NEW YORK — MWWPR has acquired Search Interactions, a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO, SEM, content creation, optimization and research. SI will boost MWWPR’s digital capabilities and ability to implement a more comprehensive approach to digital-first public relations and reputation management. SI also brings clients including Viacom, New York Media, Univision/Gizmodo Media Group, Weichert Realtors and eBags, which will be added to MWWPR’s roster.

CHICAGO — PACO Collective, a cross-cultural and minority-owned marketing agency, has  acquired Noble Food, an independent food-marketing agency headquartered in Springfield, MO. PACO is a full-service agency offering strategic planning, consumer insights, advertising, marketing, public relations, and digital and creative expertise, focused on empowering brands to transcend cultural boundaries. Noble Food brings culinary innovation and content production, covering the entire food landscape.

SAN FRANCISCO — Dan Beltramo has joined the AirPR, the science and data company serving the communications and PR industry,  as its CEO. Beltramo  brings experience from Nielsen, where he spent four years as executive VP of product leadership. He also co-founded Vizu, a crowd-sourced market research platform.

SAN FRANCISCO — SocialChorus, the internal communications platform, has launched new launched a new offering enabling users to reach employees more efficiently. The SocialChorus Innovation Lab includes include group segmentation, content templates, invitation drip campaigns and tools to help communicators plan, create, distribute and measure their employee communications from one place. The features are designed to make it easier for communicators to drive their employee engagement strategies at scale with less tactical work.

Sprout Social’s latest report shows social media has played a huge role in forcing brands to be more open, honest and communicative about their business practices. The report, Social Media & the Evolution of Transparency, found:

  • 40%of consumers cite social as a reason behind why transparency is more important than ever and36%attribute the increasing value of transparency to social making it easier to monitor.

  • Social media is the No.1 communication channel of choice for transparency as ranked by millennials.

  • Just 15% of people believe brands are already very transparent on social media. Twice as many people (30%) say brands aren’t transparent at all on social.

  • Consumers single out brands as the group with the greatest responsibility to be transparent on social media, rating brands higher than friends, family and politicians. While only 71% of individuals hold themselves to a standard of transparency on social, 81% expect the same from brands.

  • Brands doing the following on social media demonstrates a lack of transparency: Withholding information (69%), ignoring customer questions (68%), ignoring employee questions (58%), avoiding relevant political/social issues (34%) and not posting very often (20%).

  • There are nine key ways brands can demonstrate transparency -- the top three include, admitting to mistakes (61%), responding honestly to customers (58%) and discussing product/service pricing (45%).

  • More than one in five Millennials say a CEO’s transparency on social would encourage them to consider a career with that employer in the future. What they want to hear about most? A company’s values.