Why “Winging It” is Not an Option for Your News Interview
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications Very few people are naturally gifted at doing an interview. Our knee-jerk reaction is to just answer a reporter’s questions – or to clam up and hide behind “no comment” because that’s what we’ve seen on TV time and time again. If all you do is answer questions, you have […]
Wayfair Learns the Cost of Doing Business Can Include a Damaged Reputation and Loss of Employee Faith
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications The recent employee protest at home-goods retailer Wayfair involving furniture sales to a company that will outfit a new migrant detention center in Texas has generated national media attention. It also prompted a discussion with one of our clients who is about to embark on a vulnerability audit with us […]
A Major League Crisis – and How a TV News Producer Attacked it with a Roll of the Dice
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] Cleveland’s getting ready for another turn in the national spotlight with the 2019 Major League Baseball All-Star game. There’s a lot of revitalization to show off to national media doing sidebar travelogue pieces on the city. Where else can you find a town celebrating its river’s miraculous recovery 50 years […]
How to Get Every Email Returned
From Trish Hall, writing for the New York Times: We’re all writers now. We fling words out into the universe through text, email, Facebook and more. Even people who hate writing have to do it, because you need to text your husband back, write your boss a condolence note and do better on Tinder than […]
How Best to Convey “Executive Presence” Non-Verbally
By Dan Hill, from Sensory Logic: From U.S. presidents to NFL quarterbacks, I’ve studied their signature facial expressions—looking for the patterns that indicate success. Maybe you weren’t the first choice for the C-suite corner office you now have, but surely you weren’t the 199th overall pick for the job (like the New England Patriot’s Tom Brady). […]
6 Questions on the Power — and Limits — of Litigation Communications
The majority of work referred to Hennes Communications comes from attorneys, who are often “first responders” when bad things happen to good companies and organizations. Subsequently, we’re often retained by the attorney or law firm in order to help assist them in preparation for trial. It’s called “litigation communications” and here’s a great piece on […]
Grappling with Social Media
From Thom Fladung, managing partner of Hennes Communications, writing for Smart Business: Watch what happens when a business, organization or news outlet removes a user’s post from a Facebook page, website or comment string. “Censorship!” “You’re violating my free speech rights!” “You’re trashing the First Amendment!” Well, no. None of that has happened. The laws […]
More Exclamation Points, Please !!!!!!
From Madeleine Aggeler, writing for The Cut: Few things fill me with a greater sense of dread than getting a message from a co-worker that says: hi The greeting — short, blunt — makes me imagine that the other person is taking a deep, weary sigh before delivering a piece of awful news. I’ve made […]
Criminalizing the Boardroom: A Communications Guidebook for Prosecutorial Targets
From our friend and colleague, Richard Levick: It took half a year and dozens of interviews with former prosecutors, defense lawyers, the falsely accused, and those who served time and resulted in two series in Forbes and the Corporate Counsel Business Journal. It is soon to be the source of multiple broadcasts and another comprehensive piece in a board […]
The Day TV Journalism Died
By Arthur Solomon, writing for CommPro: We soon will be approaching June 1, the birthday of the death of TV journalism. And Americans who care about truthful, factual, accurate news should still be in mourning. People who grew up during the age of cable news might not know that once upon a time, TV journalism […]