Issues and Crisis
Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on February 12th, 2010
I recently read an article in drovers.com that I found very interesting. It seems that Yellow Tail wine, based in Australia, was set to support the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). However, according to this article, many U.S. wine drinkers and food producers were unhappy with this decision.
At first glance, I wondered why…isn’t helping animals a good thing? It turns out that there are reports that very little of the money that runs through HSUS actually goes to the care and help of animals. The groups that were against Yellow Tail supporting HSUS used social media as a part…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 21st, 2010
There is an interesting article in AdAge.com about the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s decision to continue to make a scheduled stop at a private resort in Labadee, Haiti. It’s a pretty strong article with a great deal of criticism from PR pros. As I was reading it, I was wondering where the other side was…there are no quotes from PR pros saying that they “get” why Royal Caribbean made the decision to continue to make stops in Labadee.
As I read the piece, I was thinking that I must not be reading this article right because I would have advised this cruise…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 30th, 2009
I have to admit, when I heard about the accident over U.S. Thanksgiving weekend involving Tiger Woods, I thought “hmmmm.” There seemed to be something missing from the story when I first heard it – what was Tiger doing leaving his house at 2:30 am on Thanksgiving, distracted enough to hit a fire hydrant and a tree?
There are lots of rumours out there right now. The thing is, Tiger isn’t talking, so the rumour mill is growing. During an issue, if you don’t give people solid information, they will speculate, discuss and even gossip.
Twitter, Facebook, blogs and mainstream media are…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 21st, 2009
Gerard Braud has an excellent article on the fallout of Whole Foods CEO (U.S.) John Mackey’s position on health care reform in the U.S.
There has been a huge backlash to Mackey’s letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal. There is now a movement to boycott Whole Foods – there is a Facebook page, a blog and you can follow the boycott on Twitter.
Whole Foods has a forum section on its website where the discussion is quite heated. Braud says that the Whole Foods’ media relations team have been working to distance the company from the opinion, explaining that Mackey wrote the…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on July 15th, 2009
Having just gone through a brand and website refresh, we’ve had some in-depth discussions about who AHA Creative Strategies is, what kind of clients we would like to work with and what organizations we think will want to work with us. It’s been an interesting process.
…I should warn you, this is a bit of a long post!
I came across an interesting article yesterday on Media Post entitled: The Safe Hire. In this piece, writer David Bernstein focuses more on advertising, but he puts forward some thought provoking ideas. His first point: “It’s a basic rule of business, only hire someone who’s…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on May 12th, 2009
Apparently there is an issue brewing on Twitter about Mother’s Day. It seems that some moms didn’t receive the flowers that their loving children ordered from FTD.
The smart people at TechCrunch are all over this and have a great blog post about the issue. They also did a sentiment analysis of the issue using twendz. According to the TechCrunch post, FTD has sent emails to people affected by this and offered them a discount on their purchase.
1800flowers also appears to have had an issue with delivering last weekend. The difference is that 1800flowers is engaging with disgruntled customers via Twitter. I searched and…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on April 16th, 2009
Domino’s has created a YouTube response to the issue that they recently faced regarding what we have now heard was supposed to be a “hoax” video on YouTube. There were several videos made by the two young people who worked (past tense) at a Domino’s franchise in North Carolina. (See our previous post on this.)
Domino’s takes a very interesting approach to this issue – and in my opinion, it’s a little over the top. Depending on what kind of policy Domino’s has, maybe these young employees didn’t realize how wrong this was. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a stupid, stupid thing to do,…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on April 15th, 2009
There seems to be a new issue online every day. Over the weekend, there was the Amazon issue where it seemed the online bookseller had removed thousands of gay and lesbian themed books from their listings and search results. Social media guru B.L. Ochman has a very good post about this issue.
And then there is the Domino’s video that showed up on YouTube yesterday. The company quickly took it down. But you know that sneaky Internet…there is always another copy somewhere that gets put back up.
According to this piece in Advertising Age, Domino’s corporate headquarters was reacting cautiously to the kerfuffle about this disgusting…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 30th, 2009
The Ketchum/FedEx issue on Twitter is being discussed online quite extensively. In my opinion, blogger David Henderson is covering this story very well. (David is a newly discovered online voice for me – and he has quickly become one of my favourites. His blog is definitely worth reading.)
This story has legs. And it has created some valuable discussion online about freedom of speech, the right to your own personal opinion, what’s reasonable to say out loud, how to handle a crisis online and much, much more.
For those that might not know, the basic overview of this issue is that a week or two…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 10th, 2008
Well, the blog post below “The Big Three Don’t Get Social Media” certainly got some attention. Creating respectful, authentic discussion is what social media is all about and, with a couple of exceptions, it seems that this is what is happening here.
Not everyone posted what they do for a living, but it is interesting to note that most of the comments here come from those involved in online/social media and/or the auto industry. Scott Monty of Ford posted and he also mentioned this post on Twitter, which sent several more people over. I did find it interesting that, at times,…
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