Cision closed its Norwalk, CT office last month, according to KC Brown, SVP and head of analysis services for the company. The office only handled analysis, according to Brown, who oversees this area.

Brown said the closure was due to “a very expensive lease coming due” and had been in the works for a long time. Some staff accepted an offer to be reassigned to offices in Portsmouth, NH; or New York City, some staff opted to leave the company, and “a couple” of people were cut, Brown added. He would not specify how many staff members were involved in these changes.

In February, PRWeek reported on layoffs at Cision totaling “less than 5%” of the company’s North American workforce and including North American VP of marketing Stephen DeBruyn. The company also sold its Swedish Monitor and Analyze businesses in late March. The company’s recently installed CEO and president, Hans Gieskes, has to reorganize the company to cope with the economic recession and the company’s own business issues. In its annual report, the president’s statement reads: “In order to protect our margins through a recession and be able to continue to invest in product innovation, we have increased efforts to reduce our cost base. During the fourth quarter of 2008, about 100 employees left the company or were given notice. In January 2009, we divested our loss-making Danish operation with about 70 employees. Significant cost reduction measures will continue in 2009 and structural activities for underperforming units cannot be ruled out.”

However, Brown was clear that the Connecticut closure was a real estate issue.

“It was a small operation and it was limited to analysis,” he said. “The folks we have in analysis have direct client interaction, so our clients know where everyone went. This has much more to do with a lease.”

YOOX, a Milan-based Internet retail platform for a number of luxury fashion brands, as well as its own e-retailer Yoox.com, is launching a green initiative on – wait for it… – Earth Day. The “Yooxygen” campaign includes a microsite featured on Yoox.com which will sell limited edition eco-friendly fashion, design, jewelry, and music, including products by influential fashion icons via Leny, an eco-brand that aims to fund Al Gore’s eco association, The Climate Project.

What’s unique about this initiative is a) the name Yooxygen, b) eco-friendly shipping, and c) the overarching green corporate initiative which aims to position YOOX as an eco-friendly company. The company, working with C&M Media, is promoting the internal effort via traditional media relations in conjunction with the Yooxygen consumer initiative. Corporate activities include educating employees on the separation of waste and recycling; introducing a car share program; and adopting renewable energy at the Milan-based office.

So while the green movement may be dying on the consumer front, there may still be effective ways to leverage the trend as part of a corporate comms strategy.

A new report from the National Defense University offers some social media tips for government folks - ones “that actually makes sense,” writes Wired’s DangerRoom blog. The aptly named “Social Software and National Security,” report is expected out early next week, Wired says, but the blog provides a sneak peek at the four tenants the paper suggests:

• Inward sharing
• Outward sharing
• Inbound sharing
• Outward sharing

Hmm…

An excerpt under the “Outward sharing” headline reads:

The 2005 natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina is now a textbook example of the need for multi-agency, multi-government, multi-media engagement in an ad hoc and constantly evolving manner.  More recently, people using social software have been able to make useful contributions during real world events such as flooding in Bangladesh, the California wildfires, and Hurricane Gustav…

Good news today, given the abysmal state of the M&A business. Homebuilders had agreed to a $1.3 billion merger were accompanied by a variety of comms initiatives. A Web site has been established that talks about the benefits of the merger, a press release has been issued, and there was a conference call and Webcast this morning. There are no PR firms listed on the press release, however, based on these items, it’s clear that comms is playing an important role as the merger plays out.

Just stopped in for the Friday morning panels at the Arthur Page Society’s spring seminar, which took place over two days at the Jumeirah Essex House - a great spot that faces Central Park.

Saw lots of top agency CEOs, a number of academics, and plenty of the group’s corporate-side members as well. The membership group emphasizes recruiting senior-level PR pros that work in or on corporate communications.

The morning’s speaker that probably impressed me the most was Carlos Gutierrez whose resume includes stints as US Commerce Secretary and chief executive of Kellogg Company. In describing the value that communicators offer - whether distilling a 700-page new bill or a new product - Gutierrez remarked that “the real genius is in simplification.” He surmised that “people can’t agree with something they don’t understand,” nor can they “fall in love” with what they don’t understand. That really struck a chord.

He ended by telling the receptive audience that their jobs are “one of the most strategic roles” in a corporation.

Too bad I missed Thursday’s session. I hear CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino stirred up the strongest reaction.

Sears launched a new tag line - “Sears. Life. Well spent.” - that will more strategically align the company’s branding efforts with consumers’ increased interest in quality of life and thoughtful consumption. The new tag line reflects consumers’ changing ideas about the American dream and how Sears’ products fit in with these values, said Tom Aiello, division VP of PR for Sears Holdings. Euro RSCG Worldwide PR will provide PR support.  “As we move ahead, you’ll see strategies and tactics come out that really bring the tag line to life,” Aiello said. One example is the Heroes at Home program, which provides support to service members and their families. Sears will be expanding the scope of this program’s reach to include other “everyday heroes,” such as teachers, police officers, and fireman. Projected to begin this expansion in the fall, these changes will “bring focus into local communities,” says Aiello.

Asked about blogger-payment programs conducted by what many believe to be a growing number of communications professionals, Don Bates, professor at George Washington University, told PRWeek via e-mail that such efforts aren’t controversial, or new. Said Bates: “A minority of PR firms has been using paid advertising and paid media for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been around the business for more than 35 years.”

“Paid media is a reasonable extension of PR services, and to my way of thinking, something that should be considered, especially in this era of digital communications when so much is moving to the Wild West of online,” he said.

However, Bates added, the practice “is not for the uninitiated.”

“It may look easy but it isn’t. The required research, art, copy, placement, billing, administration – all are different than their counterparts in PR,” he added. “Then there’s the potential impact on your media relations work. Once you start advertising, the media will start to treat you like an ad agency with potentially negative consequences for your client’s or employer’s press coverage.”

Two things that many in the financial communications probably didn’t expect to see together in the same sentence anytime soon: IR and Twitter.

On Friday, eBay announced on its blog, eBay Ink, that after three quarters of reporting its quarterly earnings via blog and covering the earnings calls on Twitter, the company has created some best practices for the earnings blogging going forward.

Those practices include a separate legal page to the Ink blog, rotating financial info every 90 days on the blog and Twitter, and special language that will designate some Tweets as a live-blogging session for the earnings announcement.

Ebay blogger Richard Brewer-Hay wrote that he was worried when he had to approach his legal team for the first time to talk about best practices and couldn’t find other companies who were using these social media tactics for their earnings announcements. But his fears were unfounded.

“I was worried I would be forced to cease this innovative way of reporting company information to our constituents,” Brewer-Hay wrote. “Thankfully that was not the case. Rather, it was mutually agreed that we could take this opportunity to set up a best practices approach to live-blogging and reporting company information via the Web - beyond traditional conference call and press release.”

American International Group (AIG) declined to comment to PRWeek on the buzz earlier this week concerning its relationships with a number of PR firms, including Kekst & Company.

After the blog item posted, PRWeek spoke with Christina Pretto, AIG’s VP of corporate media relations, who clarified the company’s partnership with Kekst, saying the relationship isn’t new, that “AIG has worked with Kekst for years on M&A transactions.” Pretto declined to comment further.

According to Brad Williams, VP of corporate communications at Yahoo, the company’s corporate communications team hasn’t been impacted by the massive restructuring - yet. “But we’re working [with] incoming CMO, Elisa Steele, to determine how to best align our team to Yahoo’s new organizational structure as it’s fleshed out in the coming weeks,” said Williams, who is acting as head of the company’s corporate communications team since Jill Nash’s departure.