March 15, 2021
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Is Fighting Fake Videos Mission Impossible? No, But Tom Cruise Fakes Show Online Threats Rising
By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications
Deepfake videos have been making news and shaking up people who worry about truth and fact for several years now. The recent release of Tom Cruise deepfakes on Tik Tok shows the technology has reached a new, disquieting level of realism. This increasing realism and ease of creation mean deepfakes must be factored into crisis-scenario planning.
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Beware Humor on Social Media – the Joke May Be on You and Your Reputation
By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications
The funny thing about trying to be humorous on social media is that it’s too often not funny – and can be quite damaging. Exhibit 1: On March 8, Burger King United Kingdom posted this to Twitter: “Women belong in the kitchen.” On International Women’s Day.
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THE LAST SHOW – 27 Entertainers on the Disbelief and Despair that Took Over When Covid-19 Shut Down Their World.
One year ago, many found themselves in long lines purchasing toilet paper and other staples. Many kissed their parents and grandparents for the last time, many became fulltime caregivers and home school teachers, many lost their jobs – and too many lost their lives. If there is indeed a tunnel with a light at the very end, that light now appears to shine with increasing intensity. There are millions of stories about the sudden worldwide shutdown one year ago. After sifting through hundreds, we came across an article from this week’s Washington Post that captures the angst of the time.
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Inside the PGA Tour's Shutdown at the 2020 Players Championship
One year ago, a novel coronavirus mushroomed from an international issue into a global pandemic. It was a professional crisis no one could have adequately prepared for, and it all unfolded here – in a dim, cozy conference room on the second floor of the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse. Huddled inside the Board Room, surrounded by oil paintings of the former commissioners, the Tour’s executive leadership team met for more than 12 hours on March 12, 2020, trying to come to grips with an existential threat to their business.
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Why Oprah’s Interview with Harry and Meghan Matters
Why should Americans care about the royal family when we have people still dying of COVID-19? Instead of talking about people of privilege, shouldn’t we be concentrating on those who desperately need financial help? Forget the queen, tell me when I’m going to be vaccinated!
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Our New Seminars
Social Media and the Courts: A New Frontier
There have been more “trials of the century” than we have had centuries. This seminar explores why trials have been big news for decades, but also how profoundly coverage of those trials has changed with the digital revolution in communications - and what lawyers need to know about it. Topics include: a brief history of high-profile media coverage of trials – and the sudden, recent change in how the coverage works; how and why social media are now crucial for journalists and why you must understand “iterative reporting”; social media’s impact on jurors and court rulings; the scarcity of research on how social media and digital journalism impact witnesses and trials overall; pros and cons of social media and digital journalism in trial coverage.
Getting to the Truth: How to Detect Fake News
Fake news is not new news. Masters of the art include Benjamin Franklin. But in the digital media era, when information – true and false – travels in seconds, fake news has become a prevalent challenge in society. This seminar delves into the history of fake news, explores how we are living through a second coming of Yellow Journalism and provides practical tips for how to recognize fake news – and avoid spreading it.
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Blunt Talk
Private sector preparedness is not a luxury, it is a cost of doing business in the post 9/11 world. It is ignored at a tremendous potential cost in lives, money and national security.”
The 9/11 Commission Report
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Our New Seminars
Crisis Communications For Educators Amid a Pandemic of Crises
The echo chamber of social media. A tense, politically charged national landscape. And the Covid- 19
pandemic. Learn how to help protect your school’s reputation in one of the most challenging communications atmospheres imaginable.
Crisis Communications and Your School in the Social Media Era
Social media is now where your school’s reputation, earned over hard years of accomplishment, can be shattered in minutes. Learn best practices for effective crisis management on social media, including applying the fundamentals of effective crisis communications; using social media before the crisis; threat assessment and response; leveraging social media to your advantage; and specific action steps to help protect your reputation.
Crisis Communications and Social Media for Public Officials
For elected and public officials, social media represents special challenges – and special opportunities. Accessibility, information-sharing and gauging public interest are easier and more convenient than ever before. As are the opportunities to criticize, organize opposition and spread misinformation. And when a crisis hits, it will play out on social media. This seminar will help participants understand the influence of social media – and how it’s only going to grow. How public officials can use social media to the benefit of their organizations and constituents. And you’ll explore how to apply the best practices of effective crisis management on social media in a public setting.
For information about these new seminars, contact Thom Fladung, managing partner, Hennes Communications at 216-321-7774
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Attention School Board Members,
Superintendents & Attorneys
The Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA) has entered into a strategic partnership with Hennes Communications to provide crisis management and communications services to public school systems throughout the state of Ohio facing sudden challenges to their organizations’ reputations and operations. With this partnership, OSBA member school leaders have access
365 days a year to expert crisis communications professionals.
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Lots of PR Firms Sell Their Crisis Work –
Let The Buyer Beware
With no barriers to entry, every public relations firm in the U.S. now appears to offer “crisis communications.” They don’t. At least, all of those who claim to don’t.
Crisis work requires a different – and often counterintuitive – skill set from the traditional practice of public relations. It’s also an art form where more often than not we’re helping clients figure out not just what to say, but what to do, which isn’t something learned from a book.
Business advisers increasingly understand that the Court of Public Opinion is often as important, if not more so, than the Court of Law, especially with more than 95% of civil cases never going to trial, according to most estimates. And that approach increases among business advisers who understand their clients’ business models and want to offer holistic advice, rather than serving in a narrower or even transactional capacity.
If you have a crisis on your hands or an issue looming and you need communications help, the best questions can get you to the best answer:
- Can the communications or PR firm share a list of named clients involving crisis communications or issues management?
- Can you get a list of case studies that describe, in some detail, what the firm did for clients facing a similar situation to yours?
- Ask for the firm’s experience with crisis situations involving social media. Today, reputations built over years can be shattered in minutes on Facebook or Twitter.
- Ask for specifically who you’ll be working with on a day-to-day basis, their experience and examples of similar situations they’ve worked on.
- Ask if the firm writes crisis communication plans and what goes into those plans. Even if you don’t need a plan right now – or don’t have time to build one – you’ll learn how deeply the firm is immersed in crisis communications.
- Ask what kind of training the firm provides.
- And, perhaps, the most important question: What percentage of the firm’s overall work would be considered “crisis” work? If the answer is 10%, 20% – even 50% – think about whether you want communications about your crisis in the hands of a firm doing something else half the time or more.
Finally, remember: you can’t use communications to “spin” your way out of a crisis. That’s Hollywood. In the real world, you’ll get called on it and your crisis will get worse.
Our best advice: don’t hire a firm that tries to spin its own story.
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No one trains clients for high-stakes situations better than Hennes Communications. We can teach you how to communicate with power, mastering even the toughest interview, speech or presentation.
Call or email us today and ask us about crisis, media, spokesperson and presentation training/coaching for you, your top executives and managers.
Remember, it's usually not what you say, but how you say it. Never again go into a media interview unprepared or go before a hostile audience uncoached.
As the coronavirus situation begins to abate, we now offer this training in-person on a select basis or via Zoom and other video platforms. Please call for details
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3/15 Intown Club - Union Club of Cleveland
3/17 Jefferson County Safety Council
3/18 Logan County Safety Council
3/18 Galion County Safety Council
3/25 MN Festivals & Events Conference
4/2 Phillips Law Firm (Cincinnati)
4/4 American Public Power Association
4/6 Ohio State Bar Association
4/6 LeadingAge Pennsylvania
4/20 Ohio School Boards Association
4/20 BCI Fraud Conference
4/22 Council of School Attorneys
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5/10 Fairlawn Area Chamber of Comm.
5/12 Winding River M.P. Bootcamp
5/12 LeadingAge - Oregon
5/13 CPA Firm Mgmt. Association
5/19 LeadingAge Colorado
7/20 Southern Ohio Safety Council
9/22 Fire & Emergency Manufacturers
& Services Association (Tampa)
If you'd like to bring us in to speak at a conference or to your organization, either virtually or in-person, perhaps for your practice group, as a value-add for your existing clients or as a new business development event, please give Bruce Hennes a call at 216-321-7774.
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Hennes Communications
You have a situation.
We have a strategy.
Because the Court of Public Opinion is always in session.
www.crisiscommunications.com
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The Hennes Communications Team
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