Hasta La Creative!

Good morning. Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital-related news. What people are talking about today: U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax got hacked, and it looks bad. Not only does the data breach potentially affect 143 million people, but the hackers got sensitive data points on consumers — names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s license numbers. About 209,000 people also had their credit card numbers accessed, as Bloomberg News reports.

The response from CEO Richard F. Smith was bland: “This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do. I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes.” But is “disappointing” the right word choice for such a severe breach? Also, people are confused about the Equifax help site, which leads to a completely different web address that immediately demands six Social Security Number digits. On social media, some people complained it didn’t seem to work right, or they wondered whether it was a phishing site.

So crisis communications experts, how is Equifax doing on this? Is there a better way?

Continue reading at AdAge.com