Crisis Management

Airlines have a poor reputation for customer service, but American Airlines has recently fought to turn that around through social media.

The pixie dust around Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer is fading fast, as one of its mainstays, Yahoo Mail, has become a consistent PR headache.

Authenticity is all the rage these days. According to the social media gurus, you have to be authentic if you want to have followers and likes. The crisis communications experts will tell you that authenticity is key to recovery in a crisis. But there are times when authenticity just doesn’t work.

Buckle up. Change in the PR field has been accelerating at a rapid clip in the last several years and 2014 will be no exception. As PR moves closer and closer to the core of strategic marketing, C-level managers increasingly expect PR pros to demonstrate their value and align communications with the organization’s overall goals and objectives, financial and otherwise.

Paul Walker’s death in a fiery high-speed car crash raises some tough PR questions for Universal. Universal already had a “do as I say, not as I do” PSA starring Walker in the can. As of this morning, the PSA had only 16,593 views on YouTube. Should Universal promote that PSA harder? Make more Walker PSAs?

“Tell it first and tell it fast.” That’s the absolute journalistic rule for those reporting on a headline-grabbing event like this week’s fatal Metro-North train derailment in Spuyten Duyvil, N.Y. For PR professionals, specifically crisis managers, getting swiftly ahead of such a story while controlling potentially damaging details is of paramount importance.

It’s said that we speak an average of 16,000 words each day. That’s a lot of talking. As communicators, we appreciate fine words and clever turns of phrases.  But on this day after a long… Continued

One of the Cardinal Rules of public relations is that perception trumps all. You may have the law on your side, for example, but the public won’t care much if it considers the optics ill conceived.

Consumer Reports released its annual corporate Naughty & Nice List this week, which highlights who the best and worst holiday retail and service providers.

The babies just keep on coming. More than a few states in America are experiencing baby booms.