12 February 2018 by Steph Gray
Oxfam’s leadership and communications team has had a torrid weekend, dealing with a media story about shocking allegations of a cover-up of sexual abuse of beneficiaries in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in 2011. There will be countless crisis consultants offering their hot takes on what looks like a serious…
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5 February 2018 by Steph Gray
We’ve been doing business in the USA and Canada for several years, helping clients in sectors from pharmaceuticals to financial services, energy to agritech to stress-test their crisis and emergency preparedness through crisis drills incorporating a realistic and dynamic social media element. This month we enter an incredibly exciting new…
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5 January 2018 by Steph Gray
Following the soap opera of a crisis on social media, blow-by-blow, saps leaders' time and focus and prevents them stepping back to consider the bigger picture.
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8 June 2016 by Steph Gray
What happens when polarising public figures pick sides and choose you?
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19 January 2016 by Steph Gray
I’ll let you in on a nasty little technique we use in our social media crisis simulation exercises from time to time. If the team is strong, is using its lines well and deftly handling stakeholders and customers, we’ll sometimes throw in a little bit of a curveball: a bit of…
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5 October 2015 by Steph Gray
We’ve run dozens of crisis simulations with communications teams large and small, from global multinationals to local city emergency responders. Here’s what we’ve found sets the great teams apart from the rest: 1. They’re quick to the first response Social media doesn’t wait patiently for you to clear your lines…
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2 June 2015 by Steph Gray
“I could kill you,” screams the angry man. “Why don’t you then?” comes the reply. “Because there’s witnesses”. This, from the ugly scene at a recent road rage incident between a motorist and a cyclist illustrates a phenomenon we’re seeing again and again, both sparking new crises for organisations and giving existing…
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27 April 2015 by Steph Gray
Brits have a complex relationship with business. On the one hand, there’s widespread admiration for entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson and an audience that enjoys watching Lord Sugar delivering commercial home truths in the Boardroom on The Apprentice. But on the other, Ipsos-MORI found 7 out of 10 Brits feel that…
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22 March 2015 by Steph Gray
At the moment, my three year old is enjoying Roger Hargreaves’ Mister Men stories at bedtime. They’re bright, to-the-point moral stories about folk who take their everyday traits – clumsiness, noisyness, grumpiness – to extremes, until they get sorted out by their neighbours. One of our favourites is Little Miss Helpful,…
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17 February 2015 by Steph Gray
There was almost certainly a very sound commercial logic behind Barnados paying Made in Chelsea star Binky Felstead to endorse their retail campaign on social photo network Instagram. But the Sun splash yesterday and the social media outrage around it, highlights the complexity of modern charity fundraising and the need to plan…
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