Reputation

Nike found itself in the midst of a major PR crisis when The New York Times published an opinion piece on Mother’s Day that revealed Nike did not provide pregnant athletes with paid maternity leave. Nike has now released a statement saying that all future contracts will be written to protect pregnant athletes from discrimination. In this action, Nike is clearly following the crisis management playbook and changed the narrative in its favor in its quick remediation. What can we, as PR professionals, learn from this?

Call it a target market, tribe, or online community: In all cases, building and maintaining an audience for your products or services is now key to maintaining a competitive edge. What’s more, with the amount of time that audiences spend online rising, even as attention spans are declining, it’s more imperative than ever for businesses to find clever ways to engage end users.

There’s no rule in media relations that says communicators need to answer a reporter’s question immediately, particularly during a crisis. Never lie to a reporter, but sometimes doing the best thing for a brand means deferring on a question until you’re ready with an answer that’s carefully crafted. Veteran communicator Arthur Solomon offers tips about how to do this well.

We can speculate about why Wells Fargo created bogus credit cards or the motivation other brands had for doing things they knew were wrong or even illegal. Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is trying to remake itself into a purveyor of smoke-less product. It says it wants to discourage teen smoking. Then why was it flouting its own rules and using young, attractive influencers to tout its cigarette alternative?

This past Mother’s Day, The New York Times ran an opinion piece featuring several female athletes who are sponsored by Nike, focusing on the fact that Nike did not provide these athletes with paid maternity leave. The scandal reminds us that brand communicators should close the gap between what’s promoted and what’s practiced, and partner with legal teams to make sure that contractual language is consistent with brand values.

Our regular roundtable feature includes honorees from the 2018 PRNEWS Platinum PR awards and speakers from The Social Shake-Up. Among the questions we put to them: What qualities does a successful communicator need? With the onslaught of technology, how can brands ensure customers have a human experience? And what social media trends are you eager to learn more about during the Social Shake-Up?

Burger King did a lot of things right in the Impossible Whopper rollout. Audience testing and the role of data played a large part in their decision. Surprisingly, Burger King did not look to coerce vegetarians with this burger. Sometimes the most obvious audience is not the correct audience.

Marvel is far more than a brand of comics and films. It’s also a marketing juggernaut. Thing is, Marvel understands the “less is more” approach with its audience. Since it has identified distinct and overlapping segments for each film release, Marvel leaves breadcrumbs of suggestion, which are enough for hardcore fans to pick up the slack. This creates FOMO by withholding information and letting the earned media hype train build momentum with what is ostensibly service journalism.

The opioid epidemic has touched one in three Americans, a new survey from NPR and Ipsos shows. In addition, pharma’s narrative about its role in the epidemic has failed to resonate with a significant majority of the American public. What steps should industry communicators take to rehabilitate pharma’s reputation with the public? Crisis communications provides a possible option.

Kanye West played an opportunistic set at Coachella 2019’s second weekend, held on Easter morning and branded #SundayService. Seeking to repair the problematic year he’s had alienating his audience, Ye’s set was largely received as rushed, opportunistic and appropriative. The overpriced merch didn’t help either. That said, communicators can learn from Kanye’s disastrous #SundayService, particularly about when branding is inappropriate and how poor visual storytelling can drastically hurt a brand’s reputation.