QUICK PR READS YOU CAN TACKLE BETWEEN BITES
Welcome to this week’s Lunch Break—or amidst #IHOb scandal trolling, it may be more of a Brunch Break. Whatever. Grab a stack of pancakes and let’s get down to it.
This week, in the Break: IHOb gets trolled by burger brands on Twitter; Facebook and Starbucks are neck and neck for the spring’s worst PR crisis; three creatives bring gorgeous design to Pride Month; and finding your creativity zone.
The B is for “Burn”
In the wake of IHOP’s unfortunate announcement that it is changing its name to IHOb (with the B standing for “burger”) the internet quickly revolted. And brands that felt they held former claim to the food item jumped on the bandwagon faster than you can say “pancake.” Restaurants dishing out a side of trolling on Twitter include A&W, Denny’s, DiGiorno, Steak & Shake, Wendy’s, and the also recently renamed Chick-fil-B. However, there is only one King when it comes to snark: Burger Pancake King. A list of all the best jabs to date can be found on this list from PR Week.
Looking for meaning in the madness for all of us communications pros? Let’s start with this: If your beloved brand name isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
Top Brands Compete for Biggest PR Crisis
From the pages of the Bakersfield, CA, community newspaper, we bring you a competition of true heavyweights battling it out for the title of biggest PR gaffe, spring edition. In our first corner is Facebook, who hit its crisis in mid-March when the Cambridge Analytica data breach broke. In the other corner is Starbucks, hot off its Philadelphia location’s racist confrontation with two black customers in April. Get the blow-by-blow analysis here.
Pride in Marketing
June is Pride Month, celebrating LGBTQ+ rights, and brands are finding creative ways to integrate the rainbow into their campaigns. These three creatives took it a step further with their LGBTQ+ glossary, bringing stimulating design in to help more people grow their awareness of related phrases and terms, all through Instagram.
Get in the Zone
Creativity isn’t a state of mind, it’s a zone. Just like gearing up for a sport, the zone is “a mental state of supreme focus in the present moment that helps you perform at your peak potential.” Learn how to tap into it in this writeup from a Quantcast machine learning expert via AdAge.
