Category Archives: Strategy

Everything’s Coming Up Roses for 1-800 Flowers. Or Is It?

Roses are red, violets are blue.  1-800 Flowers knows the importance of crisis response, and you should too.

This Valentine’s Day, 1-800 Flowers failed to deliver hundreds of orders, sparking a flurry of online criticism and negative tweets (they actually experienced a similar problem last year, but faced even greater criticism when they failed to respond to the social media backlash).

Continue reading →

Roland Martin’s Twitter Gaffe Proves Executive Branding is Key

CNN announced yesterday that the network suspended Roland Martin, one of its commentators, three days after he posted Twitter messages that were interpreted by some to be anti-gay.

The commentator, very active on Twitter, received angry comments from online readers about the a tweet he posted concerning David Beckham’s Superbowl TV ad.… Continue reading →

PR Takeaways from Komen’s Crisis

The recent Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood debacle provides an interesting case study for how an organization’s social media strategy can (often unintentionally) become a positioning strategy more quickly than ever.

After several days of public backlash both online and off, Susan G.… Continue reading →

Preparing For a Crisis: Trust Trumps Likeability

Communications and marketing professionals are people pleasers by nature. However, concerns over being well-liked by executive staff can oftentimes negatively impact your organization’s crisis readiness. Being well-liked is great. But being a trusted advisor is better.

If you’re concerned that there are underlying issues within your organization that could create a communications crisis, but have been challenged in the past to address and fix concerns without being labeled as the ‘bad guy’, read on.… Continue reading →