Every weekday a popular retailer sends out an 11 a.m. daily deal email to subscribers. Yesterday there was no daily deal. Just a branded message to its subscribers, which said: “For the lives lost at Sandy Hook. We grieve. We remember. We honor.” Then the brand listed all of the first names of the children killed […]
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Tag Archives: Crisis Communications
File Under: Facebook Weird
November 29, 2012 
2 Comments
Bizarre stuff happens on Facebook. And mostly it’s because people forget that nothing is private on Facebook. The latest case of what can only to called “Facebook weird” happened this week on the Pigalle restaurant Facebook page. An unhappy diner posted a complaint on the page (which has since been removed). She described her Thanksgiving […]
Read morePawngo Stunt is an Example of “Vile” Marketing
February 7, 2012 8 Comments
Today most of New England is still bruised from the Patriots loss in the Super Bowl on Sunday. For the last 48-hours the city that has been spoiled by championships in football, baseball, basketball and hockey in the last decade was numb at the sudden and heart-breaking loss by the Patriots. You can feel it […]
Read more5 Tips for a Social Media Crisis
January 17, 2012 0 Comments
You can take this to the bank: If you are a brand then you’ll experience a social media crisis. It’s inevitable. Look at it this way. No brand in existence – not even the most popular and best-loved brands in the world – has ever avoided a negative phone call, a snarky email, a compliant […]
Read moreThe Wrath of Everyone & How to Avoid It
November 14, 2011 3 Comments
If you’re a brand (or a celebrity) and you make a mistake on a social network then expect the following: Righteous fury directed right at you in a sudden firestorm Personal insults and questions about your intelligence, character and integrity Lectures from social media “experts” (usually in the form of condescending blog posts) providing you […]
Read more We are Living in the Age of Hyper Speed
July 6, 2011 0 Comments
Good luck keeping up. News, events and crises move like a flash of lightning. As a communicator or a marketer, you can find yourself neck-deep in trouble because you decided to walk to the sub shop next door to pick-up your lunch. Today’s case in point: Entenmann’s. The pastry maker published a tweet yesterday to […]
Read moreA Single Tweet Can Cause A lot of Damage
February 4, 2011 3 Comments
We want companies to freely use social media. We demand honesty, transparency and authenticity from them on those channels. And then punish them accordingly when they do so. The latest example of this great social hypocrisy happened to Kenneth Cole, the chairman and chief creative officer of a shoe company of the same name. Cole’s […]
Read moreThis Tweet Brought to You By…
April 19, 2010 0 Comments
PR vs. Advertising The two disciplines have had an uneasy alliance for the last few years because of social media. On the agency side, advertising and PR companies want to own the social space. Both see social media as a natural extensions of what they already do: Advertisers see social media as an additional channel […]
Read moreAll Crises Are Social Media Crises
March 19, 2010 2 Comments
It has been a difficult day for Nestle. They have been attacked on many fronts because of allegations that some of their products (the Kit Kat candy bar in particular) contain palm oil that is grown in a way that endangers rainforests. Greenpeace created a rather graphic video featuring the Kit Kat that shows an […]
Read moreNo Screaming Allowed: Social Media & A Crisis
January 15, 2010 1 Comment
When a social media crisis strikes a company – it can feel like the sky just fell on your head. And not a sunny, cloudless sky, but one of those overcast, gray skies that look as heavy as lead. Suddenly, there’s an explosion of blog posts, comments, tweets, YouTube traffic, etc. and it’s all being […]
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HighTalk by George F. Snell III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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