Business Wire announced that Jill Connor has been promoted to vice president, Cleveland region. In this new role, Connor leads the sales, operations and media relations teams for Ohio, Indiana and Western Pennsylvania. She will also serve as the main liaison for Business Wire India, guiding its product and sales support. Connor started working at Business Wire as an editor in 1990; one year later she moved over to the sales department where she became regional manager in 2001. With her lead, the Cleveland office was working with the majority of Fortune 500 companies in the Western Pennsylvania area within only a few years of setting foot into the territory. (Release)

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This web app, called “Hey Big Fish“, is all about helping attendees make sense of all the techie mayhem and the onslaught of mostly irrelevant tweets. With the fish you can identify the biggest influencers at the event and figure out where you need to be–and who you need to know–at any given time. If you’re an egotist (and who isn’t?) then you can also track your own influence.

Not only can users find the top names, hottest discussion topics/hashtags and most popular individual tweets–they can also locate the conversations, both real and virtual, that are most relevant to them while making social connections for future events. For example, if we hadn’t checked Hey Big Fish, would we know that Dale Dougherty of Maker Media is currently the man to seek out if you’re interested in 3D printing? And would we know that our own Twitter feed ranks a sad 34,665 out of 111,635 on the influence scale? No we would not!

So will any of you PR pros be at SXSWi? And will you take this trusty app along?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Building 0n the #UseMeLeaveMe theme/tag, the agency’s social media team will give each bike its own personality and, with the help of the public, use these feeds to give attendees and other interested parties around the world a better sense of what’s going on at the festival. Razorfish plans to leave the bikes at events, encourage members of the public to ride them around the festival and, thanks to the magic of GPS, use the accounts to tweet about the weather, the food and, hopefully, the startups.

Most importantly, this is really all just a big promo stunt for Razorfish. It already got our attention.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Brian Wallace, Samsung’s VP of marketing, explains, “We picked Razorfish as our digital AOR because they demonstrate the innovative thinking that we value in our agencies. We know Razorfish understands how to translate complex issues into unique and engaging customer experiences.”

Rubenstein Public Relations also announced new client wins including World Business Lenders, FiREapps and Mr. Omer Ozden. CEO Richard Rubenstein said, “Representing these leaders in the finance and real estate markets underscores our continued expansion into the business, financial and real estate public relations sectors. We are increasingly assisting more clients in elevating their profiles and business strategies by securing strategic, brand-building media coverage.”

After a lengthy review, Sears Holdings decided to retain Havas’ MPG as its top media agency. The decision means that the national marketing juggernaut, which spends heavily on advertising, will continue its relationship with MPG, which began in 2007. It also means that MPG will retain one of its most important accounts, which includes the Kmart and Sears brands.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“There are two main ways that semantic technology can contribute to findability. Some brands, depending on the type of content they create, can publish their content with markup that identifies key pieces of information on the page, for example a price or an address. This information can then be surfaced by search endings directly in the search results, helping the audience connect with valuable information about the brand more quickly,” Lovinger said.

“Additionally, brands can use semantic tools to help thoroughly tag their content with relevant descriptive terms. This not only improves the chances of people finding their content in general Web searches, it increases the accuracy of the brand’s own site search.”

Rachel Lovinger discusses how publishers must find engaging ways to re-package their content as products and services with a distinct value to customers at the upcoming Semantic Web Summit East Nov. 16-17 in Boston.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Razorfish hired a former Fleishman-Hillard SVP of Digital Communications to serve as Director of Word of Mouth/Social Media. The digital agency confirmed the hire but would not disclose the person’s identity. Fleishman-Hillard declined to comment.

As our sister blog AgencySpy points out, it’s a bit ironic that we heard about the new word of mouth hire via word of mouth, however neither agency would confirm the person via word of mouth. Yet talk to any major digital agency executive and they will gladly pontificate about transparency in social media and PR.

Fleishman currently has a job listing up for an SVP of Digital Communications in their Chicago office, although the agency couldn’t confirm if that is a replacement position or expansion.

UPDATE: Well that didn’t take long. Readers write in that Cristina Lawrence is the SVP in question. She tweeted today, “Have a few a days off before I start the new gig” and has also posted similar updates to her Facebook page.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The AOR news – announced yesterday – comes before today’s announcement that Publicis has finalized its acquisition of the agency from Microsoft. Publicis paid $531 million, including $263 million in stock, and $286 million in cash. The agency is one of the largest digital agencies in the world, counting 2,000 employees across 19 offices worldwide.

Razorfish would not comment on who Concept beat out for the work, however a company statement sent to PRNewser said that the process included, “an in-depth look at the capabilities of several firms.” The account is a five figure monthly retainer. Also – disclosure – this PRNewser was part of the Razorfish pitch team at his last agency, Horn Group.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.