What can PR learn from Humans Of New York?
What can PR learn from Humans Of New York?
Earlier this month, Assistant Account Executive Rebecca Giarrusso, went to “Humans of New York: An Evening with Brandon Stanton”. Here’s a recap of her top two takeaways from the event…
In case you haven’t been on Facebook in the last eight years (gasp!), and don’t know Humans of New York (HONY), let me give you a brief history.
In 2010 Brandon Stanton was a college dropout and bond trader living in Chicago. The pressure he felt at work made him buy a camera. He’d walk around downtown Chicago, on the weekends, photographing the city as a way to de-stress.
It wasn’t until he lost his job that he decided to move to New York and take up photography full time.
HONY started with a goal of photographing 10,000 New Yorkers. Initially, Brandon thought he’d plot them on a map, creating “an exhaustive catalogue of the city’s inhabitants” – a census of sorts.
Brandon says “Somewhere along the way, I began to interview my subjects in addition to photographing them. And alongside their portraits, I’d include quotes and short stories from their lives.” It was the rawness of those stories that saw HONY grow into a blog and an international social media phenomenon.
From humble beginnings, HONY has amassed an 18 million+ (and growing) followership on Facebook alone. Some of Brandon’s achievements include:
Documenting the stories of people in more than 20 countries and creating a number of photo series;
Being a New York Times bestseller twice over; and
Producing a Facebook doco series.
What it’s like to work at Pesel & Carr
With the work year now well and truly underway, I thought it might be time to give you a behind-the-scenes look at working at Pesel & Carr, judging from my five months here as Senior Communications Specialist.
Congratulations are in Order!
One of our treasured clients – Mark Watt, CEO of Whitelion – has received a special national award!Mark has been appointed a Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia “for significant service to the community, particularly to disadvantaged and at-risk youth, through social welfare support organisations”. The ceremony will be held at Government House in May.Throughout his long career, Mark has given thousands of young people the pride, courage and opportunities to change their lives – both at Whitelion and before.
In 1999, Mark and Glen Manton co-founded Whitelion after becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of post-release services to stop young people returning to prison. From humble beginnings, Whitelion now:
operates in five Australian states
has around 120 staff and 340 volunteers
intensively supports over 2,500 young people
provides outreach services to 20,000 more
has 40% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients.
The award recognises Mark’s enormous contribution to making Australia a better, fairer and more equal place. Congratulations Mark – we couldn’t be prouder of you, and of Whitelion!
Pesel & Carr first undertook communications work for Whitelion in 2010, and was invited back in 2017 to assist with developing its DNA, messaging, Bail Out events and other strategic communications. We love supporting its vision of an Australia in which “all young people have equal opportunities to succeed” and working with the friendly, dedicated staff.
Happy Holidays!
It’s the time of year where we swap the office for outdoors, work for white wine and a little stress for sunshine.It’s also the time of year that we look back on the year that was – we hope you enjoy this little trip down memory lane with us.
20 buzzwords de-mystified
To commemorate Pesel & Carr’s 20th year, we are publishing a series of our top 20 tips, recommendations, insights and more, right here on our website.
Storytelling: An emotional powerhouse
We know that a picture can tell more than 1000 words, and video even more so.
It’s predicted that 74% of all internet traffic is video and by 2020 it will have risen to 82%. According to Wordstream, social video generates a massive 1,200% more shares than text and images combined. Our recent work with Speech Pathology Australia utilized the power of video and storytelling.
