Chris Abraham and Frank Eliason join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, commenting on these stories…

* United Airlines’ crisis drags on and on, aided by user-generated content, competitors piling on, and Saturday Night Live. Even Pepsi can’t escape the United kerfuffle.

* Mastodon continues to grow and continues to earn scoffs from the been-there-done-that crowd. There are things about it that could, maybe, give it legs.

* Twitter’s struggles haven’t abated, but what would it mean to PR if it went out of business?

* Burger King tried some subversive advertising last week that hacked both Google Home and Wikipedia. Some thought it was brilliant. Others not so much.

* Burson-Marstellar is taking an ombudsman approach to social media. It could be a trend for other agencies to follow or it could be a marketing ploy.

* In his Technology Report, Dan York adds his thought to the United and Mastodon discussions.

Connect with today’s guest co-hosts at @chrisabraham and @frankeliason.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Here’s where to join the FIR Gaggle , which was mentioned on today’s show.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response. He operates his consultancy at Gerris Corp. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Frank Eliason, a partner at Brain+Trust Partners, is a renowned customer experience leader who introduces disruptive and transformative strategies to revolutionize businesses. Working for Comcast, he was recognized by BusinessWeek as “the most famous customer service manager in the U.S., possibly in the world.” At Citi he was recognized as one of the most innovative people in banking, not once, but twice by Bank Technology News. He drives the right behaviors at all levels by bringing focus to the customer and their story. Besides working for Comcast, Citi and Vanguard Investments, he has advised many Fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining the team at Brain+Trust, he led U.S. digital for Zeno Group, a Daniel J. Edelman company. He is the author of “@YourService” (Wiley, 2012).

Lionel Menchaca and Ike Pigott join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, commenting on these stories…

* Pepsi was the subject of ridicule when the brand released a tone-deaf TV commercial accused of appropriating and minimizing the protest movements of Black Lives Matter and others. We talked about the commercial itself and the bigger issue how companies should approach their efforts to drive social change.

* Facebook has released a free version of Workplace, its enterprise collaboration tool.

* There has been more movement in the battle against fake news, including moves by Facebook and Google as well as a new initiative from the world of journalism that involves a coalition of players that includes a couple PR agencies.

* Is PR gradually becoming just an extension of marketing? That’s the conclusion of USC Annenberg’s 2017 Global Communications Report.

* PR publications are promoting the idea that practitioners should pitch reporters via cold calls, which is an absolutely terrible idea.

* Dan York reports on the sudden rise of Mastodon, which is being hailed by many as a Twitter killer.

Connect with today’s guest co-hosts at @lionelgeek and @ikepigott.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Here’s where to join the FIR Gaggle , which was mentioned on today’s show.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Lionel Menchaca serves as director of Corporate & Strategy for W2O Group. In this role, he helps clients of all sizes to develop content and engagement strategies so they can connect directly with customers. He’s worked extensively on social media training for organizations and on helping organizations build and launch employee advocacy programs. He also works with teams of developers to build tools companies need to manage an increasingly complex flow of content. Before W2O, Lionel worked at Dell for 18 years and was the founder and chief blogger of Direct2Dell, Dell’s main corporate blog. Over the last 7 years, Lionel authored hundreds of posts on behalf of Dell. He helped expand it into several continues to extend Dell’s global presence. Before the blog, Lionel was one of the main architects behind Dell’s blog monitoring process begun in April 2006. He was Dell’s first full time employee paid to handle social media efforts.

After more than 16 years in television news, Emmy-winner Ike Pigott left to feed his passion for crisis communication. While building his consultancy, he started working with the American Red Cross – first as a local communicator in Alabama, and finally as the Director of Communications and Government Relations for a five-state region. It was during his time at the Red Cross that he pioneered the use of social media, developed the first disaster-response blogs, as well as the non-profit’s Twitter account all the way back in 2007. For the last seven years, Ike has worked as a communication strategist and spokesman for Alabama Power, an electric utility that serves more than 1.4-million customers. He helped shape the Social Media Guidelines for Alabama Power’s parent, Southern Company, and serves on the system-wide Social Media Advisory Council. In addition to media relations duties and serving as editor of the corporate NewsCenter site, Ike works across the company to help individuals and departments get the most out of social media tools. Ike has been a featured speaker at dozens of communication conferences in the United States and Europe,

Francine Hardaway and Kami Huyse join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, digging into these stories…

* More and more brands are producing web video series. The latest to join the trend: Chipotle, Marriott Rewards, and Dove. Is there potential here for PR and corporate communications?

* There has been no shortage of corporate crises to explore, including leggings on United Airlines, invasive seeds from Honey Nut Cheerios, and a fired employee from Cracker Barrell. Do any of these matter in the long run?

* Advertisers are fleeing from YouTube due to fear of an ad appearing with an offensive video, causing anguish among content creators whose revenues are tanking. Google is trying to right the ship, but one company has already reduced the number of sites on which it advertises from 400,000 to 5,000 with no noticeable change to the performance metrics.

* Millennials are driving B2B companies to become “socially investible.”

* There’s data in GIFs.

* Dan York reports on Facebook’s mobile apps adopting a Snapchat-like Stories feature.

Connect with today’s guest co-hosts at @hardaway and @kamichat.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Join the FIR Gaggle for a chance to get a free copy of J. Kelly Hoey’s book, “Build Your Dream Network.”

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Francine Hardaway, Ph.D., is the co-founder of Stealthmode Partners, an accelerator for early stage entrepreneurs. A three-time entrepreneur herself, she has been a PR professional since 1980. Her last PR company, Hardaway Marketing Services, was acquired by Intel in 1996, and after a year inside Intel, she emerged to advise, coach, and fund startups in the internet space in partnership with Ed Nusbaum. Dr. Hardaway has written for Huffington Post, Fast Company and Medium, and is a contributing writer to the Phoenix Business Journal, where she has won two journalism awards for best column. She has also taught “Business and Future of Journalism” and “Digital Media Entrepreneurship” classes as ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism.

Kami Huyse is the founder of Zoetica Media. She writes an award-winning blog, Zoetica Talks, on the topic of public relations and social media strategy. Kami is a national leader in the use of social media for public relations. She speaks at social media events and conferences all over the country and her work in social media has earned her the SNCR’s 2008 Reputation Management award and IABC’s 2009 Gold Quill of Excellence Award. Kami was a 2010 fellow of the Society for New Communications Research where she pursued a study on how cause marketing in social communities can benefit companies. She is also the co-founder and organizer of the Social Media Breakfast Houston and serves on the board of CiviliNation.

Shel Holtz is globe-trotting this week, so Paul Gillin and David Strom of FIR B2B take the reins. Our guests are Todd Van Hoosear, a well-known social media figure in Boston and elsewhere, and Barbara Selvin, associate professor at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism, where she created and teaches a course on the changing news industry.

* Within minutes of delaying a vote on the replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act, President Trump placed calls to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and The Washington Post’s Robert Costa to spin the decision. These are the same publications the President recently branded as “enemies of the people.” What are we to make of his decision to reach out to them rather than Breitbart or Fox News, whom he has praised as being more reliable?

* Subscriptions surge for the ‘dishonest media’ after Trump’s attacks – Newspapers and magazines such as the New Yorker and the Atlantic and sites such as ProPublica and the ACLU are seeing print and online subscriptions surge in the wake of Trump’s victory. Could this be the silver lining in the “fake news” crisis?

* We could use one, because Nick Bolton writes in Vanity Fair that fake news is about to get even scarier than you ever dreamed. “Advancements in audio and video technology are becoming so sophisticated that they will be able to replicate real news—real TV broadcasts, for instance, or radio interviews—in unprecedented, and truly indecipherable, ways.” This is a chilling piece. Maybe blockchain will help?

* A photo of an all-male White House panel discussing women’s health issues sparks anger, highlighting the power of imagery and the importance of thinking about your images might be interpreted before you post them.

* IBM, remote-work pioneer, is calling thousands of employees back to the office. In a dramatic change of course, the company that championed telecommuting is telling its U.S. marketing employees that they must now work from one of six locations in Atlanta, Raleigh, Austin, Boston, San Francisco or New York or seek employment elsewhere. Has the tide turned on the virtual office concept?

* How do you label audio promotions? Google wants to create promotions that aren’t ads for its voice-controlled assistant, but it got grief for an audio Plug for Disney that Google said wasn’t an ad.

* One thing’s for sure: native advertising is a thing. eMarketer says spending on native digital display ads will make up more than half of all digital display ad spending in the US this year. Are these ads diluting th the quality of editorial content that goes around them?

* Dan York’s report covers the launch of a Producer API for Twitter and

Shel Holtz was away on travel and so FIR correspondent Dan York stepped in as a guest host. Chip Griffin and Jen Phillips joined Dan for this week’s episode, which covered these stories…

* The Association of National Advertisers calls for independent ad data audits at Amazon, Linkedin, Pinterest, Snapchat and Twitter – but will any of the companies actually care? And are communicators looking at the wrong metrics, anyway?

* Global advertisers are pulling spending from Google / YouTube due to PR/reputation concerns about having their ads shown on videos they consider offensive – how does Google adjust? Who determines what is “offensive”?

* On that topic, Google’s latest algorithm changes are targeting offensive results and low-quality sites — should communicators pay attention? (Chip has a rather strong opinion here!)

* Articles about Snapchat are divided about whether it is a leader or it is failing, while competitors are copying Snapchat’s features — will it survive? (Chip had another very strong opinion here.)

* A Poynter article says that in Donald Trump’s America there is significant competition for investigative journalists – what role does investigative journalism play in media success and failure?

* European newsrooms are forming a united front against fake news — will it matter?

* And, of course, we had to discuss the recent court case in Maine that was decided based upon the lack of an Oxford comma…

This was also the first-ever “Made in New Hampshire” episode of FIR, with all three participants being in NH.

Connect with our guests on Twitter at @chipgriffin and @jenzings.

Links to the source material for this episode will are available on Contentle.

Join the FIR Gaggle for a chance to get a free copy of J. Kelly Hoey’s book, “Build Your Dream Network.”

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Chip Griffin, host of Chats with Chip and the Media Bullseye Roundtable, brings more than two decades of experience in the public relations arena, including service in public and private sector organizations. Chip is an entrepreneur, communicator, and writer. He currently serve as North American CEO of CARMA, a global media intelligence company with a presence in 43 countries worldwide. In his free time, Chip is an active American University alumni volunteer, as well as a baseball umpire and basketball referee. Chip lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two sons.

Jennifer Zingsheim Phillips is the principal at 4L Strategies, consulting and providing content development for a variety of industries. She has worked in communications and public affairs for 20 years. Her background includes work in electoral politics, government, lobbying, and public affairs PR work. Jen lives in New Hampshire.

 

Dan York has contributed a weekly “tech report” into the For Immediate Release podcast since 2005. A passionate advocate for the open Internet, Dan serves as Senior Manager, Content and Web Strategy, for the Internet Society, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet. Since the mid-1980’s Dan has been working with online communication technologies and helping businesses and organizations understand how to use and participate in those new media. Dan frequently presents at conferences,

Jenn Floto and Christine Perkett join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, which covered these stories…

* Chatbots seem to dominate the panels at this hear’s South by Southwest tech conference, but marketers are already starting to abandon the bots they’ve created. Are bots over before they’ve really begun?

* Advances in technology are raising the profile of earned media, which has taken a back seat to the paid and owned models.

* A study finds that Facebook likes aren’t worth very much unless you pay for them. Are we really still measuring effectiveness with likes?

* PRWeek argues that the CEO can no longer be divorced from the communications and culture of a company. To prove its point, they compared two CEOs: United’s Oscar Munoz and Uber’s Travis Kalanick.

* Dan York reports on the upcoming ICANN meeting in Copenhagen and web inventor Tim Berners-Lee’s letter, “Three challenges for the web” on the web’s 28th birthday.

Connect with guest co-hosts Christine Perkett on Twitter at @MissusP and Jenn Floto on LinkedIn.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Join the FIR Gaggle for a chance to get a free copy of J. Kelly Hoey’s book, “Build Your Dream Network.”

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Jennifer Floto is a veteran public relations practitioner who has worked on both corporate and agency assignments. She spent 10 years at TRW before doing stints at two of the world’s leading agencies: Ketchum and Manning, Selvage & Lee. An accredited communicator, Jenn continues to consult with such clients as the Beach Cities Symphony, Rotary International and the Keck School of Medicine. Floto was named “Professor of the Year” in 2006 and received the Mellon Mentoring Award in 2012.  She teaches an array of undergraduate and graduate courses and serves as adviser to TriSight, USC’s in-house PR agency, and PRSSA.

Christine Perkett founded PerkettPR in 1998 and SeeDepth, a PR analytics platform, in 2013. She has been named one of the ‘Top 25 Authorities Moving PR Forward’ in a recent industry study, and is routinely recognized as one of the most social media-savvy CEOs – currently ranked as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women on Twitter (by Hubspot), a “Top Influential Woman in Tech on Twitter” (by Google’s Don Dodge, alongside such greats as Marissa Mayer, WSJ’s Kara Swisher, Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, and others), and featured two consecutive years in BusinessWeek’s Social Media Special Report (keeping company of notable CEOs from Zappos, Virgin, Digg, HDNet, Mint and more). Christine was also awarded “Best Communications, IR or PR Executive” by the American Business Awards.

 

Phil Gomes and Sherrilynne Starkie join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, which covered these stories…

* Snap Inc.’s IPO went well and the stock is performing better than expected. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a bright future for Snapchat.

* One blockchain startup leader believes the technology can play a central role in rebuilding trust in business by encoding the company’s values on the blockchain.

* Dan York’s tech report looks at the Amazon Web Services outage.

* Companies invest a lot in social media but publishers are far more successful. Can communicators learn anything from how media uses social media?

* A special, brief report on what Shel means when he says “30” at the end of every episode.

Connect with guest co-hosts on Twitter at @philgomes and @sherrilynne.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Join the FIR Gaggle for a chance to get a free copy of J. Kelly Hoey’s book, “Build Your Dream Network.”

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Phil Gomes is senior vice president at Edelman, working in U.S. B2B Digital, advanced community engagement and special situations, a role he developed that focuses on preparing clients for advanced issues and special situations regarding online corporate reputation and emerging technologies. Phil has been with Edelman since 2005; before that he was with Dryden Marketing Group working as a media programs manager. Phil co-founded CREWE – Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, and he’s a founding fellow of the Society for New Communications Research. Phil was a recent FIR Interviews guest talking about blockchains and their potential role in communications, a topic that will come up again in today’s show.

For more than 20 years, Sherrilynne Starkie has been providing communications consulting and services to blue-chip organizations in Britain, Canada and the United States. She focuses on helping clients leverage digital and social media to achieve organizational objectives.  As President at Thornley Fallis, Sherrilynne is responsible for the profitable operation of the communications business including client strategy overview, business development, HR, quality assurance, marketing and team development. She is a blogger, an occasional contributor and is very active on social media. Recently, she’s been a speaker at the IABC World Conference, SXSWi, WTC and the UA Canada National Conference.  She is an active volunteer with IABC Ottawa has volunteered with many other organizations.

Melissa Agnes and Olivier Blanchard join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, which covered these stories…

* The #DeleteUber movement, which seemed to wind down after the conversation moved on from the company’s response to the Trump administration’s immigration ban, is back in full swing with a post from a former engineer outlining inappropriate sexual conduct at the company. Uber seems to move from one crisis to another. Will its response to the current crisis be enough?

* Consumer packaged goods companies are experimenting with IBM Watson Ads, which let consumers ask questions and get verbal responses from the ad itself.

* Voice tech also holds some promise for “quick service retail,” where it could replace employees with touch screen tablets who are there to answer customer questions.

* Distrust of experts is on the rise. One professor thinks storytelling is the solution to the problem.

* Most Millennials watch live-streaming video, yet most communicators aren’t ready to give it a try.

* Dan York reports on Stories, the Snapchat feature that has been appropriated by Facebook’s apps Instagram and WhatsApp.

Connect with guest co-hosts on Twitter at @Melisssa_Agnes and @TheBrandBuilder.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Melissa Agnes is a founding partner of Agnes+Day, a crisis intelligence firm. In her role, Melissa is a crisis management consultant and keynote speaker, has developed an international reputation for crisis management, planning and training by helping large global brands prevent and manage a wide range of corporate issues and crises. Her client list includes government agencies, cities and municipalities, healthcare organizations, energy companies, global non-profits, financial organizations, the public and private sectors and many others. Melissa is an international and sought-after keynote speaker and guest lecturer.

Olivier Blanchard is a French-born, American-based Brand Management and Digital Marketing consultant, the author of two best-selling books, and an acclaimed keynote speaker. As a Senior Analyst with Futurum Research, Olivier helps organizations better understand the crucial ole that emerging technologies like Cloud computing, Big Data, Virtualization, Augmented Reality, Smart Automation, IoT and AI will play their industries and markets over the next 10 to 20 years. Though based in the US, his geographic range extends beyond North America to Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Olivier is the author of the best-selling #1 social business desk reference for digital managers and business executives: Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts In Your Organization (Que/Pearson). Olivier is also a sought-after subject-matter expert and corporate trainer.

Note: This episode continues our experiment with a streamlined format: two guest co-hosts instead of three panelists and fewer stories. We were able to shave even more time off the show this week and will aim for further slimming next week. Please let us know how you like the format — and the length — by sending an email to [email protected]. 

Doug Haslam and Augie Ray join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, which covered these stories…

* An Accenture report found that loyalty programs aren’t working, with millions of reward points lingering unused while consumers have different criteria for what makes them loyal.

* Listener Tim Watt asked about our discussion in episode #73 about Volkswagen overcoming its emissions crisis to become the world’s top automaker. We discuss whether it would have mattered had the crisis been characterized as a public health issue rather than an environmental one.

* PewDie Pie was dropped as a paid influencer for Disney and Google dropped him from its premium ad program after he shared anti-Semitic videos. It’s a challenge for brands hold influencers accountable for their content.

* It’s also impossible to distinguish real rogue Twitter accounts created by disgruntled government employees from fake ones. Meanwhile, several media outlets nearly fell for a fake press release claiming McDonald’s was trying to acquire Chipotle, and a movie company launched a fake news campaign to promote a new film. With so much fakery everywhere, will consumers start distrusting everything they see?

* Dan York reports on social media passwords.

* The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer calls for companies to put employees first, but new data from Gallup suggests most organizations aren’t heeding that advice.

Connect with guest co-hosts on Twitter at @dough and @augieray.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

Doug Haslam’s  career has spanned a variety of disciplines within the communications field: radio technology, editorial production, public relations, marketing, social media and digital. Currently a senior consultant with Stone Temple Consulting, Doug began with public radio, producing news and thoughtful sports programs, moving into technology public relations, and currently to social media and content strategy for brands of all sizes and industries. Doug’s love of media has come full circle, as his most recent positions have seen him taking full advantage of his content creation skills, managing social media and brand publishing programs for a wide variety of clients.

Augie Ray is a Research Director covering customer experience for marketing leaders at Gartner. He has had a diverse career, including leading a digital experiential agency, directing social business at USAA and managing a global customer experience team at American Express. In his present role, Augie researches and advises clients on topics such as Voice of Customer, customer journey mapping, customer experience strategy and virtual reality.

Note: This episode continues our experiment with a streamlined format: two guest co-hosts instead of three panelists and fewer stories. We were able to shave even more time off the show this week and will aim for further slimming next week. Please let us know how you like the format — and the length — by sending an email to [email protected]. 

Shonali Burke and Angus Nelson join Shel Holtz for this week’s episode, which covered these stories…

* A report from TopRank Marketing, Traackr, and Brian Solis presents some influencer marketing data and recommends evolving the practice for one-shot, quick-hit marketing efforts to longer-term influencer relationship building.

* One story Angus shared predicts the future of work will be all about freelancers and companies tapping into vastly distributed talent pools. Another opines that Human Resources will be pivotal in the future to ensure companies take advantage of the uniquely human elements of their employees. Are these ideas mutually exclusive?

* Dan York reports on a new report out of the Pew Internet Center about algorithms.

* The primary benefit of Artifical Intelligence is to make predictions — something that has been expensive — abundant and cheap. The value of people is in exercising judgment. This will represent a massive shift in the nature of work that people do. Are organizations taking adequate steps to prepare employees and other stakeholders for this change?

* Ryan Holiday created the roadmap for effective unethical marketing practices. Now he’s worried that the alt-right has adopted his playbook. CEOs who are quick to condemn laws and policies may be playing right into their hands.

Connect with guest co-hosts on Twitter at @shonali and @angusnelson.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR was recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s guest co-hosts:

A veteran of small and large PR agencies, Shonali Burke is the award-winning president & CEO of her eponymous social PR consulting firm, Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc., where she and her team(s) help for- and non-profit organizations small and large reach business goals by taking their communications “from corporate codswallop to community cool.” Shonali also serves on the Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University in its M.A. /Communication program, as well as the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information.  Before launching her own consultancy, Shonali worked as Vice President of Digital Media and marketing for MSL Group, and as Vice President of Media and Communications for the ASPCA.

Angus Nelson is the “people guy” at Brain+Trust Partners, an engaging consultant, facilitator, speaker, and executive coach. Former head of Member Success at Crowd Companies, he and Jeremiah Owyang founded an innovation community of Fortune 1000 companies – his focus on the p2p economy and future of work. He’s spoken at corporate headquarters for Walmart, Whole Foods, Coke, Adobe, Hallmark and Swisscom. His podcast, “Up In Your Business”, was recognized as a Top 20 Business Podcast on Inc.com. He’s been featured in Inc.com, Aol.com, Huffington Post, VentureBeat, and SocialFresh.com. Later this year, Morgan James will release his book, “Empowering Work” addressing the gigification of corporate roles,