Crisis Management

Twitter got out in front of its own crisis, emailing its business customers about a bug that stored account passwords, unmasked, in an internal log. The bug left Twitter passwords exposed, and visible, to everyone within the company. Still, its statements raised a few important questions.

A cardinal rule of PR is for companies to be as transparent as possible. But how much is that? It depends, of course, but providing almost no transparency when something is afoot can spell trouble. More specifically it can lead to someone telling your story for you. For a few months Nike has refused to be transparent about significant departures from its senior ranks. The NY Times also initially had closed lips about the departure of one of its top editors. Transparency isn’t easy.

As we say in This Week in PR , you could look at the Starbucks situation in several ways: for a brand with such a progressive stance on diversity and inclusion, it didn’t deserve to get blasted the way it

When you bring hundreds of communicators together over two days for a conference on PR Measurement in Philadelphia, it gets interesting in a way the founding fathers never anticipated. “It’s like one big therapy session… Continued

YouTube is once again in hot water for running ads on channels promoting disturbing content, a CNN investigation has uncovered. More than 300 organizations had their ads running on channels promoting Nazis and North Korean propaganda, to name two. For now, brands are still willing to take the risk.

As communicators know, crisis communication begins well before a crisis occurs. Southwest’s communicators demonstrated they were prepared for April 17’s fatal incident aboard flight 1380 from NY to Dallas. Beyond their technical competence, Southwest used several tactics to inject a human touch in its crisis communications.

Starbucks has had a rough week after an issue of racial discrimination at one of its stores in Philadelphia led to national headlines. In response, the company has gone beyond the traditional CEO apology and announced that it will close more than 8,000 stores across the U.S. for one day for antibias training among its employees.

Communicators can never be too prepared for a crisis, especially in the age of social media. Luckily, there are dozens of tools—many of them free—your company can leverage to assist in planning for and managing crisis communications swiftly and effectively. Barry Reicherter, executive vice president and senior partner/director of insights at Finn Partners, lists three key priorities for monitoring social before, during and after a crisis and an artillery of programs for each.

Starbucks found itself in hot water that had nothing to do with brewing coffee when the manager at a downtown Philadelphia location called the police on two black men who were sitting in the shop, waiting for a colleague to show. For communicators, this crisis offers substantial takeaways about the power of social listening and the need for timely accountability.

The USPS responded to President Trump’s executive order by aligning with his frustrations and acknowledging that it has several opportunities to improve. As a case study, this statement provides communicators with a practical, tactical example of how to handle criticism and calls for reform when those calls come from the very top.