How to Destroy Your Organization in One Easy Step
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] We’ve facilitated hundreds of seminars to help companies work more effectively with the media and survive social media attacks. In the last few weeks, we’ve had to update our presentations to offer help dealing with the rise of alternative facts and the increasingly nonchalant promulgation of lies. But a question […]
New Rules of Engagement for General Counsels in the Age of Presidential Tweets
From our colleague Richard Levick, writing in Forbes: Reverberations from President Donald Trump’s recasting of political behavior are being felt in every corporate counsel’s office – not only in the U.S., but abroad, too. Civility, subtlety, even facts, are out. Confrontation, predawn tweeting, and “alternative facts” are in. When coupled with the disquieting new realities […]
BBC Interview Goes Awry & Viral
[By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications] The blogosphere lit up with smiles this past Friday after a toddler photobombed Robert Kelly’s Skype interview with the BBC from his home in S. Korea. Kelly, a political-science professor, was discussing the South Korea impeachment scandal from his home office with a door closed behind him. As the questioning […]
Facebook & The Press: The Transfer of Power
From the Columbia Journalism Review: JOURNALISM’S BUSINESS CRISIS is well known, but in the wake of the US presidential election it is increasingly obvious that the true existential crisis for journalism is its lack of influence. Fake news, a decline in trust, and plunging revenues are all proxies for a loss of influence and impact […]
The Oscars – When a Good-Looking Tuxedo Isn’t Enough to Save Your Reputation
[By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications] Wow. One minute, you’re a global company with a brand so esteemed it almost glows. The next, you’re the centerpiece of a social-media pile-on, raked over the coals by wits and late-night TV wannabes. All because a partner with 20 years of service takes his eye off the ball and […]
Trump and Twitter and Trepidation – Oh My: Some Calming Crisis Management Advice
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Your reputation is at risk on Twitter and the risk may be triggered by the President of the United States of America. Of course you’ve heard that one. You’ve probably seen the tweets and the stories that followed about New Balance and Nordstrom and Toyota […]
Ways to Engage Employees Amid a Corporate Crisis
From The Wall Street Journal & Deloitte: Engaging employees can have a significant impact on an organization’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to an incident. Nonetheless, nearly one-third (29.8%) of respondents in a recent poll of more than 3,900 professionals believe that employees may be the most overlooked stakeholder when their organization is […]
Change In Corporate Mindset Needed To Combat Cyber Attacks
From our colleague, Richard Levick: Yahoo!’s announcement late last year that it had been victimized by not one but two separate data breaches was the Gettysburg of corporate cyber attacks – the biggest battle yet waged. The first attack, which occurred in 2014, impacted more than 500 million Yahoo! user accounts, while the second assault, […]
Crisis Communications Expert: Dealing With Your Audience’s Bias – and Your Own
By Hennes Communications Welcome to the Golden Age of confirmation bias. An ancient phenomenon, confirmation bias — the tendency of people to seek out information and points of view they agree with – has references stretching back to Greek historians. As we wrote about a year ago, confirmation bias and its close cousin “the backfire […]
The Urgency of Truth in the Era of Alternative Facts
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] I don’t want to use the “T” word in this post – there are far too many hand-wringers out there opining about White House bombast and its daily Twitter fusillade. Here’s a “T” word that’s far more important: Truth. What’s happening to it? News anchors and reporters recoiled in horror […]