PR News from 42West, 5WPR & Hotwire…
COVID-19 Relief in Hollywood
Under the Paycheck Protection Program, the public relations agency 42West has received a $725,200 small business loan, according to a securities filing. The agency was acquired by Dolphin Entertainment back in 2017, which also owns a number of other entertainment marketing companies, such as The Door, a branding and marketing firm, as well as Shore Fire Media, a music PR firm.
So far, under the new COVID-19 relief bill, Dolphin Entertainment has received a total of $2.1 million in PPP loans, with $725,200 going to 42West, $672,700 to The Door and $322,200 going to Shore Fire Media. It’s also believed that Dolphin Entertainment is the first PR that’s disclosed that it received one of these loans.
Omnicom Confirms Layoffs
John Wren, the CEO of Omnicom, has confirmed that the company made layoffs across many of its agencies due to the ongoing global pandemic. An internal memo from April 14 had warned employees that layoffs and furloughs would soon be on their way all across the company. However, according to Wren, the various agency leaders had worked very hard in order to limit the number of people that would be impacted by the upcoming changes.
Additionally, in the internal memo, Wren also stated that he hoped the recovery from the crisis, as well as the layoffs and furloughs, would be swift, while the company would take care of those employees that were affected by them.
5WPR Working With SEMrush
The independently-owned U.S. PR firm 5WPR was chosen to handle insights and data promotion SEMrush, the online visibility management, and content marketing SaaS platform. This platform is based in Boston, MA, and has been used by over five million professionals in the marketing industry, in over 140 countries all over the world.
SEMrush and 5WPR have been working together since November last year, and now they are continuing this partnership as a way of advancing objective data provision for journalists, while also developing new products and services that would be based on the newest insights for their customers.
Hotwire Working With Zoom
According to PRovoke, the video communications platform Zoom has started working with Hotwire, on a global communications brief. While the two companies began working together just before all of the pandemic lockdowns across Europe, now that Zoom has become the people’s first choice for video calls, Hotwire’s work has been expanding.
The daily active users were around 10 million at the end of 2019, and have skyrocketed to 300 million after the start of the pandemic. In the beginning, it was intended to be enterprise software, but now, it’s being used for anything from work meetings to social calls and support groups. With the rapid growth, Zoom has also seen plenty of challenges, including concerns about data privacy.
