Reputation Town

This week, Warren and John talk about stories including the Donald Trump guilty verdict, the continuing absence of Kate Middleton and Kensington Palace's curious handling of the situation, Shoppers Drug Mart posts a job ad looking for people to work for free, a US study tries to link crisis response to companies' stock price and Boston Pizza's curious creative choice for its TV ad during the Stanl...

This week, we break down some of the more recent PR stories in the news, including the Toronto Maple Leafs parting ways with their coach (and his video farewell), one of the Leafs players compares his teammates to 'gods', the Canadian army declares war on good design, the handling of the university protests and Galen Weston thinks customers are 'misguided' in their criticism of the Loblaw brand am...

This week, John and Warren discuss numerous PR-related stories in the news, including the comms around the Maryland bridge disaster, the reputational implications of the New York Magazine hit piece on YouTube neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, a California police department that got under the skin of the makers of LEGO, MLB's alleged gambling crisis, rumours swirling around the impending closure of M...

This week, we're joined by PR legend Dr. Terry Flynn, Graduate Director and Associate Professor for the Master of Communications Management Program at McMaster University. The anchor story of this week is the ongoing KateGate situation, which is the last story of the pod. Other stories we talk about this week include the dangers of over-media training your spokespeople, Toronto Police's advice to...

This week, we're pumped to have communications veteran Brad Ross join the pod. Brad was the communications face of the Toronto Transit Commission for a decade and then the Chief Communications Officer for the City of Toronto. He's recently started his own communications business and he joined us this week to chop up stories including MLSE's security snafu, Shane Gillis hosting SNL, the NHLer cut b...

For the first episode of 2024, we are very happy to be joined by a special guest: US-based crisis and PR expert Molly McPherson. In this episode, the panel does a deep dive into some of the more compelling issues, crisis and reputation stories in the news recently, including Boeing's lingering safety woes, the viral HR stories from Kyte Baby and Cloudflare, the ongoing war between Bill Ackman and...

This week, John and Warren look at some of the recent PR stories in the news, including the speculation of CBC paying bonuses to execs despite laying off 10% of its workforce, the abysmal testimony of three ivy league university presidents earlier this week, Sports Illustrated gets busted using fake/AI personas and some final thoughts on the Chicago Blackhawks/Corey Perry situation. 

In this episode, John and Warren ramble on about a few recent stories, including the massive severance package to Texas A&M's outgoing football coach, a sports radio personality who made a bold promise on-air only to back out of it, the off-duty pilot who tried to crash a plane full of people, Bud Light's hail Mary partnership with the UFC and two stories about Mr. Beast one in which he's suin...

In this episode, John and Warren ramble about the new contract the Maple Leafs signed with Auston Matthews, how to create a legacy in the style of Buddy Guy, the latest social media posts from Tiffany Gomas (the plane lady) and the strategy behind Donald Trump's sit-down with Tucker Carlson. The podcast wraps up with a discussion about working with reporters and what preparations spokespeople can...

In this episode, we break down some recent stories including Bell Media firing 1,300 people, the PR fallout from the LIV/PGA merger, author Elizabeth Gilbert's self-cancellation of her upcoming book, RFK Jr's end run around mainstream media on the podcast circuit, when should the crisis management firm become part of the story (if ever) and why running away from a media scrum is a bad look. Thanks...

In this episode, John and Warren discuss Harry and Meghan's nearly catastrophic car chase, the NYT puff piece on Elizabeth Holmes as she prepares to go to prison, the anti-capitalist coffee shop that nearly went out of business in Toronto, the ongoing Bud Light controversy and what do you do as a comms person when you work for a CEO like Elon Musk?

This week, John and Warren ramble on about the mishandling of the Bruce Boudreau firing in the NHL, Tim Horton's responding to a class action lawsuit about privacy violations by offering customers a coffee and a donut and Loblaws, the self-confessed 'face of food inflation', making an awkward attempt at authenticity on Twitter.

This week, we John and Warren touch on a number of stories with reputational implications, including Prince Harry's book, Bell's decision to change the structure of its annual mental health initiative, VIA Rail's very slow communications response to its recent operational woes during a major winter storm and a story about someone who may have bought and deleted the online archive of a community ne...

This week, we're fortunate to have Molly McPherson join us to chat about some notable crisis management stories of the week. Molly shared her own story about being pulled into a social media kerfuffle and how she handled it. We also talked about the silence from grocery chain Sobeys while it deal with an ongoing data breach, the reputation elements of this week's crypto flameout and, of course, th...

We're very fortunate this week to have an exceptional panel of crisis communicators with us to break down the Hockey Canada scandal. Joining John and Warren this week are Alberta-based media trainer Grant Ainsley, Alberta-based crisis expert Shawna Bruce and US-based crisis expert podcast host and TikTok celeb Molly McPherson. We hope you enjoy this conversation!

PR and crisis response expert Molly McPherson joins us this week to discuss five stories in the media, including the latest developments in the Lisa LaFlamme termination, the rapid rise and cancellation of Andrew Tate, Finnish PM Sanna Marin's response re: the leaked partying video, Rogers' heavily redacted report and Canadian Olympic gold medalist Marnie McBean's stand re: Hockey Canada.

In this episode, we look at three recent stories through the lens of public relations and reputation management: The CEO who posted a crying selfie after firing two employees, the serious allegations against Dan Price and, of course, the media story that has dominated Canadian headlines this past week, the PR firestorm that Bell Media has found itself in after terminating the face of their nightly...

In this episode, we do a bit of a deep dive into Rogers' handling of the communications elements of its recent, massive service outage. 

Is an institution such as a university or hospital ever required to remove the name of a large donor from one of their buildings? Mackenzie Health found itself facing this question earlier this week. And as the battle between LIV Golf and the PGA heats up, what are the reputation implications for the various parties? In the wake of a troubling attack on the Toronto Transit System, John and Warren...

In this episode, John and Warren talk about the media relations aspects of the recent Ontario election, the fallout from the Johnny Depp trial and the implications of companies that ignore media requests when there's a crisis taking place. Why do so many companies do it? Is it a smart call? And if not, what should they be doing instead?

In this episode, Warren and John ramble about a few of the reputation management stories in the news these past few weeks, including the controversy around Freshii's new offshore, virtual cashier, short-lived CNN+, the reputational impacts of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial and Dolly Parton's impeccably cultivated reputation. 

In this episode, we talk about the reputational aspects of the recent incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. 

In this episode, John and Warren ramble about who's winning the PR war in Ukraine, the CEO who lost his job after making sexist comments at a conference, the Pay Gap App and what tech like this means for public-facing organizations, the Disney vs. DeSantis controversy and former NHL referee Tim Peel's tweet one year after losing his job to a hot-mic gaffe. 

This week, John and Warren chat about the controversy around one of the All-In podcast's hosts, the Terry Fox Foundation's response to protestors messing with the Terry Fox statue in Ottawa and, of course, the ongoing saga involving Spotify, Joe Rogan, Neil Young, etc. 

In our 20th episode, we chat about Jon Stewart's tiff with Newsweek, Peloton's recent Sex and the City problems and our picks for the reputational winners and losers of 2021.