Issues + Insights May-June 2007

Past Issues + Insights

Strategy: All the world's a stage, all those on it are reporters

Does "Pocket-casting" spell doom for media relations professionals?

In the past few months, we’ve seen increasing evidence that the traditional role of media relations in a corporate organization is changing.  This shouldn’t be surprising, since the very media we choose to communicate with, inform us, educate us, entertain us and titillate us continues to change and evolve every day.Witness the recent, horrific shooting incident at Virginia Tech.  The event was covered to sickening and even offensive lengths by now traditional electronic media:  broadcast and cable TV, radio, and print.  But, it was also communicated to millions on the Internet and on essentially private, peer-to-peer based social networks through SMS messaging, cell-phone videos, etc. 

What’s important to recognize is that the people doing the communicating through these newer media were not professional journalists who arrived on the scene to cover the story.  They were students, customers, faculty, passengers, staff and crew who were already there living the story. 

Another interesting, though far less tragic, case occurred in December last year, when a planeload of passengers were trapped on the tarmac for eight hours while no one was bright enough to figure out how to get them out of the stinking hellhole an aluminum tube quickly becomes when it doesn’t have air conditioning, windows, vents or toilets.  American Airlines Flight 1348 had been forced to make an unscheduled landing in Austin Texas on December 29, 2006 due to bad weather at its destination (Dallas-Fort Worth).  While the passengers were inside the plane, living through the situation, their story was covered live by conventional media who were interviewing the stranded passengers by cell phones (including live video), email, SMS and chat networks.

Not only are everyday people actively involved in an ongoing crisis now accessible by conventional media, many of them are fully equipped to begin “pocket-casting” themselves as ‘citizen journalists’ direct to the world through the wonders of everyday technology they routinely carry in their pockets.

The question this poses for media relations specialists, corporate communication executives and business leaders is this:  how do we manage this?

How practical are our current media relations policies that say “all media inquiries should be referred to corporate communications…” when everyone is a reporter?  When every customer standing in front of every customer service agent is capable of pocket-casting her experience to the world?  When every student sitting in every classroom expecting an answer from every teacher can pocket-cast her opinion to the masses?  When every son standing at the gate of every facility asking every supervisor if his father was injured or killed in the explosion can pocket-cast the interaction to everyone everywhere?

Can you really tell all your employees never to talk to a reporter… when everyone they talk to is a reporter? 

No.

So, what does this mean for your media relations strategy?

It made sense to constrain communication with the media through a single, professionally-trained spokesperson when there was a finite number of journalists to deal with.  Sure, this has become incredibly more complex with the explosion of media channels in recent years, especially if the crisis is national or global in scope.  You may expect dozens of satellite and microwave vans and a hundred reporters.

But now, if your company has 10,000 employees, 5 million customers and operates in communities with a combined population of 30 million, there are 35 million potential reporters – and that includes the 10,000 potential reporters who are also your employees.

Can you teach all 10,000 employees to be effective spokespeople?  Probably not.  So, what do you do?

Perhaps, it’s time to go back to first principles.  Perhaps your best media relations strategy in the new world of pocket-casting is not a media relations strategy at all.  Perhaps, your best strategy is to teach all your employees simply to do the right thing. 

If your company has a solid vision and mission and is committed to sound values, then maybe you should just encourage your employees to do the right thing, always.  Teach them how to understand what the right thing is and give them the resources and support they need to make the right choices.  Reward them when they make the right decisions – correct them when they fail to do so.

Maybe you don’t need to shape the media message – when every message is a media message.  Maybe, you don’t need to channel all corporate comment through a professional trained spokesperson who can carefully craft a reply that says all the right things – when all he’s going to say is what’s right.

Maybe.

Are your communication practices keeping up with the changing social landscape?

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Crowd at train station

Tactics: Sometimes the wise man says nothing

RIM example illustrates conflict between "Crisis PR" and "Crisis Management"

The April 17, 2007 mini-crisis that knocked out parts of the BlackBerry® network in North America for half a day provided an interesting object lesson in “how much is enough” proactive communication during a crisis.  Some well-known PR crisis experts slammed BlackBerry® makers Research In Motion for failing to proactively inform customers and the media that they were experiencing network problems – and for providing a regular stream of “we’re working on it” information through news releases and proactive disclosure.  We, on the other hand, are fairly certain that would have been a mistake.

Background

Shortly after 8:00 PM on Tuesday, April 17, North American users of the ubiquitous BlackBerry® devices manufactured by Research In Motion (RIM) were, quietly and without ceremony, unplugged from their the never-ending “data drip”.   BlackBerry® email, all of which is routed through RIM’s Waterloo , Ontario area Network Operations Centers (NOCs) crashed.  Much later on, it was learned that a software upgrade appeared to be the cause of the trouble.  Service was not restored until mid-morning the following day for some subscribers, mid-afternoon for others.

Addicted “Crackberry” users – including many in the media and high-stakes “Type A” personality occupations immediately went into withdrawal.  News media picked up the story Tuesday night, initially reporting the problem was global.  However, still-connected users in Asia and Europe logged onto numerous online BlackBerry® forums reporting they were up and running.  RIM itself, was running quiet.

A PC World online story posted at 9:00 AM on April 18, outlined the who, what and where as it was known at the time.  As might be expected, BlackBerry® users are a connected bunch and there were already some graphic online de-tox stories from users complaining about their lack of information about the outage and their poor customer service experience when asking RIM for a prognosis.  Some users even threatened to stop using their devices and to switch to a competing platform. 

Having observed the often obsessive behaviour of many BlackBerry®-implanted colleagues, I wonder how many people actually kicked the habit as a result of this hiccup.  Somehow, I suspect the number is very, very small.

As a regular (though, I think, not yet addicted) BlackBerry® user myself, I learned about the problem early Wednesday morning from an online news scan.  Later that morning, I was contacted by IDG reporter Grant Gross who was writing a follow-up story about RIM’s crisis management performance, so far.  His story has appeared on PC World online and most other IDG publications.  My take on the situation appears, in print at least, to be very different from another veteran crisis PR consultant who advised “more is better” as far as proactive crisis communication is concerned.

And, sometimes, that’s quite right.  But not always.

<<Insert here:  Audible gasp from crisis communication consultants worldwide>>

To speak loudly, softly or not at all

This case may be an ideal example of the difference between “Crisis PR” and “Crisis Management” or, as we prefer “Crisis leadership.”  Crisis PR consultants are typically focused on making your organization look good to the media.  They often do this by trying to make you appear open, forthright and apologetic and by bending over backwards to accommodate media requests so that the media won’t hate you.  Crisis management, on the other hand, is focused on negotiating the crisis in such a way that your organization remains able to achieve its mission.  Whatever that mission may be.  If the media learn to like you along the way, super.  If not, well… too bad for them.

 At the time I spoke with Gross on April 19, I was (and remain) loathe to criticize RIM for “under communicating.” The reason:  I did not then, and do not now, know what was going on during those quiet hours.  But I do know, for a fact, that there are often very good reasons to “run silent” during the opening stages of a crisis.  Here are some questions to help you determine if you should scream out your message from the highest hilltop or lurk quietly in the shadows until someone asks you an unavoidable question.

1.  What is your objective?  If your objective is, as is often the case for PR folks who specialize in crisis communication, simply to minimize the negative tone of media coverage, then pushing it all out there might make very good sense.  In that case, you’re trying to make the media happy:  keep them well fed so they don’t have to scratch around looking for additional details and hopefully they’ll run with the story you give them.

But, sometimes your objective is bigger.  Sometimes, you’re focused on leading the entire organization through the crisis so it can continue to achieve its strategic goals and accomplish its overarching mission.  If this is the case, the media is not your only concern.  You must also consider customers (existing and potential), investors, regulators, communities, competitors and – in this, and other cases:  your enemies.  Yes, Virginia, good companies sometimes do have enemies!

By and large, the objectives for most organizations in crisis are similar to these:

Remember:  communication is never about transmitting information – it’s always about influencing people.

2.  Are you under attack?  I didn’t know, and RIM may not have known then, whether the failure was a result of a mistake RIM managers had made, a major technology failure or whether they were under attack by an active protagonist.  Every organization has enemies, although few organizations ever label them as such.  It’s important to understand whether there are others (individuals or groups) out there who might be actively working against you.  If you are under attack, it is important to remember that one of you most important audiences is your enemy.  Everything you say and do will be observed and analyzed by your opponent who will use it against you.  Use this knowledge to your advantage.  Influence their actions.

3.  What kind of crisis are you in?  Crises come in different sizes and flavors.  As crises go, RIM’s was a “middling” one.  The concept of “say it all, say it fast” works best when you’re in a disaster of your own making – especially when you’re the villain.  It’s the Band-Aid® solution:  if it’s going to hurt coming off no matter what you do, do it fast.

RIM’s crisis began as a “Why?” crisis – not a “What?” crisis.  For contrast, consider the Virginia Tech shooting which started as a “What?” crisis.  On hearing about the unfolding tragedy at Virginia Tech, my first thoughts – and those of millions of others, including all of the media – were about “What is happening?”  A “What?” crisis is like that.  The situation is unclear.  We want to know what’s going on.  It often takes a long time to be sure.  Management effort and media attention is focused on answering the “what?” questions.  There is generally an understanding that we won’t know why for some time.

In RIM’s case, it was very clear from the outset what was going on.  BlackBerry® email was not working.  Almost immediately, we jumped to “why?”  Virtually from the outset, RIM was faced with a “Why?” crisis.  And, “Why?” is a much more difficult question to answer.  In large part because “why?” means:  “whose fault is it?” and “why didn’t you prevent this?”

4.  What options do you have?  In a “Why?” crisis you, basically have four options:

By midday Wednesday, RIM issued a tightly-targeted, one-liner media statement confirming it was experiencing a network outage and was working to correct the problem.  As far as I can tell, this statement was not broadly disseminated on a wire service, but rather was sent to a small group of industry media – perhaps only to those who had asked for comment.

5.  Who already knows about the crisis?  In RIM’s case, only the heaviest users noticed the problem directly.  This is a problem, because these are the users who most heavily depend on the resiliency of RIM’s service.  When it goes down, they will hurt.  They are also the biggest BlackBerry® apostles, converting new users to the cause.  Generally, this is not a stakeholder group you want to annoy.  However, there are only two things likely to placate this user group:  solve the problem and make the device work again (in which case talking about the problem is irrelevant) or provide them with a work-around.

This latter point is the area where RIM could possibly have done better.  My BlackBerry® allows me to communicate in seven different ways:  by email (on multiple accounts);  by BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry PIN message; by voice/telephone;  by SMS messaging through my phone company; by BlackBerry® Messenger (a proprietary instant messaging/chat network);  through MSN/Yahoo/other chat applications; or, by connecting to an Internet website. 

I know email was down during the incident and I know that voice/telephone was unaffected.  But, I do not know if PIN, chat or web services were down as well.  If not, RIM could have issued a statement saying that these services remained available – a message which would have supported the resiliency of the product.  But, back to our heavily addicted user group – they already know this, so RIM didn’t really need to tell them.

On the other hand, the majority of light BlackBerry® users probably didn’t notice the problem until they were told about it by a friend or the media.  For them, it wasn’t a crisis and their confidence didn’t suffer.  Proactive communication from RIM would only have served to make the situation appear more problematic and have had a negative impact on customer confidence.  Why make it a bigger problem?

Silence is not always golden

Without a doubt, silence is not always golden.  No crisis scenarios are ever improved by hiding from your stakeholders.  However, unlike the prevailing crisis PR philosophy, silence is not always rotten either.  There are some circumstances where maintaining a low profile, for a portion of the crisis at least, can help keep the situation from getting worse.

In RIM’s case, one of its most important stakeholder groups responded well to their management of this mini-crisis.  Investors remained confident in the company and its product, and RIM stock closed up 2.68 per cent on April 18.  Since then, the stock has continued to climb and on May 23 closed up a further 15.4 per cent from the April 18 close.  Customers seem largely to have forgotten the incident, but clients of ours will have drawn some lessons.

Lessons for Crisis Managers who use BlackBerry®

BlackBerry® can be an excellent choice for team communications, but you should ensure all users understand the many different networks it will allow them to access.  As we’ve seen, even RIM is not all-powerful.  You should also have a “lost communication” protocol that will enable team members to reconnect if their primary communication technology fails.

BlackBerry’s different networks:

Loss of communication protocol.  Your crisis management team members should know exactly what to do if they lose communication through your preferred means.  Normally, our crisis plans dictate a hierarchy of communication channels.  For example, if the cellular telephone system is down, they should revert to instant messaging through their BlackBerry®, or to email, web-chat, fax, public pay phones (a fast-disappearing option), etc.  One of your team’s first priorities, if communication is lost, should be to reestablish communication with higher/lower elements in your chain of command.

Faced with crisis, do you act like a PR pro or a crisis manager?

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TCG News

Are you a crisis leader?

Research participants needed for leadership study

TOWHEY Consulting Group Inc. is currently conducting a two-part study exploring the behavioral attributes of crisis managers and crisis leaders.  Early results of the study in progress will be presented at the 17th World Conference on Disaster Management in July.

We are looking for volunteer participants who meet the following criteria:  individuals who are currently, or who have in the past been, employed in a leadership role with crisis management responsibilities.  If you have led people in the management of a crisis, or been responsible for planning/training for crisis response, please consider participating.

Participants will complete a two-part survey.  Part One is a 5-minute online demographic survey designed to identify and categorize your crisis leadership experience.  Part Two is a 12-minute scientifically valid online psychometric test.

All survey responses are entirely confidential.

Survey results will be used to look for common characteristics that may be correlated with success in crisis management/crisis leadership roles.  Identification of these common factors, if any exist, may help organizations select, or develop training opportunities, for future crisis managers.

Your help would be much appreciated.  If you meet the criteria above, please click on the link below.  If you know others who would meet the criteria, please forward this link to them and encourage them to participate.

Thank you for your assistance!

Click here to begin the survey!

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