From Adele Cehrs, writing in Ragan’s PRDaily: Several large companies have taken out expensive ads apologizing for bad behavior. Over the last year, Samsung, Under Armour and Deutsche Bank have all issued full-page mea culpas in prestigious publications. Reasons include missteps by a spokesperson, an attempt to control the narrative and choosing to avoid a […]
From Alecia Swasy, writing for Poynter: Twitter reflects the good, the bad and just plain ugly reality of social media these days. For academics, journalists and voters, there’s never been a more crucial time to talk about the impact these social media platforms have on factual journalism and being watchdogs of the powerful. It’s in […]
[By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications] When we talk to clients about the challenges of communicating about an issue they are facing, we often discuss the phenomenon of “confirmation bias” – the tendency individuals have to believe facts that support their personal points of view while rejecting similarly legitimate facts that run counter to their personal […]
From our colleague Richard Levick, writing in Forbes: Reverberations from President Donald Trump’s recasting of political behavior are being felt in every corporate counsel’s office – not only in the U.S., but abroad, too. Civility, subtlety, even facts, are out. Confrontation, predawn tweeting, and “alternative facts” are in. When coupled with the disquieting new realities […]
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Your reputation is at risk on Twitter and the risk may be triggered by the President of the United States of America. Of course you’ve heard that one. You’ve probably seen the tweets and the stories that followed about New Balance and Nordstrom and Toyota […]
From The Wall Street Journal & Deloitte: Engaging employees can have a significant impact on an organization’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to an incident. Nonetheless, nearly one-third (29.8%) of respondents in a recent poll of more than 3,900 professionals believe that employees may be the most overlooked stakeholder when their organization is […]
From our colleague, Richard Levick: Yahoo!’s announcement late last year that it had been victimized by not one but two separate data breaches was the Gettysburg of corporate cyber attacks – the biggest battle yet waged. The first attack, which occurred in 2014, impacted more than 500 million Yahoo! user accounts, while the second assault, […]
By Hennes Communications Welcome to the Golden Age of confirmation bias. An ancient phenomenon, confirmation bias — the tendency of people to seek out information and points of view they agree with – has references stretching back to Greek historians. As we wrote about a year ago, confirmation bias and its close cousin “the backfire […]
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] I don’t want to use the “T” word in this post – there are far too many hand-wringers out there opining about White House bombast and its daily Twitter fusillade. Here’s a “T” word that’s far more important: Truth. What’s happening to it? News anchors and reporters recoiled in horror […]
From The Wall Street Journal Risk & Compliance Journal and Deloitte: At what point does business-as-usual turn into a corporate crisis? It’s not always clear, and executives might treat the first signs of a crisis—not realizing the magnitude—with complacency. Confounded by stress responses and human behavioral factors, an organization can lose precious time if executives […]