As has been the case with nearly every natural disaster in recent memory, social media has been a life saver for individuals and organizations affected by the massive ash plume resulting from the Icelandic volcano eruption. A recent post on the SharkeyMedia blog shows just how social media became an …
Courtroom Crisis Management
Rarely does a crisis management professional have to use his skills to defend their own reputation. However, as this quote from TheWrap.com explains, we are about to see one of the biggest names in the business take on this very task: Mike Sitrick, called the Wizard of Spin for his …
Why Can’t We Learn from Other People’s Mistakes?
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This George Santayana quote is one of the most famous in the world, yet we constantly see organizations making the same mistakes that others have made before them. In an article originally written for his own newsletter and …
Harmonic Convergence
Would you rather have your online reputation be associated with your beautifully written corporate values or with the terms “vomit” and “crap”? That is the question posed by guest author Merrie Spaeth in her article for the latest Crisis Manager, “Harmonic Convergence”. In it, Merrie examines the reasons why it’s …
Crisis Manager Online
The latest issue of our Crisis Manager newsletter is now up on the Bernstein Crisis Management website! This time we have a guest who, although frequently mentioned on this blog, has never before graced the pages of the Crisis Manager with a piece of her own, the one and only …
CA Attorney General investigates Palin Payments
California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s announcement that his office has kicked off a “broad investigation” (pun intended?) regarding a California State University foundation’s payments to Sarah Palin has raised a number of issues like these, from a USA Today article: In a statement issued by his office, Brown insisted his …
Learning From Toyota
Every crisis holds valuable lessons for both those directly affected and their peers. A recent AP article, published on ASICentral.com, asked professionals for some lessons that other business owners can learn from Toyota’s recent crisis management mistakes and got several responses, including one from BCM President Jonathan Bernstein: “…the best …
Twitter Developers Upset
When Twitter purchased Atebits, maker of the Tweetie app, it slapped the face of loads of third-party developers who had helped rocket Twitter to a raging success. More than 70,000 applications have been created to allow users to tweet on the go, geotag, shorten URLs, post pictures and more, and …
Three Questions to Keep You on Track During a Crisis
How are my stakeholders being negatively affected by what’s happening? What can I do to rectify that situation? How can I best communicate my actions to my stakeholders? These three questions, posed by Grant Smith in a post on his Media Insights and Crisis Expertise blog, can keep your organization …
College Crisis Management
According to a recent poll, many college and universities have never actually tested their crisis management plans. The poll, whose results were published by Campus Technology.com, contains some figures that are bound to cause concern for students, teachers and their families: According to the results, 54 percent of institutions have …
Trouble at the Vatican
By now the Vatican should be no stranger to crisis management. After all, the organization has faced issues with misconduct and molestation among their members for years, yet every time a new situation comes up they somehow manage to bungle the response. In a recent post on his ManagementHelp.org PR …
Perfect Description
Since the advent of social media platforms, boundaries between CEOs and the general public have become almost nonexistent. Customers now have direct access to the people managing companies, and they expect them to be openly accountable. This provides companies with the unique opportunity to address a crisis situation by telling …
AOL Apologizes
When AOL CEO Tim Armstrong publicly bashed work done by some of his employees, the media grabbed ahold of the quote and ran with it. Armstrong quickly realized that having your employer’s disparaging comments aired in public is bad for morale and invited the 250 employees whose work he had …
Jump Start
Every terrorist attack or natural disaster serves as a reminder of just how fragile the things we take for granted really are. In a blog post motivated by last week’s subway bombings in Moscow, Eileen O’Connor, of law firm McDermott, Will & Emery, described some ways you can get a …
Four Ways to Lie
Bernstein Crisis Management President Jonathan Bernstein’s article, “Four Ways to Lie,” is now available at his newest blog, featured at the Free Management Library. The post contains several different ways that dishonesty among individuals and organizations can create crisis management issues, as well as lending some advice to the Vatican …