One Year Later
This Week:
A Big “Thank You”
Be Ready for a Crisis
Before We Go…
1. Happy Birthday to The EO Report!
Today’s edition marks a special milestone: 52 newsletters and one incredible year of analyzing and celebrating the art and impact of strategic communications. What began with coffee, a conversation, and a desire to spotlight great communication has grown into a community of people interested in dissecting and learning from exemplar…and disastrous… efforts to communicate.
My heartfelt thanks to Kellee Mikuls for her sparks of encouragement over coffee at Lola’s in Omaha—the birthplace of The EO Report—and to Kelly Jefferson Minty, Bianca Jefferson, and Miki Kramper for their partnership and shared obsession with clear communication. I also want to thank you for signing up, reading along, sharing tips, and reaching out to talk about a particular story.
Here’s to finding out what we will find and study in year two!
Happy New Year,
Erin Owen
2. Not a Luxury, A Need: A Crisis Comms Plan
A crisis plan is often a neglected area of communications planning—until a crisis hits, leaving you scrambling. No organization–regardless of how outstanding its work–can escape reputational risk, and a poorly managed crisis can escalate quickly into a full-blown PR disaster.
No industry is immune. Consider the recent allegations in Hollywood involving Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni during the production of It Ends with Us. Have you been watching the volley of PR and crisis strategy happening in the last few weeks?
Or, on the corporate side, Boeing’s strategic communications team had a very busy 2024 managing crisis after crisis. (2025 isn’t starting much better.) The jury is still out on whether they will be able to earn back the trust of the public and their customers.
Keep reading to learn how to pull together your plan and access additional resources.
2. Before We Go…
Many companies are testing out “unhinged marketing.” Sometimes it works, most times it fails for trying too hard. But who’s doing it well? Surreal, a cereal company.
What makes it especially crazy? They’re doing it on LinkedIn – a channel often immune to “unhinged” tactics.
Stop writing bad email subject lines. Subjectline.com is a free tool that grades your subject lines and proposes changes to make them better.
From PR Daily: Communicators share their top writing tips.
Thanks for a great year! Consider giving us the birthday gift of passing along our newsletter.