Month: December 2017

I’m taking the week between Christmas and New Years off. Happy holidays to everyone.

Chipotle is fighting yet another case of foodborne illness. This time it occurred in one of its Los Angeles restaurants. The firm is in a chronic crisis caused by some kind of failure in its logistics. There should be no way that contaminated products slip through its system, but they are. The chain will need to investigate again what went wrong. Was it restaurant specific or food delivered to the restaurant? If it was restricted to one building, how were edibles being handled? Was there a storage problem, an employee foul-up such as failing to wash one’s hands? If the fresh vegetables were carrying a bacteria, how did it get there? Did it happen in the field, at the time it was being picked, in transportation? Ideally Chipotle will discover a root cause and fix it once and for all time. But, so far that isn’t happening and the chain has had a loss of reputation as a result. There is no worse PR than for a restaurant to poison its customers.

Homeopathic medicine, a quack approach to health, has poor PR. The FDA is now set to start regulating it. The administration pulled no punches with its decision.

“In many cases, people may be placing their trust and money in therapies that may bring little to no benefit in combating serious ailments, or worse—that may cause significant and even irreparable harm because the products are poorly manufactured, or contain active ingredients that aren’t adequately tested or disclosed to patients.” 

Why is it that segments of the public continue to trust so-called therapies that have no basis in scientific fact? There is a lack of logic in many people’s minds. They posit their trust in modern day medicine men who prey on their credulity. They need to be protected from themselves.

In spite of best efforts of authorities, people continue to text and drive. Or, they are reading their e-mail with their heads down. Or, they are yammering on the phone while steering through traffic. Nothing transportation agencies and law enforcement have done has stopped people from using cell phones while in control of a vehicle. There is no doubt it is dangerous. Accident statistics prove that. But, people continue to divide their attention between the road and screen. Authorities are left asking what kind of PR campaign combined with enforcement is necessary to get drivers to stop. There is no easy answer. It’s an issue as stubborn as smoking. It is essential, however, for the message and behavior change to get through. While campaigns till now have failed, they can’t stop. At some point, texting and driving should be as serious a negative as running a red light.

Robert Mueller has been a relentless investigator of Russian meddling in US elections and held in high respect. Now, with one act, the perception has turned to that of a man out of control. This stems from the seizure of thousands of transition team e-mails from the GSA. Such correspondence is not considered part of a government agency and was supposed to be destroyed. Mueller discovered that it was still intact and hauled it in. There now is a worry that any potentially prosecutable offenses might be thrown out due to tainted evidence. Mueller would defend himself by saying he was just doing his job. But, one can over-reach, especially in the law. There is great danger in the power of prosecutors.  They can wreck lives in their zeal and have. Mueller is close to being reckless, as the author of the article says. He has maintained positive PR until now. It would be unfortunate if he loses it through his own actions.

Omarosa Manigault Newman is leaving the Trump administration. Was she fired or did she choose to go voluntarily? The first reports were she was escorted from the building and left shouting in anger. Her version is the opposite. The answer is who knows? This administration is riddled with falsehood and lies. One can’t believe what anyone says. The absence of truth starts at the top and radiates through the staff. There is no effort to stick by facts or to tell the truth. It is a sink of the worst kind of communications and PR. It is a say-anything, do-anything organization without ethics. The executive branch is a moral vacuum. While it might have worked for a short time, the American public has caught on, and Trump’s popularity ratings are the lowest of any president at this point in office.

Some Silicon Valley heavyweights are now admitting that its denizens were starry-eyed optimists when it came to creating and introducing new technology. They saw only the good side of humanity and failed to think about those who would do evil. They were rudely surprised by Russians meddling in US elections, by neo-Nazi declarations, by pornographers, by others who choose to live outside the boundaries of society. One could almost forgive them for their naivete. Technologists from the beginning have only seen the good side of their labors. They had to learn the hard way that humans are flawed and will misuse hardware and software to their own benefit even if it hurts others. They know now and they are working diligently to edit out inflammatory material from their social media. They still aren’t comfortable with their new role, but they recognize the responsibility they have assumed with the success of their systems. It has been a hard-won maturation.

Google has a PR nightmare without end. It is its war against scammers who continually find new ways to rank high in search engine results.  When the company closes one door with its algorithm, the shysters find another and pile in until Google gets wise and shuts it. They are then off to other tricks as they find them. There is no point where Google’s search engine is perfect and stops scammers permanently. There is always a crack somewhere and the fly-by-nighters will find it. The company’s reputation depends on producing good search results to queries and if it doesn’t, people will stop using it. Hence, Google can’t ignore con artists. It must do its utmost to smoke them out and get rid of them. It is an onerous task but essential.

President Trump has signed a directive to NASA to send men back to the moon and eventually, Mars. It has been a long time coming. Man hasn’t been to the moon since 1972, and Mars is a gleam in the eye of space adventurers. The directive will mean little without money. Sans funds, the document is little more than a publicity stunt. It will take multi-billions to return to the moon and many more billions to reach Mars and return safely. NASA hasn’t had that kind of cash in decades. It has been reduced to unmanned probes. That hasn’t been bad. We have learned more about the solar system from instrument packages than we could have known with humans. But, it is time to have a presence on the moon as a place to understand the deep complexities of space and its effects on the human body. What we learn on the moon might get us to Mars but to little after that. The solar system is hostile to life but for earth.

A budding but incompetent terrorist set off a pipe bomb in a New York subway this morning. Authorities handled the incident well and over-communicated, as they should have, the particulars of the event to ease public concern. Only three people were hurt, apparently none seriously except the perpetrator who was burned and is in the hospital. Fortunately, New York emergency respondents had recently rehearsed what to do in the case of a terrorist attack so they were ready. The lesson here is that crisis handling and communication don’t work well on the page. One needs to run through everything that needs to be done from securing a scene through transporting victims, communicating to the public and collecting forensic evidence. It won’t be the last time this happens. The next incident might  be serious. It is good to know that New York is ready.