From Insurance Business Magazine, with quotes from Thom Fladung, (now) managing partner of Hennes Communications: First there was Harvey Weinstein. We were horrified, but we’d seen things play out like this occasionally before, like with Bill Cosby or Clarence Thomas. But then there was Kevin Spacey. And Jeffrey Tambor, Louis CK, US Senator Al Franken, […]
[By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications] One of the questions we frequently debate with clients when they are about to make a public announcement is the question of attribution: Who’s going to speak on behalf of the organization? After explaining all the reasons why having members of our crisis team fill that role is a bad […]
Thanks to our friend and colleague, Linda Bluso, Founder & CEO of the Adaptive Knowledge Institute®, for the lead to this article from the Harvard Business Review: Having your employer get caught in a public scandal is an agonizing professional experience. Even if your company comes out okay financially, it’s likely to have a tarnished reputation. How do […]
From Rose Minutaglio writing in Elle: A slew of nameless sources claiming to be “close to” Lori Loughlin and “familiar with her case” have been feeding what seems like endless fodder to tabloids since news of the college admissions scandal broke in March. “It’s killing her that her squeaky-clean reputation has done a total 180. […]
From Inc.: How many times a day do you use the word “sorry”? Statistics on Americans are hard to find, but the BBC reports British people say it at least eight times a day, and some say it as often as 20 times a day. And informal research supports what many people have observed: Women say “sorry” much more […]
If you’ve ever attended any of our training seminars, you know we often talk about how reporters are often storytellers, often using familiar tropes and archetypes, accompanied by all their embedded values. On that subject, here’s writer Jeff Jarvis, writing for BuzzMachine on this topic: In journalism, we think our job is to “get the […]
From a colleague of ours, Michael Maslansky: A crisis hits and the internal kabuki dance begins. The CEO. The lawyers. The communicators. And as if scripted in advance, the drama frequently plays out in a predictable way. The CEO wants to fight back against the unfair criticism. The lawyer, preparing for coming litigation, doesn’t want […]
The Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA) has entered into a strategic partnership with Hennes Communications to provide crisis management and communications services to public school systems throughout the state of Ohio facing sudden challenges to their organizations’ reputations and operations. With this partnership, OSBA member school leaders have access 365 days a year to expert […]
Q: My attorney says apologizing will be bad for future litigation – that apologizing means we are liable. What do you think? A: We often find ourselves wrestling with our client’s attorneys over the phrase “I’m sorry.” Somehow, through the years, attorneys have come to define the phrase “I’m sorry” as meaning “I’m liable. I […]
From Matt Cavanaugh at McDonald Hopkins: Earlier this week, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California) sued Twitter, Liz Mair (a republican strategist), and two obvious parody Twitter accounts: “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow.” A copy of the complaint is available here. Nunes claims that tweets by Mair and the parody accounts were defamatory and “fighting words” and that Twitter was negligent for […]