February 15, 2021
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When Should You Correct Fake News on Social Media Sites
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications
The tempo of client calls we field about dealing with social media misinformation continues to increase. Our mantra has always been: Stridently correct factual errors the second you see them posted. But what if you get wind that a disgruntled former employee or a special interest group is planning to launch a misinformation campaign about an issue your company is grappling with? Should you inoculate your social media audience with the facts before your opponents drop their initial post? Will it do any good?
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The Stupidity Defense
By Dr. Peter Sandman
Something bad has happened on my client’s watch, and now the client has to own up to it. The key question (or at least one key question) is why it happened. And the principal contenders for best explanation are stupidity and evil. Either my client screwed up or my client screwed over the rest of us. Usually my client screwed up, but doesn’t want to say so. I find myself urging the stupidity defense.
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Six Things Every Attorney Should Do When Hiring And Managing A Communications Team
Whether the client is a high-profile individual in the middle of active litigation, a nonprofit engaged in a public education campaign or a large corporation getting ahead of a story — good or bad — there is a legal team at the center of the action. As we've seen time and again, great working relationships with counsel mean better results for clients. Here are six tips for attorneys to effectively hire and manage a strong communications team to support your client’s goals.
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Goodell Super Bowl Pre-Game Interview Showcases PR Fundamentals
From a PR standpoint, highlights of CBS’s Super Bowl pregame show didn’t come from Miley Cyrus’s concert for essential workers or the moving piece celebrating the 30th anniversary of Whitney Houston’s performance of the national anthem. It came from a simple interview that many viewers may have missed while preparing their game-day spread. The PR theme? Admitting difficult truths.
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What the Stockdale Paradox Tells Us About Crisis Leadership
The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’s bestselling book From Good to Great, and the related discipline of survival psychology shine a light on the present moment and contains wisdom for how leaders can manage the unrolling crisis.
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KPMG’s Bill Michael Resigns After Telling Staff to ‘Stop Moaning’
KPMG’s UK chair, Bill Michael, has resigned after telling staff to “stop moaning” during a virtual meeting about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, where he also called unconscious bias “crap”. KPMG UK boss told staff to ‘stop moaning’ about Covid work conditions. Let's take a look at how the company handled this.
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Our New Seminars
Social Media and the Courts: A New Frontier
Three have been more “trials of the century” than we have had centuries. This seminar explores why trials have been big news for decades, but also how profoundly coverage of those trials has changed with the digital revolution in communications - and what lawyers need to know about it. Topics include: a brief history of high-profile media coverage of trials – and the sudden, recent change in how the coverage works; how and why social media are now crucial for journalists and why you must understand “iterative reporting”; social media’s impact on jurors and court rulings; the scarcity of research on how social media and digital journalism impact witnesses and trials overall; pros and cons of social media and digital journalism in trial coverage.
Getting to the Truth: How to Detect Fake News
Fake news is not new news. Masters of the art include Benjamin Franklin. But in the digital media era, when information – true and false – travels in seconds, fake news has become a prevalent challenge in society. This seminar delves into the history of fake news, explores how we are living through a second coming of Yellow Journalism and provides practical tips for how to recognize fake news – and avoid spreading it.
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Blunt Talk
Private sector preparedness is not a luxury, it is a cost of doing business in the post 9/11 world. It is ignored at a tremendous potential cost in lives, money and national security.”
The 9/11 Commission Report
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Our New Seminars
Crisis Communications For Educators Amid a Pandemic of Crises
The echo chamber of social media. A tense, politically charged national landscape. And the Covid- 19
pandemic. Learn how to help protect your school’s reputation in one of the most challenging communications atmospheres imaginable.
Crisis Communications and Your School in the Social Media Era
Social media is now where your school’s reputation, earned over hard years of accomplishment, can be shattered in minutes. Learn best practices for effective crisis management on social media, including applying the fundamentals of effective crisis communications; using social media before the crisis; threat assessment and response; leveraging social media to your advantage; and specific action steps to help protect your reputation.
Crisis Communications and Social Media for Public Officials
For elected and public officials, social media represents special challenges – and special opportunities. Accessibility, information-sharing and gauging public interest are easier and more convenient than ever before. As are the opportunities to criticize, organize opposition and spread misinformation. And when a crisis hits, it will play out on social media. This seminar will help participants understand the influence of social media – and how it’s only going to grow. How public officials can use social media to the benefit of their organizations and constituents. And you’ll explore how to apply the best practices of effective crisis management on social media in a public setting.
For information about these new seminars, contact Thom Fladung, managing partner, Hennes Communications at 216-321-7774
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Attention School Board Members,
Superintendents & Attorneys
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 crisis communications professionals.
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Not Everything is a Crisis
Most crises are unexpected and sudden - a traffic accident, explosion, fire, chemical leak, social media attack or criminal arrest.
While a crisis usually appears to be sudden, sometimes you should have seen it coming. For example, activists who hate your product, lax enforcement of company policies and procedures, deferred maintenance on heavy equipment, or instability in your leadership ranks.
More often than not, what you're probably facing is an issue, a situation that can and should have been foreseen. For instance, three months from now you know you're going to close a plant, discontinue a product, get a new board chair, acquire a company or announce a rate hike. For another example, click here.
Whether it's a crisis or an issue, carefully crafted communications targeting the appropriate audience at the right time can go a long way toward mitigating the amount of reputational damage you experience and the work you need to do to restore confidence among your stakeholders.
Identifying an issue early gives you the added ability to craft a well-rounded strategic plan that not only identifies what you say, it enables you to carefully consider allies you might enlist, initiatives you might employ to blunt the effectiveness of your adversaries and other tactics designed to protect your market.
Are there threats looming on your horizon you should address now? Let us help you create the communications to help you avoid them from evolving from issues you can manage to crises you can’t avoid.
While we sell "crisis" (hence our website name, www.crisiscommunications.com ), the professionals at Hennes Communications understand the difference between crises and issues.
And now, we hope you do, too.
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No one trains clients for high-stakes situations better than Hennes Communications. We can teach you how to communicate with power, mastering even the toughest interview, speech or presentation.
Call or email us today and ask us about crisis, media, spokesperson and presentation training/coaching for you, your top executives and managers.
Remember, it's usually not what you say, but how you say it. Never again go into a media interview unprepared or go before a hostile audience uncoached.
Of course, due to the coronavirus situation, we now offer this training via Zoom or your preferred video platform.
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2/16 Ohio State Bar Association
2/17 Fostoria Safety Council
2/24 Dade County (Miami) Bar Assoc.
3/5 National School Boards Association
3/10 Bureau of Workers Comp. Safety Cong.
3/15 Intown Club
3/17 Jefferson County Safety Council
3/18 Logan County Safety Council
3/18 American Bar Association (Chicago)
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3/24 Minnesota Festivals & Events Conf.
4/2 Phillips Law Firm (Cincinnati)
4/4 American Public Power Association
4/14 American Public Power Association
4/22 Council of School Attorneys
5/10 Fairlawn Area Chamber of Comm.
5/12 Winding River M.P. Bootcamp
5/13 CPA Firm Mgmt. Association
5/19 Winding River M.P. Bootcamp
6/9 Winding River M.P. Bootcamp (CHI)
7/20 Southern Ohio Safety Council
9/22 Fire & Emergency Manufacturers
& Services Association (Tampa)
If you'd like to bring us in to speak to your organization, either virtually or in-person, perhaps for your practice group, as a value-add for your existing clients or as a new business development event, please give Bruce Hennes a call at 216-321-7774.
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Hennes Communications
You have a situation.
We have a strategy.
Because the Court of Public Opinion is always in session.
www.crisiscommunications.com
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The Hennes Communications Team
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