Weekly Rewind: Our favorite stories from around the web

Photo Credit: PR Daily
Photo Credit: PR Daily

Baby, it’s cold outside! We woke up to a cold front this Friday morning in Dallas, but we’ll survive. In fact, frigid temperatures are conducive for a weekend filled of Netflix and electric blankets, which sounds pretty darn good. Before we get to the human form of hibernating, let’s be sentimental and join the movement of reflecting back on our favorite things from 2016.

Who Ran the Best PR Campaign?

A boutique tech PR firm asked more than 1,000 Americans to rank the top PR campaigns for 2016. Pokémon Go swept the millennial vote but the baby boomers ranked Donald Trump as the winner. I may have to agree with the baby boomers on this one. Donald Trump’s run was messy and controversial, but you couldn’t read the news without seeing his name in bold print. Donald Trump stamped his message everywhere and that got him the presidency. Time also announced this week that Donald Trump wins “Person of the Year” because of his strong influence over the year’s events… for better or for worse.

#Itmatters

It’s evident that social media is a big influencer in our society, and nothing could have made it any more obvious than the 2016 presidential election. The divisive campaign created online pandemonium as people took to Facebook, Twitter and many others forms of social media to express their wide-ranging opinions. Neil Patel, author of the blog “The Daily Egg,” did a post on 10 things we can learn about social media from the election, and hitting some great points including the relevancy of hashtags. “Hashtags allow accounts with large followings to create rallying points for their messages in a way that’s easy to track.” This advice isn’t just applicable for candidates — it’s a great practice for our clients and their businesses as well.

Peace and Drama — Rinse and Repeat

One of the best things about 2016 was undoubtedly the Olympics because it brought Americans together, even if the bond only lasted two weeks. However, the Rio Olympics did not come without its share of scandal and PR crises. After a night of drinking and poor decisions, Ryan Lochte told an outright lie to the press and got caught. Lochte hired a top crisis communications pro and began his apology tour. The swimmer apologized for his behavior on social media, and then sat down for an interview with Matt Lauer where he took complete responsibility for his actions and seemed sincerely remorseful.

However, the Olympics drama is still not over. It just came out that more than 1,000 Russian athletes benefited from state-sponsored steroid programs between 2011 to 2015, similar to what http://topsteroidsforsale.com/ offers. Russia has already started the process of “looking to hire as many as four PR agencies to improve its image in the West.” It will be interesting to see how the pros are going to try and turn this around — udachi! (It means good luck in Russian. I looked it up).

2016 Take Over

Seeing the headline “11 PR and communications lessons from theSkimm” is amazing. It’s gratifying to see theSkimm’s popularity take off thanks to its witty and informative breakdowns of the top political headlines. Some favorite Skimm lesson from PR Daily is “respect your audience’s time and attention.”

The key to good writing is relatability so you don’t lose your audience’s attention. “There is middle ground between talking down to people and just quickly mentioning something and assuming people understand it.” TheSkimm has conquered that balance by providing a few short background sentences on an event before delivering the new update. The writers have mastered filling readers in on important information without making them feel like they need an entire history lesson or that they’re unintelligent for not knowing particular information. “Skimm” the article for the other nine lessons — they’re super valuable!