Issues Management
Not-so-friendly consumer policies, hot-button tech issues, and things your company doesn’t want to negatively impact its brand reputation. KLC Communications can help you manage risk around tricky situations.
There’s quite a bit we can’t talk about publicly related to our work in issues management. But we’ve worked on countless issues across a wide array of industries, providing expert counsel to senior leaders when brand reputation was at stake.
Select Examples
Apple announced in September 2018 it would support eSIM. When it rolled out iOS 12.1 in October, eSIM functionality was included. But at the time at Verizon, we believed eSIMs current state would be a terrible experience for consumers.
Spyware on Phones
A reporter at TechCrunch discovered Verizon was testing an app to provide more customized search results on mobile phones. Generally, we did not promote third-party apps – particularly apps we were still testing. But in this instance, we decided our product team and the developer would speak with him briefly so that the app was not mischaracterized in the story.
The TechCrunch story came out on the same day the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution rolling back FCC privacy protections, which the U.S. Senate passed the prior week. Newly elected President Trump said he would sign it, so it would become law. The new FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, just two months into his job after his appointment by President Trump, also favored rolling back the privacy protections. Those working to defend privacy felt like they were under attack.
The day after TechCrunch published its story, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – the leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation – characterized Verizon’s new app as “spyware” in a scathing blog post.
The EFF specifically called out Verizon’s “stunning willingness to compromise the security and privacy of their customers by installing spyware on end devices.” The blog post began gaining traction in leading tech media outlets, including Engadget and CNET.
We fought back. We spoke with the reporter and rebutted every one of his claims. We spoke with his editor and noted all the various corrections needed to the story. We called every reporter who wrote about the EFF post to raise our concerns about the legitimacy of the post. We explained we were testing the app on a single phone and that customers must opt-in for us to gain visibility into their data.
In a rare move, the EFF redacted its entire initial story.
After additional research, the EFF eventually published a new blog post the following week. By this point, the news cycle had moved on and the media were interested in other matters. Not a single media outlet picked up the new blog post, which – unsurprisingly – was still critical of Verizon.
When burglaries increased because Verizon was the only carrier with unlocked phones in inventory, we knew we had to make a change to keep our customers and employees safe - even if our critics in the media would view it as a violation of FCC rules (which we agreed to as part of our bid winning the C block in the 700MHz spectrum auction). This story, given as an exclusive to CNET, drove 200 news stories with less than 15% negative sentiment.