Reputation Town

This week, John and Warren talk about Jake Tapper's new book and the accusations that he was part of the journalistic coverup he's highlighting, MLSE's handling of yet another disappointing year for the Toronto Maple Leafs, YouTube creator Luke Nichols (Outdoor Boys) quits the platform at the peak of his fame to focus on his family, murky water in Stoney Creek during labour disruption and is Tom Cruise the last real action movie hero?

We hit on a bunch of stories this week, including Coinbase flipping the script on hackers trying to extort the company, the viral customer service video from Frontier Airlines, NHL owner Doug Cifu reprimanded by the league for getting into a Twitter battle with a fan, Walmart says it will have to increase prices because of tariffs, Toronto City councillors give themselves a hefty pay raise, Tim Horton's sliding quality, Bernie Sanders justifies flying private and a Nova Scotia police news conference about two missing children starts on an interesting note. 

This week, we break down some of the more recent PR stories in the headlines, including the communications from the Vatican around the new Pope, the curiously low viewership numbers for Michelle Obama's new podcast, Ron MacLean appears to be on a reputation management tour, what happens if you're a celebrity who's named during the Diddy trial, Pierre Poilievre drops the ball in stunning fashion and a former Facebook/Meta insider has a best-selling book talking about some of the company's shady practices. 

In this episode, we catch up on some of the stories of the recent past, including LA Mayor Karen Bass's on-camera freeze-up in response to the California wildfires, Delta's handling of the upside-down plane crash in Toronto, Trudeau's handling of the trade war with the US and a look at some Canadian celebrities making headlines, including Mike Meyers and Number 99. 

This week, we welcome back our friend Molly McPherson to help us wrap up 2024 and break down some of the top PR crisis stories. We didn't discuss our topics with each other ahead of time, so in this episode, you're getting our real-time reactions and breakdowns to these stories, including the strategies behind them (or lack thereof) and any lessons learned. Thanks to Molly for joining us and we hope you enjoy this year-end episode. 

This week, John and Warren talk about the ongoing Canada Post strike and the damage it's causing, both to Canadians and to the organization's brand, Paul Bissonnette steps up to defend Arizona restaurant staff and finds himself in a 6 on 1 brawl, Paul Krugman retiring from the NYT and how he'll be remembered, Toronto Public Library gets itself into hot water after a staffer refused to let a lost young girl use a phone to call her mother, journalist Taylor Lorenz makes a post apparently celebrating CEO killings and more. 

This week, John and Warren talk about the controversial rebrand from Jaguar, the reputational implications from the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight, including for Netflix, which had technical trouble serving its live audience, Space X's COO answering questions about government contracts and the move millions are making to social media platform BlueSky. 

In this 50th episode of the Reputation Town podcast, we do a breakdown of the US Presidential election, looking specifically at the elements of media relations, whether podcasts have eclipsed mainstream media, etc. We also discuss the complicated legacy of comedian and former late-night talk show host Mike Bullard, who recently died at the age of 67. And finally, we look at McDonalds' effective handling of its recent E. coli contamination crisis. 

With four days to go before the US Presidential Election, we're joined by our good friend Molly McPherson to discuss the presidential campaigns, each candidate's use of the media, the role podcasts will play in this year's election, the controversy around the 'garbage' comments and, finally, each of us gives our prediction of what we think will happen on Nov. 5th. Hope you enjoy this episode! 

In this episode, we catch up on some stories from the past few weeks, including Dave Grohl's confession about having a baby outside his marriage, Samsung's apology for missing its earnings estimate, Quantas forces an entire plane full of passengers to watch an R-rated movie, TD is fined US$3 billion for failing to live up to its anti-money laundering requirements and the bulk of this episode (the latter half) is spent analyzing the media relations performance of presidential candidate Kamala Harris over the past few weeks. Hope you enjoy this episode of Reputation Town!

This week, John and Warren talk about the negative PR impacting Disney after the allergy death of a guest, the viral Australian breakdancer at the Olympics, the Trump/Musk conversation on X, Kamala Harris's reluctance to do media interviews, $18 million of bonuses at the CBC, a Boeing project manager tries his hand at media relations and more. Hope you enjoy this episode!

This week, John and Warren talk about the drone/spying scandal facing the Canadian Olympic women's soccer team, the wrap-up of the LCBO strike, the astronauts that 'are not stranded' on the International Space Station, the startup company that spent $1.8 million on a domain name and our main topic of the week, the fallout in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. 

This week, John and Warren chop up a few stories, including Paul Maurice's touching speech moments after winning the Stanley Cup, the TTC's inadequate response to a recent stabbing murder at Jane Station in Toronto and veteran broadcaster Al Michaels approves an artificial intelligence version of his voice to be used at the upcoming Olympics. We end this episode with a discussion of Joe Biden's dismal performance at the recent Presidential Debate, how his cognitive decline has been (mis)handled by much of the mainstream media and what does this all mean with four months until the US elections. 

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 Stanley Cup playoffs. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy this episode! 

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 amid high grocery prices. 

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 Marineland and the continuing scrutiny around Kensington Palace's PR practices. 

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 homeowners to leave their car keys by the front door to give easier access to car thieves, TikTok's lobbying initiative that backfired, Molson's great PR move to profile women's names on hockey jerseys and Ron MacLean trying to salvage his reputation/friendship with Don Cherry. Hope you enjoy this episode! 

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 by the Arizona Coyotes following a troubling social media post, Google's woke AI platform, a workplace podcaster who got into hot water and more. 

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 Business Insider and the ethcis controversy around Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's recent vacation. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy this episode! 

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 suing the company behind his Mr. Beast Burger and the other where he's getting some hate for building 100 wells in Africa. We hope you enjoy this episode and if there's a story you'd like us to cover, be sure to send us a note. Thanks for listening. 

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 take to prepare for the admittedly small percentage of journalists who might be a tad unethical or unprofessional. 

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 for listening and if there's a topic you'd like to hear us chat about on the pod, please let us know. 

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 newspaper in order to delete negative media coverage about himself. As always, thanks for listening! 

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, the ongoing controversy around Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and some of the related business moves. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy this episode! 

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 news broadcast, Lisa LaFlamme.

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 chat about the TTC's public statement and whether or not it hits the mark. And there's also a little feel-good story for all you animal lovers. 

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. 

We were delighted to welcome back our friend Molly McPherson to join us for this episode. We chatted about the CEO who fired 900 employees over Zoom, Chris Cuomo's termination from CNN and we wrapped up the episode with a detailed breakdown of Alec Baldwin's sit-down interview with George Stephanopoulos. We hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast. 

In this episode, John and Warren talk about Facebook changing its name to Meta, the pocket dial that set off a boardroom drama for Rogers, Netflix's response to the Dave Chappelle controversy and the various responses/statements regarding the Kyle Beach and Chicago Blackhawks story in the NHL. 

Where to follow John and Warren: https://twitter.com/Room40 https://twitter.com/warren_weeks 

In this episode, John and Warren ramble about Party City's September 11 marketing email that missed the mark, a private school that scrubbed all online content about its principal who was convicted of abusing students, Western University's response to widespread reports of sexual assaults, Leylah Fernandez shows incredible poise at the US Open. 

This week, we are joined my Alberta-based media training coach Grant Ainsley. The three of us shoot the breeze about a bunch of recent stories, including the Ottawa councillor who got himself in a bit of a Twitter DM scandal, Delta Airlines CEO's refusal to name the Delta variant in his communications, how not to run a press conference, politicians blatantly ignoring reporters' questions, PM Justin Trudeau's mic drop moment on Rebel Media, CNN dunking on Joe Rogan and more. 

This week, Warren and John ramble about the Taliban's attempt at public relations, Bill Gates responding to Anderson Cooper's question about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, a Canadian politician who photoshopped his head onto a photo of Prince William, Mike Richards stepping down from Jeopardy's search for a new host and what to do when Global TV's Sean O'Shea comes knocking. 

We're back! This week, John and Warren have lots of reputation-related stories to catch up on, including the odd Jeff Bezos press conference following his space flight, Lululemon's inadvertent diss of Physician Assistants and Ava Lane Boutique's errant email, the resulting viral TikTok and the company's attempted apology. And we round out this week's podcast by addressing the Montreal Canadiens' controversial draft pick and the team's subsequent efforts at damage control. We hope you enjoy this episode and thanks for listening!

This week, John and Warren ramble about the space race between Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, the pressure facing corporations re: social issues, the apology by sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson (who tested positive for cannabis), how to prepare for a media interview and more.   

It's a big week in Reputation Town because we have our first visitor and it's none other than Molly McPherson, a PR/comms, crisis response, media relations expert and author of Indestructible: Reclaim Control and Respond with Confidence in a Media Crisis. In this week's episode, we ramble about the allegations of 'fake' tuna at Subway, the admission by the CEO of Blade that he used an imaginary media spokesperson for three years, IKEA's Juneteenth menu debacle, a Canadian pastor putting his foot in his mouth regarding the residential school situation and more. We're also giving away four copies of Molly's book to you, our listeners. Instructions for entering the contest are in the first few minutes of the episode. Thanks to Molly for joining us and thanks to you for taking the time to listen. 

In this episode, John and Warren ramble about the athlete who blamed a positive steroid test on a burrito, CBC getting rid of reader comments on Facebook, the anatomy of a (bad) NHL apology, Jeffrey Toobin's awkward apology on CNN, Roger Waters tearing a strip off Mark Zuckerberg and more.

This week, John and Warren ramble about the Naomi Osaka situation, the email from Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke to staff stating that the company is not a family but rather a team, a deep discussion about when you should and shouldn't ask a journalist for a correction and a great media interview by Mohamad Fakih, the founder of Paramount Fine Foods, in the aftermath of a fire that gutted one of his flagship restaurants. 

In this episode, John and Warren ramble about the recent John Cena/Fast and the Furious controversy, Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas's slamming of The Toronto Sun, the nature of CEO crisis statements and more. 

In this week's episode, John and Warren ramble about Ellen's announcement that she's quitting her show (and our predictions of that from last month), the reputational impact of Elon Musk hosting SNL, the implications of the 'protect the king' strategy being used by Doug Ford's handlers, off-topic banter and more.