When the Trump administration banned electronics larger than a mobile phone for passengers from several Middle East airports, airlines needed to respond. A press release from Etihad Airways tries to explain the problem and their solution, but circles around aimlessly instead. Here’s how to use a ROAM analysis to make communications like this better. Etihad’s email…
Google’s Chrome browser is going to stop accepting security certificates from Symantec. This is a big deal: for a browser to recognize a site as secure, it has to accept that site’s certificate, and more than 30% of all sites use Symantec certificates. Google announced this is a direct but technical way, then Symantec responded with exaggerated whining…
Cision, which makes tools for PR professionals, will become a $2.4 billion publicly traded company through a maneuver with a capital company. They’re holding a call to explain it Monday at 11. If you read those 31 words, you know everything you need to about this news. Press releases tend toward fluff. But this one —…
The bad news at Uber keeps on coming. This weekend, its President of Ridesharing and second-in-command, Jeff Jones, quit after only six months. This was an opportunity for Uber’s founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick, to take responsibility for problems that contributed to this departure. He failed. The context for the Jeff Jones departure First, some background….
Much of the Internet was down for three hours last week. Because of an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud-based service that powers Internet companies, hundreds of services like Medium, Slack, Quora, Reddit, and Kickstarter stopped working or worked poorly. Amazon’s Web geeks then bungled the response, focusing on jargon rather than clarity and empathy….
A frequent flyer friend recently received an email regarding the American Express Platinum credit card. It includes some unpleasant news, but unless you’re the type that reads every word of every email, you’d probably miss it. That’s a mistake, because burying the bad news creates a backlash, now that everyone spreads news on social media. Here’s the…
Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, just published his company’s annual report and shareholder letter. It starts off with a veiled protest about the state of the world and the challenges it has created for GE’s leadership. The lede demonstrates clearly how people who want to accuse without naming names (Trump! Trump!) use passive constructions to generate doubt….
Waymo, the autonomous-car division of Google’s parent Alphabet, is suing Uber and its autonomous car division Otto. Waymo claims Otto stole its intellectual property. To win a battle like that, you need credible facts and an unemotional approach. Waymo does it pretty well. As I described earlier this week in another case against Uber (it’s been a…
American Airlines announced new names for the groups in its boarding process. This made it much clearer how, if you’re an ordinary non-preferred customer, you’re one step above steerage. The clarity is great: it further weaponizes envy even as it deflect attention from the privileges American is slowly squeezing out of flying. Here’s the email that I (and…