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Crisis Communications: Too Important Not to Plan For

[by Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications]   As we try to hold on to the last days of summer, many organizations are well into planning for the year ahead.  If your organization’s fiscal year begins on January 1, chances are you’re already hard at work on your budget for 2017. A former boss of mine used […]


The Social Media Uproar Over Harambe’s Death

Cameron Knight figured Saturday would be a good day to catch up on some weekend work. Barring any breaking news, he planned to finish a Memorial Day story and a piece on the anniversary of the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire. As the breaking news reporter at The Cincinnati Enquirer worked, he listened to the […]


6 Tactics For Leveraging Your Employees During a Social Media Crisis

From GaggleAmp: Every company of any size inevitably encounters a crisis situation at some point. Today, with numerous social media platforms, a crisis can quickly become very public and spread far and wide – well beyond your local city or even state.  But, the same social media platforms that can help spread a negative story […]


4 Crisis Communications Lessons from Kellogg’s

The way an organization reacts in the first hours of a crisis will probably determine whether it succeeds or fails in regaining public trust. The way brand managers at Kellogg Co. recently esponded to the release of a video depicting a disgruntled employee should serve as a model for handling a PR crisis. When crisis […]


Engaging and Informing Employees During a Crisis

Most crisis communication plans depend at least somewhat on the ability and willingness of employees to come to work – but that assumption may not be valid. According to a Deloitte study, including employees in pre-crisis planning and keeping them updated during an organizational emergency are critical to ensuring their participation and maintaining consistent communications […]


Officials Use Twitter to Spread Information, Share Condolences After Brussels Attacks

Only four months after terrorist attacks rocked Paris, professionals’ crisis communications were put to the test as terrorists hit Brussels. On Tuesday morning, two explosions went off in the check-in area of Brussels Airport. Shortly after those attacks—at least one of which, Belgium’s federal prosecutor said, was likely caused by a suicide bomber—a third blast […]


Can Chipotle’s Reputation Management Strategy Save the Brand?

From ContentStandard: A string of food contaminations in its restaurants has put Chipotle in a desperate situation. Its sales in the final quarter of 2015 dropped by nearly 15 percent, and its stock is currently below $460 after an all-time high of $758 just a few months earlier. To try and correct its course, the […]


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 […]


Panel to Discuss How Terrorism has Changed Our Lives

  By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications Spin back 20 years or so. Was anyone in your office talking about “active shooter” training? Were school closings because of anonymous threats a common occurrence? What was it like back then getting on your flight at the airport? Americans’ fears about an imminent terrorist attack haven’t changed much over […]


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