Tag: Crisis Communications
Consumers are Not Crash Test Dummies
Toyota’s PR initiative to aggressively work to discredit drivers who have encountered apparent problems with Toyota cars and to complain that the news media has not treated the company fairly is big bully PR from a bygone era.
Driving Toyota’s Reputation into the Wall
All of the problems, the issues, the crisis, the severe damage to brand reputation currently facing Toyota are self-inflicted by the company. And, there are revelations each day that Toyota has been aware of safety issues.
Corporate Dumb and Dumberer
CTS Corporation of Elkhart, Indiana – a company many of us have never heard of – has bubbled into the news as the maker of the faulty Toyota accelerator pedals linked to the biggest vehicle recall in automotive history, a recall even NPR, which chooses its words carefully, has called “unprecedented.”
Nobody Ever Kicked in the Door
Back when I was an on-air correspondent for CBS News, I witnessed how many organizations reacted in crisis. It was usually a fumbling manner that fell into into one of three different yet predictable styles: Pull down the shades, turn out the lights, say nothing, pretend it will go away, and discuss changing the name [...]
Crisis Response in the Internet Era
Web 2.0 has changed crisis response in the world of PR from “announcements” by an organization to a “conversation.” Forget the old days of Mike Wallace kicking in the door with his camera crew behind him. That never really happened, anyway, even though it has become folklore in the corporate world where many CEOs fear [...]
The Brandeis Ripple Effect
The headline in The Boston Globe online boldly told the story – “Crisis raises questions on Brandeis campus.” The recession and the depth of America’s financial is clobbering universities, which seemingly are unprepared for a crisis on every front. Were it not for the famous and respected name of Brandeis, this story may be replicated [...]
The Ketchum-FedEx-Twitter Saga Continues
The purpose of this posting is to pull back the veil, and attempt to get added perspective on what may have developed as one of the first, if not the first, examples of crisis communications in today’s new and evolving online Web 2.0 social media world. Last evening, there were so many visitors to this [...]
