On November 9, 2018, we welcomed divided government back to Washington.

Connecting Kids to Meals (CKM) is one of the largest hunger-relief organizations in Northwest Ohio, having served more than 5 million nutritious meals to children in over 15 years in operation.  Thread Marketing Group started working with this community organization in 2017.  In fact, Whitney Rofkar, one of our team members is a CKM board member and helps keep this important issue and organization front and center in Northwest Ohio.

If you missed it, Whitney Rofkar, Thread’s Director of Public Affairs, was featured on WTOL News 11 discussing the national lunch trends, consumer behavior and how it’s affecting our local economy.

On August 13, 2016, an estimated 40,000 people invaded downtown Toledo to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of Jeep. It was Toledo’s biggest single-day festival in decades. The inaugural event gave Toledoans the opportunity to celebrate one of the community’s great passions – its love of the Jeep brand and vehicles.

We've gotten used to seeing the various "disciplines" within marketing converge, and the trend of placing advocacy into marketing and advertising, as noted by a former high-level executive with McDonald's Europe, would just be the latest example.

The folks from Gallup are out with the news that is probably not a surprise to anyone:  employee engagement is stalled around the world.  It is better in the US, but even here it is only 32%.

(No, this is not an article about Pixar).

In PR, one of our biggest challenges is helping laypeople understand complicated subjects.  Whether it is the science behind plant emissions, a complex financial issue or, really, any kind of communications related to change, helping people understand scientific, technical and mathematical concepts is among the toughest jobs we have.  Early on, a big hero was Edward Tufte, whose classic book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information created a cult following devoted to the importance of design, graphics, and integrity in creating understanding in these situations.

Anyone who works in the PR business or at a PR agency today knows that content is the hottest term in the business.  We used to talk about writing copy or making videos--now we "create content."