A bad experience shared on the Internet can travel at a velocity that can reach millions of people over night. As people begin to identify with or share their own experiences – the impact on a company’s reputation and sales can be dramatic. No airline can afford to forget the viral impact of the YouTube [...]

It’s a fundamental rule of crisis management: Think with a little less head and a little more heart. That’s a concept BP’s CEO Tony Hayward should have embraced. Instead, since the oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, Hayward has been criticized for a growing list of public gaffes in handling one of the [...]

Com­panies these days must under­stand that every­body has a voice. So the best way to avoid a pub­lic rela­tions night­mare is to give great cus­tomer ser­vice right out of the gate. “It’s a bad day when a customer’s upset,” says Dave Car­roll, cre­ator of the musi­cal tril­ogy United Breaks Gui­tars. United repeatedly refused to listen [...]

The peer-to-peer communications explosion “social media” represents, did not exist in 1979 when the Ixtoc oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, nor did they exist when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989. Ixtoc and Valdez are two environmental accidents that are on a similar scale to the BP spill. What seems to [...]