You Took a PPP Loan. Now Get Ready to Talk About It.
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications EDITOR’S NOTE: On the morning of Monday, July 6, the SBA released a database with the names and information for all entities that received a PPP loan of $150,000 or more. You can download that list here. At this time, it is unclear if and when the names of those […]
Crisis Comms: Saying Nothing is the Worst Strategy
From Greg Friese, writing for PoliceOne.com… t has been more than a week since mass protests and riots erupted in dozens of cities in the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd. In the days that followed, public safety leaders expressed their grief for Floyd, condemnation of the four former officers, and discussed their […]
Science vs. Politics
When the H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine became available ten years ago, at first the scientists and other public health experts said that pregnant women should immediately get the vaccine. Then they said it should be administered to those over 65 years of age, then it was anyone who was immunocompromised, with changing death projections and […]
Food Brands Tweet #BlackLivesMatter, but What’s Behind the Words?
We remind our clients that apologies must be real, honest and authentic. We remind our clients that “spinning” is “lying.” And we remind our clients that if you’re going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. From this week’s New York Times, an insightful piece by Tejal Rao… It (seems) that, to […]
Verbs Take Sides in George Floyd Demonstration Coverage
Public trust in the media has tanked in the last four years. Police have become increasingly hostile to media, lately arresting or hectoring reporters covering demonstrations of George Floyd’s killing by one of their own. Yet, media tend to gravitate to milquetoast verbs writing about police behavior in riots. Police “deploy” anti-riot tactics or “disperse” […]
What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis
From Jill Avery and Richard Edelman, writing for the Harvard Business School… As the COVID-19 virus pandemic began to sweep across the world, Doug McMillon and his team at Walmart watched in horror. Suddenly, they realized, tomorrow would be nothing like “business as usual” and everything in the company’s marketing plan, from retail execution to […]
Women Ask for Coffee, Men Tend to Call in Favors: Why Pandemic Networking is Even Harder for Women
Carol Kitchener writes: The first step to making a new professional connection can be a little awkward. Usually, you start by reaching out over email. You might agonize over the acceptable number of exclamation points — or double check the spelling of several words you have certainly spelled successfully many times before. You read the email at […]
Crisis Communication: 5 Steps for Damage Control
By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications, writing for The Wisconsin Lawyer: Attorney Andy Phillips, like many folks, looks back a bit wistfully at the “good old days.” “I wish it was back in the day where I could go home at 6 o’clock and sit down with the paper for a half hour,” says Phillips, whose […]
Making Customers, Clients, Patients & Diners Wear Face Masks
First, they said don’t wear masks. Then they said it was OK to wear masks. And now they’re telling us we must wear masks. In what felt like a matter of days, mask-wearing went from horribly selfish to ethically and in many cases legally obligatory. For many of our readers, there’s now a new problem […]
How Your COVID-19 Communications Can Prepare Your Company to Talk About Any Crisis
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications It may feel like ages ago now, but think back to when you first began to deal with how the COVID-19 pandemic would affect your business. You scrambled an internal team to communicate minute-by-minute changes about how the business would adapt. How your employees should work at home. How they […]