Archive for PR
photo credit: Toby Harnden|Daily Telegraph
The quadrennial silly season known as the US Presidential race has been in full cry on the Republican side for about six months now, with some highly entertaining spectacle already on display. Unfortunately, a popular favorite, Herman Cain, who had built up quite a head of steam as a leading contender, has been somewhat sidelined by accusations that have put his campaign in PR-crisis-management mode.
First, let me make it clear that I have no dog in this fight. I’m still waiting for the Logic Party to form, and meanwhile am a member of the No Labels movement – in other words, I’m apolitical outside the voting booth. Inside the voting booth, I hold my nose and do the best I can under the circumstances.
My purpose here is to point out the three simple, yet critical, steps Cain and his campaign communications team should have taken to, if not 100% avoid this epic mud-fest, at least keep it at small-mud-puddle level.
- Vet the candidate fully. Pretend you’re on the oppo research team of another candidate and vet the bejabbers out of your guy. Or gal. Go after anything that could possibly lurk as a Nannygate, or sexual harassment, or financial/business ethics challenge. The Cain team is steeping in a big bucket of #epicfail right now, because according to London Daily Telegraph US editor Toby Harnden, oppo research leakage was what led to the Politico piece that started this mud-fest.
- When you know the worst, plan the response. When you’ve got all the skeletons out of the closet and into the living room, start figuring out how to make them look less threatening. In this instance, simply putting the story out themselves would have taken much of the power of it off the table. “Allegations were made, this was the result, the candidate denies that there is any truth to them, but the decision was made at the time to settle the suit/issue/whatever” and move on. Never, ever let a big story about you get out there, unless you’re the one putting it out there. If one does, particularly at this stage of the game, you’re in crisis-response mode at the cost of core-message mode. Cain will now have to talk about this every day, or look like he’s dodging talking about this … every day. Not a path that’s likely to wind up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
- When caught out, make a full statement and then move on. Cain is caught in a cycle of no-comment/denial/bimbo-eruption/feeding-frenzy. This is a really bad place to be, because at this point pretty much anything he says will be discounted as reluctant disclosure. If his campaign had rigorously acted on Tip #1, Tip #2 would have been pretty easy, and Tip #3 might have been completely unnecessary. He’s now going to be chewed on daily until the bimbo eruptions subside. He can keep up the no-comment/denial protocol, but that will keep him in the feeding-frenzy box for the foreseeable future.
I feel for the guy. I covered every Presidential race from 1980 to 2004. As I put it in my bio: I covered wars, Presidential campaigns, and Presidential campaigns that turned into wars. Politics is a rough, nasty, no-holds-barred business – the higher the office, the sharper the knives and the bigger the guns you’ll be up against.
Failing to recognize that, and failing to get in front of any negative information in your past by revealing it yourself first, guarantees painful war wounds.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
I had the opportunity to speak at a digital pharma marketing conference – DTC Perspectives’ Marketing to the Digital Consumer – last week. “DTC” is Direct To Consumer, by the way. I was representing the patient voice, at the invitation of my friends at the health activist community WEGO Health.
It was terrific for several reasons – connecting with other healthcare social media peeps in pharma, meeting and mingling with some powerful voices in pharma leadership, learning more about the regulatory environment that pharma marketers work in – but the biggest “wow!” that day happened between my ears.
I realized that pharma – and healthcare in toto – is desperate for its own #arabspring. A complete re-alignment of the entire system, driven from the bottom up, that will benefit all players: pharma, health systems, clinicians, researchers, patients … people. All of us.
This epiphany arrived courtesy of a combination of factors.
First, I felt a little like a zoo animal, since I was the only one at the conference wearing an Official Patient sign. I found that amusing, since everyone in the room is a patient at some level, even if they’re only seeing a doc once a year for a check-up. I’m not even a pharma consumer who’s on a buffet of drugs, although I do take a fat handful of supplements every morning. Why are patients seen as exotic creatures by pharma, and by most of the healthcare industry?
Patients = people, people. Treat us like … people.
Second, since I also wear a PR/media/content-creator hat, I saw that they were making a real effort to understand how they could take advantage of social media as a direct-marketing tool. They were approaching this as an industry with a huge regulatory oversight burden, from the FDA to the US Patent & Trade Commission to the host of regulatory bodies in other countries where these companies sell pharma products to doctors or direct to consumers.
Some of the regulatory step-on they’re struggling with they brought on themselves with “me-too” drug formulation and disease-mongering (“restless leg syndrome”? Really?). In conversation with a couple of high-level folks from big pharma, I learned that they routinely hear “we’ll have to run this past sales” when they want to try a new approach to communicating with their market. Why does sales drive communication? If pharma wonders why they’re seen as a scrum of hucksters, look no further than “running it past sales” when it comes to new ideas.
That combination of being seen as an exotic because I was a patient, and recognizing that, as an industry, pharma is an inverted pyramid crushing itself under the weight of heavy regulation caused, and continued, by a run-it-by-sales communication model, led me to the idea that people (a/k/a “patients”) need to #arabspring this b*tch.
People – patients – need to examine their relationship(s) with healthcare, and pharma, and ask what value they are getting from those relationships. Tell those that help how they’re doing, and tell those that aren’t to either clean up their act or take a hike.
Don’t fall for disease-mongering.
Don’t settle for less-than-full disclosure from any of your healthcare providers – in other words, ask why your doctor is prescribing a name drug, if a generic is available.
Act as if your health is YOUR responsibility. Get off the couch, call a halt to drive-through nutrition, examine your habits and ditch what doesn’t serve you, and your health.
Engage with pharma companies who provide you or your family with drugs that work, and tell them so.
Rabble-rouse the FDA to stop standing on innovation, and to start freeing up both farm AND pharm to help us eat better, and help researchers bring new drugs that actually help to market.
Take to the the streets by visiting your local farmer’s market and buying/cooking local. Boycott processed cr*p disguised as food.
The presentation deck I used at the conference, with added narration, is linked here.
I welcome comments, arguments, suggestions.
I recommend that you read my buddy Phil Baumann’s take on “we are all patients”. (He’s right, BTW – which is why I say patients = PEOPLE, people.)
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
It has become accepted wisdom that public schools in the US are failing their students.
I confess to believing some of that conventional wisdom: I think we’re losing generation after generation of inner-city and rural kids with sub-par schools and technology. I also think that inner-city schools have become both a dumping ground for teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, and a road to exhaustion and defeat for teachers who arrive fired up and get ground under the wheels of budget shortfalls, bureaucracy, and bullsh*t.
But I digress.
The Washington Post Answer Sheet blog shared a post by Will Fitzhugh, editor of the Concord Review – the world’s only English-language quarterly review for history academic papers by high school students (smart kids + smart teachers = intellectual advancement for all!) – that puts the blame for poor student performance at the feet of … students. The title of the post: “Teachers Not Enough? Who Knew?”
And he’s 110% right there.
I’m now going to sound like the geezer I’m becoming, but just roll with me for a minute here. When I was in school, my job was to go to school, do my work, and learn. That was my job. The one that would set the stage for all the jobs coming after, the one without successful completion thereof I would be stamped with the storied “L on my forehead” and consigned to the career-and-success scrap heap. It was up to me to learn as much as I could, and use that knowledge to forge my way in the world.
Am I nuts, or does it seem as though students in K-12 now believe it’s the responsibility of the school to pry open their brains and pour in knowledge without much in the way of student effort? And that expectation is being driven by parents, and the community at large?
I watched the documentary Waiting for Superman recently, and found it compelling. However, something nagged at me as I watched it, and after, that only became clear when I read Fitzhugh’s Concord Review post: the film left the viewer with the impression that schools, parents, and the community were responsible for the entire education cycle. What was left out was the obligation for students to work to learn.
I’m not saying that a kid in a failing inner-city school who fails to learn is solely at fault for his/her lack of academic progress. As a society, we must make sure that each of our kids has the chance to learn as much, and go as far, as s/he possibly can in life. Charter schools can be a terrific answer for places where public schools are letting down the kids who try to learn there … but they’re not the only, or even the first, answer.
That first answer is: kids, school is your job. Act accordingly. Pay attention, do your work, do not expect to have learning pass through your ears and into your brain without any effort on your part. Life requires that you be present, pay attention, and act to further your own progress. You will not be borne through life on Cleopatra’s barge, much as your helicopter parents might have led you to believe that was your destiny.
Work. It’s what makes things happen. So go do some.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
I don’t care what being in love means regarding saying you’re sorry. Personally, I think Erich Segal’s book sucks, but I digress.
If you’re in business – running one, managing one, working for one – you’re in the apology business. In fact, being human puts you in the apology business 24/7/365. And business always needs a good dose of human, particularly in the age of the 24-hour news cycle and the Facebook Fan Page wall post.
Not being human, and being willing to admit you made a mistake? #fail.
In a great post on INC.com, Tim Donnelly gives very solid tips on how to approach the brand apology when your business screws the pooch. His #1 tip: just say it. “I’m sorry.” Simple … so why is it so hard for a brand to do that?
I think the root cause of brand cluelessness is that businesses forget that they are, after all, human. They may own skyscrapers in cities around the world, but guess what? Those buildings are full of … people. Doing business with … people.
When your spouse, or your buddy, or your kid do something to hurt you or your feelings, they apologize. You do the same thing when you screw up. (If you don’t, let me know. I know some terrific divorce attorneys.) Same rules apply if you’re J.C. Penney, the example that Donnelly uses in his piece.
Be human, don’t be a brand-droid.
You don’t have to literally fall on your sword, or drape yourself in sackcloth and ashes (I still have random PTSD episodes from 12 years of Catholic education) to apologize. You don’t have to take responsibility for every goof since the beginning of your brand’s recorded history, either. Just say you’re sorry, and then you can move on.
If your factory releases a cloud of toxic gas that kills a few thousand people, you’ll have to do a little more than say “sorry” – just ask Union Carbide. Oh, right, you can’t ask them, because they never actually said they were sorry about poisoning Bhopal. Which explains why they WENT OUT OF BUSINESS.
See how powerful an apology could be? And how not issuing one might literally kill your business?
Use words that convey regret without taking responsibility for every hurt the offended party has ever suffered. Just saying “I’m sorry” can completely defuse a brand revolt. Couple that apology with a clear outline of how you plan to remedy the hurt: priceless. Really. Try it.
We all make mistakes. We’re human, that’s part of the journey. A business that recognizes its own humanity, and that of its customers, by making a sincere apology when they screw up will ultimately drive more loyalty for their brand than a business that’s 24/7 shiny-happy-people. ‘Cause shiny-happy will eventually fog up, or blow up. Trust me on that one.
Be human.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
On August 27, a very angry Hurricane Irene came calling all up and down the east coast, including Virginia – which is where I live. I have plenty of hurricane experience, including a sojourn 500 miles offshore in a schooner during a Category 1 hurricane. I don’t recommend that experience unless you really want to know what your laundry feels like on max-agitate in your washing machine.
Landmasses with human habitation that are visited by hurricanes always have plenty of wind and flooding damage, and our experience with Irene was pretty typical. Lots of trees were knocked down, which took a lot of power lines with ‘em, meaning that lots of local utility customers were in the steamy dark once Irene blew town.
#1 cause of a PR crisis: lots of unhappy people.
No one – at least, no one with a mature level of life experience – could have expected Dominion Virginia Power to restore everyone to lighted bliss immediately. Those of us who were here during Hurricane Isabel (hurricanes with “I” names must hate the Commonwealth of Virginia) knew we were in for a sweaty, dark few days, at least.
Crews from utilities in surrounding states came in to help Dominion crews get us all lit up again. They are still working their butts off, and they are most certainly not the target of this post’s ire.
Because Dominion has truly screwed the PR/crisis-comms pooch on Irene’s aftermath.
All the interactive outage maps in the world – and Dominion has some great ones – mean squat to customers who have to huddle in a local Panera or library to view them. Announcing where crews are working via local media is of some help.
What Dominion failed to do, however, was put a face on the problem. One of their top leadership team needed to become the face and voice of Dominion as they worked to restore their customers to the grid. As I write this – Sunday, Sept. 3 – 20% of Richmond-area customers are still without power.
That means that 1 out of 5 Dominion customers in this region are still in a Bronte novel, at least at night, wandering from room to room clutching candles. The contents of their refrigerators and freezers are long gone, and if they have an all-electric kitchen, they ain’t cooking dinner, either.
No one from Dominion’s senior leadership has been very visible during this event. The company’s Facebook page has been the wall where the unhappy sweaty scrum have been posting their displeasure, which has only compounded the problem, since the person or persons who manage the page seem to be as clueless as the rest of us. One response they posted in reply to a customer’s inquiry about the fact that the middle of a street was still dark, while the houses at each end had been restored:
I am sorry, we aren’t quoting specific restoration times. I don’t have the level of operations information you are looking for.
Why on earth is the person who is representing a utility on a major social network NOT given access to operations information at a meaningful level? This tells me that Dominion views social media as a one-more-thing activity, rather than a key communication tool.
#fail.
For next time, here are my recommendations. Dominion may or may not ever see these, but I already feel better for posting them.
- Make a top leader the face and voice of the company during the crisis.
- Have that face-and-voice respond to media inquiries at least daily, if not more frequently. What that leader says must be mirrored in/on every online outlet for customer-facing company information … which includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al.
- If you don’t know, say “I don’t know.” Shiny-happy-people, pie-in-the-sky, promise-the-world will only lead to the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Possibly yours.
- Tell the truth. This goes hand in hand with #3.
Simple. Works for a utility, a consumer-products company, a hospital, a factory. Have a leader lead, tell the truth.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
The #1-with-a-bullet rule of social media, no matter what platform, is: be authentic. This does not mean that you should be an authentic idiot, however.
I had a troubling conversation on LinkedIn a few days ago, with someone who sent me a connection request. I’m a pretty open networker – my only rules are
Have a profile picture of your face, not a logo
Be a human, with a name, not a brand or a handle
Be able to answer the “how did I wind up on your LinkedIn radar?” question effectively
All three of those guarantee acceptance. Any one of them missing, “ignore”.
So when a woman in my geographic zone sent me an invitation to connect, and had cleared the first 2 of the above rules, I pinged her with a “how” – and that’s where things got interesting. She told me that she was looking for a job, and a recruiter told her that she wouldn’t even get a look if she didn’t have at least 150 LinkedIn connections.
In other words, the recruiter was basically telling her that she needed to gather up connections quickly. Which is, in my estimation, really rotten advice. I’m not against the idea of a dedicated campaign to make meaningful professional connection on LinkedIn, or any other social media network. I do, however, question a recruiter instructing a potential client to essentially spam her address book. That’s likely to get you the LinkedIn bitch-slap, which can be as painful as being kicked off LinkedIn, and at a minimum highly circumscribed on the invitation-to-connect front.
Authentic connection takes time. I’ve been on LinkedIn since 2004, and my connection count of 1,000+ is a testament to my approach of authenticity. I don’t meet all my connections face-to-face – wish I could, since some of them are in Asia and Africa, meaning that meetings would satisfy my travel jones as well as my deepen-the-connection mantra. But I manage to keep tabs on the people I’m linked to, and have picked up both great business intel and actual booked business using my “authenticity” rules.
If you’re a recruiter, or work in HR in any way, be aware of the rules you require those you work with to live by. Focus less on number of connections, and more on how meaningful a candidate’s connections are.
Ragan.com, a must-read site for anyone interested in business storytelling, had a terrific post last week by Jure Klepic, 12 LinkedIn gaffes to avoid at all costs. It’s both funny and informative. Give it a read.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Raising Cain … then lowering him. 3 tips to avoid that mistake.
Posted by: Mighty Casey | Comments (0)photo credit: Toby Harnden|Daily Telegraph
The quadrennial silly season known as the US Presidential race has been in full cry on the Republican side for about six months now, with some highly entertaining spectacle already on display. Unfortunately, a popular favorite, Herman Cain, who had built up quite a head of steam as a leading contender, has been somewhat sidelined by accusations that have put his campaign in PR-crisis-management mode.
First, let me make it clear that I have no dog in this fight. I’m still waiting for the Logic Party to form, and meanwhile am a member of the No Labels movement – in other words, I’m apolitical outside the voting booth. Inside the voting booth, I hold my nose and do the best I can under the circumstances.
My purpose here is to point out the three simple, yet critical, steps Cain and his campaign communications team should have taken to, if not 100% avoid this epic mud-fest, at least keep it at small-mud-puddle level.
I feel for the guy. I covered every Presidential race from 1980 to 2004. As I put it in my bio: I covered wars, Presidential campaigns, and Presidential campaigns that turned into wars. Politics is a rough, nasty, no-holds-barred business – the higher the office, the sharper the knives and the bigger the guns you’ll be up against.
Failing to recognize that, and failing to get in front of any negative information in your past by revealing it yourself first, guarantees painful war wounds.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …