You Can’t Spin Your Way Out of Bad Behavior
A colleague of ours, Don Etling, said it best: You can’t spin your way out of bad behavior. The Penn State situation exemplifies that. Joe Paterno & Co. knew that Jerry Sandusky was abusing children – and they looked the other way. They didn’t have a communications problem – they had a performance problem. Volkswagen is […]
Sponsors Cut Ties After Maria Sharapova Drops Drug-Test Bombshell
From Ragan’s PR Daily: When tennis star Maria Sharapova hastily called a press conference, many reporters expected the athlete would be announcing her retirement. Instead, Sharapova dropped a startling admission: She had failed a recent drug test for the Australian Open. Sharapova’s drug test results came back positive for meldonium, a drug used to treat […]
The First 20 Minutes: 6 Tips for Communicating When a Crisis Hits
From DCInno: Picture this: A user of your new on-demand service just posted a story to her blog about a terrible experience, and major media outlets are now reporting on the story. Someone discovered your app is inadvertently making users’ private information public, and now they’re outraged. Your company’s founder posted an offensive rant to […]
VW’s Crisis Strategy: Forward, Reverse, U-Turn
From The New York Times: Someday, Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal will be studied in crisis communications textbooks. And not in a good way. “There was something like a tsunami,” Hans-Gerd Bode, Volkswagen’s communications chief since September, said in an interview. “Thousands of calls and emails coming in at the same time.” “A crisis like this, […]
Online Comment Boards: Learn to Swim Before Jumping in the Water
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] The first of two parts on how best to deal with online comments. Today: How to be prepared. Next: How to get involved. John Kroll has some advice about news story online comments for folks in charge of their organizations’ reputations: Know the water before you jump […]
There’s No Spinning the Flint Water Crisis
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Flint, and, in particular, the governor’s office in Michigan, don’t have a communications problem. They have a performance problem. Sure, they need to talk to their stakeholders, quickly, clearly and with honesty and transparency. A skilled crisis communications firm can help them with that, especially when it […]
The Difference Between Tylenol and Volkswagen: The Imagination of Disaster
When someone added cyanide to Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area in 1982, killing seven people, Johnson & Johnson, owner of Tylenol was faced with an unprecedented crisis. How they handled that situation is still the gold standard for corporate crisis management. Today, the “gold standard” for how to not handle a crisis continues to be Volkswagen. […]
Brazil Mine Disaster Shows Value (and Harm) of Public Relations Responses
From InsuranceJournal.com: Within hours of a deadly mining spill in November that would become Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, BHP Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie was in front of a camera offering his sympathies to those affected. Meanwhile, his counterpart at joint venture partner Vale SA, Murilo Ferreira, took nearly a week after the mine wastewater […]
What to Do If Your Boss Asks You to Break the Rules
From the Harvard Business Review: All of us, at some point or another, are asked to break the rules at work. It may be a small action, like rounding up or down in an accounts ledger, or a small inaction, like looking the other way while others do so. It may be a one-time request, […]
3 Ghosts of Crises Past — and Lessons Left Behind
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] Communications crises don’t take a holiday. We can’t predict what crises will break in the short time left in 2015, but is anyone willing to bet that there won’t be at least a few? And someone’s crisis probably will arrive at a profoundly inopportune time – say, the night of […]