The Gorkana Weekly Industry News Brief: 6 to 10 June 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
As part of the agency’s international expansion plans, Hanover names Blue Rubicon’s former chairman, Alastair Gornall as its first non-executive chair.
Sophie Raine
W promotes its head of brand, Sophie Raine (pictured right), to director, just over two years since she first joined the agency.
Sue Neilen joins Virgo Health as head of the communications division. She joins from specialist health advertising agency, Langland, where she headed up corporate communications.
Chris Mostyn joins J. Murphy & Sons Limited (Murphy), the engineering and construction company, as head of marketing and communications.
Frank PR’s Bianca Lee-Chang joins creative comms agency Lexis as head of consumer, with a brief to drive growth and lead on some of the agency’s key clients.
Pitch Wins
Lloyd’s of London hires Harvard PR, part of Chime, with the aim of positioning the insurance giant as a global leader in cyber insurance.
Pearn Kandola appoints Bottle, a comms agency specialising in content-driven PR, to increase its profile within national and trade press, including the HR, business and wellbeing sectors.
Sports nutrition brand Optimum Nutrition chooses Speed Communications to deliver a number of campaigns for the brand, ahead of a new initiative launch for its consumers to mark its 30th anniversary this year.
Nabarro, the international law firm, appoints Rostrum to assist with a project that will raise its profile among technology companies in the UK.
PHA Media is chosen by make-up brand Look Fabulous Forever to manage its comms activity throughout 2016.
Agency News
David Fraser, former deputy MD of Frank PR and publicist for Lord Sugar, launches a London-based PR and SEO agency called Ready10.
Handpicked Media founder Krista Madden joins forces with editor and journalist Emily Seares to launch a creative SEO agency, We Elevate.
Events
Media briefing with BuzzFeed
“BuzzFeed content needs to be incredible, unique and not seen anywhere else.” At a Gorkana media briefing this week, a trio of BuzzFeed’s editorial team shared their thoughts on what PRs could do to help create something “relatable and shareable” for its audience.
Metrics matter
This week, Gorkana hosted its third and final Metrics Matter webinar. The series, centred on presentations from Paul Hender, Gorkana’s head of insight, advises communciators on why they should lookto set-up a measurement and analysis programme and how to make it work. All three webinars in the Metrics Matter series can be found on Gorkana’s YouTube channel.
A White Paper featuring insights and case studies from the webinars will be published on Gorkana.com on Tuesday 14 June.
News Analysis
Is Tuesday the best day to pitch to online titles?
New research from digital market intelligence firm SimilarWeb shows that top news sites get the highest amount of traffic on Tuesdays. Gorkana asks Punch Communications, Fleet Street Comms and W if the amount if traffic a site receives on a specific day of the week has any bearing on the timing or content of pitches to journos.
Journalist News
At Bloomberg News, Chris Kay is appointed to Pakistan bureau chief and is responsible for coverage of the country and Afghanistan. Sophie Mongalvy is the new Nigeria bureau chief, based in Lagos.
Robert Thompson joins the team at BBC General News Service as editor. He was formerly deputy editor at the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme.
Formerly tablet editor, Wesley Rock is appointed as smartphone and website editor at The Times and The Sunday Times.
Michael Moore is appointed tech reporter at the Daily Express. He is currently tech reporter at TechWeekEurope, and will start his new role on 15 June.
Caitlin Morrison moves from night production editor to deputy digital editor at City A.M.
Features
Behind the Headlines with 3 Monkeys Zeno’s Tristan Pineiro
Tristan Pineiro, head of 3 Monkeys Zeno’s consumer practice, reveals how he got a starter lesson in the importance of branding, recalls his first, unintentional, pitch to a journalist and wonders why “street food” is a thing.
Nissan’s Stuart Jackson: ‘Tell a story well and it will fly’
Stuart Jackson, Nissan’s VP of comms, tells Gorkana about the lessons that have stayed with him since helping to launch the joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile in 2012 and explains why he co-authored the soon to be published The 4G Mobile Revolution: Creation, Innovation and Transformation at EE.
Gorkana meets… Professional Photography
In October, Future launched Professional Photography magazine – its latest offering in the photography sector. Gorkana’s Sam Willis caught up with group editor-in-chief Chris George (pictured) to find out, eight months in, how the market has reacted, why Future wanted to add to its existing photography portfolio and what he wants in content ideas from PRs.
