2019 was quite a tough year for a bevy of brands. From tech titans such as Facebook and Uber to traditional stalwarts such as Boeing and PG&E, many took a beating and will be limping into the new year. For them, the New Year’s resolution is clear and immediate:...
Every year brings increasingly rapid changes for many industries, and public relations is no exception. As we look toward 2020, two key areas—crisis management and healthcare communications—may be among those experiencing the most dramatic shifts for PR professionals....
Just as the Hallmark Channel and its corny, white-bread Christmas movies were getting parodied in a “Saturday Night Live” skit over the weekend for its outdated perspective on romance and relationships, the greeting card network managed to really blow up its image...
Boeing’s mishandling of the 737 Max crisis is almost legendary. We can already see future generations of PR students going over the missteps that the company made. In this post, we will analyze what happened, what the company did, and what it could have done better....
The recent criticism of Peloton’s latest bike ad is emblematic of where we are as a society and culture in 2019. The case of obtuse and presumably misintended offense, imperceptive to some but plain as day to others, is representative of a new breed of sensitivity...
For any company, the sickening of customers and the death of an employee would be an epically bad week. Just ask Chipotle, which battled outbreaks of e-coli and Norovirus at restaurants in 2015 and 2018. And any business open to the public would be reeling for weeks...
The world of crisis management has changed dramatically, and continues to swiftly shift as what constitutes a crisis and how organizations respond both continue to evolve. From Target to Equifax to Capital One, high-profile hacks of the last few years have certainly...
Crisis communications befell Nike this year when the sports apparel manufacturer rang up not one, but two crises. Managing one can be an onerous task, but two? Crisis One Duke University’s rising star freshman basketball player, Zion Williamson, fell during a big game...
After last month’s pre-World Series public relations fiasco involving their then-Assistant GM, the last thing the Houston Astros needed was one of their former players outing them as shameless rule-breakers. But to paraphrase the principle of karma, what goes around...
Is your brand as ready to respond in a crisis as your execs might think? With more than half of consumers (54 percent) reporting they use social media more than six times a day, information—whether real or fake—can spread like wildfire. As crisis PR pros know, this...
Corporate board members may have greater confidence in their organizations' ability to manage key risks than management actually does—and as a result, boards are significantly overconfident when it comes to addressing the thorniest issues facing their organizations,...
PR professionals know all too well that threats to a brand’s reputation can emerge any time, any place. And, since issues are often driven or escalated by social media, they develop at a frighteningly fast pace. Is yesterday’s crisis plan—in a binder on a shelf—really...