When it comes to media scrums, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the vast majority of people will make it through their entire careers without finding themselves at the center of one of these stressful, impromptu press conferences. The bad news is that if you do find yourself suddenly surrounded by a circle of clamoring reporters during a crisis, you will have likely had very little time to prepare...
Read MoreThe Rob Ford 'crack allegations' story has dominated headlines in Canada and parts of the United States for the past week. In addition to the salacious nature of the allegations of drug use by the mayor of one of the largest cities in North America, there have been surreptitious meetings between journalists and drug dealers and high-profile references to a secret videotape that allegedly shows the Mayor smoking from what appears to be a crack pipe.
Read MoreIn the world of public relations and reputation management, timing is usually the factor over which people have the least amount of control. The crisis communications cycle is usually set in motion by something or someone outside our control. The cruise ship runs out of power in the middle of the ocean. The tanker spills its cargo. An insider blows the whistle.
Read MoreTo say that Rob Ford's relationship with the media has been rocky since he became the mayor of Canada's largest city would be an understatement. Even with this kind of media relations track record, this is a very, very bad day for Rob Ford.
Read MoreCrisis communications is one of the most stressful jobs around. And while there's no shortage of great courses, textbooks and videos out there to help you hone your crisis communications skills, there's no teacher like good...
Read MoreAs a business owner, these are words I never thought I would utter: "Our website is temporarily down. And we're cool with that."
That shows you the power of great communications. Our site is hosted by Squarespace. They're a great company and their operations have been impacted by Hurricane Sandy (more on that below). Operational disruptions happen.
Read MoreAccording to the old adage, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Well, the people over at Cogeco might disagree after the week they had. The company made headlines for all the wrong reasons this week after a massive email outage left thousands of customers across Ontario unable to send or receive messages. Hundreds of frustrated customers have since taken to Twitter and Facebook...
Read MoreIn June of 2012, if you visited the City of Elliot Lake's website, you would have seen an icon for the community's Facebook page. Today, that icon - and the Facebook page it led to - are gone.
Read MoreThis latest tweet by @celebboutique actually makes the NRA's tweet earlier today look somewhat tame in comparison. Whether this is ignorance, stupidity or a PR stunt, this is why companies need to have solid social media programs in place...
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Last week, we posted the top 5 risks of using Twitter, one of which was 'tone deafness'. There's a great example of this today. As the public tries to make sense of the horrible shooting in Colorado last night in which 12 people were killed, American Rifleman (the official journal of the National Rifle Association) apparently sent out the following tweet this morning at 9:20 am:
A quick check of the journal's Twitter page shows the tweet has since been removed. Someone at the organization likely deleted the tweet once they started getting inundated with retweets, negative comments from the public and critical news stories. But not before someone got a screen cap of it.
Here's just a sample of the backlash they're currently facing on Twitter:
Update: It appears the NRA has now gone beyond deleting the offensive tweet and has deleted the twitter account in question altogether. Talk about handling the situation the absolute wrong way in a social media world.
Read MoreMany spokespeople treat a media interview like a job interview. They sit there passively like a job applicant while the reporter asks question after question after question. The person being interviewed is like a human piñata, getting whacked with questions for 10, 15, even 20 minutes at a time. The result?
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One of the more popular stories from our newsletter this month is about Christine O'Donnell, the Republican candidate in Delaware's general election Senate race. Leading up to the election, O'Donnell's campaign was dogged by speculation about her involvement in witchcraft (speculation fueled by comments O'Donnell herself made during a 1999 TV interview). In an attempt at damage control, O'Donnell issued a 30-second TV spot aimed at convincing the public she's an ordinary person, "just like you". In a shockingly poor attempt at addressing the issue head-on, however, a smiling O'Donnell begins her ad with the following four words: "I'm not a witch." You can view the ad here.The Lesson: There are two lessons here. The first one relates to the 1999 interview in which she referred to "dabbling into witchcraft". Even if you don't aspire to hold public office one day, this probably isn't the kind of life experience to bring up in a network TV interview. The other lesson is about not repeating negative language. The TV ad would have been more effective (or at least less damaging) without the phrase "I'm not a witch." Even though she's refuting the claim, her statement has the opposite effect, serving as fodder for her opponents, critics and the media. In the end, O'Donnell lost her election bid.
Note: This story is taken from our 'Manage your Message' e-newsletter. To get your own copy sent to your inbox each month, sign up here.
BP continues to get hammered for the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The
spill, which is on its way to becoming the worst in U.S. history, has
irreparably harmed the company's carefully cultivated image of
environmental responsibility. Louisiana and federal officials in the
U.S. have described the company's cleanup efforts as being 'not
adequate'. No kidding.The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) faced a PR challenge last month after a cellphone picture of a sleeping worker went viral on the Internet. For the TTC...
