Crisis Insider

This month’s reader question asks whether it’s ethical to pitch positive stories as a way to deflect attention when you suspect a crisis is about to hit your organization.

Each year, the Institute for Crisis Management (ICM) tracks crisis-related news stories, classifying them as “sudden” or “smoldering” and putting them into one of 16 categories for its annual report.

just when you thought cyber would recede from the news cycle after it dominated the June Summit between President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Russian hacking returned it to the headlines.

Does your company have a process to shift gears quickly on its web site when a crisis hits? If not, during a grave incident or crisis your site might continue doing business as usual, loaded with upbeat content and imagery.

When cybercrime hits, you realize quickly it’s very different from almost any other crisis. It requires a tailored and measured approach to communicating with stakeholders. In the event of a cyberattack: Are you ready to comply with regulatory requirements? Do you have back-up channels so you can communicate with stakeholders? Do you have a back-up list of employee and stakeholder contacts? Are you ready to respond publicly without inciting threat actors to wreak more havoc on the brand?

For this month’s Buzz Box, we look at names and numbers you should know.

While companies may feel enormous pressure to issue a major diversity announcement, tectonic shifts rarely work, according to the NAACP’s Aba Blankson. Instead, she says, acknowledge what the company has, or, more importantly, has not done on racial justice previously.

In this month’s Buzz Box, we explain the Tinkerbell Effect and Green Hydrogen and their impact for crisis communicators.

Crisis Insider contributor Brett Bruen talks with Alyssa Farah, former President Trump’s director of communication, about lessons learned from what were undoubtedly some of the most intense interactions any media relations team ever experienced. Several are relevant as companies prepare for, and respond to, today’s polarized political climate.

For this month’s Crisis Interview, we talked with Kelly Stepno and Jim Moorhead of APCO about risk and risk assessment.