Here’s the first thing that we all should remember – social media doesn’t kill careers, people using social media kill careers. Oh and you can add companies into that also. Social media can also wound them pretty severely.

You must be a monk living in a Nepalese cave if you don’t know what Wiener did. According to ABC News Weiner admitted Monday he had “engaged in ‘several inappropriate’ electronic relationships with six women over three years, and that he publicly lied about a photo of himself sent over Twitter to a college student in Seattle over a week ago.”

The overall lesson in all of this is think before you do anything on the Internet. I am not sure why it is, but many people do not consider the consequences of their actions when posting on the web. I mean does anyone think a sitting US Representative would post a picture of his junk on his office wall? Of course not. Yet when people get on the Internet, they seem to think that the same rules don’t apply. They don’t ask that question I always urge clients to ask before doing anything – “what if … ?”

I don’t get it. Research indicates the average post initially reaches approximately 150 people. If each of those 150 people sends out the same post and it reaches another 150 people each, over 22,000 people will see it and so on. You see how fast something goes viral.

So why do Weiner and others do inappropriate things on the web? I think it is because they don’t understand the power of the Internet. A lot of people don’t get it. They think they are somehow anonymous when they post. Well, they aren’t.

Here’s the second lesson to be learned from this: “three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” That is one of my favorite Ben Franklin quotes. I use it when I discuss crisis communications.

Weiner has been touted as one of the more Social Media savvy members of Congress. Yeah, and I am scheduled to perform brain surgery tomorrow. Did he honestly think that those pictures would stay private?

It is hard to believe that anyone doesn’t know that once you enter the Social Media realm, privacy is surrendered. Anything you put on the Internet is accessible to anyone who wants to see it. If it is something salacious or embarrassing that pretty much guarantees it will go viral. We humans seem to revel in spreading that around. We really like it when it happens to someone who we feel thinks they are smarter than us.

There is the third lesson to come out of this. This is one is about crisis communications. In today’s Internet-based world, you have about an hour or so to respond to a crisis. You cannot wait more than that to formulate a response to whatever happens. In fact, if you decide to do something stupid like tweet pictures of your body parts to college student females, you had better have your story all set to go before you tweet.

Seriously, companies today have about an hour today to put out the fire. That’s why I always urge clients to have a crisis communications plan in place. They need to be monitoring Social Media 24 hours a day, seven days a week to catch those small fires. Wait any longer than that and it’s too late.

If Weiner had come out right away and said, “yes, it’s me. It was a stupid thing to do and I am sorry I did it” the story would have flared and died. Instead, he waited way too long to respond.

As my father used to say: “there is no sense in being stupid unless you show people how stupid you are.” We Coles are sarcastic people. What the Internet has done is expand the opportunities to demonstrate that stupidity.

Anticipating how to handle a crisis before it occurs should be a key part of any company’s business plan. The one thing social media has probably made more difficult is crisis communications. A company now usually has minutes, possibly no more than an hour, to prevent a small crisis from growing into a major disaster. A response has to be immediate – within those same minutes of the crisis.

There is no alternative, no other option.

Here in my city of Milwaukee is an example of what happens when the crisis is more nimble than the responders. A suburban mall found itself the victim of what was apparently a flash mob that wreaked havoc throughout the shopping center. Then mall management made things worse by the way it responded

Businesses need planning and practice to be ready for a practice. A business has to have a crisis communications plan in place long before the crisis happens. To ensure the plan works when needed, it has to be rehearsed constantly.

Think about it. Fire Departments, police departments, the military and a host of other agencies constantly train. They do it so when they have to go into action everyone knows what to do.

Here’s what happened to Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, WI. I should note that it is one of the top shopping destinations in the Milwaukee metro area and is almost always crowded. In this case, I think the flash mob organizers decided that the crowd of shoppers would be the perfect audience for their “performance.”

For those who have not heard the term flash mob, Wikipedia defines it as a “large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.”

At Mayfair a group of several dozen teenagers raced through the mall, knocking over displays, running up and down escalators, which scared customers and staff. Mall management said the event was too organized to have been a spontaneous occurrence. They suspect it was organized via Facebook, Twitter or any number of other sites. Adding to the commotion was an apparent attempted robbery in the mall parking lot. Authorities have not said if the robbery was related to the flash mob but a shot was fired, which caused even more panic among. Luckily no one was hurt.

Mall management said they monitor social media sites to ensure things like this don’t happen. They said they were able to stop a flash mob planned for two days before Christmas. In that one, a group of high school students was planning on dancing in the mall.

If mall management is monitoring social media, someone fell asleep at the switch on the disruptive flash mob. For something this large, there had to be multiple posts on Twitter and Facebook. That’s how the word gets spread, by constant repetition across the web. Someone should have caught this.

It is possible the word was spread via text message. Unless you work for the National Security Agency, or some other federal investigative agency concerned with terrorism, those messages cannot be tracked. In that case mall management would not have had advance warning.

Even if Mayfair management did not have advance warning, the ball was still dropped after the incident. The flash mob happened Jan. 2. Mall management waited until the afternoon of Jan. 3rd to respond which meant for 24 hours Mayfair Mall lost control of its brand. In social media years that’s a lifetime. The mall was being defined by the hundreds of comments most of them negative made on social media sites and to the local media

When Mall management finally did respond, they did it by issuing a press release. Kind of like using a carrier pigeon to get the message out. What management said was just as bad.

Most of the statement condemned the group who disrupted the mall. It wasn’t until almost the end of the statement that management said: “the safety and security of our guests are always our top priorities.  We will not tolerate any behavior that compromises that safety.  As a result of this incident, we anticipate that there will be operational changes as well as consequences for those involved.”

What the statement should have said was that security was being increased immediately and there would be an even stronger policy governing when teenagers could be in the mall. The mall later did announce that it was changing its policy regarding when teenagers would be allowed in the mall. But that happened after the initial flurry of reports on the incident, which didn’t have the effect it would have had if the mall had made the announcement on the same day as the incident.

Plus Mayfair competitor Bayshore Mall announced changes to its policy for teenager access at the same time. There have been no incidents at Bayshore so that mall looked proactive. Mayfair suffered by comparison.

In other words, management be nimble, management be quick, or the business is going to be burned by something a lot hotter than a candlestick.

Yet, it still amazes me that in this digital age of electronic sharing of everything people have not internalized that rule. It hey did, it would keep them of trouble of their own making. Not following that rule will always lead to public relations problems and a lot of collateral damage.

The latest person to fall victim to a failure to pay attention to Franklin’s aphorism is U.S. Navy Capt. Owen Honors. Honors’ career was derailed because of a series of videos he made when he was the executive officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise. According to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper, “The videos were a series of profanity-laced comedy sketches that were broadcast on the USS Enterprise via closed-circuit television.” Some were described as homophobic.

Did Honors think no one was ever going to talk about this to an outsider? But as Ben said, secrets just cannot be kept. In Honors’ case, almost 6,000 men and women who crew the aircraft carrier saw these videos. The odds were better than even that someone was going to talk.

I not am going to talk about the content of the videos or Honors intent in producing them. I am not seen the videos. From everything I have read, Honors was a rising star in the Navy. He apparently was an excellent leader slated to become an admiral. Perhaps he one day would have become Chief of Naval Operations – the overall Navy commander. Not anymore.

This entire situation is about how the videos were perceived and the fallout from their release. There are numerous stories talking about how the videos show the sexist, homophobic culture that the writers claim permeate the military. Again, I have no idea if that’s an accurate picture of our fighting men and women. I would say not from own experiences dealing with our armed forces. I do pro bono work for groups that work with veterans. I married into a military family. I have a lot of experience with our military.

However, truth does not matter, only the perception. I tell this to clients all the time. Perception is reality as far as the outside world is concerned. That’s why you have to be careful because the odds are very good that what you view as an off-hand remark could come back to bite and bite hard.

Remember, this is the era of social media. What once might not have spread beyond a city block will now zip around the world in minutes. Once the problem is out of the box, there is nothing that can be done to put it back.

As Capt. Honors unfortunately found out, it is not just the individual who will get burned. It can be an entire organization.

HowHH

This piece’s headline is my professional mantra. I operate in three complimentary, and often overlapping, areas: social media, public relations and marketing. It is my firm rule when working in any of those areas that I am there to further my clients aims, not my own.

Too often I see other companies that operate in the same areas who don’t adhere to that rule. That bothers me. I think they’ve forgotten that they there to serve the clients, not themselves. I am not going to name any names. It just isn’t right. It gives my entire profession a bad name.

Let me tell you how I view the relationship between client and agency.

When a client hires me, the first thing I tell them is they are going to be their company’s face. The reason is simple – they are the best representatives. Since the person is usually a senior executive, they are going to know far more about the place that I will. Plus hopefully the enthusiasm they have for their employer will show through. If they don’t have that kind of enthusiasm, perhaps they should think about working someplace else.

The primary objection to that idea that I hear from clients about that is “well, I don’t how to handle myself in front of the news media and public.” This is where many agency types trip. They take the executive’s words at face value and make themselves the spokesman. Now it is as much about them as it is the client.

It is very frustrating to most journalists when the subject doesn’t know the answer. When I was a reporter, I would make it point to go around some public relations people. I needed information and I knew that the public relations person would have to ask someone for it. Most of the time that process took too long. So I identified who had the information I needed and called them.

That does not apply, by the way, to in-house public relations counsel. They are almost always very knowledgeable.

When a client tells me they are nervous about being out front that to me I reply: “don’t worry, I can train you to handle yourself.” I spent over two decades as a working journalist. I know how interviews go. I can take an executive through just about every scenario that will be encountered. I know them all because I use to create them all.

Where I do step in is arranging coverage. As I said, I worked a reporter for a long time. I know how to approach a reporter in a way that gives the client best chance at coverage.

That’s another thing that bothers me – agencies that guarantee coverage. No one should ever do that. What a lot of agencies don’t seem to understand is that media outlets have different needs and agendas than their clients. It is much easier to make a client’s needs conform to the media outlet than the other way around. What I mean by that it’s better to pitch a story in a format that the outlet use rather than conforming to the client’s outline.

The bottom line is agencies should realize they are planners and counselors. They should stay out of the spotlight. It is their job to make the client look good, not to pump themselves up.

I am not talking about a plant fire or an accident. There might be actually more time to respond to the media on one of those. Most people understand that the average executive doesn’t have time during the event to respond to questions. It is perfectly acceptable to say in such a case that the causes will be dealt with once the immediate crisis is over.

What I am talking about is an information crisis, which can often more damaging that a physical disaster. The fallout from a physical disaster can be mitigated. Unless it is dealt with right away, a consumer complaint or an even an unfounded can spread around the Internet is a matter of minutes.

Even though Mark Twain died 80 years before the rise of the Internet, he summed it up correctly when he said: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Actually, I think a lie can make it all the way around the world before truth gets out of bed.

Part of the problem is many companies still don’t pay attention. I am always amazed that any corporation will spend millions on advertising, but very little on reputation monitoring and management. To not keep track of company reputation is committing business suicide.

One of my firm rules of is that social media can kill you before you even know are bleeding. Someone needs to be watching 24/7. Remember that old saying that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” That was because the English had colonies on almost every continent. Well, the Internet has a much a wider reach than the Empire ever did.

Facebook alone has over 500 million followers. Twitter is somewhere north of 100 million. If someone posts on Facebook an error your company made, and it goes viral, you could wake up in the morning to find your reputation trashed.

Look at the companies that have run into trouble because of their Internet ignorance: Proctor & Gamble’s Motrin, Comcast, United Airlines, Kryptonite Bike Locks, L’Oreal, Dell Computers, Wal-Mart, Jet Blue – the list goes on and on. (My thanks to SMI for its short history of social media screw-ups.)

Some of those companies learned their lesson and started paying attention to what as happening on the ‘Net. I am not sure others get it even after being punched around.

The only way to deal with is to be proactive. As I have also always preached, you have to be part of the conversation about your brand. It is essential. That’s why I always tell clients that they need to hear the bad comments more than the good. Good comments reinforce what you are already doing. It is valuable to know that so you can expand whatever worked.

Bad comments will tell you where you are making mistakes. That’s more important. Responding to a consumer complaint can build good will. Personally I find I like a place that is willing to own up to a mistake. It shows me they care.

Plus by doing that, a crisis is usually headed-off. If a company doesn’t respond to customer concerns and complaints, the whole thing can grow and get really ugly.

The take away from this is pay attention all time or be willing to pay the cost when you don’t.

In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural address in 1933, he uttered that now famous phrase: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” What he meant was that what keeping the economy from recovering from the greatest economic disaster in U.S. history was people’s inclination to hunker down.

Unfortunately, I see the same thing happening today, especially with US companies. They are afraid to do anything right now, especially spend money. Their fear is very specific. Publically traded companies only really want to do one thing – please Wall Street. I think that is one of the biggest problems in our country right now. I think it is what is holding us back.

My friends know this is a common rant with me. I think American business pays way too much attention to what some pimply-faced MBA/analyst has to say. How many company’s justify layoffs, or moving a factory by saying Wall Street demands it? Every state in the United States has seen this happen. If some analyst says a company should be make $1 share and it makes 99 cents a share, the stock price is pummeled. The Board of Directors and the CEO both talk about how cuts need to be made to make that $1 a share.

Now the company might be wildly profitable, but that doesn’t matter. It suddenly doesn’t want to spend any money or hire more workers because it has to make that Wall Street imposed goal. In my mind, it is a stupid way to do business.

That’s why three of my favorite companies are S.C. Johnson Wax, Jockey, and Kohler Corp. They are all privately held companies. They can do what needs to be done without having answer to some analyst 800 miles away. I wish more companies were like them.

I am not so happy to see the records BP is now setting in the Gulf of Mexico. We have seen a whole of series of dubious achievements since the explosion April 21^st explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Since I am public relations and social media person, I am going to focus on one area in particular. British Petroleum has perhaps done the worst job of crisis communications in the modern history of public relations. I cannot think of another incident that has been handled worse than the Gulf oil spill.

This should be a lesson to every company. A disaster can happen anywhere, anytime for any reason. It takes about five minutes to destroy a reputation and turn the public against you if it is not handled correctly.

“BP is going to be first and foremost in people’s minds when it comes to poor crisis planning and response,” said Timothy Sellnow, communication professor at University of Kentucky and author of several books on public relations in a crisis told the New York Times. “They’ve surpassed Exxon.”

You know that old saw that goes if you locked 100 monkeys in a room with laptops eventually one of them would come up with Macbeth. Well, I think one monkey could come up with a better way to handle BP’s crisis communications that the company’s leaders.

To talk about all of the public relations things BP has done wrong during this crisis would take more space than I allocate for this blog. Let me put it this way – I cannot think of one thing BP has done right since the explosion. Every time a BP executive or spokesperson opens their mouth they make things worse.

The New York Times reported that Public relations experts say it appears both BP failed to follow the first rule of crisis communications: having a plan in place to deal with a potential disaster, .

“BP never had a plan in place for the worst-case scenario or they would have put it in place,” Kathleen Fearn-Banks, communications professor at University of Washington and author of the book “Crisis Communication, A Casebook Approach” told the Times. “I don’t think it’s a question of money. … They absolutely don’t know what to do at all.”

This should be a lesson to every company whether it has five or 50,000 employees. I constantly hammer on this with clients. A company needs to have a crisis communications plan. It needs to update the plan to reflect changing environments.

Most importantly, it needs to rehearse the plan constantly. Part of that rehearsal means media training the company’s primary spokesman. BP CEO Tony Hayward is a classic example of what happens when that doesn’t happen. If I had been BP’s spokesman when Hayward said he “wanted his life back” I would have resigned on the spot.

Hayward suddenly became the poster child for every out-of-touch CEO on the planet. Whether he meant it or not, he told the people of the Gulf Coast that he was more important than they were. In one five second sound bite, he destroyed any goodwill the company had. Any good leader knows his needs always come last.

BP has done a host of other things wrong, such as trying to ban the media from public areas; not accepting help from the fishermen who know the area best; and making promises they just cannot keep.

It is amazing to me just how inept this multi-national company has been. Let that be an example to every company. Be prepared or you will go down the same road BP is traveling on.

Apple Inc.’s Marketing

Whether you are a Mac or a PC, you have to admire the way Apple markets itself.  The phrase I used to start the previous sentence is an example. Apple has become an iconic product. It’s marketing is transcending its market and becoming part of the general conversation. Which frankly is genius.

Of course Apple runs television advertisement for its products. However, those commercials are just one leg of the centipede that is Apple’s marketing plan. I cannot think of another company whose products go viral faster than Apple. They are word-of-mouth geniuses. You gotta admire that.

BP and The Oil Spill

That would make a great name for a punk band. In the real world, it has been an unmitigated disaster for British Petroleum on so many levels.

If you remember, last I blogged about the need for a crisis communication plan. That plan cannot sit on the shelf and gather dust. Just like every other part of crisis planning, a crisis communication plan has to be practiced. In that way, when the real thing happens, the communications team will know what to do.

I have to say that if BP did have a plan, it ain’t working. They have so ham handed about the way they dealt with the media. Their people actually got testy about what the company was doing. Bad idea. That just leads to more bad press.

The only way to act when there millions of oil that will potentially damage eco-systems from Louisiana to Florida and beyond is contrite.

Ford’s Advertising Campaign
Ford Motor Co. clearly gets it when it comes to telling the public about their products. Their current ads are the firs I have been in a long time that actually talk about their product’s attributes. That is a good way to get consumers interested.

If you watch television commercials for automobiles, you will notice that the ads rarely talk about what’s in the car. Most of the time, the commercials are trying to sell image. The one exception to that are truck commercials. The people who buy trucks want to know about horsepower and payload. They don’t care about image. They care about owning a tool that will get the job done.

Ford seems to have transferred that idea to car advertisements. The commercials for such things as the Ford Fusion or the Escape SUV talk about cargo space, gas mileage and horsepower. Those are thing I want to know about when I look at cars.

The Internet

I never realized how much I relied on the ability to use the Internet until part of it was taken away from me.

As I am sure you all noticed last week PR 101 was attacked by a virus. It was part of a larger attack on WordPress Blogs hosted by Go Daddy. I eventually had to take the blog down to protect all of you from getting infected. It took awhile, but the viruses were eventually flushed from the system. I have to give kudos to the Go Daddy customer support for helping me.

I also have to give a huge thank you to Joao Moraes of Sao Paulo, Brasil. Joao is the man who designed this blog and maintains it for me. It was he who helped me work my way through all of the issues a virus attack presents. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have a blog.

I also have to thank of all of you readers for sticking with me. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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.”

Last Wednesday, I said Toyota was slow out of the blocks to respond to the various crises it has faced of late. I think I was blogger 10,143 to state the obvious. However, I also said the company is showing signs of regaining its equilibrium.

Note: I drive a 2000 Camry. Both my children drive Corollas.

The company is running ads in every print and broadcast outlet it can find – including a lot of radio. It has shown pictures of its idled factories to demonstrate how serious it is in identifying the accelerator and brake issues. It also has a very active presence on Facebook.

Still while this is a good start, I think the company could do more. I think they if they handled it as I suggest, they would turn a negative into a positive.

Do What Datsun Did

The first thing Toyota’s C-Suite executives should do is plan road trips to every dealer in every country where Toyota is sold. The road trippers should be Chairman Fujio Cho, Vice Chairmen of the Board Katsuaki Watanabe and Kazuo Okamo, President Akio Toyoda, and in North America, Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, USA. If there are people who hold the same positions as Lenz in Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa, they should also pack their bags.

They need to take a page from the handbook of retired Nissan executive Yutaka Katayama.  It was Katayama who made Datsun (which later returned to its original name of Nissan) into the first Japanese automobile success story in the United States, according to the late journalist and author David Halberstam. It was Halberstam who detailed Datsun’s success in “The Reckoning” – his account of the rise the Japanese auto industry.

Katayama lived in the United States. He traveled constantly around the U.S., meeting, customers, dealers, reporters and anyone else who talk to him. Halberstam explained that Katayama made Datsun a powerhouse because “he (Katayama) was a rare man. He brought a face to the Japanese mercantile presence; meeting him, Americans felt they knew, understood and liked the Japan that was behind his products.”

This is what Toyota’s executives should be doing. Going to every place in the world where there have been problems. Once there, they should personally apologize to their customers. They should be interviewed by the media in each city and repeat the apology. They should honestly answer the tough questions about what they knew and when they knew it. They should be speaking to every group that will listen. There should be town hall style meetings at dealerships for the customers and the general public to air grievances.

These public appearances will, in my opinion, do much to quell the anger and rebuild trust. Most people are willing to forgive a mistake, as long the one who makes the mistake sincerely apologizes.

Cut Prices

Second, a simple thing to do would to be slash prices on all models. Not a token five percent cut – a real one in the neighborhood of 25 percent. For those who have a car with a defective accelerator or brakes, give them a new car. I would throw into five years free maintenance for every car sold. Not just for oil changes and other minor things, but for all repairs from replacing a headlamp to replacing a transmission.

More Social Media

Third, I would make better use of social media than they are. Both Cho and Lenz should be blogging every week. Craig Newmark – the Craig of Craig’s List does, as does Jonathan Swartz, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems and my personal favorite CEO blog, that of Southwest Airlines Gary Kelly. It has helped all three companies when they have hit rough patches. Explanations sound so much better when they come from the person in charge.

Finally, there are many, many people out there who are still strong Toyota supporters. Anecdotally, I know that because as Chester the Wonder Dog and I walk each day, I talk to Toyota owners. I have yet to find one who would get rid of their car.

I have also been on the Toyota Facebook page for U.S. owners. The level of support is amazing. Toyota needs to get those people more organized around company support. Most kind of companies would kill for that kind of support.

Put this all together and I think Toyota will be just fine.

So, you get a call from a Fox News producer – Bill O’Reilly wants you to appear on his show. Or you pick up your phone to hear a print reporter ask why your company is dumping toxic waste into the Old Mill Stream. Finally, the worst situation of all, you are watching a television show or reading a magazine story or a blog when you discover your company is the middle of a crisis because some advocacy group painted every company in your industry with the same brush.

In my over two-decade career as a reporter, I made some of those calls. In my somewhat shorter career as a public relations and marketing professional, I have responded to situations where an entire industry was painted with the same brush. In the later case, I was part of a team of three that crafted the first response to the first outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, in a cow in the state of Washington. We successfully showed that our client, Smithfield Beef, was doing everything right to ensure no cow with BSE would ever enter its slaughterhouses.

Incidentally, I just demonstrated the first rule of responding to a hostile situation. Many people called BSE “mad cow.” We never, ever used that term – even during meetings in the office. “Mad cow” conjures up images of some Holstein frothing at the mouth, chasing Old McDonald around the fields. BSE is the scientific term and more accurate. We determined the terms of the battle before it was even joined.

The second rule we demonstrated was we responded within hours of getting the news about the BSE discovery. We didn’t wait to respond to someone else’s announcement. Now, we got one break. The news of the BSE-infected cow broke on the morning of Dec. 24, 2003. Because it was a holiday, most of those who would have attacked the meat producing industry were not in their offices. We essentially had the playing field to ourselves for about 48 hours – we were able to present the issue on our terms. Two news cycles passed before the Chicken Littles got revved up. By then, we had shaped the issue and the debate into what the meat industry was doing right.

Something to remember. An announcement like that of the cow infected with BSE is a neutral event. The government officials who usually release such news generally play it right down the middle. So, it is up to you to tell your side right away.

Another thing to remember – if you have genuinely made a mistake, admit it. Don’t try to spin it. In the case of the cattle and meat packing industries, the discovery of the infected cow showed what was being done right. The cow was found before it got into the system. It showed that the proper checks were in place. We didn’t need to spin anything. We just needed to get our story out before it got buried in the noise.

Trying to spin a mistake just gets you into more trouble. The media and bloggers will usually quickly pick up on your attempts. They will trumpet your efforts to hide what you did. You or your company will end up looking worse than if you had just said, “yeah, we were wrong. We are doing everything we can to correct the error.”

Now, being preemptive works very well when there is an event that could turn out bad. Handling a Sean Hannity or a Bill O’Reilly is done somewhat differently. Remember, you are playing by their rules. This isn’t neutral ground. What you are hoping for here is a draw. Not losing is the same as winning.

First, watch as many of the shows as possible before going on. Make sure you know what the topic is and do your research. These shows have a rhythm. They start out seemingly being neutral and then move into questions designed to do one thing – make the interview subject look bad. Objectivity is not their strong suit.

Here’s the key thing to remember when you find yourself the subject of one of those “interviews:” stay calm. Don’t lose your temper. They want you to get upset. It makes better television. Angry people don’t think and spew out the wrong kind of answer.

What you want to be is calm and boring. Boring makes lousy television. Answer the question, but don’t elaborate. If the interviewer tries to go off on tangent, don’t let it happen. Go back to the main subject and stay there. Give short declarative answers.  Keep it boring.

Finally, you find there is the situation where find your company being criticized in the media and the Internet – and you had no idea it was happening. In this case, the blame is internal. You should have known that you had enemies out there. Most companies monitor conventional news outlets. Where they fall down is monitoring social media outlets – blogs, videos, etc.

Think that’s it’s not important to monitor those sites? Ask United Airlines about the country group Sons of Maxwell and its lead singer Dave Carroll. United baggage handlers broke Carroll’s $3,000 Taylor Guitar. Frustrated that the airline would do nothing to remedy the situation, Carroll recorded and posted a video on YouTube about his experience. As of Sunday, Aug. 16, the video had been viewed just under five million times. Now United did eventually step up and pay for repairing the instrument. It also said it wants to use the video in its employee training.

Still, think about the notoriety United gained from that one video. How many people chose to fly a competitor after watching that video?

United is just one example. Comcast, Proctor & Gamble and several other companies have felt the wrath of angry bloggers.

As I tell clients all of the time: “there is a conversation going on right now about your brand. You should be a part of it and leading it. But no matter what you do, it is going to happen anyway.”

Now, if it does happen, what to do is get involved in the conversation, quickly. Engage with the bloggers, talk to them and find out what the beef is. Proctor & Gamble was initially blind-sided by the Motrin Moms. But within 48-hours, the company had dealt with the problem and ended the furor.

In all these cases, the key is engagement and preparation. Do those things and at least you will never be surprised. And being ready is the most important thing to do.

Note: Check out my company’s new and improved website at JJC Communications.

To start, there are two kinds of self-inflicted wounds: the slow one, think the American auto industry not understanding why market share was shrinking; and the fast one, as is currently happening in the financial industry.

How should such crises be dealt with? Simple really, admit mistakes were made, correct those mistakes and ask for the public’s forgiveness. It’s the only course of action that works.

I will focus on a crisis that occurred close to my home – The Green Bay, Wis. headquartered-Associated Bank decision to take employees to Puerto Rico after receiving federal bailout money.

Full disclosure: I do not do business with Associated. I did pitch them for public relations business, but was unsuccessful. I worked for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel until I left journalism in 2002. Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Bice, who broke the story and whom I will be quoting, is a friend. However I have not questioned Bice about the story. Everything I have written is based on media reports.

In November 2008 Associated accepted $525 million in federal bailout funds. In February, the company decided to take 100 employees to a Puerto Rican resort. The company said it was rewarding its top performers.

This is the time a public relations professional should have been consulted. The pr pro would have done a risk assessment and advised the bank what would be the consequences of those actions.

I also believe any company that takes the time to create and practice a crisis communications plan is more attuned to potential mistakes. It is more likely to avoid making them.

At any rate, the trip decision caused much negative publicity for Associated. The trip was eventually canceled, but only after a lot of public criticism.

Has that publicity hurt Associated in the long term – I don’t know. But, a harsh light was cast on the bank. It is not the kind of publicity any business should ever get.
Remember, crisis communications is like a battlefield. A badly handled crisis can severely wound, even kill a company. There are no do-overs – you have one chance to get it right. Get it wrong, and if you’re lucky, you might restore a reputation in a decade or so.

The crisis began when this headline ran on the front page of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Associated Bank plans its own fiesta after bailout party.

Associated became a target. The coverage led to a lot of things like this: a blog urging canceling accounts; instructions on how to cancel an Associated account; and a headline from a Milwaukee television station: “Just dumb or incredibly stupid.”

It also led to a reaction from far more powerful sources, Bice reported:
“This is another gang of people who just don’t get it,” said U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Madison Democrat. “If they want to take this trip, they should return the TARP funds and go on their own dime.”

She wasn’t the only politician to sound off.

By the time the day was done, several members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation and U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl had lashed out at the state’s second largest bank.

“I am very disappointed,” Kohl told the Journal Sentinel. “I don’t think we can suggest they ought to return the funds or anything like that. There have been other violations, as you know, of companies that received funds or applied for funds, or did things not considered to be very smart or very proper. And I would put this in that category.”

The bank did two other things:
•    When Bice asked about the trip, Associated CEO Paul Beideman responded: “Should we ask you or anybody else each individual thing we do to see if it’s politically correct?” he asked. What he cares about, he said, is the opinion of his employees, and they overwhelmingly support the Puerto Rico trip: “I think it’s coming across very positively.” Bice noted in his story that it was Associated employees who tipped him.

•    And the bank did something I would advise against. I will let Bice explain it in a story he wrote: Here’s one bit of unsolicited advice for the person who lands the new job (as spokesman) with the Green Bay-based bank: Return calls from the media. Over the past two weeks, current spokeswoman Janet Ford hasn’t responded to any number of messages, leaving it to No Quarter to find other ways to chase down readers’ tips about a variety of other subjects.

The emphasis is mine. Never, ever, ever duck the media. It is up there with lying and saying no comment. By doing that, you forfeit the chance to tell your side of the story. The story will get done anyway. Here are some suggestions how I feel Associated could have dealt with the issue.

•    The bank could have announced that because of current economic conditions, the trip was being canceled. This would have had to have been done before Bice’s first story was published. Associated would have received valuable national publicity for the decision.
•    This is one of the hardest things for a CEO to do, but the bank’s leader should have admitted a mistake had been made as soon as the trip became public. The public likes humility,
•    Once the firestorm starts, apologize, cancel the trip and promise it will never happen again. It doesn’t matter if nothing wrong was done. It’s perception that counts.
My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help companies with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link.
I am available for speaking on media relations, or counseling your company on that or on your other public relations needs. I can be reached at 414-763-8310 or jjccomm@wi.twcbc.com.

An example I still use for how to manage a crisis happened about 25 years ago. It was so long ago that I cannot find the story stored anywhere on the Internet, so the details are somewhat hazy.
A small boy shoved his arm inside an unlocked box protecting high voltage lines. The utility chairman didn’t waste a minute. By the end of the day, the company was paying for the boy’s medical bills and a host of other things. The chairman took a negative and turned it into a positive enhancing his company’s reputation.
That should be always the goal. Don’t think about just containing the damage – think about turning the situation on its head. Your goal in a crisis situation is emerging from it with your reputation intact. Handled correctly, you can improve that reputation.
The key element in handling a crisis is to be ready. No, you cannot anticipate the exact shape a crisis will take anymore than a firefighter can anticipate how a fire will burn. How firefighters deal with that is to plan and practice. You and your company should be doing the same.
A lot of companies have crisis communications plans. However, it is usually tucked away in a dust-covered file. Often the people who wrote it, and the management who approved it, are gone If you’re lucky, somebody with an institutional memory will remember that the company has a plan. If you’re really lucky, they will remember where it is. And, if you go three-for-three, they will remember what it says.
I wouldn’t count on any of that actually happening.
Writing A Plan
Let’s start with creating a crisis communications plan. As I said, it is impossible to know the shape a crisis is going to take. So, the plan has to provide a framework for dealing with a crisis.
Here are the steps you should use to create a plan.
Develop and write the plan
A working group should be created to develop the plan. The group should be made of senior people familiar with all aspects of a company’s operations. The working group should meet with each department head to gather information on possible crises.
The plan should include:
•    The primary members of the crisis communications team. It can include: the CEO, the chief of public relations, outside public relations counsel corporate counsel, the safety and/or security officer, other employees who would be relevant to the situation.
•    A media point person and a spokesman: One team member, usually the public relations person, should be designated as the primary media contact. This person should be the conduit for all media inquiries. One team member, preferably the CEO or another high-ranking executive, should be the designated media spokesman. It is important to have as high a ranking person as possible as the spokesperson. The higher the rank, the more integrity in the eyes of the media and public.
•    A crisis communications team roster with each member’s contact information. This should include cell phone, home phone office phone and email addresses. Each team member should have a copy.
•    An initial contact. This is the person at headquarters who will get the call that there’s a problem. This can be done on a rotating, on call basis
•    A chain of command – who reports to who.
•    Who will be collecting information on what is happening. This should be a team. One of the team’s key roles will be dealing with rumors.
•    Who determines what resources are needed to deal with the issue.
•    The names and contact information for the spokespeople for area emergency personnel, or any other outsider who might be involved, should included on the list. If possible, at least one member of the crisis team should meet with the spokesperson for the emergency personnel to get acquainted.
•    A method for continual reassessment of how things are going and what additional resources are needed.
Once completed, the plan should disseminated to all department heads and their key people. They should review plan. Senior management should follow up with them to ensure they have done their homework. Each of those department heads should also have of the phone list. They should always know who is on call in the event of an emergency.
Practice
Those are the basics of a crisis communications plan. Writing it is only the first step. The next is to rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse. I always recommend practicing at least one a quarter, more if your company is in an industry where incidents occur often.
Set up a “practice” crisis and run through your plan. This will tell you what works and what doesn’t work. It will also ensure everyone knows their places when the real things happens. The plan should be second nature to everyone involved long before it has to be put into action.
As I said in the beginning, there is no point in having a plan if no one knows were it is, what it says, or how to execute it. It would be akin to not recharging your sprinkler system or checking your alarms.
Next week, I will discuss how to deal with an external crisis.

My background: I worked as a reporter for 25 years in central Illinois, upstate New York, suburban Detroit and Milwaukee. I now help companies with marketing communications through my company – JJC Communications LLC. If you want to know more about my company, and myself, click the link.

I am available for speaking on media relations, or counseling your company on that or on your other public relations needs. I can be reached at 414-763-8310 or jjccomm@wi.twcbc.com.