From Lauren Collister, University of Pittsburgh, writing for The Conversation: When it comes to texting, the period, full stop, point – whatever you call it – has been getting a lot of attention. People have begun noticing slight changes to the way our smallest punctuation mark is deployed, from declarations that it’s going out of style to […]
By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications Even in this era, when the news barrage can be numbing, the report that Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself in jail and the immediate flurry of conspiracy theories took a run at qualifying as “shocking.” The least surprising element: Much of it started and played out on Twitter. In an […]
Q. How do I know whether I should respond to a negative social media comment about our organization? A. We’ve worked with several clients recently that faced the challenge of negative social media posts going viral, attracting thousands of comments and shares and threatening the reputation of the organization involved. Before it reaches that crisis […]
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications The recent employee protest at home-goods retailer Wayfair involving furniture sales to a company that will outfit a new migrant detention center in Texas has generated national media attention. It also prompted a discussion with one of our clients who is about to embark on a vulnerability audit with us […]
By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications This 4th of July, amid the fireworks, hot dogs and parades, let’s remember another grand American tradition: making stuff up. Or, as John Adams noted with delight in his diary in 1769, he’d spent the evening in “a curious employment. Cooking up Paragraphs, Articles, Occurrences etc. – working the political Engine!” […]
The majority of work referred to Hennes Communications comes from attorneys, who are often “first responders” when bad things happen to good companies and organizations. Subsequently, we’re often retained by the attorney or law firm in order to help assist them in preparation for trial. It’s called “litigation communications” and here’s a great piece on […]
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 […]
By Charlie Warzel, writing for the New York Times: You can’t see much in the haunting video of Tuesday’s shooting at the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, Colo. — just darkness and an eerie voice repeating a prerecorded warning over a loudspeaker. “Attention please. Lockdown. Lock, lights, out of sight.” Two videos with a combined runtime of 82 seconds […]
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, […]
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 […]