How Live-Streaming a Police Shooting Could Change the Narrative
When a police officer fatally shot her fiancé, Philando Castile, during a traffic stop in a Minnesota suburb, Diamond Reynolds responded the way she knew how: She calmly live-streamed the aftermath of the event, reciting on Facebook Live what happened in the car seat next to her. In doing so, she punctuated a national paradigm […]
The Dividend of Crisis (Yes, There Is One)
[By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications] If you want a recent wonderful example of an organization doing well by doing good, you need look no further than West Virginia’s Greenbrier Resort, which was at the epicenter of that state’s recent historic flooding. West Virginia was declared a federal disaster area after torrential rains swept through the […]
3 Lessons From General Mills During a Product Recall
A brand’s worst nightmare: product recall. For brands in the food industry, customers’ health and safety are on the line and any recall situation can turn bad. Every brand should treat a recall situation as a crisis – even if nothing bad has happened yet. Taking the right steps in a recall situation can help protect your […]
McDonald’s and ‘The Founder’: What to Do When Your Brand’s in an Unsought Spotlight
From PRNews Online: “The Founder,” set to open in the U.S. on Aug. 5, is the latest in a string of movies to examine an American corporate institution and the visionary figure behind it. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs were given the Hollywood treatment (twice for the latter); now it’s Ray Kroc’s turn, the man […]
6 Tactics For Leveraging Your Employees During a Social Media Crisis
From GaggleAmp: Every company of any size inevitably encounters a crisis situation at some point. Today, with numerous social media platforms, a crisis can quickly become very public and spread far and wide – well beyond your local city or even state. But, the same social media platforms that can help spread a negative story […]
Top 5 Mistakes Businesses (and Governments) Make in Disasters
According to the UK-based Business Continuity Institute, the top 5 mistakes that businesses and governments make when preparing to respond to, mitigate and move forward from disaster: 1. Failing to define worst-case scenario. 2. Failing to to fully understand the risks associated with its operation, and then failing to take the necessary steps to mitigate those risks. 3. Neglecting […]
Using Journalism to Find Solutions: Join a Community Conversation About a Growing Trend
By Thom Fladung Hennes Communications Plenty of people have talked about what’s wrong with journalism over the last decade. Shrinking newsrooms. More mistakes as fewer people do more work under more time pressure. Too much bias. Plummeting public confidence in the media. Some of the criticism is valid. Some is a tried-and-true tradition. (Check out […]
How One Restaurant Critic Took on the Food Fables We’ve All Been Fed
Laura Reiley’s first investigation was a small one. But it proved to be a nibble into something much bigger, a story the Tampa Bay Times’ food critic took on this week. Four years ago, over dinner at Tampa’s famous Bern’s Steak House, Reiley listened as the waiter expounded on specials that came from the restaurant’s […]
9 Ways Spokespeople Can Annoy Reporters
It’s no secret that journalists get exasperated with PR pros who pitch wholly inappropriate stories to them. Even those PR pros who are experts at researching a particular journalist’s beat and outlet and successfully land an interview for their company’s lead spokesperson—say, a CEO—can aggravate time-strapped journalists if that spokesperson is ill-prepared or has a […]
A Harvard Psychologist Says People Judge You Based on 2 Criteria When They First Meet You
People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating? Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions. In her new book, “Presence,” Cuddy says that people quickly answer two questions when they first […]