So what happens to these companies when they’re purchased? Advertisements. Sales. Clutter. Those things that take up your sidebar and even interrupt the middle of your computer or mobile screen when all you want to do is look at comments and posts your friends wrote or took pictures of. Chief Executive of Yahoo Marissa Mayer who decided on the acquisition has now put in for a long-shot/long-term result process. Although the combination of the two powerhouses will be an immediate plus in numbers for Yahoo in terms of visitors and demographics, there are many concerns already rising.

Yahoo has made it clear that they don’t want to ruin the functionality that Tumblr has already, but there are worries of Yahoo’s influence transforming the site into a more corporate and straight-edge version compared to its original purpose of individuality per each blogger. There is also concern over the previously existing content and image of the site. In 2009 Tumblr was almost 80% adult related content and gave it a particular reputation that still lingers. Now they’ve minimized that content to about 5%. But what about when Yahoo decides to “ramp up” Tumblr’s dashboard? Will it become the next Facebook with endless advertising that consumers argue about every time there’s a new update that resets your settings and spams your homepage with ads? Tumblr was started by a guy, David Karp, after he dropped out of high school for the preference of home schooling and wanted a new, uninhibited way to share what interests him and others. Wasn’t that a similar aim of what Zuckerberg was going for? What kind of future does Tumblr have to look forward to and what sort of pattern might we be seeing for all social media platforms these days?

Yahoo doesn’t have the greatest track record for big purchases, as seen by its failed purchase of Geocities for $3 billion. Maybe Mayer has a new strategy and understanding of the relationship between social media and general media. The coming months will tell if her gut feeling was the right one.

Obama has just appointed Nicole Wong, former Twitter lawyer, as the White House’s Chief Privacy Officer—a brand new position for the government. If you’re like us, you thought, “Wow, that’s smart.”

Finding the right person was no easy task considering there’s not a huge pool of people to choose from. Internet privacy is a relatively new concept, yet this job requires someone with loads of experience.

Enter Nicole Wong. She’s had to deal with hacks, addressing governments that want to sensor, police request she deemed out-of-line and more. No, she wasn’t Chief Privacy Officer at Twitter (or Google, where she worked before), and no she doesn’t have government experience, yet the skills she has are really relevant to the new job she’ll be handling in government.

So that got us thinking. In a PR agency, we tend to be jacks of all trades—pitchers, writers, event planners, strategizers, etc. But beyond that, if you look around your office, there’s a chance everyone possesses skills that aren’t specifically related to PR, but still offer a lot toward the job at-hand. At PCI, as we look to hire a new SAE, we’re reminded of this.

Don’t just look at standard PR skills when searching for a team member or expanding your capabilities. Instead, look to people’s other skills and passions as a way of rounding out the team you have and the services you offer—whether you’re looking for a new employee or simply growing from within.

Here are a few “non-PR” skills and personalities we’ve seen over the years that can really help an agency:

• The person in the office who always seems to wear a new fad just before it shows up everywhere
o You’ve got a trend-spotter who is likely great at crafting trend pitches.
• Anyone who’s worked as a restaurant server or host
o Customer relations at its finest—these people are usually great at making clients and the media feel taken care of on a daily basis.
• Have a great gift wrapper in the office?
o Use them to make new product kits look beautiful, wrap client gifts or come up with creative event decor
• Former retail employees
o As people who are used to rattling off product attributes and answering questions on the spot, they’re often great brand ambassadors if you’re ever doing a sampling program.

While some things will always be important to PR people—writing skills, detail orientation and efficiency to name a few, it can be the little, seemingly unrelated things that make an employee stand out and fit right in.

These statistics, and the increase in public awareness of childhood obesity, make it more important than ever to take the time to teach kids how to cook healthy meals for themselves and their families. ShopRite supermarkets took matters into their own hands last month, emphasizing the role of their in-store dietitians.

ShopRite retail dietitians rolled out programming for Kids Cook Monday, a public health initiative begun by the non-profit Monday Campaigns. “The Kids Cook Monday program is a natural fit for what our dietitian team is already doing within the store, both in store and within their local communities. We believe that setting children up with healthy behaviors and skills provides them with them with a strong foundation for a lifetime of healthy eating,” said Melanie Dwornik, Wakefern’s retail dietitian supervisor, in a Supermarket News article.3

During the free, in-store events, retail dietitians convey their messages through interactive demonstrations and full cooking classes with a new recipe highlighted each month, helping kids and their parents learn how to prepare healthier meals. ShopRite plans to hold Kids Cook Monday events at least once a month in all stores, and the frequency in each store might vary depending on local demand.

As ShopRite continues their program, other retailers should take note!

1. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Kit BK, Flegal KM. Prevalence of obesity and trends in body mass index among US children and adolescents, 1999-2010. Journal of the American Medical Association 2012;307(5):483-490.
2. National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States, 2011: With Special Features on Socioeconomic Status and Health. Hyattsville, MD; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2012.
3. Liz Webber. Shoprite Dietitians Teach Kids Healthy Cooking. Accessed May 6, 2013. http://supermarketnews.com/health-amp-wellness/shoprite-dietitians-teach-kids-healthy-cooking

One of the reasons PR people can be good at our jobs is that we treat every product, statistic, spokesperson as if it is the most important, most interesting thing. So, what does public relations look like during a crisis? During a time when even we have to admit that our priorities are not what’s important to the world? Last Monday during the Boston Marathon, and all of last week, was one of those times.

What should we do? Even if we have the world’s best pitch and we’re sending it to the sports editor, we stop. Save the email draft and wait. Even if the person’s beat is not hard news or crime, there’s the possibility that she might have been pulled onto breaking news for the short term to cover everything that’s happening. Not to mention, she is still a human being, and just as you are checking CNN every five minutes, she is too—glued to the TV, refreshing Facebook or Twitter for updates from friends and family that live in affected areas.

Also, if you are the manager of social media channels, there are two mistakes that we see people offended by over and over:
A) Tying sales goals or consumer engagement techniques to the tragedy
While we won’t mention brand names here, a few may spring to mind for you. We’ve seen stores tie sales promotions to Hurricane Sandy and during the riots in Egypt, another company claimed the riots were excitement over its spring clothing line.
B) Ignoring the tragedy altogether
Despite what we normally think about staying engaged, it is more than appropriate for brands to take a hiatus from social media during crises. No one will miss your Wednesday tweets about mid-week family dinners or Friday tweets about weekend plans. In fact, last week, we saw quite a few people take brands and public figures to task for being flippant or unaware.

It’s called Public Relations—our job is to build relationships—between ourselves and the media, and between the public and our clients. What faster way to destroy goodwill we’ve created than to capitalize on tragedy or misery? So stop typing and go watch the news with the rest of us.

Then, when the time is right, the storm has blown over or the perpetrator has been caught, resume your PR efforts, but do so with care, respect and the knowledge that the people you’re reaching out to, and their audiences, may have been personally affected.

At this point we understand that the news media has actions in place to handle these sorts of national incidents, but what about social media sites and outlets? How should they be handled in cases such as these? How should social media managers control the content that is so rapidly and virally distributed?

PR Daily posted an article questioning just that idea and came up with multiple guidelines to help companies, businesses and other outlets streamline the chaos that overwhelmed all of us. Here are their 7 suggestions:
1. Have a company plan in place to handle the news and how you will disseminate your response, unless you choose to go silent
2. Put a monitoring system in place to keep track of the content that comes through your company
3. Inform employees and your community of what is taking place objectively
4. Halt marketing/promotions so that you don’t appear unaffected
5. Respond to criticism in case you were behind with the news and offend any readers
6. Be a resource in case your community has questions and uses you for information
7. Show compassion because we are all human

At Pollock we were all dismayed by the news and our hearts were heavy with the rest of the world. We can always come up with precautionary steps to prevent social media from getting out of control, but we can’t control the precautionary steps to prevent these major crises that affect us all.

Source: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/14288.aspx

According to the USNews.com article1, among the Food Marketing Institute association’s 1,500 food retailers and wholesalers, 85 percent employ dietitians at the corporate level, half employ dietitians on a regional level, and 33 percent of all stores boast an on-site dietitian. This makes sense since the 2012 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends showed that 78% of shoppers report interest in reading nutrition labels, paying more for organic products, or looking for locally sourced products.2

As dietitians increase their roles and numbers in-store, it will be important for retailers to measure the sales of healthier items and the return on investment for the store. The USNews.com article1 refers to an uptick in sales around certain healthy promotions in Hy-Vee, and the customer loyalty associated with having a dietitian to help make your purchase decisions a little less complicated.

As health and wellness becomes more of a priority among consumers, it is valuable for the consumer to have someone in-store, explaining to them the health and nutrition benefits of the various products on the shelves as they make their purchasing decision.

1 USNews.com. “Meet the Supermarket Dietitian”. Accessed March 21, 2013: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2013/03/07/meet-the-supermarket-dietitian?page=2
2 ICN-Net.com. U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2012 Executive Summary. Accessed March 21, 2013. http://www.icn-net.com/docs/12086_FMIN_Trends2012_v5.pdf

Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is looking for a new “Social Media Manager of Greatness.” How did they expect to fill this position? At SXSW, of course—and candidates were allowed just 140 seconds to impress the boss. Doesn’t that number sound familiar to all the Tweeters out there?

In doing this, Pizza Hut assumed, rightfully so, that a) the right person for the job would be at SXSW (or on a Google+ hangout for those who couldn’t make it), and b) the person would know how to make a splash in a matter of seconds, which is a key skill for a social media marketer.

If you think this is strictly a stunt, think again. The job has a legitimate set of criteria, including 5+ years experience in digital advertising or marketing.

Heineken
On the other end of the spectrum, Heineken was conducting interviews for an event and sponsorship internship. How did they weed through the 1,700 applicants? Instead of interviews that lasted seconds, they conducted drawn out interviews that featured everything from an interviewer who tries to hold your hand to a fake heart attack and having to catch someone who’s jumping off a burning building.

And in a Candid Camera style twist, Heineken secretly taped the interviews and turned them into a video, The Candidate, that has now been viewed almost three million times on Youtube.

Why is this interesting, aside from being entertaining? Well, isn’t that just it? These two companies have found a way to make the commonplace job interview entertaining to millions of current or potential consumers—showing the fun side of their corporate brand to the world while filling a straightforward HR need. Pizza Hut has even seen coverage on Forbes and BusinessWeek.com, while Huffington Post UK and Mashable have covered Heineken’s “The Candidate” scheme.

If Pollock Communications were to take this approach, what would it look like? Definitely a healthy cooking competition—sort of Chopped meets MyPlate—and we’d be live tweeting from @PollockPR through the entire thing.