Dealing With a Crisis
The managing partner of Hennes Communications, Thom Fladung, was recently interviewed on the subject of crisis communications for Ari Lewis and his Mastering the Attention Economy video podcast. Tune-in here for a short, 20-minute master class on crisis management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7jTEG7cHaE
Crisis Comms Lessons From a Tennis Tantrum
From our good friends at PRCG | Haggerty, written by Thom Weidlich… Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 ranked men’s singles tennis player, threw a hissy at the U.S. Open on Sunday and bashed a ball that hit a line judge in the throat. Djokovic was ejected from the tournament, was fined and suffered a blow […]
The Two Political Conventions – It’s Not Just What You Heard, But What You Saw
We’ve said it over and over again to our clients and in this newsletter: how you say something is almost always more important than the way you say it. Joe Navarro agrees. He’s author of the international bestseller What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People and The Dictionary of Body […]
How Police Departments are Applying the Principles of Crisis Communications in the Age of Citizen Journalism
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications As protests rage across the country in the wake of police shootings, police departments are learning that shaping the public’s perception of any given event requires an increasingly sophisticated communications response. Gone are the days when a department’s public information officer would brief the media and then retreat from view […]
Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Zoom Body Language Hacks
by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications The more we get used to Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams and other live video teleconferencing platforms, the more danger that we get a little too relaxed. I’ve seen Zoomers drone on and on, delivering their presentations in a disinterested monotone. I’ve seen “listening” participants slouching, checking email and who-knows-what-else on […]
Eight Lessons I Learned from Hiring a Writing Coach
By Ari Lewis, writing in Crain’s Cleveland Business… The best athletes in the world have personal trainers: LeBron James, Serena Williams, Megan Rapinoe. I knew that to be the best, I needed to hire a writing coach to take me to the next level. As a species, we have a monopoly on collective knowledge. So […]
Nailing Your TV News Interview – Part 2 – The Ambush
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications You’re grappling with serious challenges that threaten your organization, and perhaps your career. Someone leaks an internal e-mail to the media, and reporters have been leaving you voicemail messages all day asking for your comment on the issue. Your company’s unwritten policy is to ignore the media, and your general […]
Creating a Post-Pandemic Crisis Team
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications Pre-COVID, few of our clients had ever experienced a crisis event with the potential to threaten the very existence of their organization. Now, almost everyone we talk to has had first-hand experience managing disruptions in supplies, sales, finance, staffing, production, logistics, communications, marketing and technology. Some organizations have emerged stronger […]
How to Nail Your TV News Interview – Part 1
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I earned my stripes in TV producing newscasts and managing newsrooms for the better part of twenty years, and I can now freely admit the following: I loved reporters who came trotting breathlessly back into the newsroom with video of […]
Forget Those Hokey, Fake Backgrounds on Zoom
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications If you’ve used Zoom lately, you’ve noticed the fake pools, sunsets and palm trees. We’re all starting to envy the Pottery Barn-like kitchens, living rooms and dining rooms. And don’t you just love those libraries full of books we know none of us have ever read, the coffee shops we […]