By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications Papa John’s has delivered the latest example of a too-little, too-late, too-lame apology. As noted just about everywhere, including CNN, Papa John’s attempted to apologize on Twitter, in a series of tweets, after CEO John Schnatter said on an earnings call that sales of the official pizza of the NFL […]
By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications In 1782, Benjamin Franklin, while serving as American ambassador to France, reported a shocking story. American revolutionary soldiers had found bags with more than 700 scalps of soldiers, boy, girls and even infants. The massacre, Franklin wrote, was the work of Indians who were allied with King George. And the Indians […]
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] The catastrophic after-effects of Hurricane Harvey continue to claim lives, destroy property, and wreak havoc across Texas and the gulf coast at this writing. Today, floodwaters have touched off reports of explosions and fires at Arkema, a French specialty chemicals and advanced materials company with facilities now underwater in Crosby, Texas. […]
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] The Wall Street Journal editorial board has a solution for the Russia scandal that the board suggests offers President Donald Trump “the best chance of saving his Presidency: radical transparency.” The editorial adds: “Release everything to the public ahead of the inevitable leaks. …every Trump family member, campaign operative and White […]
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] In the three days that have passed since I drafted our initial blog post on this unnecessary incident, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz tried a do-over on ABC, finally offering what seemed to be a more heartfelt apology to Dr. David Dao, the 69-year-old passenger violently dragged off of a United flight […]
[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 […]
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 […]
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] How fast is social media at reporting on events – including events that your organization might consider a crisis? Faster than you. Consider a situation involving a school in Westfield, N.Y., that we stumbled upon. Here’s the first paragraph of a story from the Westfield Republican: “Parents need to realize that […]
The biggest bully-pulpit in the land is located inside the Oval Office. In the past, the occupants of that office have carefully chosen words and phrases, knowing they can move markets, armies and trends with minimal effort. Today, we are on the brink of uncharted waters as the next president of the United States appears to […]