Pew Research Blog

Kids These Days – The latest on teens, social media and tech

Javier Solano Blog, Featured post, Insights

Pew Research Center recently released the findings from its every-once-in-a-while (previously in 2015 and 2018) survey of American teenagers and their social media habits. Spoiler alert: Kids like TikTok, and they’re online a lot. But there’s more here. My top 5 takeaways:  TikTok and Snapchat are Gen Z platforms, with their built-in photo and video editing tools and comparatively lower numbers of old people. A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly. TikTok, which broke into North America in 2018, now has a billion users worldwide. Only one of three U.S. teens is not on TikTok. They …

Talking to Strangers

Javier Solano Blog, Inspiration

As we reclaim our social lives and return to some version of pre-pandemic normal, the loners are freaking out. Believe it or not, this is a thing.  I believe it. I’m a loner. Big pile of awkward. I hate talking to strangers. (No offense if you don’t know me. It’s not you.)  So while others were baking sourdough, making art and doing other sequestered things, I decided to do something about my biggest fear. No, not actually talk to strangers. Too much, too soon. Instead, I talked to someone about talking to someone. Meet Lily Clayton Hansen, Nashville author, actor …

I’m a Lifelong Washington NFL Fan, and It’s Past Time To Change the Name

Javier Solano Blog, Inspiration

As a lifelong fan of the NFL franchise now known as the Washington Football Team, my relationship to it now spanning five decades, I remember Super Bowl VII. I remember the lovable “Over the Hill Gang” that lost, 14–7, as the footnote to Miami’s perfect season. I don’t remember that, in the spring of 1972, months before that Super Bowl season began, a delegation of Native American leaders met with Redskins President Edward Bennett Williams and urged him to change the team’s name, which means that the controversy over the team name is at least 48 years old. Williams tweaked …

How Nashville Became Smashville

Javier Solano Blog, Insights, Inspiration

MP&F Loves Our Preds – Watch the hype video HERE during the 2016-17 Stanley Cup run (P.S. – That’s Javier in the skates). Stick taps for the Preds’ marketing and communications department As the puck drops tonight for the Predators home opener, their 109th consecutive sellout at Bridgestone Arena, it’s probably past time to reflect on what an amazing success story this is for the team’s marketing and communications department, and for all of us. First, a little context. When the team arrived here 20 years ago, there were no bachelorettes downtown, no evidence of a pro hockey fan base, not …

MP&F Earns Prestigious National Award and Local Parthenons

Javier Solano Blog

MP&F earned a national Gold SABRE on behalf of the BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation for the Count It! Lock It! Drop It! campaign, at the recent North American SABRE Awards ceremony in New York City. The three-year campaign won in the Healthcare Providers category. It was MP&F’s third SABRE award in the past seven years. MP&F Public Relations also received 30 awards, including 12 Parthenons, at the 32nd annual Parthenon Awards ceremony at Country Music Hall of Fame. The ceremony, sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America’s Nashville chapter, celebrates the best public relations campaigns of 2017, …