Inside PR firm Hill + Knowlton's turnaround effort, and which media companies and platforms are poised to benefit from the pandemic

Hello and welcome back to the Advertising and Media Insider, your weekly industry news roundup. Hope you got to enjoy the long weekend despite the strange reality we're all living in. I'm Tanya Dua, a senior advertising reporter filling in for Lucia this week. If you're new to this email, sign up for your own here.

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Inside WPP-owned Hill + Knowlton's decades-long slide — and reboot

Founded in 1927, Hill + Knowlton used to be considered a global PR juggernaut. But over the past decade, a string of big account losses, headcount reductions and frequent restructurings precipitated its slide — and the coronavirus only made things worse.

But the WPP-owned agency has been trying to plot a comeback by changing how it charges clients, investing in creative and digital work, and shaking up its leadership, as my colleague Sean Czarnecki reported.

Sean also got ahold of documents revealing the new billing rates that Hill + Knowlton hopes will help turn around its US business, which has been fading for years.

Go deeper:

• How constant restructuring crippled Hill + Knowlton's US business and what the WPP PR agency is doing to turn itself around
• Leaked documents show what WPP's PR firm Hill + Knowlton Strategies is charging clients for 2020

The 12 media companies and platforms whose businesses are most likely to change due to the pandemic

With advertisers cutting spending during the coronavirus pandemic, ad buyers have also started scrutinizing media companies and publishers in greater detail as they decide where to spend their clients' money.

Lauren Johnson spoke with 16 ad buyers who said that the current environment has sped up changes that have been taking place in the ad industry in recent years, including a shift to over-the-top advertising and publisher consolidation.

Some of the winners? Roku, Amazon, Peacock, and Fox.

Read more: 16 ad buyers tell us which media companies are poised to benefit the most in the pandemic, like Roku and Fox

Here are other great reads from around media, marketing, and advertising:

• Panera Bread has hired former Kraft Heinz CMO Eduardo Luz as its chief brand and concept officer
• Instacart quietly launched a new advertising tool to compete with Walmart and Amazon as online grocery shopping surges
• PayPal parts ways with CMO and former Apple executive Allison Johnson after 18 months
• Why The Atlantic cut 17% of staff despite having a subscriptions surge and billionaire backer
• The CMO of 1-800-Flowers reveals how it's adapting its business and advertising as people send more flowers during the pandemic
• $220,000 from YouTube last year: How a personal-finance creator went from filming videos in a Walmart parking lot to a lucrative career
• CEOs of the biggest ad holding companies including Omnicom and Dentsu say offices will reopen slowly and staffers won't be required to come back
• Joe Rogan's blockbuster deal with Spotify is the streaming giant's biggest signal that it wants to dominate podcasting. Here's what it means for other show personalities and advertisers.
• YouTube managers reveal the secret details of their jobs working with influencers, from dealing with hackers and breakups to locating rare animals
• Doctors with verified Facebook accounts are sharing COVID-19 misinformation with their hundreds of thousands of followers

Have a great rest of your week.

— Tanya

Read the original article on Business Insider