Toyota Shifts AOR Gears…

SHIFT Communications announced that Toyota has selected the award-winning firm as its primary PR agency in the Northeast Region, which includes New York, New England, Washington, D.C., and the mid-Atlantic states. The firm will also play a lead role in strategic planning for the brand, driving earned media with mainstream and social media outlets, and highlighting the motor company’s philanthropic and community relations programs.

“Toyota is a brand with deep roots in innovation,” said Todd Defren, CEO of SHIFT Communications. “That forward-thinking mindset is incredibly synergistic with SHIFT’s approach and we look forward to working closely with the team at Toyota to bring that same level of innovation to its communications.”

Two for One AOR…

The Morris + King Company announced that it has been retained by Arby’s Foundation, an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger in America. Over the past 25 years, Arby’s Foundation has donated over $52 million to various charitable causes across the country. Their recent partnership with Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry Campaign is working to bring meals to more American children than ever before.

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Shift Communication

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Newswire company Marketwire said today that it has acquired social media monitoring company Sysomos. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Social media monitoring and analysis continues to be an incredibly hot space, with media companies from Dow Jones and Reuters and marketing and technology companies including Vocus and Lithium all fighting for market share.

Shift Communications principal Todd Defren and FutureWorks principal Brian Solis both endorsed the deal in a press release.

The deal makes sense for Marketwire, who will use the new offerings provided by Sysomos in an attempt to up-sell clients already working with the company for press release distribution.

Sysomos itself has generated PR recently by issuing frequent data reports on social media usage and trends.

PRNewser caught up with Marketwire president and CEO Michael Nowlan today, who did not rule out additional acquisitions.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made perhaps his most public of statements today regarding recent concerns about the social network’s privacy settings: an op-ed in the Washington Post.

In the op-ed, Zuckerberg said the company “missed the mark,” regarding privacy controls, while adding, “We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use.”

We asked several PR executives what they thought of the op-ed.

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This week’s account win round-up features some notable moves.

Shift Communications has been named Sony Online Entertainment’s first PR agency of record. In a candid blog post, principal Todd Defren admits the agency almost won work with Sony’s Sr. Director of Global PR and Corp. Comm. Scott Gulbransen when he was at TurboTax. Looks like second time’s the charm.

Starbucks subsidiary Seattle’s Best coffee hired Zeno Group. We had heard about Seattle’s Best sniffing around a few weeks back, but the company kept issuing denials. The video above is something they put together when they “re-launched” the brand this past March.

Tennessee-based DuVita LLC, a direct sales company distributing all natural dietary supplements, selects Raleigh, NC’s French/West/Vaughan as agency of record to execute a regional PR campaign.

Beckerman has a busy first quarter, adding Frontier Beverage Co., Raw Foods International and several other clients to their national and regional client roster.

Cookerly Public Relations is psyched to get all up in some grills. They’ll be working with grill and cooking equipment purveyor Fire& Flavor and auto dealer behavior dynamics researcher to increase visibility via comprehensive PR campaigns.

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In a blog post titled, “(Many) Advertising Agencies (Still) Don’t Understand Social Media,” Shift Communications Principal Todd Defren writes, “…the new Stella Artois campaign [Editor's note: video posted above.] struck me as such a perfect example of how some Advertising agencies take a bone-headed, campaign-is-king approach to Social Media…”

Defren adds a bunch of caveats at the beginning of his post, mainly that he has friends in advertising, and that many ad agencies are good at integrating social media into their work.

So then what was the point of the post? Using one campaign to paint a broad stroke on an industry could be considered a bit much, as many commenters on Defren’s post said.

When PRNewser spoke with Defren over email today, he said that the agency landscape is a complicated environment, and that there are numerous client engagements when Shift may have worked with an ad agency, or was brought in to clean up an ad agency’s mess, or did not work with an ad agency at all.

Particularly of note is that Shift Communications recently lost a PR/Social agency of record pitch for Century 21 Real Estate to an ad agency: Mullen. To their credit, they’ve also recently won big accounts like Quiznos.

Defren’s salvo is nothing new.

Edelman CEO Richard Edelman wrote in August 2006, “I think that the presumption has been that ad agencies act as coordinators of multiple communications disciplines. I intend to challenge that notion. There are times when PR should lead.”

Let the debate continue.

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PRNewser caught up with Shift Communications Principal Todd Defren at a party to celebrate the launch of the agency’s New York office last night.

The agency, which reported revenue of just over $12 million in 2009, already operates in Boston and San Francisco.

Defren, who pens the popular PR Squared blog, told us the move to New York was to help the agency service its increasingly diverse client base, which he said is now 50% technology brands and 50% consumer brands. “We need to be in the mecca of all these big consumer brands,” he said.

Also, many of Shift’s Boston employees began moving to New York anyways, so the agency thought they would provide them with an official office. Defren told employees, “You can’t work out of your apartments, we’re going to do this right and open you a nice office in Union Square.”

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Shift Communications announced the opening of their New York office today, which is the agency’s third office, in addition to current offices in San Francisco and Boston.

“It made sense to start a New York PR firm, since many of the inquiries we receive from consumer and technology companies stem from the New York area,” Shift Communications principal Todd Defren said in a statement.

John Carter, vice president of account services at Shift, will lead the office. The agency’s clients include Akamai, Virgin Mobile, Canadian Club, Quantum, RealNetworks, Yelp, Johnson & Johnson and H&R Block.

PRNewser will be attending the official opening party for the office next week.

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If, like most PR pros, you spend a good deal of time on Twitter tracking journalists, clients, industry influencers or anything else, you begin to notice some trends. Many Tweets often fall into one of five categories, which we’ve carefully outlined for you below.

Is this scientific research? Absolutely not. But it’s all in good fun and we hope you will enjoy it and post your own examples in the comments. Read on for the five popular types of PR tweets.

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From Todd Defren‘s PR Squared blog: “I wish this was a joke. It’s not. This is what it’s like in the world of marketing agencies right now.” Are you feeling the same? Let us know.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.