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Kmart was once one of America's leading discount retailers. But its sales have been tanking for years, and now it's closing dozens of stores. At its peak in 2000, Kmart raked in $37 billion in sales and had 2,156 stores. Since then, Kmart's sales have dropped 72% to $10 billion. It now has just 941 stores, with plans to close nearly 70 more by next month. We went to a Kmart store in Richmond, Virginia, to find out why it's losing customers.... 
Doug Hall's curator insight,
June 30, 2016 2:19 PM
What a shameful example of what happens when managers don't manage – staff no longer care. Senior management of Kmart should be ashamed of themselves for not presenting stores properly and not hiring store managers to get the job done. And shareholders should be irate! It's way too late to turn this Titanic around.
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Ryanair, the Irish low-cost airline, is 24-hour £9.99 flash sale for people who "need a getaway" after the UK voted to leave the European Union. An ad for the promotion on Twitter takes on the famous "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys and replaces them with UKIP leader Nigel Farage, former London Mayor Boris Johnson, and justice secretary Michael Gove - the leading three figures of the Leave campaign. Ryanair, was firmly in the Remain camp - so much so that it had sent out a marketing email earlier on Friday morning - hours ahead of the official referendum results - to promote the sale, reading: "Celebrate remaining in Europe with 1 million seats from £9.99."...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Earlier on Friday morning, Ryanair was hoping to celebrate a win for Remain but had to switch marketing gears fast!
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Joel Gascoigne, CEO of social media tool startup Buffer, shared a 3500-word post in which he explains why he’s laying off 10 of his 94 employees. In contrast to bloodless posts from the likes of Inteland Microsoft, it indulges a different sin: oversharing. A lot of my correspondents forwarded Gascoigne’s post to me, hoping I’d praise it because it is so different from the other CEO communications I’ve shared. And there is a lot to like here: it’s extremely open, fair, and honest. Gascoigne is living his sincere promise to be transparent. But a CEO should be communicating the realities of his or her business regularly, not dropping it all at once in a 3500-word lump along with a layoff. What a team wants from their CEO is to share what’s relevant, not to share everything. This is a good example of how it’s possible to overdo transparency....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Can you overshare in an employee layoff memo? Seems so according to Josh Bernoff's review of Buffer's CEO memo. Do you agree?
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As PR pros, we all know there are those pitching missteps that journalists loathe. There are surveys telling us what they prefer and advice on how they like to be pitched.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Always lots of lessons from others' #PRfail.
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We suppose it is possible for the Department of State to screw up the handling of questions about whether they lied to reporters even worse — but it is hard to figure out how. The video below from CNN’s Jake Tapper today nicely lays out the series of offenses — but here is our quick summary: In February 2013 Fox News correspondent James Rosen asked then State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland if there had been direct talks between the U.S. and Iran. She essentially said “NO.” In December 2013, Rosen points out to Nuland’s successor Jen Psaki that the correct answer would have been “YES” and asked if State routinely lied to reporters when they found it convenient. Psaki with a smirk said there are times when diplomacy needs privacy to succeed. (Translation: yes, we lied)....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Lots of crisis management and media relations lessons here.
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It has been a tense spring in the realm of big-time newspaper consolidation. Back in April, Gannett, owner of more than 100 newspapers across the country, including the flagship USA Today, made a roughly $400 million takeover bid for the Tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and several other titles. The intervening weeks have seen a great deal of maneuvering by Tribune Chairman Michael Ferro to rebuff the bid, an effort that advanced Thursday with the news that Gannett may be backing off its bid in light of “expectations” that Tribune shareholders would back management in a critical vote. [VIDEO: Tribune rejects Gannett’s bid again] Amid all this business, the Tribune lost its mind, in a press release. First, it renamed and rebranded itself: On June 20, we'll be tronc. Yep. tronc. pic.twitter.com/PvK8jtrQbp— Michael Zajakowski (@zajakowski) June 2, 2016 “Tronc” stands for “Tribune online content,” or, as this tronc press release renders it in smaller case: “tribune online content.” So obsessed is the new, rebranded company with the Web’s lower-case vibe that its press release starts various sentences that way. ...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Buzzwords and lower-case letters abound. Hope for the survival of the entity formerly known as the Chicago Tribune? Not so much. And the news release? One of the worst examples of baffling, befuddling, techno-speak-filled, corporate jargon laden press release ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them.
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Yesterday, Tribune Publishing, purveyor of news since 1847, changed its name to “tronc” (short for “Tribune Online Content.”) It’s now a “content curation and monetization company” — a company that makes money from content, what we used to call a media company. Today, I deconstruct the rest of its attempt to use techno-drivel to misdirect our attention from its problems. Crisis-tossed Tribune Publishing, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and dozens of other papers, has suffered through a sale to a billionaire, a bankruptcy, a corporate split, newsroom turmoil, massive layoffs, and an unsolicited takeover offer. Now, as “tronc,” the company wants to be considered alongside Silicon Valley startups. (If this trend catches on, will the Boston Globe company become “hubstuff” and the New York Times “gray_lady”?) The tronc press release is a classic, because it reveals that when a media company wants to reinvent itself as a technology company, it drapes its press release in the same techno-drivel that tech companies use. Instead of meaningless media and corporate bullshit, we get meaningless, shiny Silicon Valley bullshit. It’s a transformation (you can tell because the release mentions “transform” or “transformation” six times).In the commentary below, I’ve added bold to indicate passives, meaningless superlatives, and especially, new-age jargon. I add commentary in brackets and commonsense translations below each section....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
tronc - the self-proclaimed, high-tech, low touch reinvention of Tribune publishing is a silly name that tries to deflect from all of its problems according to Josh Bernoff. The news release is a classic PR fail for this sudden rebirth as a "content curation and monetization company”.
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It started with a post on social media. Or, to be more exact, a series of posts about a visit to McDonald’s to buy a milkshake. Within hours, Josh Raby’s gripping account on Twitter was international news, covered by respected outlets on both sides of the Atlantic.
“This guy’s story about trying to buy a McDonald’s milkshake turned into a bit of a mission and the internet can’t get enough of it,” read the headline on Indy100, the Independent’s sister title. The New York Daily News said he’d been “tortured”. Except, as McDonald’s pointed out – and Raby himself later admitted – the story was embellished to entertain his Twitter followers, although he says he based it on real events.
Raby’s was the latest thinly sourced story that, on closer inspection, turned out not to be as billed. The phenomenon is largely a product of the increasing pressure in newsrooms that have had their resources slashed, then been recalibrated to care more about traffic figures.
And, beyond professional journalists, there is also a “whole cottage industry of people who put out fake news”, says Brooke Binkowski, an editor at debunking website Snopes. “They profit from it quite a lot in advertising when people start sharing the stories. They are often protected because they call themselves ‘satire’ or say in tiny fine print that they are for entertainment purposes only.”...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The push for traffic means that clicks rule – even if the facts don’t always check out.
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In 2015 F500 there are 9 corporations who do not use any of the social media platforms or tools examined in this study. These include:
Key findings of this study include:
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Nine FP 500 companies including Liberty Interactive and Wynn Resorts have no active corporate social media accounts?f Berkshire Hathaway and Apple have no active corporate Twitter accounts? Really?
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The idea was cute. It always is. Ask members of the public to post there selfies with New York police officers, tag them with #myNYPD, and sing "Kumbayah" together. OK, that last part maybe not. The response was overwhelming -- overwhelmingly bad. Soon the hashtag was used as a bashtag....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
These stories about hashtags turning into bashtags were an excellent reality check. Beware of rose-colored glasses.
Dejan Nikolic's curator insight,
March 18, 2016 5:04 AM
These stories about hashtags turning into bashtags were an excellent reality check. Beware of rose-colored glasses. 
Jalu Dash's curator insight,
March 18, 2016 5:23 AM
These stories about hashtags turning into bashtags were an excellent reality check. Beware of rose-colored glasses.
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If former Gov. Jeb Bush was looking for attention online, he certainly got it.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
I think the handlers fumbled this one badly. Bad PR? You betcha.
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The diesel emissions nightmare at Volkswagen continues unabated as the German government orders the company to recall 2.4 million vehicles next year. To recap, the company has admitted to cheating on emissions tests on up to 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide. The global CEO has resigned, the new North American head departed before even starting, its share value has dropped by over 30% and VW Group sales have plummeted. Some estimates say this could cost the company in the region of 35 billion euros, and all but destroy the consumer market for diesel vehicles. This scenario has all the makings of a classic PR crisis, but so far most would consider VW’s communications efforts a fail. Weeks into the scandal consumers who purchased one of the diesel vehicles still do not know what, if any action they should take. Dealers are left scrambling on the front lines without the facts or even a narrative on VW plans. For employees, suppliers and shareholders there is also confusion around how the corporate parent plans to navigate through the crisis. Lawyers smell blood and are circling both in North America and Europe....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
VW PR efforts fail miserably!
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Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn is gone. But on his way out the door, he described the company’s massive, deliberate fraud on his customers and the environment as an “irregularity.” That’s bullshit.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Josh Bernoff takes a closer look at Volkswagen's apology for its environmental scandal and finds it wanting. Good read and useful lessons for others who need to step up with corporate apologies, starting with losing the weasel words.
Kelly Vivian's curator insight,
September 25, 2015 2:10 PM
After the discussions in class about Volkswagen scam, i decided to do a little more research about the situation. At a PR perspective, it will be hard for the company to regain the consumers trust. If I was the PR rep for this company I would start with a public apology. |
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Back in 2004, media and TV personality Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail for obstructing a federal securities investigation. To pass the time during her incarceration, Stewart did what she does best: cooking and crafts. Speaking at a Daily Mail brunch session at the Cannes Lions advertising festival on Thursday, Stewart said the food inside was around three years past its expiry date. "That's why I made jam out of the crab apples on the trees," she added. Aside from making jam, Stewart also turned her hand to ceramics. As a child she'd go to ceramic classes at the weekend, so she quickly signed up to a ceramics class in prison too, at a place called Alderson....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
She made an entire nativity scene that she brings out each Christmas. She also obstructed justice. No sympathy despite the ceramics and crabapple jam.
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Cannes Lions 2016 has its first truly cringeworthy moment, in the form of a party invitation seeking "attractive females and models only." The email went out to a number of festival participants who planned to attend The Wednesday Party, an event sponsored by digital agency VaynerMedia and media company Thrillist Media Group with a musical performance by Wyclef Jean. UPDATE: Thrillist founder and CEO Ben Lerer responded to the controversy via an internal staff email that appears in part at the bottom of this story. A female agency executive tells Adweek that she and two female colleagues received the email while having lunch in Cannes on Tuesday. One of them forwarded it to women's advocate and agency veteran Cindy Gallop, who subsequently shared it on Twitter and wrote, "It's 2016, @vaynermedia @thrillist. This is not how you party at @cannes_lions." The email was sent by events company iGetIn. Its key section reads (emphasis via the sender of the message): "Thank you for your interest in attending!! Please be aware that this specific list is for attractive females and models only." The note, which was also shared by members of the public Facebook group Cannes for Cannesseurs, then instructs male attendees to "contact the PR departments of the respective sponsors" if they want to get into the party. It requests that women interested in attending send "recent untouched photos and/or your Instagram/Facebook links for you and each of your additional female guest [sic]," adding, "once we have reviewed we will send you specific entry details." ...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Ouch. The moral of this bad PR story is know what your suppliers are doing on your behalf.
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Amazon.com Inc. is facing digital backlash following a tweet that was posted just hours after 49 people were killed and more than 50 others injured inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide, posted a tweet of a ceramic bowl with the words “cereal killer” and a red splatter pattern that resembles bloodstains on it, along with “#Guilty” and a link where shoppers could buy the product. The tweet, time-stamped at 10 a.m. Central on Sunday, was posted as U.S. consumers were learning about the mass shooting in Orlando and as details about the attack and the victims were trickling out. The tweet remained online for about an hour before it became unavailable, and that was plenty of time to draw reaction from Twitter users who called the tweet “offensive” and “insensitive” and said it was poorly timed. The bowl, made by Ohio-based crafts manufacturer Dab-A-Do’s Ceramics, is no longer for sale on Amazon’s site, though it’s unclear as to whether Amazon or Dab-A-Do’s pulled the product. Dab-A-Do’s still had the bowl on its website for $25....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Analysts say retailers need to pay attention to current events at all times to make sure their content doesn't come off as insensitive. Careful with your auto tweets.
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Is Todd Gurley actually vegetarian?
You have to wonder after watching this Carl's Jr. commercial starring the Los Angeles Rams running back. The spot shows Gurley supposedly biting into the California Classic Double Cheeseburger, but it's blatantly obvious that the burger isn't real—it's a digitally inserted photo that isn't fooling anyone.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Carl's virtual burger ad gets virtual laughter online. Maybe there is no such thing as bad publicity in this case?
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Tronc. Few words have garnered as much hilarity in such a short period of time. On Thursday, Tribune Publishing announced that the historic media company would rename itself "tronc." Media Twitter nearly lost its mind. For hours after the announcement, the jokes rolled in. They're still going strong as of Friday morning. Disastrous company rebrandings aren't particularly new, even for newspaper companies. Gannett, which publishes USA Today, spun off its digital businesses into something called TEGNA. None of them drew quite the ridicule that tronc elicited. And since it's Friday, here's 30 of the best tronc jokes from Twitter....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Few words have garnered as much hilarity in such a short period of time. tronc if you like it! Yes, this bad branding, PR fail deserves to be the butt of all journalism jokes.
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Well, that sure got weird, didn’t it? Tribune’s takeover of what used to be called Times-Mirror was messy when it started, a decade and a half ago, and has gotten worse every few years: This is the company, after all, that took over several great newspapers, crowed about “synergy,” and made a few legendary editors so uncomfortable that they left their posts. (One of them was Dean Baquet, who’s now executive editor at the New York Times.) And they sold their papers to Sam Zell, who had no background in newspapers and made an even bigger mess of things before filing for Chapter 11. Last fall, the company put Tribune Tower, where its original newspaper is based, up for sale. But now Tribune has a new trick: It has renamed itself tronc – a term that means, in French, “poor box,” and if modulated to “trunk,” something worse. According to Tribune’s current chair, Michael Ferro – who was invited onto the board by former CEO Jack Griffin, whom he fired — this is a bold step into the future. Here’s a corporate release:...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The goofy new brand emphasizes "content curation and monetization," not the Pulitzer-quality journalism of before. Whatever!
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It's a tragic day, as one of the most gifted musicians of the modern era has passed. Despite his moniker, Prince, who died Thursday at 57, was a king among men and will live on only through memory and the hours of powerful and provocative music he left behind. Brands, as they usually do, tried to join the conversation about Prince online with mostly-purple-clad homages. That's challenging in the best of times—and doubly hard when the conversation is mostly one giant outpouring of grief. Not every brand managed it well. As of this writing, at least two brands have had second thoughts about their posts and deleted them outright. Many others remain up, though some are clearly in questionable taste—mostly because they feel overly self-promotional....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Another icon has left us and brands prove once again that self-promotion gets in the way of real feeling and sincerity and generates well-deserved scorn. These are loud marketing fails and they should be signed up for sensitivity training.
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The old adage that “perception is reality” is particularly true in online reputation management. Practitioners know that what’s said online, true or not, frequently influences the public’s perception of their client. Online image cultivation and maintenance has become part of almost all public relations practice, and practitioners continually strive to keep up with what people think about their client. However, despite ever-increasing PR research sophistication, the core tenet of image management stays the same: a practitioner must know and understand what others are saying about their client. Handling criticisms is part of any good PR practice, and those teaching PR tell students how a practitioner responds to criticism is important because it can help foster a relationship with an aggrieved public. However, there is a trend in image management that turns this philosophy on its head. In the past few years individuals and, increasingly, organizations have turned away from the PR practitioner and embraced the lawsuit as the most effective means to control, maintain, and cultivate online image.... These cases demonstrate a problematic trend in online image management. While some defamation lawsuits are probably necessary, the expense of lawsuits and the potential for negative media attention are liabilities for any person or organization. The use of non-disparagement clauses in contracts is equally problematic because it allows organizations to squelch criticisms rather than engage with critics. Because of this, PR practitioners need to know four things when dealing with online defamation issues:...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Online reputation management by lawsuit and contract is a worrying trend in business and certainly is not sound PR practice.
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The Republican frontrunner met with the editorial board on Monday morning. The full transcript follows at the link above:
FREDERICK RYAN JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER: Mr. Trump, welcome to the Washington Post. Thank you for making time to meet with our editorial board.
DONALD TRUMP: New building. Yes this is very nice. Good luck with it.
RYAN: Thank you… We’ve heard you’re going to be announcing your foreign policy team shortly… Any you can share with us?
TRUMP: Well, I hadn’t thought of doing it, but if you want I can give you some of the names… Walid Phares, who you probably know, PhD, adviser to the House of Representatives caucus, and counter-terrorism expert; Carter Page, PhD; George Papadopoulos, he’s an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy; the Honorable Joe Schmitz, [former] inspector general at the Department of Defense; [retired] Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg; and I have quite a few more. But that’s a group of some of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different aspects of what we do, but that’s a representative group....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
I thought they had quit making episodes of the Twilight Zone. If you enjoy politics, this will keep you entertained. One lesson though for PR and public affairs pros. Who suggested he meet with an obviously hostile crowd? There was no possible win here for Trump given his lack of substance and who he was meeting. Recommended reading. 11/10 ;-)
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Nike has suspended the eight-year, $70-million contract it renewed in 2010 with tennis star Maria Sharapova after she announced yesterday that she had failed a doping test taken during the Australia Open in January, where she advanced to the quarterfinals. Porsche this morning said that is will “postpone planned activities” with the 28-year-old, Russian-born athlete. And Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer said it would not renew a deal with Sharapova that expired at the end of 2015.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
This story illustrates the perils of personalities, personal endorsements, sponsorships and brand integrity.
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Every business must serve a social purpose”. These are not the words of a social campaigner or a politician; they are the words of a banker, Ashok Vaswani, the CEO of Retail and Business Banking at Barclays, one of the world’s largest banks. Barclays has been involved in at least one major trading scandal and holds the dubious honour of the most fined bank in Britain. There will be some people who will treat his words with understandable cynicism but that would be to miss the point. The point is not whether the words are sincere or not – it is that they should have been said at all. Banks are concerned with the control of money, why should they concern themselves with any purpose beyond that? The reason is that society is demanding they do. When banks first started they fulfilled a social need in the community, to enable ordinary people to fund their ambitions. Over the years banks forgot that purpose and focused most of their efforts on funding their own ambitions through obscene profits, often at the consumer’s expense. The bubble burst in spectacular fashion with the downfall of Lehman Brothers in the US and RBS in the UK. It isn’t just the banks that have lost their way. Now it’s critical for any business to demonstrate it has a purpose before, and beyond profit; that it seeks to improve the lives of its customers as a primary goal. Failure to have such a purpose, to be clear about it and to ensure it directs everything you do, will lose customers, employees and ultimately business value....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
This is a thoughtful post about what it takes to be a purposeful brand. Barclays Bank and Volkswagen need not apply lhough there is a long list of others that don't measure up!
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Don’t waste words. That includes meaningless disclaimers at the bottom of your emails.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Josh Berner does a hilarious take out on stupid email disclaimers. Recommended reading. 9/10
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Here's what happens when managers don't manage - staff don't care! And why should customers? What a bloody disaster! Senior management should be ashamed of themselves and shareholders angry.