Each week on The Thursday Three with Pushkin PR we share three news stories that captivated our attention during the week ranging from public relations and social media trend updates to relevant news in the industries we serve including healthcare, nonprofits, government and festival clients.
2018 PR Trend: Brands Taking a Stand
Agility PR: Edelman research finds two-thirds of consumers worldwide now buy on beliefs
If there’s one trend we’ve seen in public relations in 2018, it’s undoubtedly the fact that consumers are increasingly looking to brands to take a position on social and cultural issues. This article delves into the latest iteration of this movement and gives it the moniker ‘Brand Democracy.’ According to new research from Edelman, two-thirds of consumers worldwide will make purchasing decisions based on the way a brand positions itself in reference to a social or political issue.
This article highlights some shocking statistics: 53 percent of consumers believe that brands can do more to solve social ills than the government, and 54 percent believe it is easier for people to get brands to address social problems than to get government to act (#sad). Enter brand democracy: consumers use their purchasing power to elect brands as their change agents.
While larger brands like Nike, Ben & Jerry’s and Heineken are able to take a gamble and publicly plant flags surrounding hot-button issues, this research raises many questions for the smaller brands we serve, ranging from healthcare companies to nonprofits, about when they should take a stand and how it will impact their bottom line. Smaller brands will need to take stock of the potential impact taking a stand could have on their revenues to ensure that any potential brand boycotts will be outweighed by purchasing support in favor of the brand taking a stand.
Delta Uses Twitter to Engage Consumers, Generate Media Buzz
Cnet: Die Hard or Elf? Delta lets passengers Twitter-vote for movies
The busiest travel season of the year is just weeks away and Delta Airlines recently devised a clever way to use Twitter to engage consumers. Using a Twitter poll, the airline encouraged people to vote for the in-flight movie option Delta will show this holiday season. Choices included Home Alone, Elf, Die Hard and New Year’s Eve. In the final results, Elf inched out Home Alone by just one percent, taking home 43 percent of the vote. Fun and games aside, this was a great tactic to generate both media and social media buzz on a scale that organizations of any size can replicate.
Take Note PR Pros, Trust in Media is Increasing
Gallup: U.S. Media Trust Continues to Recover From 2016 Low
Is the era of consumers believing everything they read or hear from the media is fake news over? Maybe. A new Gallup report shows that, “45 percent of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.” This number is up from the all-time low of 32 percent in 2016. However, this number is much lower than when Gallup first began surveying the public about their trust in media in 1972. At that time, 68 percent of Americans responded that they trusted the media a great deal or fair amount.
Political affiliation also appears to affect trust in media; Democrats’ trust in media is at the highest it has been in the past twenty years with 76 percent trusting the media. There is currently a 55 percentage point gap between Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on the trustworthiness of the mainstream media.