Like my Kith colleagues, I cut my proverbial teeth in politics. Not as a candidate, but as a campaign staffer and, later, political consultant. Campaigns are great places to train for reputation management and crisis communications because everything is a crisis. The latest mud your opponent threw...
We’re taking you way back in the wayback machine to when I was a little kid in Canada. It was 1991 when Winnipeg-based Old Dutch Foods entered the Ontario market hoping to gain ground but instead faced a salty standoff. Rival Hostess Frito-Lay was accused of buying all the Old Dutch chips from...
If you’ve ever seen the classic Abbott and Costello sketch "Who’s on First?," you know how quickly things can unravel when no one knows who’s doing what. It’s hilarious on stage, but in a real life crisis, that kind of confusion is anything but funny. Think back to the last time you were called...
You may have heard recently that Perrier’s fizz has gone flat overseas. Parent company Nestlé Waters is facing a major environmental scandal after investigative reports revealed years of illegal waste dumping at its bottling sites, including massive landfills filled with plastic, debris, and even...
Many of us found ourselves abruptly working from home during the Covid pandemic. For some, a return to the office did not occur for months or even years. If you were one such person, you may recall the cognitive dissonance you experienced when you found it exactly as it was the day before you...
Let’s talk about precision. In a crisis, speed is critical ... but speed without clarity and accuracy is just noise. When you’ve taken the time to get to know your stakeholders, you understand where they get their information. Even if you just know the age range, you can understand which social...
Around here, we warn clients about the long tail of crisis. It’s when the effects of a crisis can drag on for a long time, with unexpected problems, and damage, popping up well after things seem like they’ve settled down. It’s also known as “the ripples,” and can pose an even bigger risk to...
If you’ve been around a moment, you’ve heard or read about our Kith formula: Clarity + Trust = Strategic Speed. Today, I want to talk about just one piece of Clarity: Knowing your stakeholders. That means knowing who matters, what they value, and how to communicate with them effectively under...
Here’s one of the most overlooked truths in crisis communication: The messenger matters as much as the message. You can have a perfect statement, a perfect plan, and a perfect rollout. But if it comes from someone your stakeholders don’t trust, it will fall flat. Or worse, backfire. We are in an...
In our last post, we discussed the importance of mapping your stakeholders. Now it’s time to really understand them. And the whole thinking for this series was spurred by this column about where people get their information. While Kith is politically agnostic, all of us have worked in politics at...
Lately, we’ve seen organizations in the news that have failed to prepare for an uncomfortable scenario: when the threat comes from within. It’s unsettling to imagine a business unraveling due to the actions of an insider (whether intentional or not). But it happens, and few are feeling that...
Demonstrating that no industry is immune to controversy – and highlighting the need for solid risk mitigation strategies – a shocking scandal has just rocked the HR tech sector. Rippling, a company specializing in workforce management, has taken legal action against its rival Deel, accusing it of...
Is your organization prepared to respond to a crisis and protect its hard-earned reputation? Take our quiz and find out!