Catching Up on Carnival PR, Hedge Fund PR & Rubenstein
Carnival Cruise Lines added a new consumer PR director to their ranks. Robyn Fink previously worked in New York City at Taylor Strategy as one of the vice presidents. At Taylor, she was in charge of accounts for clients such as Lenovo NFL, KT Tape, Capital One, as well as overseeing P&G’s 2015 NFL draft prospects PR styling, Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos for Taco Bell, and launching Mastercard “Priceless” campaign in some cities.
Other previous employers during her 15 years in consumer PR include Ketchum, Edelman, and MWW Group, and during that time, she worked with celebrity sponsorships, endorsements, and partnerships as well as consumer PR. In her new job at Carnival, she’ll lead proactive, consumer branding PR activities in all aspects. Congratulations to Carnival and Fink.
Hedge Funds are hot social media topic, except on by Hedge Fund leaders
Big data has so many uses … and Peppercomm used it recently to study social media conversations happening about Hedge Funds. They found there’s a lot of chatter going on, but rarely do any of the Hedge Fund managers become part of the conversation.
If you are wondering just how much conversation was happening – on most of the platforms* during 2015 there were approximately 1.1 million mentions of Hedge Funds. That’s an increase of 45 percent from the levels in 2014. And in five months during 2015, there were more than 100,000 mentions per month, with the largest number happening in September at a mind-boggling 116.6K mentions.
With all that activity, you’d think the hedge fund managers would be jumping in, at least, a little more often, but across the industry, hedge funds do not seem to be much interested in social media of any kind. Peppercomm’s report showed that of the 314 largest hedge funds, only a little over 11 percent of them have any social media presence – including on LinkedIn. That number has increased slightly from 2014 when it was 9.9 percent. Though to be fair, those numbers include several hedge fund social media accounts that have gone inactive. That leaves a few of the largest financial institutions showing consistent, active participation.
Jacqueline Kolek, Partner at Peppercomm, said, “Thanks to the proliferation of social media, the once private world of hedge funds is becoming more public every day. But while the public commiserates about fund closures, industry asset growth, and the political leanings of the big-name managers, the firms themselves remain virtually silent. Every time hedge funds shy away from the social media conversation, they throw away important thought leadership and content opportunities for themselves and for the industry.”
Recommendations are that hedge funds monitor their digital footprint to be aware of what people see when their specific offerings are searched on Google or another search engine. Monitor what your target audience is saying about areas of concern and what’s important to them, even if it isn’t part of your business. Using common ground offers possibilities of building relationships and conversations. Set up protocols to follow, so legal issues don’t arise from discussions, but using social media to strengthen business and the relationship with customers is a key way to make sure businesses, even hedge funds, continue to grow.
*For the report they used Talkwalker’s Research, which looked at hedge fund mentions on Dailymotion, Facebook, Flickr, Forums, Foursquare, Google+, Instagram, Mixcloud, SoundCloud, Twitter, Vimeo, Weibo, and YouTube.
Rubenstein Communications Helps Prince and Gagosian move for dismissal of copyright lawsuit On February 26, Richard Prince and his art dealer, Gagosian filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Donald Graham. Prince and Gagosian cited a case they won previously and argued the Rastafarian Instagram screen prints are transformative. In the suit, Graham alleged infringement on his copyright when Prince enlarged an Instagram-styled screen print of the photograph Rastafarian Smoking a Joint, showing the enlarged version in 2014 at the New Portraits Exhibit held at Gagosian Gallery.
Patrick Cariou previously sued the same pair after Prince used his photographs in the Canal Zone series of collaged paintings at the Gagosian Gallery. In 2013, an appellate court found Prince had not violated Cariou’s copyright since the works were “transformative” and as such fell under fair use.
“This lawsuit reflects an attempt to essentially re-litigate Cariou.” They argued the Rastafarian print was also transformative. Prince’s exhibit using Instagram graphics is “a commentary on the power of social media to broadly disseminate others’ work, or as a condemnation of the vanity of social media, its pervasiveness and sexualized nature, and people’s need to receive ‘likes’ and ‘comments’.”
Prince’s public relations firm, Rubenstein Communications, issued a statement saying Prince describes his digital technique in creating the New Portraits series as “using electronic scissors.”
