In 2019, you should finally get that crisis planning done, because your job depends on it. Despite what the PR industry says, a reputation crisis rarely creates long-term harm to a business (see long-term impact). This year, research has convinced us that the real impact of a crisis is on the jobs and reputations of…
Author: admin
Organisations that fear disputes put their business at greater risk. New Zealand’s banks increased the long-term risk of unreasonable regulations when they did not quarrel with policy-makers who criticised their ‘culture and conduct’. A recent review found no cases of criminal behaviour from New Zealand’s banks. But regulators’ still said they had concerns that “banks’…
The haste of organisations to avoid criticism has been spotted by journalists, who now use the PR industry’s thoughtless “apologise and dump” strategy to create even more public criticism. This appears to be what happened with the New Zealand Herald’s ‘sexist Santa’ story. The Auckland Santa parade organisers unceremoniously dumped their long-term Santa provider who…
Following the Jami-Lee Ross controversy, there was a lot of attention on the study by BPR’s Mark Blackham and academic Geoffrey Miller into the work experience and education of MPs. We studied the backgrounds of MPs for the same reason we examine the audiences of any client; to understand how they think and act. The…
He also got the opportunity to get in a sales pitch: “It’s coastal lamb. They are browsing grasses, herbs and clovers and shrubs and native bushes. So there is a flavour profile that is more complex and deeper than any other lamb”. If your business was criticised for its mode of operation, can you make…
When the Government announces a review into an industry, we advise clients to use the initial publicity to influence the outcome. At this early stage, most organisations hope against hope that the issue will go away or the outcome will be benign. So they avoid saying anything, except blandly claiming they “welcome the review”. This…
By Geoffrey Miller and Mark Blackham Since 2010 were have tracked MPs’ work and education backgrounds. We have done this to help us understand influences on their decisions, and to track our hypothesis that New Zealand politicians are becoming less like the voters than previously. Employment backgrounds and education are highly suggestive of our…
Academic institutions are one of the toughest environments for communicating. Most academic PR challenges are effectively internal issues exposed to the general public. They arise because there is a wide variety of strongly held opinions among the audience groups, a passionate diversity of opinion about educational purpose, and a hierarchy with only nominal control….
Organisations are often exasperated by the tendency of media to choose one ‘narrative’, making it challenging to get the other side of the story accurately reported. One way of circumventing media-driven narrative is to not give journalists the time to shoehorn quotes from an interview into their stories. A sure fire way of achieving…
Many New Zealand organisations are launching significant change programmes, transformations, or new operating models. These initiatives are intended to deliver benefits to customers and organisations, so they involve all parts of a business, and a wide range of stakeholders. Why then does mentioning ‘transformation’ or ‘operating model’ often elicit groans of despair from communications…