Vanity Fair magazine nearly melted the Internet last week with its cover story on Caitlyn Jenner. But lost in the tidal wave of coverage was a revealing comment by VF Editor Graydon Carter describing how news is made today. He uttered a truth that many editors might privately acknowledge but few would dare repeat in public.
Organizations today must be more imaginative about strategies for engaging their audiences. Long gone are the days when a press release or a print advertisement alone would get results. New digital tools abound, but it’s easy to get lost in the buzzwords. We speak to one of our partner firms to make sense of a shifting […]
Dick Fuld was never that skilled with the media when he was CEO of Lehman Brothers. Nearly seven years later, he still isn’t.
Meeting with opinion-makers is often a good communication strategy. It has risks, but they usually can be managed. Unless, that is, you’re Janet Yellen, in which case such meetings are best avoided. With an investigation underway about a leak of confidential information, the Fed is learning that lesson the hard way.
Vanguard and Blackrock, two of the world’s largest fund managers, recently warned corporate boards to expect tougher scrutiny on governance issues during this year’s proxy balloting. Growling like this can be an effective communication strategy, up to a point.
Lumber Liquidators is getting nailed. An investigative report on 60 Minutes accused the company of selling unsafe laminated flooring. A predictable fall in the company’s share price ensued. But rather than mount a defense, Lumber Liquidators has been mostly silent. That’s making a bad situation worse.
Reeling from press reports about his personal financial maneuvers, HSBC chief Stuart Gulliver offered a few plain words of explanation. He may have revealed more than he intended. His remarks show the bank is even more deeply flawed than the headlines suggest.
Say “risk communications,” and people usually think of crisis management: what to say when bad things happen. That’s one part of it. But there’s another side to risk communications that involves taking risk with intelligence and purpose. President Obama’s State of the Union address offers a great example.
In 2003 Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser to President Bush, met with editors of The New York Times in an effort to dissuade them from printing an article she feared would damage US interests. Strong-arming the press was one of two tactics favored by the White House for squelching unwanted news; the other was […]
A good leader learns from mistakes, especially those of his rivals. Jeb Bush is said to be preparing to release a decade of tax returns, intent on avoiding the mistake that helped sink Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.