Author: Jonathan & Erik Bernstein

This is why you need to look at advertising with an eye for crisis management

Dove has been quite successful as a brand in recent years, in part thanks to its campaigns focused on women with a wide range of body types. Its latest campaign never went to print, however, thanks to an early reveal from the New York Times that got stakeholders fired up.

Have a look at the proposed design, which would have gone up on billboards in New Jersey this summer:

That’s right, the ad, which, considering it came out of a multimillion dollar organization, had to have passed through several committees and was signed off on by company leadership, seriously addresses New Jersey as “The Armpit of America”.

For our readers not in the States, this is not a term used endearingly, but rather the go-to insult for anyone looking to take a dig at Jersey. Making the choice even more baffling, Dove parent company Unilever is actually headquarted in New Jersey!

As far as we’re concerned, this is a complete crisis management failure. An ad like this, that is so clearly offensive to a large group of your stakeholders, should never make it to the public eye. Heck, if we were Dove artists and drew this up as a joke amongst ourselves we’d be putting it through the shredder twice before we clocked out.

Predictably, Dove’s Facebook and Twitter pages bubbled over with comments from angry and offended New Jersey residents defending their home state and blasting the billboard, waking the brand up enough to let everyone know their feedback had been heard and the ad would be pulled.

It feels like we’re dishing this advice out nearly every week, but here goes again – when you finish drafting up that edgy new ad campaign, how about taking a little survey?

Ask your family, friends, colleagues…heck, maybe, if you’re one of the largest manufacturers of personal care products in the world, you might even have the budget to bring in a focus group of those in your target area to ask what they think.

Just sayin’.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

[The following guest post from Rick Kelly, Vice President of Strategic Communications at Triad Strategies examines the dangers that arise when you let the legal department override common sense.]

Failing to balance legal concerns and reputation can create major crises

When conducting crisis management training, one of the points we always make is that what works in a court of law and what works in the Court of Public Opinion aren’t necessarily the same things.

General Mills, which possesses an exceptional stable of iconic food brands, learned this the hard way last week when it changed the terms under which its customers are permitted to interact with the company online. The ensuing public backlash caused the company to revert to the earlier agreement and apologize after three days of social media turmoil.

Like many consumer product companies, General Mills capitalizes on social media and other digital communication tools to build and strengthen brand loyalty. Customers are able to get recipe ideas, download coupons, take advantage of promotions, view videos, etc., and in doing so, imply their acceptance of a “terms-of-use” agreement.

And again, like many consumer product companies, General Mills is interested in limiting its legal liability and avoiding the over-the-top awards that plaintiffs extract from deep-pocketed corporations on occasion.

What caused everyone to choke on their Cheerios was when General Mills updated its website terms-of-use agreement to include a provision requiring website visitors to give up their right to sue the company. Instead, they would be required to resolve any claims through binding arbitration, an approach that tends to be more favorable toward the defendant and eliminates class-action opportunities.

The New York Times began the buzzkill with a business-page article that posed the question of whether downloading a 50-cent cereal coupon could cost customers their legal rights. Facebook and Twitter were immediately onto it, and posts questioned whether “liking” the company’s Facebook page or following it on Twitter constituted a forfeiture of consumers’ right to sue as well.

The Times reported that the company had made the revisions following a California judge’s ruling last month against a motion to dismiss a case brought by two mothers who accused General Mills of deceptively marketing its Nature Valley products as 100 percent natural when they are not.

By Saturday, the company had had enough of the public brouhaha, and at 10 that night it announced that it was changing the policy back (for its part, the Times pounded its chest by describing the reversal as “stunning” – not once, but twice in its story.

The company also issued an apology on its Taste of General Mills blog site, saying its intentions had been “widely misread” and it had not foreseen such a reaction.

Digiday, a media company for digital media, marketing and advertising professionals, quoted National Consumer Law Center attorney David Seligman as saying arbitration clauses are more common than most people realize.

“General Mills was public about it, so it caught people’s attention,” Seligman told Digiday. “The vast majority of companies already have arbitration clauses. I don’t think this will put pressure on companies to remove them, and there are all kinds of sneaky ways to put these things up.”

In other words – and we apologize in advance for our lack of restraint – the folks at General Mills aren’t the only ones with Trix up their sleeves. We’re likely to see more about arbitration clauses moving forward, and we’ll watch with interest to see which court – court of law, or Court of Public Opinion – prevails.

Rick Kelly directs the crisis management practice at Triad Strategies LLC, a Harrisburg, PA-based governmental relations and strategic communications firm. Click here for more information

This post originally appeared on the Triad Strategies blog.

Is poor customer service creating unnecessary crises for your organization?

Customer anger affects business today to such a degree that there are studies focused entirely on the subject. The 2013 National Customer Rage Study aimed to determine what causes rage in customers, how to best mitigate it, and which systems could help to minimize its impact.

The study found plenty of reason to make providing quality customer service an integral part of your crisis management efforts, including that:

– Since 2011 the number of people who have gone online to post information about problems with an organization has nearly doubled.

– Overall customer rage has increased 8% since 2011.

– MOST complaintants are dissatisfied with how companies are handling their complaints.

– 56% of complaintants felt they got NOTHING as a result of complaining.
– 76% of these just wanted an apology, only 32% got one

– Automated response phone systems, understaffing of customer care agents, and lack of empowerment for agents to make necessary changes are all major factors contributing to customer rage.

– When companies added non-monetary remedies (most often a simple apology) to the monetary relief they provided customers, complaintant satisfaction DOUBLED.

– Word of mouth resulting from dissatisfied complaintants is nearly three times higher than the word of mouth communicated by those who were satisfied.

– Posting information on the web about customer problems has almost doubled since 2011.

As you can see, a huge percentage of customers are left unhappy not necessarily because they encountered issues with a brand, but because of how the issues were handled. In fact, the study shows that MOST complaintants are dissatisfied with how their problems are being handled, and, even with the technology at our disposal, complaintant satisfaction is no higher than it was back in the 1970’s.

To us the item that stood out the most were the figures regarding apologies. The fact that with figures like a literal DOUBLING in satisfaction as a result of adding an apology to any monetary recompense, as well as seeing a huge majority of complaintants walking away unsatisfied with customer service because they weren’t even offered a simple, “We’re sorry”, means many organizations out there are just not putting in the work they need to keep customer-related crises at bay.

The rest of the survey contains many more as eye-opening findings and figures. Take a look, and make customer service an asset, rather than a detriment, to your organization’s crisis management.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

A botched practice run can create a very real crisis

It’s great to see so many organizations hopping on board with social media as a crisis communications tool, but the rush is leaving many open to mistakes as well. For example, when testing new notification systems in mid-April, Connecticut’s Department of Transportation forgot one important rule – either don’t test in a live environment, or make sure people know that it is indeed a test.

The DOT sent two tweets that, because they looked exactly like the typical posts going out from an account similar to, and using the same hashtags employed by, its statewide traffic update account, had stakeholders very concerned indeed. The first read:

Cleared: (31914004) Ferry Update: Chester Ferry ran out of fuel and went out to sea.#cttraffic

…and the second was just as bad:

Cleared: (31914003) Ferry Update: Rocky Hill Ferry sank to the bottom of the river after being struck by the Chester Ferry. #cttraffic

The mistake was quickly caught by members of the media, and the DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick gave a horrible statement, further compounding the situation:

“We were doing some test tweets from a separate account. They weren’t supposed to be going live. We were backfilling with some funny ones while we worked out how to add the ferry information to our Twitter feed.”

We’re not sure who would consider passenger ferries sinking to be “funny”, but we certainly wouldn’t want them running any transportation we were trusting our lives to.

If you’re doing to be publishing reports of negative situations for testing or training purposes, it’s best to do so in an offline environment. If you must do it live for some reason, make very certain that the words “THIS IS A TEST” appear prominently. In fact, even if you’re working with good old-fashioned pen and paper, we strongly advise putting something to the effect of “MOCK SCENARIO – FOR TRAINING PURPOSES ONLY” in large, boldfaced font right smack at the top of the page.

Practice makes perfect, but if you’re not careful it’s entirely possible your practice could create the very type of damage you’re seeking to avoid.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Infographic shows just how vital a firm grasp of social media is for crisis management

Social media has become THE go-to tool for crisis management of all kinds, from smoothing out boardroom fiascoes to disaster relief. We came across a great infographic, from the experts at EmergencyManagementDegree.org, that shows how social media has been used for crisis management in the midst of several types of situations:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Why give unhappy stakeholders more reason to think ill of you?

One of the most damaging labels to wear as an organization is that of hypocrite, especially if you’re already nearly universally hated. Cue the IRS, which took a roasting last month after it was revealed it awarded cash bonuses to over 1,000 employees who owed back taxes!

SFGate’s Stephen Ohlemacher reports:

More than 2,800 workers got bonuses despite facing a disciplinary action in the previous year, including 1,150 who owed back taxes, said a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The bonuses were awarded from October 2010 through December 2012.

George’s report said the bonus program doesn’t violate federal regulations, but it’s inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.

Organizations in some industries are going to take flak no matter how responsible and well-run they are, making it even more crucial that they analyze every move with an eye for crisis prevention in order to avoiding diving deep into the negative in the reputation department.

The IRS is already disliked even when it does everything right – it can’t afford the perception of favoring employees who have committed offenses for which the IRS takes us to task.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Another crisis management case, brought you to by the power of the smartphone

Social media strikes back for airline passengers once again, this time with Air Canada as the organization under fire. As Dwayne Stewart sat waiting for his flight to be ready, he observed two of the airline’s baggage handlers dropping excess carry on luggage from the top of a 20-foot boarding platform to a bin down below. Of course, Stewart didn’t just observe, he notified Air Canada what was going on via Twitter, and then uploaded the video to YouTube:

To the airline’s credit, it did take action, telling CTV News that the two employees would be terminated following the outcome of an investigation, and delivering the following statement:

“Their actions clearly contravened our standard baggage-handling procedures which require gate-checked bags to be hand-carried to the ramp,” Air Canada spokesperson Angela Mah said in a statement to CTV News. “We take matters involving the protection of our customers’ personal possessions very seriously.”

How many more examples do we have to see before everyone from ground-level employees to CEO’s understand that in this Digital Age, the camera is always rolling?

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Facts and figures make clear the need to include reputation in crisis management planning

It’s undeniable – having a positive reputation not only helps your bottom line, but also significantly reduces the risk of crises causing permanent damage. The time to start working on that reputation isn’t in the middle of crisis management, however, but before trouble ever rears its ugly head.

Not convinced? Maybe the stats in this Ciceron infographic will sway you:

In our experience, the cost of properly preparing for reputation threats falls FAR below that of recovering from a full-blown crisis situation. Don’t be left saying, “we should have been ready”, start putting your plans together today.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Incredibly racist recording creates mid-playoff crisis

In the midst of their 2014 NBA playoff run, the Los Angeles Clippers are mired in a massive crisis. An audio recording of a man alleged to be Clippers owner Donald Sterling in an intensely racist 9 1/2 minute conversation was published by TMZ Friday, and the basketball world has been on fire discussing the controversy since.

Here is just a sampling of the disturbing comments made by the man alleged to be Sterling, reportedly speaking to his girlfriend regarding her sharing photos on Instagram posing with Magic Johnson:

— “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?”

— “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”

— “I’m just saying, in your lousy f******* Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people.”

— “…Don’t put him [Magic] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games.”

The Clippers have responded with the following statement:

“We have heard the tape on TMZ. We do not know if it is legitimate or [if] it has been altered. We do know that the woman on the tape — who we believe released it to TMZ — is the defendant in a lawsuit brought by the Sterling family alleging that she embezzled more than $1.8 million, who told Mr. Sterling that she would “get even.” Mr. Sterling is emphatic that what is reflected on that recording is not consistent with, nor does it reflect his views, beliefs or feelings. It is the antithesis of who he is, what he believes and how he has lived his life. He feels terrible that such sentiments are being attributed to him and apologizes to anyone who might have been hurt by them. He is also upset and apologizes for sentiments attributed to him about Earvin [Magic] Johnson. He has long considered Magic a friend and has only the utmost respect and admiration for him — both in terms of who he is and what he has achieved. We are investigating this matter.”

If you were left feeling less than convinced, we’re right there with you. First sign that the organization is grasping at straws is the line, “We do not know if it is legitimate or [if] it has been altered”. Well, SOMEONE does, namely Sterling himself. Their second mistake was attempting to discredit the source of the recording. It really doesn’t matter what the tipster’s motivation was, what matters is what we all heard.

Further weakening Sterling’s case is the fact that he has a long history of racist behavior, including being reported by many past players and colleagues for using racist language and being forced to pay some $2.72 million to settle allegations that he discriminated against African Americans, Hispanics, and families with children at apartment buildings he owns in and around Los Angeles.

It remains to be proven whether it was indeed Sterling’s voice on the recording, but already major figures in the NBA and sports pundits everywhere are quite understandably screaming for Sterling to be punished, if not removed from the league altogether. In a press conference Friday night league Commissioner Adam Silver stated that, although he wishes to give Sterling due process, the NBA will rush to reach a conclusion in the matter.

We’ll be watching closely to see how the league, and in turn the Clippers as an organization, react.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

A different way of thinking about preventing social media crises

We’re constantly searching for ways to gain greater insight into our field and how we can do crisis management more effectively. In that search, we came across an intriguing theory from Jerimiah Owyang, author of Social Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare, who suggested that organizations apply a system based on the psychological concept of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the development of their social media programs.

Sound a bit confusing? Don’t worry, there’s a resource which makes this concept much easier to understand – the below infographic, created by Patricia Redsicker:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]