Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

United Airlines made headlines this week after airport police forcibly removed a passenger from one of its flightSuch unfavorable occurrence is not the first for United. Several weeks ago, the airline disallowed two girls from boarding a flight as they were wearing leggings and were “not properly clothed via [its] Contract of Carriage.” 

It comes with no surprise that the incident has ignited a wave of responses online. While United Airlines attempts to clean up this unsavory fracas, here is a compilation of the best trolls by brands and netizens in response to the brouhaha, with some referencing Pepsi’s recent infamous ad....

When Donald Trump gathered the press at Trump Tower 20 months ago to announce his unlikely candidacy for president, he reportedly paid actors to fill the marble lobby and cheer.

Not much — and everything — has changed since.

On Wednesday morning, when the president-elect once again faced hundreds of reporters from around the globe gathered in his lobby -- this time for his first press conference in seven months — Trump filled the room with paid staffers who clapped and cheered as he blasted members of the media as purveyors of “fake news.”

It was Trump’s method of battling back an extraordinary report that U.S. intelligence officials have presented both Trump and President Barack Obama with unverified allegations that Russia has compromising information about the incoming 45th president, including about a reported salacious encounter in a Moscow hotel room....

When last month’s “Communicator of the Year” can turn into this month’s PR disaster, there’s a lesson for any brand on the perils of flubbing a corporate apology. Any brand can go from hero to zero.

Much has been written in the last week about the missteps of United and its CEO. Given that it was PRWeek that so recently awarded Oscar Munoz as “Communicator of the Year”, I thought the PRWeek postmortem was particularly interesting:

“No company or brand can rest on its laurels when it comes to its reputation. Protecting and enhancing it is a 24/7, 365 days a year undertaking....

The disturbing scene captured on cellphone videos by United Airlines passengers on Sunday went beyond the typical nightmares of travelers on an overbooked flight.

An unidentified man who refused to be bumped from a plane screamed as a security officer wrestled him out of his seat and dragged him down the aisle by his arms. His glasses slid down his face, and his shirt rose above his midriff as uniformed officers followed.

At least two passengers documented the physical confrontation and the man’s anguished protests, and their videos spread rapidly online on Monday as people criticized the airline’s tactics. A security officer involved in the episode has been placed on leave, the authorities said, and the federal Transportation Department is investigating whether the airline complied with rules regarding overbooking.

Tyler Bridges, a passenger on Sunday’s flight who posted a video to Twitter, said in a telephone interview on Monday that “it felt like something the world needed to see.”

The shocking scene raised questions about the common practice of overbooking and how far airlines will go to sell all of their seats. Particularly annoying, Mr. Bridges said, was that the airline was looking for extra seats for some of its employees....

Perhaps you noticed that there was a screwup at the Oscars last night. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced that “La La Land” had won the Academy Award for Best Picture . . . and then had to backtrack, because there was a mistake. “Moonlight” was the actual winner.

After the mistake, many people behaved graciously. In what has to be the most heartbreaking moment of his career, “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz realized he didn’t receive his first Oscar, and then beckoned the producers of “Moonlight” to come on stage. Warren Beatty explained why he’d made the mistake — he’d gotten the wrong envelope.

But who was responsible for the screwup? It was PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that counts the votes and determines the winners.

PriceWaterhouseCooper’s statement is a model apology. Here’s PwC’s statement just after the event...

This week, enigmatic former Donald Trump campaign advisor Carter Page appeared on a PBS News Hour interview to defend himself from the revelation that he was caught on a phone wiretap colluding with Russian intel agents during the election. This came as a surprise because Page’s last publicly known location was Moscow, suggesting he had already fled the country.

He told PBS this week he’s Arizona – but he was standing in front of what appears to be a fake background that has been used before by other political figures.Here’s a screen grab of Carter Page’s interview on PBS News Hour this week.

If your first thought was “Why is he standing outdoors in front of a mountain during a remote television interview,” we asked the same question. And if your second thought was “Does he look like he’s poorly superimposed on that fake looking background,” we asked that question as well. So we went digging, using a Google image reverse-search, and we uncovered this strangely familiar image of Arizona Congressman Trent Franks giving an MSNBC interview in 2016 in front of the exact same scene:...

It’s a tricky time to be a food marketer. Consumers are scrutinizing more than ever to what goes into the foods they buy. And what constitutes “healthy” to consumers is in flux.

The FDA recently announced that it will be calling out “added sugar” on nutrition labels in the future. It is estimated that 68% of processed foods contain added sugars.

“It’s going to really surprise people who go to organic and whole foods stores, when they find that all this natural food they’ve been buying is full of added sugar,” said Barry Popkin, UNC professor and author of a study called, “Sweetening of the Global Diet.

”I heard that there are 61 different names for added sugar listed on food labels, which can make it hard for consumers to evaluate the amount of sugar in products they buy. The sneakiest trick to to have multiple sources of added sugar in one product, so that no one type of sugar shows up first on the ingredients panel....

Congratulations, US media! You’ve just covered your first press conference of an authoritarian leader with a deep disdain for your trade.

Here are some tips from Russia.Vladimir Putin’s annual pressers are supposed to be the media event of the year. They are normally held in late December, around Western Christmas time (we Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas two weeks later and it’s not a big deal, unlike New Year’s Eve). Which probably explains why Putin’s pressers don’t get much coverage outside of Russia, except in a relatively narrow niche of Russia-watchers. Putin’s pressers are televised live across all Russian TV channels, attended by all kinds of media — federal news agencies, small local publications and foreign reporters based in Moscow — and are supposed to overshadow every other event in Russia or abroad.

These things are carefully choreographed, typically last no less than four hours, and Putin always comes off as an omniscient and benevolent leader tending to a flock of unruly but adoring children. Given that Putin is probably a role model for Trump, it’s no surprise that he’s apparently taking a page from Putin’s playbook.

I have some observations to share with my American colleagues. You’re in this for at least another four years, and you’ll be dealing with things Russian journalists have endured for almost two decades now. I’m talking about Putin here, but see if you can apply any of the below to your own leader....

Does anyone really believe that story?” Donald Trump said, at his first press conference in more than five months. He was referring to a dossier that BuzzFeed had published the night before, which contained unproved allegations of material that the Russians had supposedly gathered to blackmail Trump. The press conference might not have gone half as well for Trump if that story hadn’t been out. Trump looked angry, in a way that, as anger sometimes does, left him more rhetorically focussed. The rambling defensiveness that criticisms often provoke in him was not so visible. His grandiosity, his resentments, and, at moments, his crudity were all on full display, but not in a way that is likely to alienate his supporters.

The first question asked of Trump was whether he had been briefed by American intelligence about the alleged Russian efforts to compromise him, as CNN had reported. He said that he couldn’t talk about classified intelligence, but he did have something to say about what had been publicly reported. “It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen,” he said. “And it was gotten by opponents of ours, as you know, because you reported it and so did many of the other people. It was a group of opponents that got together—sick people—and they put that crap together.”...