PR Daily

A truckload of 40,000 pounds of Pabst Blue Ribbon was stolen in Montclair, California. Not the truck, just the contents. In a strange turn, the beer brand has offered a deadline for its return. If the beer is given back within 18 days and 44 minutes (corresponding to the year PBR was founded), the brand will offer “no questions asked” forgiveness.

Communications functions have spent years talking about integration. What they haven’t done is invest in the people responsible for making it happen. Across Fortune 500 organizations, a new class of leaders is emerging, part chief of staff, part strategist, part futurist, part transformation executive. They don’t typically own media relations, employee communications or crisis response. Instead, they own the connective tissue between them.

Lorra M. Brown is director of the online Master of Arts in Digital Communication program and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Talking to senior communicators earlier this year surfaced a shift in how leaders are defining the job in this AI era.

Callaway has cut ties with Good Good Golf and released an updated statement as the fallout continues over its ad that showed a man shoving a woman to the ground for considering touching his golf club. The companies had worked together since 2023, CNN reports.

For 30 years, Marta Ravin has worked in a world where the unexpected is inevitable with no opportunity to pause, regroup or try again. As a producer of pop-culture programming, Ravin has managed celebrities, navigated high-pressure broadcasts and made consequential decisions with the clock ticking.

Long before Darcie Rosenthal was helping shape how ADM communicates across a global workforce, she was making fast editorial calls in morning newsrooms across the South and Midwest. Now director of communications planning and performance at ADM, Rosenthal helps the company’s global communications team work more effectively by strengthening the standards, data practices and coordination behind its work.

Polaroid took the AI debate onto a Coney Island beach this summer.

The death of Hayden Panettiere shined a light on comments she made months before her death. In a May podcast interview, Panettiere claimed her long-standing contract with Neutrogena was not renewed in 2015 due to her comments about post-partum depression. The resurfaced comments drew sharp criticism and threats of boycotting Neutrogena. About a week later, Neutrogena issued a statement: The statement failed to mollify many, and debate raged over what Neutrogena should do next.

Good Good Golf and Callaway have apologized after an ad for their co-branded driver showed a man shoving a woman to the ground when she reached for his golf club. The scene feels more ominous as tense music plays over the ad. The 60-second clip was intended as a parody of the horror movie “Obsession.” But the Wall Street Journal reports that a shorter clip circulated on social media without that context and drew widespread backlash for seeming to make light of violence against women.

If communicators want to know how AI is shaping their organization’s reputation, they should be asking the same questions as their audiences. Alex Sevigny, associate professor at McMaster University and an adviser at Ragan’s Center for AI Strategy, recommended frequent checks on how different generative AI platforms describe your organization, then compare those answers with what you know to be accurate.