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No matter the size of your company, mistakes happen, issues occur. Once there you have several options. You can own the situation, apologize heartily and announce a plan of action. Or you could say nothing and hope the situation remains a secret. Last, you could issue a weak apology and hope the whole thing blows over. PRNEWS Crisis and Measurement Summit speaker Bobby Amirshahi, SVP at Univision, explains the good, the bad and the ugly of crisis apologia.

Moving from being a brand communicator at Pfizer to an agency executive prompted Dean Mastrojohn to think about team building. He offers three lessons he learned from his years on the client side. The veteran communicator is using these lessons as he builds an integrated media team as part of his agency position.

You may remember the backlash of #OscarsSoWhite after the 2015 nomination announcements. Many outraged directors, producers and actors, including Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith, boycotted the awards in 2016. How did the 2020 Oscars do on diversity and inclusion? We take a crisis PR perspective to grade last night’s ceremony and the larger issue facing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In this regular series with the Institute of Public Relations, veteran communicators relate lessons learned early in their careers that continue to help them. This installment features Shirley Powell, SVP, Cox Automotive, who received a great education from her first boss. One of his toughest lessons remains with Powell to this day.

Most indications are that data and analytics are rising in importance in the world of PR and communications. Still there are some communicators who refuse to measure. If you find yourself trapped in a non-measurement culture, how can you change things? Measurement guru Katie Paine argues that testing assumptions via audience surveys is a simple route to take. But first, buy Starbucks, cookies and alcohol.

When it comes to crisis, there’s good and bad news, according to a survey from PRNEWS and CS&A International, a risk, crisis and business continuity management consultancy. More than half the executives surveyed said their firms have crisis plans. Far fewer knew whether or not those plans are updated regularly. In addition, few companies are practicing crisis scenarios regularly.

While everyone anticipates the release of Iowa Caucus results, PR and crisis management pros are more inclined to discuss the crisis response of the Iowa Democratic Party. Technological glitches may be common, but to fail on such a grand stage, when timely results are expected, shows cracks in an already shaky system, debilitating public trust in a year when it’s most important.

In a far-ranging interview, new PRSA chair T. Garland Stansell discusses the need for PR pros to be courageous enough to accept and shape change, his goals for the 30,000-member organization and the challenges of communications measurement.

In this 4th installment of a series on measurement from Intrado Digital Media, we examine why communicators measure and how to discover the best metrics to find ROI at your company.

On first glance you might not think diversity and inclusion has anything to do with crisis communications. In fact, it has everything to do with it, argues Esther-Mireya Tejeda, SVP, head, corporate communications & PR at Entercom.