The Spin Doctor

Crisis dos and don’ts

In an earlier post, I looked at the kinds of crises an organization should prepare for, in particular a smouldering crisis such as Swine Flu.

Last year, I became involved with one of the dairy companies (not Sanlu Group) in mainland China accused of adding melamine to its milk products. When they first approached us, they were in a panic. In some countries, senior managers found guilty of similar charges face stiff penalties; in China, the penalties are even more severe.

How Asia beholds beauty

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty  was launched in 2004 and since then has been drawing both praise and criticism. Created by Ogilvy & Mather and Edelman Public Relations, the Real Beauty campaign is intended to promote self-esteem among women and help free themselves “from beauty stereotypes”.

CEOs and Social Media

There’s an interesting post over at engageorm.com on CEOs not using Social Media. According to a study by UberCEO, not one CEO on the Fortune 100 had a blog, only two had Twitter accounts and 81 percent did not have a personal Facebook page. (You can download the report here).

Simon Clarke over at Freelance Unbound believes one reason for this is that Facebook can be “an awful time-sink”, and I agree. Yet blogging can be...

Essential reading: The Public Relations Writer's Handbook

Although I’ve been a professional writer for more than 25 years, I wouldn't be without this book on my bookshelf. Along with Webster’s Dictionary, Words into Type and The Elements of Style, it's an essential resource for any pr writer.

Nearly every conceivable writing assignment is covered (from press releases to speeches and video  scripts) and explained in a clear, concise step-by-step fashion. It’s also right up with the times. The book’s subtitle, The Digital Age, means that this version also includes sections on writing for the Internet, email, viral marketing and syndicated news feeds.

Swine Flu: Crisis, what crisis?

The debate rages on as to whether concern over the current Swine Flu epidemic is the product of a media fear-mongering campaign or a very real public health crisis. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, organizations in both the private and public sector were right to prepare for the worst when the epidemic first erupted.

I’m part of a team currently preparing a crisis management and communications plan for a NASDAQ-listed company based here in Hong Kong, and I have to admit we were caught off guard when stories on Swine Flu started coming in. Perhaps it was because we were still so focused on the actual process of preparing the plan.

Ethical blogging?

What better place to start my revived  blog than with an item on ethical blogging. Notably, this from blogger John Timmer at ars technica:

A few years ago, Tim O'Reilly kicked off a bit of a firestorm when he suggested that there should be a blogger code of conduct and offered some helpful suggestions for items that might appear in that code.