The Gorkana Weekly Industry News Brief: 21 to 27 May 2016
Missed out on this week’s PR News? Get your handy round-up of the essential highlights of PR and media stories, features and events content over the last seven days on Gorkana News.
People News
Aurélie Kane
Pernod Ricard, which includes brands Absolut Vodka, Beefeater Gin and Jameson Irish Whiskey, has promoted its head of corporate comms, Aurélie Kane, to comms and corporate affairs director.
Shirin Majid has rejoined Weber Shandwick to become creative director, 17 years after starting her PR career at the agency’s Washington, D.C. office.
VFS Global, the world’s largest outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions, has appointed Kuoni Group’s Peter Brun to chief comms officer.
Hotwire’s deputy MD, Matt Cross, has been promoted to MD of the UK business, four years after joining the agency as a director.
Global social media agency We Are Social has boosted its creative and production teams by hiring All Together Now’s Daniel Evans as associate creative director and Hello You Creatives’ founder Dan Vallint-Riggs as its first shooting director.
Pitch Wins
3 Monkeys Zeno has been handed a European comms brief by global broadband networking tech provider ZyXEL.
German life sciences company Bayer has chosen WPP agencies Finsbury and Hering Schuppener to work alongside its retained adviser, Brunswick, on its £42.8 billion ($62 billion) bid to buy American agrochemical company Monsanto.
New “social crowd” platform Crowdmix has chosen Manifest as its retained comms agency, with a brief to handle the platform’s UK launch this Summer.
Agency News
WPP-owned Clarion has restructured its senior team, with MD of 12 years Amanda Meyrick stepping into the role of CEO to lead a newly-formed board of four managing partners, as the agency turns 30 this year and takes on a new brand identity, ‘Clever Works’.
This weekend, Clarion has created a pop-up store in BOXPARK, Shoreditch to push Aldi’s award winning-range of wines and beers. The store will be open from 26 to 28 May and run a range of wine-tasting masterclasses. More information can be found here.
Scottish PR agency The BIG Partnership has expanded its offering in the North West of England with the launch of a new Manchester office, and brought in Sarah Lawless from marketing agency One to head it up.
Events
Media briefing with International Business Times UK
Big changes are taking place at International Business Times, a digital first news organisation, which reaches 55 million global readers a month. At an exclusive Gorkana media briefing this week, its recently appointed UK editor-in-chief John Crowley and managing editor Julian Kossoff revealed the recruitment of several top flight journalists to strengthen its news team and bolster IBT UK’s mission to cover the untold stories that ‘fall through the cracks’. At the media briefing, Crowley announced the appointment of Gaurav Sharma, as business editor at IBT UK.
Join Gorkana’s media briefing with The Sun’s city editor, Rhodri Phillips
On Thursday 2 June, Gorkana is holding a media briefing with Rhodri Phillips, city editor at The Sun. The national newspaper’s long-running city page offers a condensed take on major business and financial stories and tends to focus on the successes and failures of well-known consumer brands and retailers.
To register to attend the event, click here.
News Analysis
PRs respond to Twitter’s new 140 rules
Twitter’s latest efforts to improve user and financial growth have seen the platform create more space for users to express themselves through its famous 140 character limit. Gorkana gets feedback from PR and content experts on how they feel about the latest changes and how they might make Twitter more accessible.
Journalist News
Guarav Sharma has been appointed business editor at International Business Times. Sharma has previously worked with CNBC Europe, Euromoney, IDG, Incisive Media and Emap.
Alain Tolhurst has been promoted to digital politics editor at The Sun.
Dan Kelly has been appointed as commissioning editor at BBC World News. Kelly was previously assistant editor at BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and Newsnight.
Joanna Carr has been appointed head of current affairs at BBC News. She joins the team from BBC Radio 4, where she held a news and current affairs editorial role.
Features
60 Seconds with Nissan Europe’s comms VP, Stuart Jackson
Stuart Jackson, comms VP at Nissan and founder of UP Communications, on his unique hiring techniques, why journalism in the 90s was ‘like the Wild West’ and why people shouldn’t use the word ‘comms’ as a verb.
PR Case Study: WheresTheSticker
When the Food Standards Agency looked to encourage restaurant goers to seek out its green ratings stickers in restaurant windows, Threepipe came up with “thumb stopping” video content to hijack the high levels of “#foodporn” on social media. Video clips featured a cockroach emerging from a steak sandwich and a bloody plaster surfacing on a bowl of soup.
Behind the Headlines with Stir PR MD Alicia Mellish
Alicia Mellish, MD of Stir PR, on what’s led her to appreciate vacuum packed food, the marker for campaign success and why PR should be seen as the gatekeeper to a brand’s most powerful influencers.
