By: Paige Strott
Father’s Day is right around the corner and you’ve probably spent all week trying to find the perfect gift. In case you haven’t found time to read the news, here is a round up of 5 PR news stories that happened this week.
1. Obama lessens student debt.
Good news for many college students, President Obama issued an executive order this week regulating college loans. Among the changes is a Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) program that limits banks from taking more than 10 percent of borrower’s income after college and PAYE also extends the repayment period to 20 years.
This is progress but many question if the plan is enough to solve the $1 trillion student debt that our country is in. For more information on how the executive order will affect this take a look at this Forbes article.
2. Facebook is now letting users edit their ad profiles.
If you have ever wondered why ads on Facebook seem like they were tailor-made for you it is because they are. Facebook uses your likes and activities to determine what kind of ads are best suited for you, but now this is being taken to a new level.
Facebook is changing the rules for how they match ads with the public by allowing customers to see the content that they have on them and add or delete it. This gives Facebook, marketers and users more control over the ad content. This will help some people if they want to see relevant information but others may see it as an invasion of privacy. Either way it is beneficial that now users will be able to choose. For more information on this change read this NY Times article.
3. Many large PR firms agree to follow Wikipedia’s rules.
Eleven large PR and advertising firms have agreed to abide by Wikipedia’s rules against ad companies paying for employees to change the pages. PR and advertising teams want to control all that is being said about their clients,and that can often include the content on Wikipedia.
Some PR firms were creating hundreds of fake accounts to edit their clients’ pages without revealing their affiliations with them. We will have to wait and see whether this new agreement will become an industry-wide practice but for now it is simply an enormous success for Wikipedia. Read more on this, including quotes from the PR professionals, on Time.com.
4. World Cups ads are being shared more than Super Bowl ads.
Ads linked to the World Cup have already surpassed the number of shares that Super Bowl ads had.
According to Mashable.com, “the top-20 World Cup 2014 ads have so far netted 6.9 million shares across social media. That’s 31.4% more than the 4.7 million shares related to the top-20 ads from Super Bowl 2014.” Shakira’s Activia ad is pulling up these numbers. In fact, if you discredit that ad then shares of Super Bowl ads would be ahead. It is essential to examine the global reach of the World Cup when considering its significance. While the Super Bowl is one of the biggest events in the U.S., the World Cup is more popular around the globe.
5. Lululemon’s profits sink by 60 percent.
Lululemon, the “yogawear” retailer, has lost 60 percent of profits this quarter. Reuters reported that it was due to their expanding taxes, but this brand has made headlines many times in the past few months, and not often for positive reasons.
Leadership at Lululemon has had to deal with many PR disasters including Lululemon, co-founder, Shannon Wilson blaming their issue with the yoga pants becoming sheer on the size of women’s legs. The company has also refused to sell plus-sized clothing, making the company seem unsupportive of all body types.
These PR issues have undoubtedly been a contributing factor to their loss of profits and this reveals how essential good PR is in terms of maintaining sales after a crisis.
(Photo via)