PR 101

The news and blogosphere have been full of items lately on various crises – from Toyota to the Catholic Church – large organizations are struggling to deal with issues that threaten to swamp them. The sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be that way. If organizations would use bit of common sense and foresight, the crises would either never occur or they wouldn’t grow into major issues.

So while you can consider this a rant, it is also a warning and a how-to. A rant about why organization and the people who run them don’t try to head off crises; don’t realize what will happen if there isn’t a crisis plan; and a how-to – perhaps avoid the problem.

There are three kinds of crises:

• Immediate crises: Most dreaded type. Happens quickly and unexpectedly. Little time for research and planning. Includes such things as earthquakes, fires, plane crashes, product tampering, workplace shootings, and death of a key officer
• Emerging crises: Allows more time for research and planning. May erupt after festering for long period. Includes such things as sexual harassment, substance abuse, overcharging on contracts. Key is to convince senior management to deal with the problem before it explodes.
• Sustained crises: Problems that smolder for long periods of time, despite best efforts to put out the fire. Rumors go viral, getting reported in the media, tweeted about, posted on Facebook, written about by bloggers and other social media sites. Examples include P & G being in league with Satan, that fluoridated water is dangerous or that some childhood vaccines lead to autism.

Obviously, there isn’t anyway to anticipate the sudden crisis. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a general plan – a framework – in place to deal with it and whatever happens. How many companies have you seen scramble in the first hours after a crisis happens? It doesn’t have to be that way.

Planning for a specific crisis is not possible. Planning on to handle crises is and should be done.

That’s why I am always amazed when I see a company like Toyota get in trouble. Here is one of the smartest marketers on the face of the planet. Yet, they create a crisis because they don’t listen to their customers’ complaints. Clearly they didn’t have a crisis communication plan in place. That’s just dumb. The list of companies that have done the same thing would fill two blogs.

What all those companies lacked was a scout, someone whose job it was to keep his or ear to the ground (and Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). If you keep any eye on what’s going on out there, you can avoid a lot of problems. The idea is to identify the grass fire and put it out before it becomes a forest fire.

Sometimes crises happen despite an organization’s best efforts. That’s when the plan comes in. Knowing what to do is half the battle.

Remember, as Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “The plan is nothing; planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of ‘emergency’ is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.”

I spent 26 years as a working reporter. In that time, I dealt with a lot of traditional public relations and marketing pitches. Social media didn’t exist. While I was on the receiving end of many inspired pitches, all of them were basically the same. The only real difference was the quality of writing and the freebies those pitching tried to entice me with.

As a note: reporters cannot accept anything of value. It is against most publication’s ethics code. So don’t send anything. Anything I received went to charity if possible. If it was food, it went to a food bank. If it was perishable food or beer (hey, I work in Milwaukee) I shared with the entire newsroom. I always said – maybe I have my price, but other than Bill Gates, I doubt anyone could pay it. A box of cookies wasn’t going to influence me.

When I left journalism just over seven years, I went to work for any agency run by a former reporter. It was a great place to learn. Like everyone else, I did the traditional things one does in P.R. and marketing. The only difference for me was that my pitches and writing were better. I had a good track record there and at my next job.

The appearance of social media four years ago changed everything. It was also when I learned that traditional public relations and social media go very well together. I had a client that couldn’t get employees to open emails. After doing some research, we decided to a series of podcasts. The podcasts were very successful. It wasn’t even called social media then, the usual title was Web 2.0

The employees found out about the podcasts through the traditional channels. There was an announcement in the company’s newsletter; each department head received a written announcement to read to their employees. We also got some press coverage because at the time what we did was unique.

Without going into a lot of tedious detail, I soon learned when I went out my own that social media is becoming the dominant form of marketing. I have done everything I can to learn about it and how to use it. Still, the growing dominance of social media doesn’t mean that there is still not a place for traditional methods.

Do not discount the power of a story on the front page of a local newspaper or on the local television station. While it’s a shrinking group, many people still get their information from traditional media. That includes elected officials. It is silly to ignore those people. They are probably also on line, but what’s wrong with reaching them through multiple channels?

Yes, I advise sending out a social media press release. See last Monday’s blog for the reasons. But it is still a press release. Just in a super-charged form.

Twitter is a great place to release news. Many, many journalist now follow Twitter. Rather than call 50 reporters, you can send out one tweet and get journalists to call you. They might be working for a traditional outlet, but you reached out using social media. See, you married the two methods.

As for employees, I always advise a combination of social media and traditional methods. In any kind of many workplaces, manufacturing, retails, and others, employees are not going to have constant access to the Internet. They probably have it at home, but they are not at home at times when you want to get the word out. If it’s really important, you should have a face-to-face meeting. If it is not that important, but if you want employees to know something, there is nothing wrong with posting a notice where they can see it.

None of this changes my opinion that CEOs should be blogging, companies should have Facebook Fan pages, should be posting videos on YouTube, creating groups on LinkedIn and tweeting company news. That should be the primary focus.

But just as I use a hammer on home improvement projects that first belonged to my grandfather, traditional tools still have a place in marketing and public relations.

Several years ago I had an insurance company as a client. The company sold various types of business insurance through about 3,000 independent agents. Its management worked hard to get the right messages to those agents; ones that made the agents feel like part of the team.

The insurance company knew that communicating with the people who sold their products was probably the most important kind of communication they did. People who make or sell a company’s products are the most important ambassadors. If they receive little or no information, or the information is delivered in a way in which they aren’t going to pay attention, there’s a problem. The insurance hit that problem head on.

Companies spend lots of time carefully crafting messages designed to make employees feel part of the effort. And then those companies fall flat on their faces. Why? They forget the second half of the communications equation, one that is as equally important as the message.

What don’t they do? They don’t use a delivery system that ensures their employees will pay attention to the message.

Think how much information you receive on a normal day. It comes at you from everywhere – television, radio, newspapers, emails, websites, social networks and talk around the water cooler. It comes from family, friends, employers, advertisers and a lot of other places. How much of it really stands out? How much do you retain? There is so much noise today that is very hard to stand out.

This insurance company used two primary ways to communicate with its agents and employees: a printed newsletter and email. Company executives thought those were more than adequate. The feedback from agents on the two methods was good – when they heard from the agents. The assumption was that since not much was being heard, things must be okay.

That bubble burst when the company sent out an email detailing changes in the way agents were compensated. Of the 3,000 messages sent, approximately 10 percent were opened. The company was shocked that a message on such an important topic received so little attention. The email got lost in the noise.

So the insurance company’s management came to the agency. They didn’t know what to do. To be honest I didn’t either. So I called a couple of friends who are insurance agents – neither of them handled this company’s products – and asked what the problem was with the company’s methods.

They both told me what I suspected about too many emails. So, I asked what would be a format that would work – how could someone an agent’s attention? One of them had just bought an IPod. He was talking about how cool it was. He then told me how he was downloading things from ITunes called podcasts. I went to ITunes and listened to a few. The light bulb went on.

We did a series of podcasts for the company on a variety of topics. The download rare exceeded 95 percent. We did a survey to ascertain how many people were actually listening. It was around 75 percent. The insurance company said it was the highest rate of communication they ever had.

What about that 25 percent who didn’t download or listen? We reached them through the printed newsletter. That’s an equally valid method.

The takeaway from this is simple: when you want to reach your employees, really reach them, you need to find a method that works. You need to use multiple methods. No one method is perfect.

Let me cover the methods I suggest to clients:

* Face-to-face communication. This is still one of the most effective, and surprisingly, underused methods. People like to hear news and information from another human being. There is also a lot more credibility when it is coming from trusted manager. With today’s technology, the speaker and the listeners can be 10,000 miles apart. It is still face-to-face. One thing about that – if your company has multiple offices, make sure employees can “talk back” and ask questions. It is not that hard, there are many websites that provide the software for that. I think it is underused because many managers don’t want to face tough questions.
* As I just showed, a podcast or a video podcast, called a Vlog. The advantage of that is people can download and listen at their leisure. But again, have some way people can ask questions. It is pretty simple to put a Q & A forum on a website.
* A printed newsletter. Many employees still like to receive something they can hold in their hands.
* A blog written by senior management. If possible, the CEO should write it. There are CEOs that already do that, most notably Jonathan Schwartz,  president and CEO, Sun Microsystems; Craig Newmarkk, CEO, Craig’s List, and Mark Cuban, chairman, HDNet and owner Dallas Mavericks owner. Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh is particularly famous for his blog. They have all said is good way to talk to their people.
* A company Wiki. Employees can post information about experiences or problems they’ve had and how they dealt with them. That saves a lot of time and trouble.

There is one more method I am going to blog out next week – social media. It is starting to trump every other form of communication. But you are going to have to wait on that one.

I post this every Monday. As a new feature, if you have questions you would like me to answer, please email me. I am always looking for topics and input. My email address is in the next paragraph.

My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help clients with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link. It’s a cliché, but it’s true for me: no job is too big, no job is too small. I have worked with companies on the Fortune 500 list and I have worked with companies that have one employee. The service I provide is the same for all.