Crisis communications: 2 stories and 1 lesson

The start of 2019 holds some great examples of how to handle – and how not to handle – communications in a crisis.

What to do: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos alleged in a blog post that the National Enquirer’s parent company was blackmailing him and threatening to publish lewd pictures of him. He took charge of his story – including the unflattering parts – before someone else could tell it.

What not to do: The furor over a blackface picture on an old yearbook page featuring Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was made worse by inconsistent and sometimes tone-deaf messaging.

The lesson: Honesty helps.

– Dan Stefano, WordWrite