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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.
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KCSA Strategic Communications launches the KCSA AI Lab, which will develop proprietary AI systems to expand what strategic communications can achieve for PR and IR clients... Clipbook, a vertical AI platform for strategic communications and public affairs, closes a $3.3 million seed round co-led by Mark Cuban, Commonweal Ventures and Carpenter Capital... VizSense, a Boston-based AI influencer marketing agency, teams up with holographic storytelling company Geminai, to launch what they say is the next frontier in brand experiences: interactive holograms powered by AI.
Ways Marketing Solutions, a Saudi Arabia-based marketing and communications group, teams with H&K alum James Drewer and Cake founder Mike Mathieson, to launch Ways Global Communications with HQs in London and Riyadh... UNICEPTA, a media intelligence provider within Stagwell’s The Marketing Cloud, launches an integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot... MAD Global CEO Mike DuHaime has been named to New Jersey Governor-Elect Mikie Sherrill’s transition team.
Ogilvy launches CultureCurrent, a social-first earned media offering that integrates cutting-edge technology with human cultural intuition to listen, identify, activate and amplify brand stories.... Forward Global, a risk and reputation management advisory firm, opens in Abu Dhabi... Lyons Broadcast PR marks its 20th anniversary with the introduction of new virtual production technology, enhanced media outreach tools, and integrated broadcast-digital strategies.
