Dick’s Sporting Goods Followed Its Conscience on Guns—and It Paid Off
By Jay Fitzgerald for Harvard Business School Working Knowledge After the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Dick’s Sporting Goods’ CEO declared: “I don’t want to be part of the story anymore.” Two new case studies by George Riedel go inside the retailer’s decision to remove certain firearms from stores and restrict gun sales. Days […]
Use Peacetime Wisely: Plan Now For What To Say And Do In A Crisis
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications Public officials, CEOs, executive directors and members of for-profit and non-profit boards have a responsibility to their stakeholders to plan for situations that will imperil life, limb and the ability of their organizations to fulfill their missions. In the immediate aftermath of a major incident, such as a mass shooting […]
Inform, Don’t Alarm – Communicating Before & During Civil Unrest
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications Considering the Supreme Court’s epic Roe v. Wade decision, its decision to loosen New York City’s gun laws, unrelenting gun violence across the country and the prospect that the upcoming mid-term elections may result in the seizure of ballots in certain battleground states, emotions are likely to boil over and […]
Why Empathy is Critical When Disaster Strikes
By Tony Jaques, for Managing Outcomes – When a boatload of tourists was involved in an incident in remote northwest Australia, and more than a dozen were taken to hospital – some with serious injuries – you might expect the company to express shock and sympathy. But apparently not. According to media reports, the only statement […]
7 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Crisis Communications Firm
Crisis communications is a sub-specialty of the public relations profession that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation. Crisis communications is aimed at raising awareness of a specific type of threat, the magnitude, outcomes, and specific behaviors to adopt to reduce the threat. […]
Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications – Having a crisis consultant in your contact list is nice, but no substitute for having a plan in place. For companies and organizations, written, tested and ready-to-go business continuity plans should be part of doing business. Typically, those plans include the step-by-step operational response procedures to follow in the […]
Chaotic Communication Adds to Pain of Texas School Shooting
From Christopher J. Tennyson, writing for Crisis Quotient Blog – In the Early Hours of a Crisis, Getting Things Right Trumps Fast Response We’re all still processing the horror of last week’s mass murder in Uvalde, Texas. Continuing confusion about just what happened at Robb Elementary School that day is adding to the pain being […]
Why Wall Street Can’t Escape the Culture Wars
By Paul J. Davies, writing for Bloomberg – Wall Street has always been involved in politics even if bank bosses sometimes want to pretend disinterest. In the past, they were able to stick mainly to battles about tax and regulation. Now, it is ever harder to avoid the U.S. culture wars. Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive […]
How PR Pros Can Avoid Overused Phrases to Express Sympathy
By Hinda Mitchell, with Inspire PR Group… Our nation has not been without a crisis for some time. In local communities, there are crises nearly every day. In families and relationships there are unfortunate, tragic events, unnecessary deaths, injuries and accidents. My purpose in writing is not to minimize any of these; each takes a […]
The Handmaid’s Tale
From our friend and colleague, Richard Levick at Levick.com… We are an over-polled society, a fact which subsequently influences politicians to prefer to follow rather than lead. Yet, how is it possible that up until U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, only 20% of Americans thought […]