The social media and PR agency perspective.

With the volumes of resources, insights, and an entire industry built around crisis management, it’s amazing that even the biggest names in the news still fail to heed the basics.

• JP Morgan: incurs $2 billion in trading losses… and no holding statement on its website.  Who do you think is controlling the message?

• Sukhoi: the Russian jet maker crashes its next-generation commercial aircraft, killing dozens and jeopardizing billions in international trade… but it took three days to get a statement of regret on its website.  Who do you think is controlling the message?

• Mitt Romney: gets caught up in the anti-bullying narrative as a villain… and offers an evolving non-apology to my-bad-if-anyone’s-hurt apology (and even had his campaign outright deny knowledge of very sensational events).  Who do you think is controlling the message?

Crisis management, when done well, requires asserting as much control over the controversy as possible.  Delayed messages, stalling tactics, and flat silence can never be part of a successful PR response strategy.

Here’s a simple crisis PR and media training principle to follow when responding to media inquiries: every answer must avoid attracting further inquiries.  Right now, Congressman Aaron Schock’s re-election campaign would do well to add this rule to its press strategies.

Schock’s campaign got dinged when the story broke that campaign contributions were used to pay for luxury hotels, town car service, antique stores (seriously, on a campaign?), and concerts.  While such expenditures are legal, the perception this carries – particularly for a public servant – doesn’t fit for positive headlines.

That’s where good media training is essential in responding to inevitable reporter phone calls.  And, that’s why the campaign manager’s justification of the lavish expenses – “You can’t have the typical cocktail receptions at all the typical places in Washington that everyone has already done” – is a bad approach to handling the PR crisis.  Why?

First, the campaign’s response doesn’t address the issue at hand.  The media narrative of politicians abusing money so easily completes itself.  That’s the big mistake Schock’s campaign is making in its press strategy.

Second (stop us if you heard this before), the response doesn’t address the issue at hand!  Rather, the campaign is effectively saying, “well everyone else is a bad actor, so why pick on us?”  Your crisis management strategy should provide you the opportunity to assert control over the media narrative instead of saying there’s nothing you – or anyone else – can do about the bad situation.

A better response?  Any variation of “these expenditures are under review and Aaron will make sure the campaign will vet future campaign expenses more carefully.”  That effectively buys time for your next move and halts permutations of the story that can eclipse the savviest of campaign spokespeople.

You may have seen a recent study that found 60% of Wikipedia entries about organizations contained factual errors.  Imagine a newspaper or other media outlet that regularly ran corrections for 6 out of every 10 stories.  Put another way, it’s more likely than not that what you read about a company on Wikipedia is false.  Not quite the reliable source of information anyone would turn to for authority – on anything.

For all Wikipedia’s vaunted “citizen journalism” ethos, this 60% statistic is breathtaking.  PR pros have for years considered Wikipedia a scoundrel, as stories about their clients are based on otherwise erroneous information.

Say your client is the target of such a story, and the Wikipedia entry in question contains false and damaging information.  As correctly noted by Marcia DiStaso, Wikipedia’s current lag time of several days for updating bad entries is way too long in today’s hyper 24/7 news cycle.  (On a side note, Wikimedia Foundation Jay Walsh’s statement that “[y]ou shouldn’t edit articles if you have a personal stake in them” is absolutely laughable.  How exactly does Walsh define “personal stake”?  If you’re a super fan of a band, for example, does that disqualify you from editing or deleting negative but false comments about the band’s music?  Where does Walsh propose drawing the line?)

Now imagine your client is a publicly traded company, and an incorrect news report – based on an incorrect Wikipedia article – causes the stock price to plunge.  You try to edit the Wikipedia page but are constantly haunted by Wikipedia CEO Jimmy Wales’ admonition that “[t]here is a very central bright line rule that constitutes best practice: do not edit Wikipedia directly if you are a paid advocate.”

How such a regime constitutes fairness, in particular from a site that purports to be a democratic system to incubate and publish knowledge, is beyond comprehension.  And lastly, if Wikipedia were ever to get its act together per this misguided editing philosophy, the least it could do is streamline the process.  Even if you want to edit an article, good luck figuring things out as you travel down the rabbit hole.

He could even make a press conference cool!

Music is a leader of the high art of communication, so no doubt we in the PR world can learn from that industry’s best practices.  And when it comes to learning from the best, who better to study than the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley!  Here are four key points Elvis would probably share with PR pros today:

• Be versatile.  Elvis was more than the greatest rock vocalist ever.  He was a solid guitar player, could belt tunes on the piano, wrote some of his biggest hits, was a movie star… even had a black belt in karate!  Similarly, the best PR pros aren’t just skilled in one skill set.  They know how to write, speak, pitch, strategize, network, and do it with a smile.

• The best campaigns take time.  Elvis was summoned to serve in the military just when his star was reaching supernova status.  Many speculated the compulsory service would suddenly end his career.  Instead, he returned and drew from the amazing musical foundation he built, with the biggest blast being the famous 1968 “Comeback Special” seared in many music lovers’ minds.  In PR, the biggest positive impact we can make for clients often requires months, sometimes years, of legwork before the publicity payoff is realized.

• Mix it up.  Elvis didn’t just stick with rock music.  He dominated many genres, including gospel, country, blues, even a few bizarre side numbers.  PR pros should always think about getting clients outside their comfort zones, such as in other industries where business and publicity opportunities may provide excellent bang for the buck publicity.

• Only the strong survive.  Not only the title of a great song Elvis covered, but also a motto all PR pros should live by!  PR is a rough industry, it requires significant time, creativity, and plenty of persistence (hello, pitching…) to get results.  If you don’t have the drive to keep going despite setbacks, you may want to consider another line of work.

Stayed at a hotel recently?  Paid for internet access?  Yep, it’s a pretty rough world out there.  In fact, having recently attended a conference in New Zealand, we had to shell out $30 a day for wifi at some locations!

Complaints about hotel wifi services are as common as death and taxes, so you’d think the hotel industry would be sensitive to chatter about how internet services are deployed, and exercise care over which vendors they choose to provide internet access.

Marriott may not be following such principles, as a scathing New York Times story recently revealed how the hotel’s wifi service at its Midtown Manhattan location was effectively pushing ads onto every website a customer accessed.  The lid was blown off by a web engineer who posted the technical details on his own blog.  The culprit, it seems, is a wireless hardware component that’s specifically marketed for its “Web experience manipulation”…

In matters of PR and perception, sometimes the unlikeliest of scenarios can catch up with a client – in this case, a supply-chain mini nightmare eventually bit Marriott with a dose of bad publicity.  The lesson here is to evaluate and choose your vendors carefully, knowing that their own bad acts may influence your own customers’ perceptions of your business.

A lesson in consumer public relations…

You probably heard last week about the massive credit card data breach at Global Payments, Inc., affecting potentially 10 million customers.  Data leaks are the new “the dog ate my homework” phenomenon, and of course require solid crisis PR strategies to manage.

If there’s one thing that’s good so far, it’s that Global Payments now estimates that the data breach impacted only about 1.5 million customers.  Still, Global Payments shouldn’t assume this lower number somehow mitigates the bottom line, as the company’s stock dropped nearly 14% on news of the data breach.

These ups and downs certainly mean a lot to the Street, but what about the average consumer?  Instead of worrying about stock prices, a typical consumer was probably asking themselves, “were my credit cards hacked?”

Too bad Global Payments’ website offers them no information on where they should go, or what they should do.  Rather than recommending helpful steps for contacting credit card companies, credit bureaus, or other consumer-protection organizations, Global Payments instead has a technical statement in an eye-splitting font size.  The company’s defense of its position clearly hasn’t reassured Visa, which dropped Global Payments as a partner in processing transactions.

Data breaches are a demanding PR dilemma, and require concise, easy to understand messaging to reassure consumers.  For all companies trafficking in ecommerce, to avoid a barrage of negative Monday morning headlines, make sure to put the consumer front and center per your PR and communications.

As this blog has written before, tweets are almost always a very bad way to apologize for something.  Especially if your tweet might have threatened the safety of otherwise innocent people.

For Spike Lee, whose tweets per the Trayvon Martin tragedy have earned him a harsh spotlight, perhaps he’s doing more behind the scenes to amend his mistakes for the elderly couple he might have put in danger.  From the PR standpoint, if Lee’s aim was to go officially on record for having done something wrong, perhaps Twitter was an acceptable platform for doing so.  But should the side controversy over tweeting the wrong address get worse, then Lee will need a bit more damage control.

And aside from all this, we are reminded of another important lesson: just because something appears online, that doesn’t mean it’s true.

As we stated in our previous blog post on Invisible Children, when advocacy campaigns are based on misrepresentations, exaggerations, and near falsehoods, they undermine their own cause and damage the credibility of communications models that aim to advance a moral movement.

With the startling collapse of disgraced activist Mike Daisey’s attacks on Apple, 2012 may very well become the year of bad theater/journalism/truth-seeking gone awry.  As with Kony 2012, the same principles hold true here — facts are always more interesting than lies.  If Mr. Daisey doesn’t believe that (which apparently he doesn’t, given his recent loquacious defense of his fact-bending), he should just look at the New York Times’ carefully researched account of Apple‘s supply chain controversy.

So for all budding viral-video, monologue, interpretive dance, or other medium producers who want to stamp out injustice, remember: don’t simplify the facts so much that the truth gets skewed.  Your audience, and most certainly the media, will thank you for it.

Much has been said about the questionable tactics of Invisible Children, the advocacy group whose video on Joseph Kony’s Lords Resistance Army dominated the news cycle recently.  While some lauded the organization for spotlighting Kony‘s wave of guerilla conflict atrocities, others harshly criticized Invisible Children for playing fast and loose with the facts on the ground.  Even worse is the charge that the video perversely undermines the cause of bringing Kony to justice, rather than advancing it.

The problem from a PR perspective goes like this.  If your advocacy campaign peddles half-truths, misconceptions, exaggerations, and is factually ignorant, you are bound for PR failure.  Issues campaigns can’t claim altruism and simultaneously bulldoze a fake message by assuming the end justifies the means.  If you don’t agree with that premise, just imagine the news headlines for future Invisible Children campaigns:

“Controversial group releases new video with questionable claims …”

“Fact-challenged organization launches new campaign against alleged tyrant …”

“Disputed CEO once again defends latest advocacy effort on child warfare …”

You can see the pattern here.  Not only has Invisible Children hindered its own long term goals by warping the facts presented in its anti-Kony campaign, it’s done something substantially worse to like-minded organizations.  Every future villain targeted by similar multimedia advocacy efforts now has a straw man to bash away at: “I am not a warlord/child trafficker/international scumbag — after all, the group accusing me is using the same dishonest Invisible Children playbook.”

Lesson for all high-minded groups: stick with the actual facts.  They’re often more compelling than the exaggerated alternative (and you ultimately won’t need to devote a ton of real estate to explaining how your own house is in order).

It’s rare you’ll ever see such a stark misalignment of a brand’s health-focused messaging, and the harsh reality of contrary medical studies.  Diet Coke supports The Heart Truth, a public campaign to raise awareness of how heart disease affects women.  Naturally, skeptics rolled their eyes at the idea of a soft drink maker promoting better heart health, and the fact that the diet drink’s can even has a heart logo on it.

Putting aside interest group differences with Diet Coke, the more tough pill to swallow is a new study showing that diet soda consumption may be linked to, gulp, a higher risk of heart disease.  So what does this all mean, in terms of brand equity and CSR efforts?

Hard to say at this point.  What matters at this moment is how Diet Coke plans its short and long-term response.  Clearly, Coca-Cola is no slouch when it comes to highly resourceful marketing.  In fact, check out the company’s website, where they openly disclose their marketing budget.  (Although the most recent figures are from 2006, we’ll assume just about any company would love to have $2.6 billion for advertisements.)

Normally one might turn to the company’s Facebook page to see what response it might have to this turn of events, but good luck finding any worthwhile commentary there.  How much longer can Coca-Cola stay silent when facing such circumstances?