Media

In this opinion piece in PRWeek’s online edition, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR President Marian Salzman offers some details about the agency’s recent survey of hundreds of teen girls nationwide on various trends. Euro RSCG PR also talked to members of its teen initiative called The Sisterhood and to Blair Fowler (aka Juicystar07, the 17-year-old online fashion guru with hundreds of thousands of followers on her YouTube channel) to round out its research. Among the findings: Girls have more money to spend than last year at this time, are eager to return to classes and will buy fewer brand-name back-to-school goods. Plus, what they’re looking for in life now includes their personal-best style and the ever elusive balance.

Goldman Sachs has banned cursing in e-mails sent by its employees. “But,” as this writer notes, “completely eliminating cursing on the job may be even harder than eradicating fraud on Wall Street.” She asked Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, for her take. “ ‘I think truck-driving speak has invaded modern language and won’t go away,’ said trend-spotting guru Marian Salzman, who’s been credited with coining the word ‘metrosexual.’ The cyber age, she added, has accelerated this foul-language phenomenon. ‘WTF will be the single most common response.’ ”

In its fourth year, PRWeek’s “40 Under 40” feature honors public relations professionals under the age of 40 who have “already made significant contributions to their agencies, clients and organizations,” says the magazine. One of those this year is Eric Edge, 33, global chief communications officer for Euro RSCG Worldwide and executive vice president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR. Among other accolades, the article says Edge “is committed to promoting the agency’s belief that social responsibility is at the core of business success.” It calls out his efforts for One Young World and the “Tck Tck Tck” campaign and his work as a volunteer for various organizations.

Robert Dudley is preparing to replace Tony Hayward as CEO of BP, and some public relations executives think that’s a good move. Advertising Age interviewed two, including Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America. “Mr. Hayward is symbolic of what is wrong,” said Salzman, who also gave some thoughts on BP’s branding on the Huffington Post, “so he needs to be forgotten so that the global community can contemplate forgiving.”

“We might all think about our brains differently now than we did even a decade ago,” says Marian Salzman in this final part of her series on the brain, “but one thing that hasn’t really changed is the concept of braininess.” Tina Fey has made braininess sexy, and thanks to Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and others, more kids are aspiring to be tech gurus than ever. Salzman talks about her campaign to preserve her “non-brainy hair” (“My whole routine was this: Don’t look brainy but be brainy,” she says) and about the analytical nature and distance of braininess, among other ideas—plus a few conclusions.

On the third anniversary of her craniotomy to remove a brain tumor, Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America, has been thinking a lot about brain health. Turns out, she’s very au courant, as more people are talking about multitasking and how it affects their brain ever since a spate of new studies has shown that it’s not all it’s been cracked up to be. In this third part of a four-part series, Salzman ponders technology addictions, distractions and the information onslaught—and how her life since her surgery has been affected by all of them. (Hint: It’s a balancing act.)

In this second of a four-part series about the brain, Marian Salzman muses about the functions she took for granted before her craniotomy to remove a tumor in July 2007—from “automatic” tasks such as walking, talking and reading, to the brain’s higher missions such as memory and creativity, the latter of which she calls “arguably job No. 1 for everyone’s brains these days.” Salzman talks about the four steps of the creative process and how her experience has changed her approach to creativity, including becoming more analytical and more open to collaboration.

In spring 2007, Marian Salzman was diagnosed with a brain tumor called a meningioma. A frequent-flying top ad executive at the time, Salzman was also making popular annual trend predictions and keeping up a full schedule of media appearances and international speaking engagements. Brain surgery followed, along with a successful recovery, but not without bumps in the road—and life changes, including a career switch to public relations and a realignment of her advocacy and philanthropic priorities. This is the first in a series of four posts about the brain in general and Salzman’s experience.

Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America, talked to eMarketer about kids’ shopping habits, behaviors and expectations. She had this advice when asked for the Q&A how retailers should use social media to reach teen consumers: “Talk their talk and walk in their shoes, but don’t overmarket, overpromise or be too in their faces electronically or anywhere else. Realize that reduce and reuse is a green message but also part of teens’ commitment to values. It’s social. It’s not marketing; it’s a conversation, not a lecture.”

Consumerism has come full circle. Across the world’s major consumer markets, shoppers are becoming people again, returning to financial sensibility, focusing on social values and, after a too-long hiatus, even saving. Euro RSCG Worldwide PR President Marian Salzman observes the strength of the trend in one of its most glaring outliers—Sarah Ferguson, who, in order to pay down a million-dollar personal debt, tried hawking her royal connections and was roundly panned for her green-veined attempt.

Two teenage girls from the Stamford, Conn., area are surprised to find themselves intimately connected in their tastes, their perspectives and the ways they approach the world around them. But it’s not Facebook or MySpace that has revealed all this. Rather, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s Sisterhood initiative, which was developed to gain an understanding of teen girls as a market demographic, is showing the teens (and the rest of the world) just how closely connected they are. “To put it simply, teenagers are at a new frontier of social culture,” says the agency’s president, Marian Salzman. “They’re changing the field of marketing, altering communications, inventing new lexicons and adopting still-embryonic innovations.”

The Chic Report turns to Euro RSCG Worldwide PR EVP Stacy Mackler to get a read on what business lessons can—and should—be learned from the recent recession. Mackler also offers sound advice and analysis on what today’s mediascape means for doing business in the recession. “Social media seems to have answered a lot of prayers through the recession,” Mackler says. “Ugc (user generated content) is huge and highly impactful. Fortunately, PR budgets are fairly small, so we still see companies that see its worth!”

Teenage girls love to share valuable information with their friends, especially when it comes to their favorite brands. Euro RSCG Worldwide PR finds that two out of three teen girls will let their friends know about a sale on a favorite brand, while almost six out of 10 raise the alert when there’s a hot new trend discovery. The study offers other valuable information on this powerful consumer demographic and paints a surprising picture of how the average American teenage girls shops and communicates.