The Brent Spar episode proved that it is not enough for a company to be in the right, if it also fails also to engage with stakeholders and ­convince the media. It showed that even a major multinational can be defeated by hostile public opinion. Shell lost the PR battle, and then lost the regulatory battle as a result.

The context

The North Sea contains over 350 drilling rigs and oil production platforms. They are very large and contain some level of contamination from oil exploration and prod...

Messaging is the art of framing an idea in a way that will stand out and be noticed, resonate with an audience, and stick in their minds in a way that shapes behaviour. One way to be distinctive is to say something unexpected or counterintuitive. Whereas most companies promote their products as being the best, IKEA ran a marketing campaign intentionally positioning itself as “proudly second best” – earning a coveted Film Gold Lion at Cannes 2023.

In this atypical campaign, IKEA departs from the...

The top two global sportswear brands – Adidas and Nike – have both taken a reputational hit from scandalous comments and social media posts by high-profile celebrity partners. The circumstances were parallel, but the way each company responded to its crisis had profound implications for damage limitation. An analysis of the coverage data reveals some important lessons for communicators everywhere about the interaction between corporate culture and the effectiveness of crisis response.

The heada...

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023 after a run on deposits doomed its plans to raise fresh capital. Weak communication was a primary factor in the crisis, on two dimensions:

• Failure of communication strategy. SVB underestimated how sensitive depositors would be to the news, in the context of recent financial failures.
• Failure of storytelling. SVB communicated without context and neglected to build a narrative.

SVB was a $200 billion institution and had been the go-to-bank for tec...

Some of the best communication campaigns are those where the company creates and gives away something genuinely useful, and has the courage not to spoil it with commercial messaging. A great example popped up as an Instagram ad recently.

Onstar is the connected technology platform installed in newer General Motors vehicles, which among other things can connect a driver remotely to a human advisor to coordinate with emergency services in the event of a crash.

In this campaign, they partnered wi...

On February 13, 2023, three students were killed and five others injured in a mass shooting on the campus of Michigan State University. The gunman, 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae, shot himself dead when he was confronted by police.

In the aftermath of the shootings, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee decided to send a consoling email to students using the following text:

We must recognize that creating a safe and inclusive environment is an ongoing process that requires ongoing effort and co...