Minnesota Public Relations Blog: October 2013Minnesota Public Relations Blog

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Job - PadillaCRT - Account Executive, Health Care, Minneapolis

Job - Account executive needed for PadillaCRT’s thriving agribusiness practice!

PR with the Pros: An Evening Discussion about the Future of PR

The Twin Cities community has one of the most recognized PR industries in the country. Among the PR professionals in our area, there are some that stand out from the rest. Some of these professionals start their own businesses, have valuable cross-industry experience, and achieve other impressive feats.

Join Minnesota PRSA on November 13 to hear from some of the Twin Cities’ finest PR minds. We’ll start the evening with a panel discussion led by moderator Doug Spong, and will then break into smaller groups to have more personalized conversations with the panelists.

This is an exciting opportunity to hear about and learn from other PR pros’ successes, failures and lessons learned.

Agenda
5:30: Registration
6:00-6:30: Panel Discussion
6:30-7:45: Breakout sessions
7:45-8:00: Networking

Location
Cambria Gallery on 7th
625 2nd Ave S, Suite 101

Cost
Members: $30
Non-members: $45
Students: $25
Punch Eligible: YES

*Price increases by $10 at the door

REGISTER HERE – Space is Limited

David Hakensen, APR is senior vice president and general manager of FleishmanHillard’s Minneapolis/St. Paul office. He has worked with a diverse roster of clients, providing counsel in areas such as crisis communications, media relations and executive media coaching. Among his previous roles, he managed communications for several businesses of Pearson Education and led the media relations practice at Padilla Speer Beardsley. Hakensen is a former president of the Minnesota chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (2000) and has served as Midwest District chair (2004-2007). This past summer, David received the inaugural PRSA Midwest District Platinum Award for his contributions to the organization at the national, regional and local levels.

Diana Harvey is Chief Communications Officer for the University of Minnesota. In this role, she oversees the institution’s public relations and marketing enterprise. She serves in the dual capacity of Deputy Chief of Staff to University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler.

Prior to this appointment, Diana served for eight and a half years as Assistant Dean for External Affairs for the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her portfolio included communications, public affairs, and global partnerships. Before joining the University of Minnesota, Diana was an account group director in the Minneapolis office of Weber Shandwick, serving the agency’s clients within its healthcare industry practice group. Her work includes the national award-winning teen tobacco prevention campaign for the Minnesota Department of Health called “Target Market.”

Rose McKinney, APR is the founder and CEO of Pineapple RM, Inc., a communications firm focused on reputation management. Rose has spent her career at agencies, serving as director of public relations at Foley Sackett, vice president client services at Karwoski & Courage, and president of Risdall McKinney Public Relations.

As a past Minnesota PRSA president, Rose is both proud and grateful to say that the chapter has helped her through each step of her career, yielding new insights, greater leadership opportunities and an even deeper network of colleagues and champions.

Jeff Shelman is a senior manager of corporate public relations at Best Buy. He manages the company’s relationship with several national reporters, works on many corporate communication projects and provides strategic insight around issues and crisis. In addition, he plays key role in Best Buy’s local and regional media relations efforts.

Prior to Best Buy, he held communications roles at HealthPartners and Augsburg College, where worked on items ranging from the Affordable Care Act to the online clinic virtuwell to a student who handmade his own medieval suit of armor. In his life before PR, he worked as a newspaper reporter for more than a dozen years, including eight years at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. When he isn’t working, he is probably playing golf, Instagramming photos of golf courses, or tweeting about sports.

Doug Spong, APR, Fellow PRSA is president of Carmichael Lynch Spong. He founded the firm in 1990 and quickly built its reputation as the PR industry’s undisputed champion of best practices. The firm is a four-time “PR Agency of the Year” award winner, and it ranks among the nation’s 25 largest and one of the world’s most decorated public relations firms.

Doug is a member of the Counselors Academy; past chair of PRSA’s Honors and Awards Committee; and Minnesota chapter past president.

Jason Thunstrom is vice president of Corporate Communications for Life Time Fitness. Since joining the Company in April 2002, Thunstrom’s responsibility has grown to include several functions, including Public and Media Relations, Internal Communications, Social Media, Events and Sponsorships, Interactive Content and the Life Time Fitness Foundation.

During Thunstrom’s tenure, Life Time successfully transitioned from a private to publicly traded company (2004) and has grown from $192 million in revenue (2002) to $1.13 billion (2012) and from 23 Life Time centers in five states to 107 in 23 states, one Canadian province and 29 major markets.

Greg Zimprich, APR is currently Senior Vice President of Agency Operations and Strategic Insights at Kohnstamm Communications in St. Paul. Prior to joining Kohnstamm in 2012, Zimprich spent nearly 20 years at General Mills, including seven years as Director of Brand Public Relations and Social Media.

At Kohnstamm, he is responsible for driving agency operations, overseeing strategy for the firm’s nearly 20 clients, and leading a team of 15 PR professionals. Zimprich also leads the agency’s continuous improvement efforts, to enhance the firm’s competitive edge as a nationally recognized boutique PR agency.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

HNTB Corp select PadillaCRT for public and community relations programs

has been engaged by HNTB Corporation – a national, employee-owned infrastructure engineering firm – to support its public and community relations programs in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

PadillaCRT, a full-service communications firm that also is employee-owned, will help demonstrate HNTB’s expertise in addressing the transportation challenges the region faces through a public relations and thought-leadership program.

PadillaCRT won the competitive opportunity due to its industry experience and its office locations in key regional markets.

“It’s a pleasure to put our professional services industry expertise to work for another employee-owned company,” said Lynn Casey, CEO of PadillaCRT. “We are excited about the instant synergy we have together and look forward to helping HNTB and its clients address transportation challenges.”

#IHateMyJob…. Keep it Offline!

With social media so prevalent in society today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the personal from the professional. I often find myself doing professional networking through my own Twitter account or using social media to promote stories from my internships. However, where do we draw the line? And to what point can social media harm your career?

Jofi Joseph, the former White House employee working for the National Security Council, has recently been fired for misuse of Twitter. Joseph was anonymously manning a satirical account, @NatSecWonk. The account has now been taken down. The account made snide remarks about the government and politicians from both parties and harshly criticized the administration.

“It has been a privilege to serve in this Administration and I deeply regret violating the trust and confidence placed in me,” stated Joseph in an email to Politico. He continued to state, “What started out as an intended parody account of DC culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments. I bear complete responsibility for this affair and I sincerely apologize to everyone I insulted.”

More information on the story can be found in this New York Times article.

First of all, I do not condone Joseph in any way. I believe his tweets were over the top and distasteful. In a position as important as the National Security Council qualities like discretion and loyalty are extremely important. Joseph destroyed the fundamental trust needed to work in the White House.

However, the story got me thinking. How do our actions on social media affect our careers? How much does the first amendment protect us online in regards to our job? We have all heard the horror stories about college students drunk tweeting or putting up too many photos from their wild spring break trip and losing a potential job.

What about people sharing confidential work information or complaining about their employer? What if it was a PR person using their personal account to make fun of their clients? Working in media and communication, it is dire to be cautious about whatever you put out into the world via social media. Even though it is your personal account it is not a platform for venting about coworkers or turning your workplace into a satire.

This situation reminds me of the Twitter account . The self-description is “I hate my job.” Tweets cynically and comically rip on this person’s boss and office environment. The account is anonymous, but does that mean what he or she is doing is right? I argue no.

When it comes to these two accounts and anyone else sharing unflattering information about their place of employment online I would say this is a very bad practice. It is hard to separate the personal and professional when the two are so intertwined, but never make fun of or complain about your job on your personal accounts or even an anonymous account. There should be a level of trust between you and your work and you do not want to break that by over-sharing something online. If you hate your job that much, look for a new one. Chances are they will see what you said, and then you may be forced to look for a new one anyways. When it comes to social media, keep it real, professional, and personable!

Taryn Bitterly

University of Minnesota
Jour 3279
Blog Assignment

Myth: The iPhone’s Fingerprint Scanner is Un-Hackable

Fact: Less than one week following the iPhone 5S launch, German hackers revealed an at-home remedy to break into the fingerprint scanner Apple invested over $356 million to produce.

On Sept. 10, 2013, Apple introduced the highly-anticipated iPhone 5S. The iPhone 5S is visibly different than before. It comes in three colors (black, white, and gold), and replaces the home button with the Touch ID fingerprint scanner.

The Touch ID security system was designed to put the iPhone 5S in media limelight, and to make the smart phone stand out from its competitors. However, the security feature made headlines that put the Touch ID into unfavorable light and public scrutiny.

Just days after the iPhone 5S was available to the market, a group of German hackers claimed to break into the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. The Berlin-based group of hackers call themselves The Chaos Computer Club (CCC). The group announced a successful hack of the Touch ID scanner on the group's website the Sunday following launch.

A CCC hacker by the name of Starburg announced his successful break in utilizing his self-made process of laser printing. The process creates false fingerprint prints. Starburg demonstrates that novice hackers can use everyday items such as superglue and graphite powder to make a lifted fingerprint print out.

"In reality, Apple's sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake," Starburg announced. "As we have said now for more than years, fingerprints should not be used to secure anything. You leave them everywhere, and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints," (http://mashable.com/2013/09/22/touch-id-hacker/).

Since the original hack by The CCC, many additional hacker solutions have been revealed. Hacker solutions have become so common, that a big chunk of consumers have reported security problems with the Touch ID system. According to a poll conducted by Forbes Magazine, the scanner has a fail rate of nearly 20%.

Even with such severe public scrutiny, Apple still managed to once again pave the way to smart phone innovation. Many other smart phone industry leaders have jumped on the band wagon of fingerprint security systems. Imitating Apple's Touch ID, HTC quickly released the One Max fingerprint security system. Additionally, Samsung is working toward releasing a similar fingerprint scanner for their Galaxy line.

By studying industry leaders, it is clear that the fingerprint security feature will become ubiquitous in smart phones. However, consumers must not infer that ubiquity necessarily correlates with security. Smart phone industry leaders are using the fingerprint system because it is the biggest fad, not the most secure.

I am not saying you shouldn't use the fingerprint feature. I am also not implying that your cell phone is not secure from the average hacker. If you want to keep your boyfriend from snooping in your phone, the fingerprint feature may be the solution. However, if you boyfriend happens to be an amateur computer hacker, a fingerprint scanner may not be the security feature for you.

Lucy Rymes

University of Minnesota
Jour 3279
Blog Assignment

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Here we go again...Please welcome University Of Minnesota student bloggers

I hope you will welcome once again this year the University of Minnesota student bloggers. Please Tweet, ReTweet and proliferate their posts. I am very excited and I hope you will be too. Special thanks to for keeping me connected to the brightest minds in Minnesota.

Friday, October 25, 2013

CCF Hires new talent, promotes from within

October brings new and exciting changes to Clarity Coverdale Fury’s creative and new business teams, with the addition of a new Associate Creative Director, Creative Intern, and promotion of two existing talents. CCF welcomes Emily Hoyne, Sam Johnsrud, and applauds Madesyn Kimball and Elizabeth Clarity.

Emily Hoyne joins CCF’s creative arsenal as an Associate Creative Director. Previously at OLSON, where she was a Senior Art Director, Emily also spent time at Leo Burnett Chicago and GSD&M, among others. With her energetic nature, and passion for the art of advertising, “I love this business. In fact, at times, it gives me butterflies,” we look forward to great things from Emily.

Sam Johnsrud comes to CCF as a Creative Intern. Sam recently graduated from Brainco Minneapolis School of Advertising where he received a degree in Art Direction. Having helped set a Guinness Book of World Record for most people simultaneously treading water, we have no doubt that Sam will be able to keep the creative team afloat.

Also making a move is Madesyn Kimball, who has been promoted to Assistant Art Director. Prior to joining the CCF clan, Madesyn was at Drive Thru, where she was a production assistant. With a fantastic ability to transform imagination into reality, and a laugh that can be heard across the office, CCF is lucky to have such an implausibly creative, and experienced individual like Madesyn.

Elizabeth Clarity has been promoted to Project Coordinator, New Business. Prior to her time at CCF, Elizabeth traveled Europe, and spent time at record label, art gallery, design firm and clothing line, Elm & Oak, based out of Boulder, CO. Elizabeth graduated from University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied Advertising and Communication.

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