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| Kristen Bryan |
Raven Public Relations, a Nashville-based firm that works with creative companies in the advertising sector, acquires PR consultancy KBPR. KBPR founder Kristen Bryan will join Raven as EVP, group account director. Raven says it will benefit from Bryan’s experience in creative agency PR and her track record of securing national recognition for clients. Her focus on storytelling, media relations, and her passion for working with female-led businesses is intended to strengthen Raven’s existing offerings. “I first met Kristen working as an ad industry reporter, and our relationship grew because I knew I could trust her word,” said Raven co-founder Matt Van Hoven. “We’ve had so much success together it just made sense to take this step.”
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Brunner, an integrated marketing agency with offices in Pittsburgh and Atlanta, acquires Rakuten Advertising’s Performance Solutions group, which includes its paid search and programmatic planning and buying teams. Brunner will now serve as the performance solutions partner for Rakuten, providing digital media services to its clients in addition to extending its affiliate marketing opportunities to clients through Rakuten’s platform. The addition to Brunner bolsters its team, expanding both its size and scale and adding to its digital media, data engineering and data science capabilities. “With this acquisition, we will immediately begin integrating their expertise with our existing capabilities, so we are poised to deliver even greater value to our clients," said Brunner partner and chief revenue officer Dan Gbur.
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A new D S Simon study says that more than nine out 10 TV producers at news stations around the country are open to receiving pitches from PR people. The most popular topic of interest for those producers: health-related stories. More than three quarters (76 percent) of respondents said they were interested in getting pitches about health-related issues. Among those respondents, the most popular area was mental health, which was cited by 84 percent of them. Other top areas of interest were women’s health (78 percent), wellness care (71 percent) and children’s health (69 percent). Topics such as pharmaceutical advancements (44 percent) and alternative medicine (38 percent) were considerably less in demand. TV news producers also noted a shift in where they get their health-related content. A considerable majority (85 percent) said they prefer in-house spokespeople to third-party experts (15 percent). They also said they are cutting back on their use of network or syndicated health news feeds for their coverage. In addition, stations are depending much less on their own staffs to gather health-related information. Only 31 percent of the stations that had a dedicated medical or health reporter just three years ago still have someone filling that role. The online study was conducted via SurveyMonkey in February.
Highwire launches AcroAI, an agentic AI platform... FGS Global introduces a new brand identity... Coyne Public Relations puts an inclusive spin on Take Your Child to Word Day with its new “Take Your VIP to Work Day”... Marino SVP Jordan Isenstadt is elected to the board of directors of the National Cannabis Industry Association.
CIVIC, a New York-based brand experience agency, acquires strategic communications consultancy Wave Kilo... Hotwire Global reaches an agreement with Morning Consult to give Hotwire Global instant access to Morning Consult’s proprietary dataset... The Public Relations Student Society of America announced its 2026–2027 International Committee... Avenue Z is named a Shopify Platinum Partner, the highest tier of Shopify’s Service Partner Program.
ICR releases a report that says the SPAC IPO market has been trending upward—and is likely to stay on that track... Washington Women in PR is sponsoring an April 15 event that looks at how women can change the dynamics that often keep them in lower-visibility positions through strategic self-advocacy and organizational awareness... Life Science Cares Boston, an organization supported by LaVoieHeathScience, will convene leaders, employees and partners from across the life sciences industry for its annual Impact Breakfast on April 13 at the Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport.
