Archive for May, 2008
Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on May 22nd, 2008
There was an interesting article in the New York Times recently about doctor’s acknowledging and apologizing for their medical mistakes. It is interesting to note that at the University of Michigan Health System, one of the first to experiment with a full disclosure approach (which includes apologizing face-to-face to patients), lawsuits dropped from 262 in August 2001 to 83 in August 2007.
As communicators, approaching an issue has always been about acknowledging the impact an action, situation, incident or tragedy has had on people – one person at a time. Sometimes what a communicator would like to do conflicts with what legal would…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on May 15th, 2008
I have to admit that I have been struggling with the point of Twitter – on both a personal and professional level. A colleague (and one of my best pals) sent me this article in Business Week magazine. It does a good job of explaining the purpose of Twitter. I think I might have to give it a try and see how it works. How about you? Is Twitter a tool that you have found useful?
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on May 15th, 2008
The BBC news carried a piece last week about how Swiss company Nestle had “deeply offended” the people of Azerbaijan with a recent marketing campaign aimed at selling cereal to the Azeri people.
As part of this campaign, Nestle attached a CD-ROM to cereal boxes that contained information about the countries of the world. The piece in the CD about Azerbaijan said the central-Asian country started a war with its neighbor Armenia over a hotly contested strip of land called Nagorno-Karabakh.
That conflict has killed more than 30,000 people since the 1990s and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Being reminded of this black…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on May 14th, 2008
Post by: Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies
Communication has changed. We all know that. How it has changed and how it will continue to change is a hot topic right now. Interestingly enough, Delta Airlines has created a mini site to inform stakeholders about the proposed merger between their company and Northwest.
According to a blog posting by Harvard Business Review’s Scott Berinato, this is the future of press releases. While I appreciate his viewpoint and do think mini or micro-sites such as this are a valuable addition to the communications mix … they are added-value. Especially sites such as this one.…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on May 01st, 2008
Starbucks recently launched mystarbucksidea.com.
This is an interesting site. It’s well designed, you can get around it easily and at first glance it looks authentic. The people at Starbucks seem to want to know what our ideas are. It does have some challenges – asking everyone for ideas could be overwhelming – which is what many bloggers are saying right now.
Some have also compared it to Ideastorm, which has done very well in helping Dell rebuild it’s brand and it’s relationship with consumers. Their blog is also a good example of reaching out and really connecting with stakeholders.
It is always interesting to…
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