Thomas Cook was a British travel group company. On September 23, 2019, Thomas Cook went into compulsory liquidation. Around 21,000 worldwide employees were left without jobs and 600,000 customers were left abroad, triggering the United Kingdom’s largest peacetime repatriation. Thomas Cook’s corporate collapse last month left authorities with an enormous problem. More than 150,000 holidaymakers […]
By Garrett Graff, writing for Wired The voice message that Lauren Grandcolas left for her husband, Jack, on September 11, 2001, would puzzle a generation raised with smartphones. Two months pregnant with their first child, the 38-year-old Grandcolas was returning home to California when her flight from Newark Airport—United 93—was hijacked, and she, along with […]
By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications In 1982, Johnson & Johnson wrote the book on effective crisis response – literally. Chicago was in a state of panic. Within just a few days, seven people had dropped dead from cyanide poisoning. There was no explanation until investigators discovered the link: Tylenol. Someone had laced Chicago’s Tylenol supply with […]
From Victoria Cross, writing for ContinuityCentral.com: Fight, flight, freeze… or film? Evolutionary science tells us that when faced with a potentially dangerous situation, our sympathetic nervous system is activated and a primitive ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response kicks in. Our body is subsequently flooded with adrenaline and we are poised to make an unconscious decision […]
From Madelaine C. Lane, writing for the Grand Rapids Business Journal: It’s a story we see play out all too often on the evening news: An organization or one of its employees is hit with a search warrant, subpoena or a civil lawsuit. Before the receptionist, communications director or CEO can turn around, a microphone […]
From John Schwartz, writing for the New York Times: Don Guckert’s job is keeping the buildings on the University of Iowa’s charming campus up and running, and safe. His most important lessons came from the worst days of his career, in June 2008, when the waters of the Iowa River washed across the campus, causing […]
By Nora Jacobs, Sr. VP, Hennes Communications If you are able to access it, this article from The New York Times provides a riveting account of the firefighting strategy that saved Notre Dame cathedral from collapse in April. If you are not able, the story recounts the heroic measures response teams took to extinguish the […]
By Bruce Hennes, CEO, Hennes Communications The scribbled threat on the bathroom mirror. The cryptic email. The whispered voicemail. The strange guy with the backpack. The employee who’s going to be fired next week…will he or she do something harmful to themselves or others? More often than not, we get calls from potential clients seeking […]
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 […]
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 […]
