Weekly Rewind: Our favorite stories from around the web

Photo Credit: PR Week
Photo Credit: PR Week

It’s been a great week for CSA! We celebrated Cooper’s birthday, were treated to a delicious holiday lunch and *spoiler alert* — we’re in the single digit countdown for Christmas! A lot of pros in the PR world are having a great week as well, but a few others, not so much. We’ve got the good, the bad and the ugly in our Weekly Rewind.

A Swing and a Miss

A tweet by Dropbox has people calling for the company to fire its marketing team. Dropbox posted an image on Twitter to showcase its diversity efforts, however, the picture only includes light-skinned staffers and people are not happy. Dropbox responded that the photo was meant to highlight the increase of women in senior leadership roles and that improving their diversity continues to be a top priority. This “tweetosphere” attack is a good reminder that a picture speaks a thousand words, and we need to analyze every image we upload for our clients.

Don’t Call it a Comeback

Ryan Lochte is so easy to continuously reference when talking about PR news. After lying about being the victim of an armed robbery during the 2016 Rio Olympics, Ryan Lochte has been riding the apology tour. Next stop — doing an add for Pine Bros, who makes soothing throat drops. “The campaign ties the ‘forgiving’ nature of the drops on sore throats to a plea to forgive Lochte for his transgressions. The ad ends with a title card that reads “Pine Bros: In this Season of Forgiveness.” It’s a creative ad with the right celebrity figure to deliver the message so this campaign gets a thumbs up from us.

Pass the Tissues Please

Oh WestJet, how we love thee and thy beautiful heart-warming campaigns. The Canadian airline is famous for making people cry during their Christmas giveaways and this year is no different. WestJet decided to help out the community of Fort McMurray, which was destroyed by a wildfire in May 2016. Unsuspecting folks received personalized ornaments with their family pictures inside and vouchers for free flights. Moral of the story — if you want to make people sob and fawn all over your company, go all out with Christmas campaigns like WestJet.

Y Stands for Yahoo & Yikes

Yahoo suffered another huge hacking blow this week. One billion users now have vulnerable data including names, email addresses, phone numbers and in some instances, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. This latest PR crisis definitely does not help Yahoo’s already crumbling image. Research from Alertsec shows that it will likely take “several months to begin trusting a company like Yahoo again following a data breach.” The crisis could also jeopardize the $4.8 million-deal with Verizon.

Here’s a Forbes article on how to keep your cool during a PR crisis. The pros say that the most important tip is to be honest and forthcoming about the situation. “If you’re up front with your audience from the start, they’ll be more likely to remain your loyal fans and stick with you as you ride out the storm.” Got that, Yahoo?