Tag Archives: communications

New Crisis Management Book: The Essential Crisis Communications Plan

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Crisis Communications Plan

The Essential Crisis Communications Plan
Simplifies Creation of Customized Crisis Management Plan

Crisis and Issues Management Veteran Tim O’Brien Condenses Decades
of  Crisis Management Experience into a Real-time, Step-by-Step Handbook

Pittsburgh, PA, August 2, 2023 – Crisis communications and issues management veteran Tim O’Brien’s new book, The Essential Crisis Communications Plan: A Crisis Management Process that Fits Your Culture, is unique in the world of communications-centric books in that it is an actual crisis management plan readers can quickly adapt to their own operating cultures.… Read the rest

Public Relations: Don’t Just Articulate…Resonate

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PR messaging

One of the more common problems I’ve seen when it comes to public relations messaging is that while many messages tend to contain all of the right information and make all the right points, they don’t resonate with people.

More to the point, their creators are great at articulation, but they don’t know how to make those same messages relatable to the targeted audiences.… Read the rest

The Pertinent Negative: Find Out What’s Missing

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pertinent negative

There’s a term used in medicine called “the pertinent negative” that helps doctors and other medical professionals diagnose illnesses and identify problems. Essentially, it’s to look for what’s missing.

For example, a pertinent negative is when it appears someone has heart failure but they haven’t gained weight, a common symptom of heart failure. To a doctor that’s weird, and it’s a pertinent negative, because weight gain is missing from the symptom list.… Read the rest

Sound Bite Case Study: Meet the News Media Where It Lives

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In the communications business, to say we need to meet the media where they live is essentially to say, make it as easy as possible on reporters, editors, journalists and producers. Give them the content they need when they need it, where they need it and in the most user-friendly format possible.

The problem most newsrooms face these days is lack of resources.… Read the rest

Is Your Review and Approval Process Killing Your Results?

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I got an email today from a respected consulting organization that provided details on a recent ransomware attack that occurred over the July 4th weekend.  The rather polished e-news alert was robust in its information, but there was a problem. It’s two weeks too late, and I’ve already gleaned all of the information in the article from other sources when the news first broke.… Read the rest

Whose Truth Is It, Anyway?

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I had an interesting interchange with a colleague, Karen Swim, President of Words for Hire in Detroit, on social media recently. The thing that prompted our discussion was her posting of this article from Forbes about a new analytics program called Protagonist which is claimed to help “better manage communications strategies.”

That sounds good, and if it does what it says it does it could be very meaningful, but I have my concerns for one simple reason.… Read the rest

Why Emotional Language is More Powerful than Facts

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In more and more situations of late, I have found myself counseling clients that the facts can’t speak for themselves, and that we need to frame facts in the proper context with a little help from emotion. It would seem that in today’s communications environment, one person’s fact is another person’s opinion.

What does seem to break through is anger, fear, joy, surprise, sadness and trust, though some emotions seem to dominate more than others.… Read the rest

What Can a Traffic Cop Teach You About Business and Communications?

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My dad’s birthday was always around or on Father’s Day, so the annual flurry of sentimental social media posts I see from others often spurs me to reflect on my own dad. So, when it all came around this year, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the lessons he taught me about business and communications, even though he spent the majority of his own working life as a police officer.… Read the rest