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So you made the The Top Ten Worst List. Happy New Year!

Each New Year around this time reporters, editors and publishers everywhere – mostly at the expense of business and industry – engage in their favorite board game – “Top Ten Worst…” lists.  The list idea, contrary to any claims otherwise, was not a news media invention. Like they’ve done with other clever creations, news reporters and editors borrowed it. Note we did not stoop to suggest thievery.

While some may credit David Letterman and his nightly Top Ten, the original idea was the creation of American fashion critic, Richard Blackwell, who was a born self-promoter.  During his 86 years on earth, Blackwell was a former child actor, journalist and fashion designer, artist, and television and radio personality.  He was the creator of the “Ten Worst Dressed Women List,” an annual awards presentation that he unveiled in January of each year and was grist for just about every newsroom in America.   Driven by an insatiable hunger for media attention, Blackwell later published the “Fabulous Fashion Independents” list and an annual Academy Awards fashion review. He is responsible for two books, Mr. Blackwell: 30 Years of Fashion Fiascos and an autobiography, From Rags to Bitches. Blackwell was creative, clever and – thanks to the print and broadcast news media – credible.

So, thanks to Blackwell, we see lists around this time of year everywhere in print or broadcast like, The Top Ten Worst Public Relations Failures, The Top Ten Worst Environmental Disasters or The Top Ten Worst Corporations.  And, thanks to the Internet and social media, the lists are tweeted, posted, reposted, shared, texted, blogged and otherwise emailed to countless millions of followers, fans, friends and family.

Many a Chief of Industry, VP of PR and corporate crisis manager has begun the new year by ranting and raving after seeing or hearing or learning that his or her business or corporation has made a list for some fault or error committed the previous year. And, then horrified to realize that the news has reached billions and billions of people around the world from California to China.

There’s not much you can do after your brand or reputation is hoisted by its petard by somebody’s Top Ten Worst List.  But you can do some things ahead of time to head off or even to mitigate any damage from these kinds of lists.  They come under the categories of preparation and protection – the initial fundamental concepts of crisis communications planning that also include response, restoration and mitigation.

Preparation and protection involve identifying all risks that potentially threaten your brand and reputation and the steps to ward off a disaster, incident, accident or other threat.  Knowing your risks makes it possible to effectively plan for protecting your hard earned image.

So, if you found yourself on some Top Ten Worst list last year, then you have no excuse for repeating the error of your ways.  If you’ve avoided appearances on such lists, then you either carefully planned ahead or still have time to do so.

Crisis = Opportunity

Nothing travels faster than bad news ignored 

It’s a lesson that few learn and then only painfully!

The allegations of sexual harassment involving presidential candidate Herman Cain and of sexual abuse by a former football coach at Penn State University provide lessons in handling bad news. Or, better, how not to handle bad news.

In the first case, Cain has given several different explanations and responses to the allegations over a period of weeks since the story broke by Politico. Some violated women have stepped forward and now Cain is denying all allegations as being politically motivated.  

Meanwhile, the Penn State story is marked by reports that Joe Paterno, head coach, acted improperly. “Paterno was informed in 2002 of one of the alleged acts of sexual assault by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, and authorities concluded he fulfilled his legal obligation by reporting the incident to athletics director Tim Curley. But Curley and other superiors didn’t alert a law or child-protection agency,” according to USA Today. The alleged crimes involved several young men. Just last night, students at the university rioted in protest after Paterno was immediately dismissed from the University.

Bad news ignored or delayed serves only to feed rumor, innuendo, speculation and misinformation in the media.  Further, it creates the perception of truth.  The longer bad news is ignored, the worse the buzz.  This can make it very difficult to respond, and the response to a problem is where the attention should be focused.

Any response should include acknowledging the problem, expressing concern for victims, taking immediate corrective action and conveying credibility by the University’s leadership.

It’s how you make things right that matters and makes the difference in protecting and restoring a reputation or brand name.

The quicker the response, the sooner the recovery.

In turn, the sooner bad news is acknowledged the better.  Just get it all out!

Crisis = Opportunity: Building trust after a Crisis

It’s how you respond and behave in a crisis that largely determines your success in rebuilding trust afterward.  In short, it’s all about the response.

That’s one take away from two related developments making the national news on October 26.

First, BP CEO Robert Dudley declared the company has reached a “turning point.”  The other was that BP has won government approval to return to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico seventeen months after the disastrous Macondo oil well spill.

Let’s briefly retrace that long journey for BP from the April 20, 2010 oil spill to the present to assess the correlation between response and trust.

An Associated Press survey reported in early May 2010 – just days after the Macondo explosion and BP was named the responsible party for the response – that 49 percent of Americans approved of the way BP was responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  The survey results obviously reflected several widespread emotions – shock and awe at the horror unfolding one mile above the Macondo well, sadness over the loss of precious lives, concern about survivors, sympathy for families and alarm regarding damage to the environment.  Those initial reactions would give way to another set of emotions as the impact of the oil spill began to be seen and felt worldwide.

The AP reported in June that public approval for BP’s response had sunk to 15 percent.  The public was responding to several factors – initial efforts failed to stop the oil spill, the final solution would take 90 days, the company’s CEO made poorly chosen comments and the media and public began heavily scrutinizing the responsible party’s safety record.

Lost in the public was the fact that the response to the oil spill was just beginning to take root.  Claims offices were being established in counties all along the Gulf Coast to respond to individuals and businesses’ losses.  Shoreline workers were being recruited, trained and deployed.  Miles of boom were being strategically placed to control the oil.  A fleet of vessels was being assembled to skim, collect, burn, disperse and dispose of the oil.  And a public information campaign was beginning to inform and educate the public about the response.

The AP’s survey results in July, nevertheless, showed that the needle of public opinion held at 15 percent.  One reason is probably that the response by then was in full bloom – 48,000 responders were attacking the oil both on and off shore, 8,000 vessels were operational and 5 million feet of boom was deployed.  On July 15, efforts to cap the run-away Macondo well had finally succeeded.  BP also announced a $20B fund to settle all claims.  To top it off, a new company CEO was named and assuming control.

The full force of the response would finally register with the American public.  In August, the AP reported that public approval for BP’s response had risen to 33 percent – a significant development by any measure.

The Macondo well would be permanently capped in mid September and the oil spill response began transitioning into a restoration project that continues to this day.  Early in the restoration, BP deep cleaned miles of beaches, maintained response teams to clean up any signs of tar-balls, sponsored advertisements promoting tourism to the northern Gulf Coast and underwrote concerts and other shoreline activities.

There are no AP public approval survey results available for September or subsequent months.  However, the headline news on October 26 that CEO Dudley is confident enough to proclaim that BP has reached a “turning point” and the news that it has won approval to return to the Gulf are two developments that reflect some measure of public trust has returned.

Another available measure of trust is economic.  The northern gulf coast is reportedly experiencing a return to prosperity credited in large part to an influx of BP funds devoted to promoting gulf coast beaches.

It’s way too early to fully measure the amount of trust BP has rebuilt, and to what extent of trust will be built in the years ahead.  The jury is still out on the long-term prospects.

But the critical lesson here, however, is unmistakably clear.  When it comes to building trust after a crisis, it’s how you respond and behave in a crisis that really counts.

It’s always all about the response.

Great Job of Communicating!

Apple founder, Steve Jobs is being remembered for many things by many people.  He was a remarkable visionary.  He was an exacting and demanding CEO.  Jobs was a great innovator.  He knew what we wanted even before we knew what we wanted, and once he showed us what we wanted, we all really, really wanted what he was selling.  His name was synonymous with high-tech innovation and Apple.

Being in the biz, however, we can’t resist talking about Jobs as the Chief Communicator for Apple.  Steve Jobs was without peer when it came to communicating.

Jobs stuck to the basics and kept everything simple.

Jobs may have been the greatest inventor of our time, but he was also certainly old fashioned.  He communicated largely without the support of focus groups, handlers, teleprompters and pyrotechnics.  Jobs was a bare-bones pitchman for his products.

He always had a carefully crafted and well rehearsed message.  For Jobs, no detail was too small to be overlooked.

When technical gremlins occasionally surfaced during his pitches, Jobs proved that he could handle the confrontation .  He expected the unexpected.

Jobs put himself in the minds of his intended customers.  He told us what we wanted and needed to hear.  He knew our hot buttons and pushed every one of them.

He was such a clever communicator, too.  He skillfully presented his message using body language, hand gestures, voice inflections and facial expressions.  Jobs kept us totally engaged, on the edge of our seats and we loved every moment of it!

Steve Jobs and his legendary reputation as a communicator will forever stoke the great debate over whether great communicators are born, or made.  He will undoubtedly be missed.

Perfect pitch. Perfect game. Nolan Ryan and Texas Rangers play it right!

It was a script and a scene straight out of Hollywood.  A 6-year-old youngster makes a highly emotional return to the major league ballpark where his father was killed on July 7^th while stretching and stretching and falling over a railing to catch a baseball souvenir thrown by the boy’s favorite player.

Cooper Stone threw a perfect opening pitch at the beginning of last Friday’s major league baseball playoffs.  The ball was caught by Cooper’s favorite player, outfielder Josh Hamilton, who then took a knee near the pitcher’s mound to congratulate Cooper and then hugged the boy’s sobbing mother.   The 50,000+ fans watching the whole scene from the stands were drenched in tears.  Cooper, his mother and Hamilton walked off the field where they are joined by hall-of-famer and Ranger president, Nolan Ryan, who has stayed in close touch with Cooper and his mother, Jenny Stone, since after the tragic death of fireman Shannon Stone.

After the July game, Ryan launched a team initiative that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Cooper’s family.  A monument at the ballpark to Cooper and his father is in the works.  Never mind that the moment of Cooper’s return and opening pitch are enshrined forever in major league baseball lore.

Despite losing the game 9-0 after Cooper’s perfect pitch to Hamilton, Ryan and his Rangers – in our professional opinion – played a perfect game in the way they responded to the tragedy and continue to perform as good corporate citizens.   The Rangers, by the way, recovered to take the play-off series 3-1 and move on the next round in their march to the World Series.  Forget all that because Nolan Ryan and his Texas Rangers – by their proper and classy response – already are this season’s biggest winners in Major League Baseball.

The American landscape is littered by organizations and individuals that stumbled and failed to recover when confronted by a crisis.  They did not understand what many others have learned from a crisis.  People are human and they make mistakes.  That’s why we pencils come with erasers.  When something goes wrong, however tragic and horrific, that moment defines an outfit’s true culture and ethic.  Will they rise to the occasion and seize the day, or will they hesitate and sink.  The moment for decision is fast and fleeting.  And it only comes along once.  That’s how a crisis tests us.

In the end, there’s only one measure that really counts in court of public opinion.   We sometimes have to remind ourselves of it.   And then at times, like last week at the Ballpark in Arlington, we are pleasantly reminded by the bold and genuine actions of others.

It’s all about how you respond.

Crisis Has a Friend in Fraud

It’s the wake up call for a crisis that feels much like a bucket of ice water in the middle of a deep night’s sleep.  You’re shocked out of your slumber, confused and struggling to gather yourself, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and trying to make out the source of the interruption.  When you are finally able to gather yourself, reality sinks in and your emotions run from disbelief to anger.  Then, a wave of shock and awe settles in as you begin to process the situation.

That’s pretty much the wake up call that comes with the discovery of fraud.  Fraud can be every bit as shocking, as damaging and as crippling for a business or corporation as the worst oil spill, plane crash, pandemic or ship collision.

Effective crisis planning must consider all potential risks that could befall an organization, and fraud should be considered high on the risk assessment.  There are early warning signs for fraud – just as lax safety practices can foreshadow a fatal industrial accident.

Many early warnings of fraud have been identified in an exhaustive study by the forensic auditors at KPMG.  The report, “Who is a typical fraudster?, reviewed some 348 fraud cases scattered over 69 countries during a three-year period.  The report found that more than half of the frauds, which were investigated by KPMG, exhibited one or more red flags that should have, but apparently failed to, catch management’s attention.  A mere ten percent of fraud cases were acted upon prior to triggering a full investigation.

The report is a valuable tool for any crisis planning.  It provides a useful profile of typical fraudster, lists seven red flags and eight traits of fraudsters.

Fraud can strike, cripple and sink any small business, large corporation (Enron), industrial concern, or organization.  Recognizing early warning signs and quickly responding can mitigate the resulting fallout from a crisis.

de La Garza has been consulted in fraud cases, and from our 30 years of experience, we have come to learn that “a stitch in time can save nine” when it comes to nipping fraud in the bud.

Crisis = Opportunity: Capture your response to a crisis! You’ve got a success story to share!

A crisis is not over when the final drop of oil is recovered, the last rescued bird or turtle is set free, the firemen reel in their hoses, the ship channel is cleared for traffic, flights resume, the trucks roll again, your team gets back to work or the news media interest fades.  That’s when the opportunity presents itself for you to position yourself as a “take charge outfit,” — responsible, prepared and committed to doing the right thing.  The story line is something like this:  ”How we stepped up, took responsibility and made things RIGHT!”

The public and media know that people are not perfect.  We’re humans.  Mistakes happen.  That’s why pencils come with erasers.  It’s not the crisis that counts, but how you responded that matters with stakeholders.  But they won’t know and appreciate all that unless you captured your actions on video and on paper.  After the response is when you become a Cecil B. DeMille – complete with French beret, long cigarette holder and producer’s stool!

Some do put the lesson of follow-up to very effective use.

“Making it right”, a video produced by The Industry Connection, is a good example.

Many overlook the golden opportunity to present their success story for all to see.  Don’t make that mistake!

Remember, it’s your message.  It’s your video.  You are controlling the action!

So, are you ready? Okay… Lights! Camera! Action!

 

Transparency can provide cover when surrounded and taking heavy fire

A timely example of transparency comes from a current report by CNNMoney concerning the status of the fund established to compensate businesses and residents along the Gulf Coast for damages caused by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  Thus far, only $5B has been paid of the $20B that BP set aside for the recovery.

The Gulf Coast Claims Facility administering the fund reports approving almost 40 percent of the 947,892 claims submitted.  Kenneth Feinberg, the fund’s administrator, expresses satisfaction with his performance and results.  But he remains a lightning rod for criticism, mostly from the 350,000 claimants denied relief, as well as for heavy scrutiny by the news media.  Many claimants, who were denied payouts, say that both Feinberg and the process are unfair.

To counter skeptics and critics, Feinberg points out that the U.S. Coast Guard has reviewed more than 1,000 claims from disgruntled claimants and agrees with Feinberg’s decisions to deny those claims.

To add further transparency, Feinberg reports that he has agreed to have the U.S. Attorney General’s office conduct an independent audit by year’s end.

We’ll have to wait until next year to learn the public’s reactions to the findings of the AG’s audit.  Some claimants, no doubt, will not be pleased by any audit that supports Feinberg’s actions.  For them, it remains a matter of “show me the money”, which is understandable.

Engaging in transparency may not always convince everyone, but it buys a measure of credibility for those seeking to show honest and fair dealings by having other sets of “eyes” looking over their shoulders in a public fashion.

Finding as many ways to deliver transparency goes a long way toward building credibility when you’re under heavy fire and the “heat” is boiling over.  Feinberg will need to find more transparent ways to take cover because the Gulf Coast Claims Facility will continue to process claims until August of 2013.

Early Lessons from the Deadly Stage Collapses

Survivors, families, governmental leaders, other authorities, citizens, the news media and a host of others have begun searching for answers to last weekend’s tragic stage collapse that killed five concertgoers and injured dozens more.  An estimated 12,000 people were packed in the audience waiting for a Sugarland concert to commence at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis.  Then, with short warning, a gust, packing 70 mph winds, delivered a punishing blow of dust and rain that sent the massive rigging and lighting system collapsing on the front of the crowd in a sickening thump.  The whole scene was captured on a mobile phone and appeared on YouTube before the dust had even settled.

We can see some key lessons from this disaster.

One would think that the stage collapse in July at the Ottawa Bluesfest Cheap Trick concert would have provided a precautionary warning to event organizers, but that apparently was not to be.  There was a painfully obvious lack of preparation and planning for a potential crisis, such as was witnessed in Indiana.  Outside venues conducted along tornado alley are ripe for sudden and violent changes in weather.  Yet, no one seemed to take the threat seriously enough to plan for such an eventuality.

Any planning would have taken into account a strategy for gathering information and communicating with the public.  No one from the concert organizers stepped forward as a spokesman and offered any official source for information.  The media relied largely on the emotional experiences of eyewitnesses.

Finally, social media quickly played a leading role as a primary information source for the news media.  If anyone doubted the power of social media to instantly inform and educate, then they got a good dose of reality from this story.

There are three critical components to crisis communications preparation:

1) Be the first to communicate

2) Be informative and helpful with factual information

3) Be compassionate and show sensitivity to loss of life and injuries.

None of these were on display at the tragic events in Indiana and Canada.

Crisis has become an ordinary part of doing business, but crisis planning falls short.

Sixty percent of business executives and owners say that their companies have experienced a crisis due to controversial layoffs, problems with logistics, defective or contaminated products, natural disasters, explosions, bomb threats, criminal actions, fires and explosions, negative media coverage and cyber attacks.

That’s among the findings of a new study of business decision makers in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Latin America.  The consensus of those surveyed is that crisis is now an ordinary part of doing business.  These executives represent a cross section of industry – manufacturing, technology, services and healthcare.

About half of the business executives surveyed anticipate their companies will experience a crisis within the next six to twelve months.

Yet, only half of the surveyed CEO’s said their companies currently possess a crisis plan.

When asked how a crisis affects their companies, business decision makers pointed out damages to their brand names and reputations, loss of revenue, decreased of public trust and confidence, drop in share prices, increased political and media scrutiny, more government regulations, greater fines and penalties and increased legal fees and court costs.

Sadly, much of these crisis driven damages could have been mitigated with planning and preparation, such as is provided by our Crisis Tool Kit.  It includes a risk assessment, crisis planning, media training, crisis drills and round the clock crisis response.

The survey proves that every corporation is at a greater risk today for a crisis.

The question to ask yourself is simple, “Are we prepared to handle a crisis when, not if, one strikes?”