In the May episode of “The Hobson and Holtz Report,” Neville and Shel discussed how a group of online retailers led by Amazon has come together to pressure the U.S. Congress to save the Postal Service through a highly targeted advertising campaign. Other topics include…

• The importance of being true to your brand purpose during the pandemic
• New tools on LinkedIn
• The evolution of brand movies
• How Skype faded while Zoom rose
• A challenge from the United Nations for creative types to create visual pandemic messages

Dan York reports on Facebook’s acquisition of GIPHY and the opportunities for communicators to learn more about live streaming.

We are hosting an FIR Communicators Coffee Break on Zoom each Thursday during the stay-at-home period at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our Facebook group or send an email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Spread the word to your communications community.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

The next episode of For Immediate Release will be posted on Monday, June 15.

Links from This Week’s Episode

• To All the Purpose-Driven Businesses: We Will Remember You
• How PepsiCo Partnered with Actor John Krasinski to Highlight CSR Efforts
• PepsiCo Foodservice Launches Four New Initiatives To Support Restaurant Industry COVID-19 Relief Efforts
• PepsiCo Finds Empathy Is The New Imperative for Marketers Amid Pandemic Uncertainty
• PepsiCo Helping Restaurant Workers Coping with COVID-19
• PepsiCo Is First Major Consumer Foods Name to Take a Big Dive Into DTC
• Popeyes Is Hiring Musicians to Record its Iconic ‘Love That Chicken’ Jingle
• Top AWS engineer Tim Bray quits $1m-plus job over Amazon firing employees
• Maintaining Healthy Reputations During a Pandemic
• 18 Brands Getting In On Virtual Graduations and Proms (With a Slew of Celebs)
• IKEA designs forts for children in lockdown
• Top 6 Gin Distilleries Making Their Own Hand Sanitiser
• LinkedIn adds polls and live video-based events
• Brand Film is No Longer a Niche Player
• Brand Film Festival
• How Skype Lost its Crown to Zoom
• Online Retailers Spend Millions on Ads Backing Postal Service Bailout
• John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” segment on the US Postal Service
• Unsplash Founder Mikael Cho’s Twitter Threat on UN visual crowdsourcing initiative
• United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives - help stop the spread of COVID-19
• Welcome to the official United Nations COVID-19 Response Creative Content Hub
• Unsplash Quarantine Images
• Unsplash’s United Nations COVID-19 Response

Links from Dan York’s Report

• Facebook to buy Giphy, keep its branding, integrate with Instagram; sources say the deal is worth ~$400M, while Giphy was valued at ~$600M in its latest round
• Facebook’s purchase of Giphy gives FB insight into how and where gifs are shared outside of its own apps, including device IDs and keystrokes in Giphy tools
• How Facebook Could Use Giphy to Collect Your Data
• Soundcloud to Launch Live Original Programming on Twitch
• Soundcloud on Twitch
• Anyone’s a Celebrity Streamer With This Open Source App
• OBS Studio