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Experience
We have navigated the highest-pressure situations in the most sensitive environments. Our expertise can help identify solutions to your most pressing communications challenges.
Industries
Even at the best of times, airlines are forced to confront a near-constant barrage of reputational threats. From pricing issues, flight cancellations, and customer service problem to safety concerns, labor unrest, and financial underperformance, the potential brand liabilities are as numerous as they are menacing. When disaster strikes, the stakes are raised exponentially. Carriers must appear cool, calm, collected, and in control when conditions are anything but.
LEVICK’S Aviation Team understands the full spectrum of issues that make and brake airline brands. We have been the communications equivalent of first-responders in the wake of high-profile accidents. We were there to help clients manage post-9/11 panic. We have soothed the anger that results from high-profile delays on the tarmac. We have helped airline employees set standards of excellent customer service. And we have gathered the intelligence that alerts clients to what’s coming next from competitors, investors, unions, and regulators such as the FAA, TSA, and NTSB.
Online and off – from the ticket counter to the runway to Wall Street – we are a full-service airline communications partner.
The challenges facing the banking industry have grown ever more complex and multifaceted in the years since the financial collapse. Shareholders, legislators, and regulators grow increasingly aggressive with each new scandal and each new investment setback. Worst of all, perhaps, the public has cast an ever more jaundiced eye on the industry’s business practices even as banks labor to engender and communicate trust.
LEVICK’s Banking Team, tested in the fires of November 2008, understands the role that strategic communications must play to retain the confidence of the industry’s multiple stakeholders. We work with financial institutions to underscore transparency and compliance. We shape and control the narrative, promoting superior financial performance, customer service, and shareholder value.
Financial service providers are at a crossroads. They demand market-wise partners who’ve been there before, who have the instinct and knowledge to anticipate what’s coming next.
The defense industry is confronting the most challenging procurement environment since the advent of the Cold War. Federal dollars are scarce. Pentagon budgets are dwindling. Cost overruns routinely generate unwonted and unfair attention. With diverse political and economic influencers shaping an uncertain future, contractors must simultaneously reach the public and its representatives with messages that emphasize security, value, and trust.
LEVICK’s Defense Industry Team deploys experts recruited from every sector of the government to ensure that these messages are heard by the grassroots and grasstops alike. We have directly and successfully challenged Department of Defense and Pentagon decisions. We have aggressively and effectively persuaded audiences of the integrity with which defense contractors carry out their critical missions.
And we have gathered the intelligence that helps domestic and international clients see around corners to what’s coming next on Capitol Hill and beyond.
Educational institutions have been beset by emergencies and on-campus tragedies that threaten their reputations, diminish recruitment, and jeopardize development. At the same time, the urgency felt by school administrators is by no means limited to violence and scandal. In recent years, we’ve had lawsuits filed over allegedly inflated job placement data. We’ve seen campus leaders taken to task for accepting donations from sources some see as less than savory. And we’ve seen leadership struggles spill out of the boardroom and onto the front pages.
LEVICK’s Education Team stands ready to assist public and private institutions from Pre-K to PhD. We have helped schools reverse harsh media narratives about student, teacher, and administrator misconduct. We have assisted in the development of crisis plans that ensure school leaders can respond rapidly and responsibly to any anticipated public liability. All the while, we work tirelessly to inundate traditional and online media with messages that remind the public about the ethics and values at the heart of every school’s educational mission.
In this age of diverse risk, minute-to-minute news cycles, and increased competition, educational institutions need to think differently about the ways in which they protect their brands – both in crisis, and in periods of relative calm.
It doesn’t matter that the U.S. food system is the most abundant, safe, and effective in the world. Given unprecedented levels of regulatory and activist scrutiny, as well as the speed with which isolated problems are communicated across vast audiences, even the most trusted food brands face likely crises, recalls, and brand-damaging controversies.
LEVICK’s Food Team is the industry’s leading communications and crisis counselor. We oversaw the front-page spinach and pet food recalls of 2007 and 2008. We prepared Bob Evans for potential crises and did the same for the USDA itself. When one company expanded overseas, we helped guarantee that the same unimpeachable product safety standards would be instituted on two continents.
As food industry insiders, we know exactly what fears and anxieties affect consumers and regulators – and we understand how best to put them to bed.
There is no limit to the communications needs of a foreign government. Foreign Direct Investment has to be attracted. Compliance with international humanitarian standards has to be emphasized. Policy decisions need to be justified. Economic growth initiatives must be marketed and sold to multiple audiences throughout the world. Often, the fortunes of entire populations hang in the balance.
LEVICK’s Foreign Governments Team provides seamless strategic service to nations throughout the world. We understand the concerns of potential corporate investors: stability, safety, and long-term growth potential. We gather the intelligence that provides insight into tomorrow’s challenges. We inundate traditional and digital media with persuasive content. Simply put, we reach corporate and governmental decision-makers with the compelling messages that transform them into powerful allies.
In a shrinking world, foreign governments need willing partners to help them achieve their economic, societal, and security goals.
Today, the insurance industry is operating amid new challenges and in a markedly more contentious environment. It began when self-interested plaintiffs’ attorneys and local officials made their claims front-page news in the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. It continues in the debate over health insurance. All the while, stakeholders begin to forget the basic premise at the heart of the insurance and underwriting industry – to help people and businesses get back on their feet after disaster strikes.
LEVICK’s Insurance Team knows how to provide the public – and its legislative representatives – with a powerful and compelling narrative. We are corporate and trade association veterans that have advised insurers both in and out of court. We have tailored traditional and digital media strategies that take back control of the overarching narrative. We have built relationships with the editors and beat reports who decisively affect the climate of opinion. During the 9/11 coverage crisis, we guided a UK insurer through the thicket, effectively isolating the company from public attention during the acrimonious negotiations.
We provide a safety net as the insurance industry walks a daily tightrope and grapples with multifaceted internal and external challenges.
The pharmaceutical and medical devices industries are by nature high-risk, controversial, litigious, and intensively regulated. They are playgrounds for plaintiffs’ lawyers and high-volume, high-risk litigation. They are targets for NGOs. They are the focal point of ongoing debates over health care. They are subject to devastating product recalls and unpredictable political agendas.
What’s different today is that modern communications, especially the Internet, have upped the ante exponentially, and the need among pharmaceutical and medical devices companies for the most strategic possible communications has never been greater. LEVICK’S Pharmaceutical & Medical Devices Team is a long-established partner to the industry’s leading corporations and start-up companies, guiding these clients through one minefield after another.
LEVICK provides the training and implements the strategy to manage industry crises, achieve our clients’ public policy objectives, and prevail against daily reputational assaults.
Professional services such as law, accounting, consulting, and engineering, are facing unprecedented reputational issues. Even as clients are more prone these days to blame their advisors when matters don’t work out as well as hoped, partners are likelier in this competitive environment to defect. Fairly or not, the public perception is then one of institutional disarray.
A responsive communications agenda needs to be a hybrid: maintain the firm’s reputation amid disputes and departures and simultaneously intensify business development initiatives that incentivize professionals to remain on board. Having served clients in this area since we were founded, LEVICK brings unmatched sensitivity and knowledge to the table.
LEVICK’s Professional Services team has pioneered cutting-edge professional service marketing campaigns even as we have guided brand-name firms through reorganizations, failed mergers, and malpractice allegations.
Viral communications and an increasingly voracious appetite for instantaneous news now guarantee unprecedented reputational challenges for sports and entertainment celebrities as well as industry businesses and institutions. Careers are torpedoed by scandals, drugs, lawsuits, and Congressional investigations. So often these individuals turn to close friends and family for advice. It’s usually the worst thing they can do.
Sports and entertainment businesses and organizations are besieged by contract negotiations, labor actions, and scalding criticism of their standards and oversight. Few industries are as doggedly scrutinized by their public stakeholders. LEVICK’s Sports & Entertainment Team guides clients through these minefields with communications strategies that minimize or eliminate reputational damage during the most vulnerable moments of a public inquest.
We succeed for individuals and organizations online and before Congress; during litigation, and in the daily struggle to influence public perception. We are industry insiders.
Specialties
The anticorruption enforcement landscape has never been more perilous. Since 2004, civil and criminal actions carried out by the Department of Justice are up 1000 percent. Monetary penalties have soared into the billions. Executives are going to prison. No longer is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) the only area of exposure, as European, Asian, and even developing countries in Africa and the Middle East are looking to mirror America’s aggressive stance.
LEVICK’s Anticorruption Team knows where the threats lie and how best to mitigate the corruption risks inherent in global operations. Our counselors provide unparalleled resources to help companies and individuals articulate a commitment to compliance, highlight proactive initiatives, and brand themselves the standard bearers of ethical business practices.
Clients trust us to assume control of the narrative from the moment a violation is uncovered until the final remedial step is taken.
When allegations of anti-competitive practices arise, public trust, marketplace credibility, and the brand itself are all jeopardized. As such, antitrust cases aren’t just about legal judgment; they are about public opinion, and how the dominant perception can decisively influence regulatory decisions.
LEVICK’s Antitrust Team works hand-in-glove with legal counsel on bet-the-company actions, managing trenchant counter-offensives and controlling the narrative online, where terms such as “monopoly” and “price fixing” are so crucial in setting the tone of public discussion. We recruit powerful third-party allies to ensure the credibility of our clients.
Companies that act in the best interests of the marketplace must often remind the marketplace that they are.
In 2011 alone, hackers accessed 174 million confidential corporate records. With new breaches discovered almost every day, the question isn’t if a company will be victimized by hacktivists, criminals, or disgruntled insiders; they question is when – and will the company be ready to respond with the speed, accuracy, and transparency that the marketplace demands.
LEVICK’s Data Privacy and Security Team understands the urgency that confronts risk managers, executives, and boards of directors. In numerous engagements, we have helped companies recover lost stock value, regain public trust, and retake control over their brands – transforming stories about vulnerability and victimization into narratives that highlight new levels of security, responsibility, and commitment to consumer privacy.
Today’s corporate stakeholders accept that data breaches are a reality of digital age and will often remember an organization’s response far longer than the breach itself.
Companies, organizations, schools, and other repositories of the public trust face horrific, often unjust exposure when their employees allegedly engage in personal misconduct. It’s often all too hard for the public to separate the actions of one individual from the institution. Minute-to-minute media coverage compounds the matter.
LEVICK’s Employee Misconduct Team has successfully separated bad actors from the brands they once represented – as we did when we served as counselors to an Order of the Catholic Church at the height of scandal.
We help organizations demonstrate maximum transparency, articulate support for the injured, and underscore how everything possible is being done and will be done in the interests of fairness and justice.
Companies are facing exponentially greater environmental concerns from the public and 24-7 oversight from increasingly aggressive regulators. MDLs are commonplace as claims extend from the riverbeds of Northwest America to the rain forests of Latin and South America. New products are scrutinized for environmental impact as never before, with alleged “greenwashers” paying a heavy price. All the while, global disasters such as Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon guarantee that environmental activists enjoy a newfound public credibility.
LEVICK’s Environmental Team has the experience and intelligence needed to navigate even the most intense environmental issues. We were front and center in the Gulf. We have managed communications programs to persuade the EPA that new products pass muster. We have countered panic and anxiety during and after emergencies, with persuasive information about actual health and environmental risk. We have transformed complex data into publicly digestible message points that deter litigation and engender newfound trust between companies and the communities where they do business.
Activists and regulators know that environmental battles aren’t won in the courtroom; they are won in the Court of Public Opinion – both online and off.
When it comes to government investigations, monetary and other potential penalties are only half the liability equation. Regulators, legislators, and state attorneys general are masters of media manipulation – and they don’t hesitate to do all they can to put public opinion squarely in their corner. Corporate and organizational brands are eviscerated – sometime beyond the point of recovery.
LEVICK’s Government Investigations Team possesses the experience and intelligence needed to win against such formidable adversaries. We aggressively fought the Department of Justice after it reneged on an amnesty agreement. We have helped conciliate some of the toughest state attorneys general in the country, to reach mutually acceptable agreements – even amid public clamor for punitive action. And we have prepared a variety of clients to face the harsh spotlight of Congressional testimony – from corporate executives to the highest-profile sports figures.
Whether the goal is all-out victory or mutually-agreeable settlement, we work seamlessly with legal counsel to win not only in the court or hearing room – but in the Court of Public Opinion as well.
In today’s marketplace, intellectual property means much more than filing patents, trademarks, and copyrights. It is a competitive tool that companies in multiple industries use to gain decisive business advantages, often with claims and lawsuits that drive their opponents out of business. Communications plays a vital role in these struggles, to ward off potential legal actions or to win lawsuits when there’s no choice but to litigate.
It is a formidable theater of war, all the more so because the battles are fought globally, in multiple venues where different laws of engagement typically apply. Levick’s Intellectual Property team has won for clients under just such daunting circumstances, when whole product lines are at stake as well as corporate reputations.
We know that shareholder perceptions and consumer opinion can be as important as judicial rulings. We know how essential it is to partner with our clients’ legal counsel even as we build a seamless case in the Court of Public Opinion.
Labor & Employment issues challenge companies in courtrooms and in the workplace, at negotiating tables and in the Court of Public Opinion. They involve age, gender, and race discrimination allegations. They pit corporate interests against publicly conspicuous and often well-funded labor unions. They give rise to multi-district litigation.
At LEVICK, we know that how these challenges are handled affects the reputations of businesses throughout the marketplace, among customers, shareholders, and public officials. We fight and win your battles on every front – when a high-profile labor issue is percolating as well as afterward, to preserve public loyalty once the issue is resolved.
LEVICK’s Labor & Employment Team succeeds because we speak compellingly to both your internal audiences as well as to every citizen who has a stake in the outcome.
Native Americans have unique communications challenges and opportunities. Displaced, often violently, as the original inhabitants of what is today North America, they are the forgotten minority. But in the late 20th century, through their own will, enterprise and ingenuity, many tribes built businesses, diversified and provided better lives for their people and their surrounding communities. While many have taken steps to preserve their rich history and cultural legacy, their future as job creators and engines for economic growth are constantly challenged. There’s an ongoing need to underscore the contributions of Native Americans to our society, to our armed forces and to our economy. Native American nations have always had a great story to tell. There’s never been a more advantageous time to tell it.
Whether the opportunity involves historical treaties, financial solutions, gaming, tobacco sales, energy production, land rights, or health care, LEVICK's Native American Team stands ready to do battle with any government to protect the sovereignty of Native American nations.
Product liability is as much about communications as it is about law and regulation, simply because every consumer has a vital stake in the outcome of a product lawsuit or a regulatory inquiry. When a food product or an automobile or a surgical device is challenged, the manufacturer can expect to see the Internet explode, as much with unfounded speculation as with fact.
The most strategically coherent communications plan is then as important as a strong legal defense. Not just a product line, the manufacturer’s reputation is in jeopardy. LEVICK has served clients at every stage of a product liability crisis, to support litigation strategies and to reassure the public; to communicate with regulatory agencies; and to deploy digital resources and protect clients’ reputations online.
LEVICK’s Product Liability Team has decades of collective experience limiting client exposure and repairing reputational damage after high-profile recalls and trials. Contact us today to learn more about how LEVICK’S product liability professionals can work with you before, during, and after a problem occurs.
For manufacturers and retailers, global trade has led to unprecedented regulatory and communications problems when products face recall. So many goods are now produced in countries where quality control is inadequately monitored. In turn, xenophobic fears exacerbate consumer fears and anxieties.
Recall-related communications thus demand a multifaceted strategy. Along with the public’s safety concerns, the recall itself must be managed flawlessly with communications specifically compliant with regulatory standards. LEVICK has succeeded for clients in the highest-profile recalls of the past decade, including all three front-page events (the spinach, pet food, and toy recalls) that made 2007 “The Year of the Recall.”
LEVICK’S Recall Team works seamlessly with manufacturers, retailers, and specialized recall management firms. Contact us now to learn more about how we can help create a practicable recall plan ahead of need, as well as team with you should a recall ever be necessary.
Today, every communications agenda is first and fundamentally a struggle to prevail on the Internet. It’s not just technology. It’s the strategic lifeblood of business itself. The social and digital media now drive all communications initiatives: not just marketing and brand or reputation management, but crisis, litigation, and public affairs.
Institutions and companies are often brilliantly adept at using the social and digital media to market products and services but perilously vulnerable to adversarial campaigns that sabotage corporate reputations. LEVICK’S award-winning Social & Digital Media Team spearheads campaigns that reverse the momentum. We empower our clients to drive the day-to-day online narrative that directly impacts marketplace perception, political oversight, and customer loyalty.
LEVICK’S team members include experts on every facet of the Social & Digital Media: from grassroots campaigns to mount groundswells of public support, to full utilization of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others; from blog engagement strategies to ad campaigns that powerfully reinforce your online message. Contact us now to learn more about the myriad of services we provide that will put you in the digital driver’s seat.
Crises don’t just threaten companies; they can threaten entire industries. Similarly, the interests of entire industries may demand a specific public affairs initiative: advocacy, perhaps, for or against a new law. In other cases, a single persistent message needs to reach a mass market or a targeted audience. In all such situations, industries can be best served when a trade association spearheads the campaign on behalf of its member companies, serving as a single source of commentary on behalf of all.
LEVICK partners with trade associations on a variety of fronts; when, for example, unneeded regulation threatens everyone’s business interests, or when a product or environmental issue incites public anxiety and hostility. Trade associations are also natural venues for crisis planning or media training to ensure a consistent industry-wide strategy and execution.
In unity there is strength. Contact us now to learn more about how we have helped trade associations in multiple industries achieve collective goals.
Prosecutors are public officials and public opinion influences their actions and decisions, sometimes decisively. Today, public opinion is molded by much more than a few tabloid headlines as the Internet now drives perceptions. Allegations, rumors, and innuendo spread virally, hardening prejudices. Even if the accused are exonerated in court, their reputations continue to hang in the balance.
Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to draw a clear line between the crimes of a renegade individual and the complicity or negligence of the corporate entity. Companies must therefore prepare to respond effectively – at the very moment an investigation is initially launched – to protect their brands and stock price. LEVICK has guided both individuals and companies through the most complex high-profile criminal matters, from insider trading and FCPA violations to front-page celebrity trials.
Time and again, LEVICK’s seasoned professionals have taken back control of the narrative…collaborated seamlessly with legal counsel to manage communications during trial…helped restore reputations in the aftermath of a public ordeal. Contact us today to learn more about our capabilities and experience on behalf of individuals and corporations in the most challenging white collar crime cases.