How Activists And Populists Now Control Your Corporate Brand — And What You Can Do About It
From our colleague, Richard Levick: “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.” – Niccolo Machiavelli C-suite executives and board members often ask if their corporation needs a new Facebook strategy or a better way to communicate on Twitter. As pleased as I am that they’re exploring ways to institute change, I […]
The 13 Golden Rules of Crisis Management
Any business, at one point, will face some sort of a public relations crisis and the way you respond can either give you a much-needed image boost or significantly damage your brand, ultimately alienating your customer base and business partners. Especially in this day and age, when news goes viral almost instantly, organizations need to […]
Don’t Get Too Obsessed with Recent Airline Customer Service Incidents – There are Bigger Sharks in the Risk Waters
Chris Britton writes: Target is a great place to shop. I love going there, and I bet many of you do too. But I also find the company fascinating because over the past few years it has provided huge debating points for those of us who make a living managing issues and crises. Until United […]
Preparing For a Company Crisis: Protecting Your Business’ People, Assets & Reputation
A Conversation on Company Crisis Preparedness with former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, from Boss Magazine — Every business leader thinks and rethinks their business strategy, weighing the strengths, analyzing the weaknesses, pondering the opportunities and scrutinizing the threats. But when it comes to a company crisis, how many are applying that same due […]
Why ‘Sorry” is Still the Hardest Word
From Michael M. Grynbaum at the New York Times: “I’m sorry.” Two simple words, not so simply said. On Wednesday, the public representatives of two embattled American institutions — United Airlines and the White House — found themselves on national television grappling with a delicate and increasingly common ritual of the corporate and political worlds: […]
Apologies, Non-Apologies, Fauxpologies, Conditional Apologies & Past Exoneratives
By Stan Carey: Writing in 2012 about the nature of apologies, I said that being sorry is about more than just saying the words, “but the words, as an explicit admission of wrongdoing or shortcoming, can be an important part of reconciliation.” With a non-apology the aims and effects are wholly different. The person delivering […]
Crisis Management: Preparing for the Next Big Event
From Deloitte: No matter the crisis—a billion-euro loss, a breach that leaves millions of customer records at risk or a major airline accident with the CEO on board—organizations can take steps to weather the storm, according to Jeremy Smith, global leader of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited’s Crisis Management practice. But instead of aiming merely for […]
Did American Airlines Profit from United’s Poor Example?
[By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications] This past weekend provided the crisis communications profession with a Petri dish-like opportunity to study the way two almost identical organizations managed two almost identical situations less than two weeks apart. If we had devised an experiment using the scientific method, we probably could not have created a more precise […]
Crisis Management: Preparing for the Next Big Event
From the Wall Street Journal’s Risk & Compliance Journal: No matter the crisis—a billion-euro loss, a breach that leaves millions of customer records at risk or a major airline accident with the CEO on board—organizations can take steps to weather the storm, according to Jeremy Smith, global leader of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited’s Crisis Management […]
Shooting Your Reputation in the Foot: Self-Inflicted Crisis Management Lessons from United Airlines
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] A video recently removed from Facebook shows law enforcement officers violently removing a passenger on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville right before takeoff. The flight was overbooked, and a United crew of four needed seats so they could get to Louisville, where they had a flight to work. Passengers […]