Crisis Management

Yahoo Inc. announced on its official Tumblr and Twitter accounts that it had confirmed a hack from late 2014 that copied information, including account passwords, security questions and answers, from 500 million user accounts. The announcement comes after a challenging several months for the tech giant, which Verizon agreed to acquire in July 2016 for $4.8 billion.

In the many months since its E. coli outbreak and the subsequent cleanup, Chipotle has made several attempts to rebuild trust in the brand. The release of the short video, “A Love Story,” did little to divert attention away from E. coli. Not even free burritos could bring the masses back into its restaurants. The new campaign meets customers’ fears head-on, a smart move that might have appeared bolder had it launched sooner.

You saw the headlines Sept. 8 and 9 discussing the record payment of $185 million Wells Fargo made to regulators. The basic details surrounding the reason for this fine also are well known: Some 5,300 bank employees allegedly created an estimated 2 million bogus bank and credit card accounts. Some were started with fake names. Others used identities and funds of unsuspecting Wells Fargo customers. The 5,300 employees were fired during the past five years, the bank said. How can the bank rebound from this hit to its reputation? We asked a specialist in crisis PR and one in reputation management. Both stressed honesty, transparency and accountability.

Wells Fargo became part of a club Sept. 9 that it had no interest in joining. For want of a better term, we’ll call it a crisis club, although the media and PR practitioners use that word too loosely when describing smaller issues and dilemmas. Full disclosure: The crisis club exists only as a conceptual construct. Sort of like the fake Wells Fargo accounts.

The question of Hillary Clinton’s health has dogged her campaign for president well before she quickly left a ceremony in New York on Sept. 11 that honored the 15th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. Republican candidate Donald Trump has tweeted consistently that Clinton lacks the strength and stamina to be president.

It’s true – a lot of people just don’t understand what PR people do. They think it’s about pitching the media, chasing positive coverage, then rinsing and repeating. Certainly media relations is an important component… Continued

A look at the week that was in PR. This edition includes several Wells Fargo miscues and a poor showing from NBC Today host Matt Lauer during a presidential debate.

There were high expectations as NBC News headed into what was referred to as a preliminary debate between the two presidential candidates. But for many the “Commander-in-Chief Forum” that aired on MSNBC on Sept. 7 crumbled in the hands of its host, the longtime “Today” show anchor, Matt Lauer.

We’re pretty sure Wells Fargo didn’t commit its recent goof for the benefit of teachers at the nearly 500 colleges and universities in the U.S. that have programs in PR, advertising, strategic communications and integrated marketing communications. Still, the financial brand’s inexcusable print ads, which seemed to urge youngsters to forego careers in the arts in favor of positions in science and technology, provided excellent lecture material for instructors teaching the estimated 51,000+ students enrolled in PR, advertising and strategic communications courses.

An undisclosed IT problem disrupted the British Airways’s check-in process at airports around the world causing lengthy delays. But for many that were stuck on the ground, the lack of information from the brand was less than ideal. Unlike other outages experienced by airlines like Delta and Southwest, British Airways focused on responding to people individually on Twitter with generic statements.