Dec. 1. During the transition, she will continue serving as managing director of the London Healthcare Practice. A search is underway for her successor in that role. (Release)

MSLGROUP North America has named Shellie Winkler as North America practice director of its health and corporate practices. With more than two decades of experience, Winkler most recently worked at Edelman, where she was general manager of corporate and public affairs operations for the New York office.  She is located at MSL New York, the flagship office for MSLGROUP North America (Release)

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE) has hired Ben Finzel as senior vice president, public affairs and general manager of the Washington, D.C., office. Finzel brings more than 20 years of communications and public affairs experience to the agency, including a presidential appointment during the Clinton administration and nearly six years as a press and legislative staffer for two members of Congress. Finzel will lead the firm’s Public Affairs practice, a Washington, D.C.-based group that manages complex policy issues, leads high-profile campaigns, and drives business results for corporate clients, trade associations and advocacy groups. (National Journal)

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The press release announcing the leadership changes at Ketchum described the appointments as part of a transition for the company. But if you ask the firm’s top two execs, change is always and ongoing.

“Our business is all about change, so if you’re not changing you’re not moving a service firm of any kind forward,” the soon-to-be CEO Rob Flaherty told us on the phone today. “I think a good service firm develops a percentage of their services as new services every year.”

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Ketchum has announced leadership changes right at the top of the organization. As of July 1, Rob Flaherty, senior partner and president, will also become CEO of Ketchum. And Ray Kotcher, currently the CEO and senior partner, will be named chairman. The move is part of a planned leadership transition, with Flaherty continuing to report to Kotcher once they assume their new roles.

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Research conducted by Ketchum (with help from Communispace) finds that people around the world are most appreciative of the ways in which technology makes their lives easier, even more than tech’s entertainment value. Other countries included in the study were France, China, and Spain.

The Ketchum Digital Living Index polled 6,000 participants between the ages of 16 and 54 (between the ages of 18 and 64 in the U.S.) with results showing 46 percent of consumers want technology that is going to simplify their lives. But 76 percent said they weren’t happy with technology’s ability to make life easier. Only 35 percent said they were more desirous of technology that entertains them.

In addition, a cultural anthropologist who helped with the study, Emma Gilding, expressed surprise over the ways in which opinions differed depending on country of origin. “I didn’t expect that because the dominant narrative is that technology sells itself. But the data shows that this just isn’t true,” she said in a statement.

After the jump, we’ve got an infographic that illustrates the Index’s findings. You can also read more here.

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