Latest news with #RPublicRelations
Forbes
23-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Trends In Hospitality PR: Adapting To The Changing Consumer Landscape
New York native and nomad by choice—Emily is a marketing & PR pro, now the founder of the award-winning R Public Relations, New York. Hospitality is an ever-evolving landscape that has faced a number of massive challenges in recent years, including Covid-19, travel restrictions, rising inflation and labor shortages. The hospitality sector, known for its great resilience and flexibility, has faced these challenges with adaptability at the forefront. Post-pandemic, the hospitality sector is well on its way to recovering from the unexpected drop-off and restricted operations across the industry, from food service to travel. Hotel Dive reported in January that renovations will likely "dominate hotel construction pipelines" this year, and consumers have been returning to regular leisure travel. With such recovery underway, it's no surprise that the consumer landscape is shifting across the industry. With these changes, hospitality professionals must adapt their public relations strategies to align with this new landscape. Creative approaches to PR are necessary today, from building key partnerships with nearby businesses to immersing brands into their local communities. Let's explore a few effective PR strategies hospitality brands can employ moving forward. Understanding how consumers are approaching travel and hospitality decision-making will go a long way to informing your PR strategy. Consumer mindsets have shifted in recent years and are continuing to do so as the hospitality sector actively bounces back. Use tools like data analytics, consumer surveys and feedback from hospitality industry publications, such as HOTELS Magazine, Hospitality Net and the Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, to keep up with consumer behavior. By doing so, you'll be able to determine how best to disseminate information for clients by developing targeted campaigns, highlighting positive customer experiences and identifying pain points through feedback. With these insights, you can further hone your client's key messaging into their value propositions. These propositions are key to standing out in the crowded sector. Consider this: Every hotel has nice amenities and decor. But what are the value propositions for each hotel that improve a guest's overall travel experience? It might be unique connections to the local community or focusing on a specific kind of guest, like digital nomads or LGBTQ+ travelers. As a PR professional, it's up to you to take what you know of the consumer and connect your client's value propositions to highlight their unique offerings. One undeniable shift in hospitality is that many consumers are seeking more authentic experiences and connections in their travels, from the food they're eating to the accommodations they're seeking. PR professionals can focus on highlighting local experiences that are outside of the traditional tourism box, such as cultural events, community events and small local restaurants. Today, many consumers are also seeking more personalization. Local, authentic experiences have the potential to meet this desire. As a PR professional, you can adapt your strategies to meet this need by including local experiences like restaurants, cultural festivals and museums in your PR and messaging efforts. This can be done by building and maintaining relationships with local community members and journalists who can put you on to these often lesser-known experiences. You'll always find value in securing top-tier publication coverage in the likes of Condé Nast Traveler and Southern Living. However, building relationships with regional and local journalists can also be fruitful. Those journalists might be asked to write a local guide to the surrounding area where your client is located for a larger publication, or they might choose to include a client's property in event round-ups. This PR strategy can pay off in many ways, both in the short and long term. An increasing number of consumers are seeking sustainable options for travel, according to Group's 2024 Sustainable Travel Consumer Report. I'm finding this growing interest in sustainability is almost the norm within hospitality. Many hospitality companies are prioritizing sustainable and eco-friendly efforts. Regarding PR efforts, you need to get very specific about what aspects of your client's company are sustainable. It's not particularly helpful to just say they value sustainability overall. If they have a garden that feeds into their restaurant, talk about that. If they have a composting program, talk about that. Do they regularly source local ingredients, support local communities or invest in regional conservation efforts? Point those initiatives out to get specific. Specificity will more directly appeal to consumers who are focused on eco-friendly travel. PR has evolved with the digital landscape to embrace the rise of influencers and the unique reach they can bring to a brand with their built-in audiences, and this is no different for hospitality brands. Influencer collaborations are a powerful way to expose your client to new audiences. Influencers have worked to grow a trusting follower base, and they can help brands connect with their community in authentic, genuine ways. The standard approach is to offer targeted influencers free stays, during which time the influencer will create content around their experience. There are also alternative methods for working with influencers, such as: • Offer hospitality space as a content-creation backdrop. • Allow influencers to host community events in a space. • Develop joint social media campaigns with various content, such as videos, text posts and photos. • Allow guest blogging or social media posting (i.e., an influencer account takeover). • Establish a brand ambassadorship—a long-term relationship between a client and an influencer. Influencer collaborations can go beyond the traditional free stay, so get creative in approaching these relationships. They're a unique opportunity to amplify your client's brand and can help them adapt to the changing needs of consumers. With an industry that shifts as frequently as hospitality, it's important to routinely adjust your PR strategies in response to the changing consumer landscape. By regularly adapting your approach, you'll be able to help your clients stay in direct contact with their target audiences in meaningful ways. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Building A Remote PR Team: Challenges And Solutions
New York native and nomad by choice—Emily is a marketing & PR pro, now the founder of the award-winning R Public Relations, New York. getty In a post-Covid-19 world, remote work has become more normalized in many industries—including public relations. It's so normalized, in fact, that U.S. workers' remote workdays have stabilized and shifted to regular business hours since 2020, according to Gallup's 2023 annual Work and Education poll. With such stabilization, some businesses are switching to fully remote teams. For those in PR, building and managing a high-performing remote team opens up a world of possibilities in what you can offer to both your team and clients. But just as building a traditional, in-person team brings challenges, so too does building an entirely remote team—from how quickly the industry moves to ensuring all team members communicate properly. While the challenges that come with building a remote PR team can seem daunting, there are solutions you can implement as you build and create your team. Taking the time to understand how to tackle the challenges that come with fully remote work can help set your PR business up for long-term success. The PR space is very fast and is known for trends, news cycles and ever-changing strategies. While plenty of tried-and-true practices have stuck around, the nature of PR is still quickfire and requires immediate responsive action. If your remote team is not well-connected and excellent at both internal and external communication, you can miss media opportunities. Remote PR teams are responsible for a great deal of communication. To ensure your team communicates effectively, it's important to set up tools that make it easier for them. This includes everything from email and video conferencing software to online project management platforms. Here are a few of my team's favorites: • Google Workspace • Microsoft Outlook • Slack • Zoom • Trello • Asana • • Basecamp Communication options are wide and varied, giving you freedom in how to best build a communication toolbox suited to your team's needs. Remember, video conferencing platforms allow remote PR teams to meet on camera, record meetings and easily share screens as needed while project management tools are key to keeping your team on track and ensuring the moving parts of all your projects are completed. PR is all about setting the tone—something notoriously hard to do online. And for a fully remote PR team, being able to set the tone is crucial for every aspect of their work. When it's time to nail the messaging tone, unclear organization guidelines and team members lacking the ability to write effectively can lead to issues. One major factor when hiring for a remote PR team is ensuring your team members are able to write conversational English in addition to professional business writing. This can ensure they accurately convey the tone of messaging on behalf of clients, no matter the project they're working on. Tone is important to maintain across all client work, from strategic communications and public affairs to crisis management, as it helps build trust and credibility. As you build your remote PR team, ask to see writing portfolios during the hiring process and consider offering additional training opportunities once individuals are brought on. A fully remote team doesn't have the luxury of meeting in person for training. And for the PR industry, which has a learning curve, this can be a challenge! You can't really learn the nuts and bolts of PR in a classroom. There's a good amount of on-the-job learning that has to happen, and this is particularly tricky in remote settings. But it's not impossible. One solution to address your team's PR learning curve is to develop a robust meeting structure, including training opportunities. This helps ensure your remote team is meeting regularly and keeps everyone in the loop on projects, clients and internal news. Training opportunities for employees of all experience levels can be built into your meeting structure at regular intervals to help team members improve their skills and knowledge, from media training to professional development workshops. You can also consider a formal mentorship program that pairs individuals with experienced peers within your organization (something that benefits both mentors and mentees), making for unique knowledge-sharing opportunities and career advancement. Building a remote PR team means you might face a range of challenges, even beyond what I've covered above. Here are a few additional solutions to keep in mind as you build up your team. • Establish clear communication guidelines to help keep your team on the same page—from which communication platforms are to be used to how asynchronous communication works for your team. • Create a remote team culture where possible. Recognize professional accomplishments, create social time once a month (such as a virtual team lunch) and incorporate a 'social' channel into your chosen communication platform. • Define remote work guidelines so that all team members know what's expected of them from day one. A remote PR team comes with its challenges as you build, but there are solutions you can incorporate to lay a strong foundation for your team. Understanding how fast the PR industry moves, establishing clear communication channels and ensuring your team has training opportunities to continue growing professionally over time are just a few solutions to consider as you build up your high-performing team. Remember, you have total freedom to incorporate solutions and strategies that suit how you want your remote PR team to function and how you ultimately want to serve your clients. Get creative and enjoy the process! Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Fox News
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni called out for 'high school' drama in new documentary
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni's "It Ends With Us" film was supposed to be centered on the message of domestic violence, but allegations on the set of the movie created a Hollywood scandal. Lively, 37, and Baldoni, 41, were each called out for their part in likely the "most high school fight that people with millions of dollars can have with each other," as pointed out in the Investigation Discovery documentary, "In Dispute: Lively vs. Baldoni." Emily Reynolds Bergh, founder of R Public Relations, also offered up another opinion in the documentary, "Maybe they're both wrong." In 2019, the novel became a media sensation thanks to TikTok. Baldoni acquired the rights, and Lively was cast in the film with the "Jane the Virgin" star set to co-lead and also direct. In May 2023, "It Ends With Us" filming was paused due to the Screen Actors Guild strike. The SAG-AFTRA strike lasted from May 2, 2023, until Nov. 8, 2023. "Most high school fight that people with millions of dollars can have with each other." When filming resumed in January 2024, Lively returned to set with a list of demands after arranging an "all hands" meeting regarding alleged behavior from Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath, including no more showing nude videos or images of women to Blake, no more mention of Baldoni's or Heath's previous "pornography addiction," and no more discussions about personal experiences with sex, according to her complaint obtained by Fox News Digital. It was during the press tour in August 2024 when social media sleuths uncovered issues between Lively and Baldoni. "The movie came out in the summer of 2024," Perez Hilton said in the documentary. "Social media noticed that Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni were not doing any press together for a movie where they are the co-leads." At the New York premiere on Aug. 6, "The Ankler" writer Matthew Frank noted that "things felt off" between the co-stars, who didn't appear on the red carpet together. It was then revealed that Baldoni, his family and friends, watched the film from a separate theater after waiting in the basement for Lively's crew to walk the red carpet. Despite the awkward press tour, "It Ends With Us" was a "financially successful movie," Hilton said, and there had been "a lot of hope that domestic violence would resonate with the masses." Months later, Lively detailed allegations of sexual harassment, retaliation, intentional affliction of emotional distress, negligence and more made by Baldoni and Heath in a complaint first filed with the California Civil Rights department on Dec. 20 and later in federal court on Dec. 31. The same day Lively filed her federal suit, Baldoni filed a $250 million suit against the New York Times for a December article about the alleged smear campaign he attempted to run against his co-star. Weeks later, Baldoni then named Lively and Reynolds in a separate $400 million defamation lawsuit in which he accused the Hollywood power couple of attempting to hijack "It Ends With Us" and create their own narrative. In Baldoni's suit, he claimed she took over the edit, and he was essentially locked out of the film. From there, she allegedly threatened not to attend the premiere. "I believe that Sony – the film's distributor and major financier – they were scared, in my opinion, of Blake Lively," Hilton said. In addition to releasing a website detailing the timeline of events that allegedly occurred, Baldoni's team also shared unedited footage from the set of "It Ends With Us." Both Lively and Baldoni have claimed the footage bolsters their respective claims. WATCH: JUSTIN BALDONI RELEASES UNEDITED 'IT ENDS WITH US' FOOTAGE "The dance scene, both sides think it's great for them," legal analyst Dina Doll said in the documentary. "So, when this goes to trial, that video will for sure be shown in front of a jury, and you'll hear two completely different perspectives on what that video is." A six-minute voice note was also released with Baldoni admitting he "fell short" of Lively's expectations. In the message sent at 2 a.m., Baldoni apologized and also thanked Lively for being vulnerable with him. By the end of January, social media erupted after a judge ruled that the cases would go to trial in March 2026. "Even though it seems like a lot of social media is supporting Justin Baldoni, the longer this goes on, the more reputational damage they will both suffer," Hilton said. "Both of them are going to have a hard time getting the mud off of their reputation," Bergh said in the documentary. "They're both going to have to do some work with great professionals, hopefully, that are going to lead them down the path outside the courtroom, building back the trust of their fans. "I believe, for Blake, she needs to be vulnerable. She needs to have a moment where she's a mom of four. We want to be connected to her and empathize… like what woman hasn't been uncomfortable in a work place? That's a common situation, and we want to support her." Bergh added, "For Justin, you know he has this platform of debunking toxic masculinity. He needs to also – hey tail between my legs here guys – I could have done better. That's a relatable moment."
