Stories by Seth Arenstein

You’ve been chosen to write a memo or report to the members of the C-Suite. Should you change your writing style and how you compose your content? Jenna Hilzenrath, VP, communications, Birchbox, advises mirroring the style of communications you’ve seen coming from the C-Suite, be it formal or informal.

The alleged murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has grown in intensity as a news story during the course of the past 17 days. Incidents involving the deaths of many more people fail to gain such traction. Several elements surrounding the Khashoggi incident may explain why.

Yesterday (Oct. 17) we wrote about the worsening reputation of USA Gymnastics (USAG). That post is updated with more bad news involving USAG. A former USAG president was arrested Oct. 18 for obstructing Texas’ investigation into Dr. Larry Nassar’s alleged crimes at the Karolyi Ranch. Our Oct. 17 post is updated with information about the arrest.

CEOs and board members spend much time worrying about and discussing risks to growth, though a new study from Deloitte indicates they lack strategic plans to counter the risks they’ve identified, such as disruptive technologies and cyber events, which lead the list. The study also shows brand reputation and culture are receiving too little attention.

Regulators already are calling for an investigation into why a Google+ data breach that was discovered in March was made public only this week. Google claims the breach was minor and did not warrant sending an alert to users, though the data of 500,000 might have been compromised. A Google blog post, though, seems to want to hide the data breach, too, creating bad optics for the company.

Despite the demand for transparency, traditional thinking still holds that when brands receive bad news they should do their best to keep it quiet. When a brand disrupts this pattern and amplifies its bad news, it becomes newsworthy. This describes the case of a gunmaker that issued a press release when its bank refused to continue doing business with it.

It was temporary relief that Facebook’s largest data breach to date occurred in the midst of non-stop coverage of the Judge Brett Kavanaugh brouhaha. Still, the incident and a story in The Washington Post point to serious issues for Facebook as it attempts to monitor its gargantuan site.

While it might be too early for data and analytics to verify it, Amazon’s pledge to boost wages to $15 per hour certainly appears to be a PR win for the retail giant. Looking at it deeper, Amazon almost certainly calculated the implications of balking, though PR considerations and optics likely cemented the move.

Bell, formerly Bell Helicopter, is another example of a brand where the PR title is outdated. For the past five years the CCO, Robert Hastings, has been building what the company calls its strategic communications department. Hastings urges his staff to view its work strategically, since the goal is to use communication to influence measurable business outcomes. That’s strategic communications not PR.

A new report using analytics puts a numerical value on how brands react to PR crises. It also says the market predicts within five days whether or not a brand’s value will gain or decline based on how it reacts to crisis.