Crisis Management

PR crises are winnable, says Hill+Knowlton Strategies’ crisis chief and managing partner Kevin Elliott. In fact, organizations should see crises as opportunities to display their bona fides to the market. He cites research showing brands that manage a PR crisis well can and do improve their market value.

A former chairman of Burson-Marsteller Jim Lindheim takes you inside a PR crisis, where he emphasizes the importance of solving issues within and outside the C-suite and boardroom. His insight into crisis also forms the basis for his recent novel, which he teases here along with excellent crisis-management tips.

We’re living in an unusual time when a company the world’s richest man owns scraps plans to build a second headquarters in NY and it isn’t the lead news story. Yet there are myriad communications questions surrounding Amazon’s departure from NY, which had become largely a war of communications. Here are a few takeaways.

One professional well versed on the topic is Andrew Sherry, vice president of communications for the Miami-based Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that funds journalism, community engagement and the arts, with a special focus on 26 cities where John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Sherry will share his insights on a panel at the upcoming Crisis Management Summit on Feb. 27-28 in Miami Beach, hosted by PR News. In a recent Q&A, Sherry gave a preview of his session, “How to Respond to Attacks to Your Brand on Social Media…..And How To Measure Outcomes.”

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, our blogger looks for things to love about PR and marketing. Certainly PR pros like their jobs (we’re unsure if they love them). And the profession can do more better and quicker than ever. Unfortunately, the public sometimes has a tarnished view of PR. It’s time for this to change.

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, it’s the right time to discuss what we love about PR and marketing. There’s plenty to say. We’re unsure if PR pros love their jobs, but we know they like them.… Continued

The maxim for writers is “write what you know.” Jim Lindheim followed that advice. The former Burson-Marsteller chairman has just written “Spin,” a novel with a PR crisis at its center. In this hybrid column, Lindheim offers a glimpse of the novel and provides best practices from years in the crisis-management trenches.

The enmity between legal and PR is supposed to be a given, particularly during PR crises. In the first of a series about organization, we find that the digital era has made it important for communicators and lawyers to work in concert.

There are few topics in PR and communications that are discussed more than crisis management. To get you ready for the PR News Crisis Summit in Miami Beach later this month, we asked speakers from that event to respond to our roundtable question: What two areas should communicators invest in so they can manage future PR crises?

In each edition of PR News we highlight takeaways from select articles as well as important additions to the PR News Subscriber Resources Center, which is available to paid subscribers.