Author: Jonathan & Erik Bernstein

Fighting back with hardball crisis management after a negative review

Tesla Motors is at the forefront of the electric car revolution, but a controversial review by the NY Times has created quite a bit of turbulence around the brand over the past couple of weeks.

Basically, NY Times reviewer John Broder took the Tesla Model S sedan for a test drive to try out Tesla’s new “Supercharging stations,” meant to make electric car travel a more viable option, but ended up having to call for a tow after his car ran out of power.

Playing hardball

While Broder’s review claimed he followed all instructions from the carmaker, Tesla CEO Elon Musk vehemently disagreed, and he wasn’t about to keep mum about it. Three days after the NY Times review appeared, Musk launched his offensive with the following tweets:

Musk is no stranger to combating reviews that he believes to be untruthful. In fact, his “Top Gear BS” comment above refers to a dustup over a negative review that’s resulted in Tesla filing two lawsuits against the show.

Tesla’s crisis management offensive included encouraging Tesla vehicle owners to recreate the Times review route, reaching out to other journalists to repeat the drive and, unlike many disputes we see, actually backing up his statements with cold, hard data pulled from the Model S’s “black box” detailing every second of the drive.

While the Times did attempt to refute, point by point, Tesla’s claims, the fact is that data from the black box directly contradicts several statements in Broder’s original review, throwing an enormous cloud of doubt on any statements from the Times camp.

The final (for now) result

Public outcry demanded that Times editors take another look at the situation, and Monday Public Editor Margaret Sullivan published an article with the headline, “Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test.”

Was this a clear-cut victory for Tesla? Not entirely, those that didn’t follow the entire saga, and even some that did, may still come away doubting the company. Did its high-risk, hardball strategy end up generating a heck of a lot of publicity for its brand, as well as defending its reputation and public perceptions of electric vehicles, which is critical to the Tesla’s success? Absolutely.

Brassy crisis management Tesla, well played.

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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]

Sometimes it takes a crisis to solve one

Millions of gallons of radioactive goop are threatening to leak into the ground of eastern Washington state, and it’s not the fun, ninja-turtle creating kind. Here’s a quote, from a SeattlePI article by Shannon Dininny:

The long-delayed cleanup of the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking.

The news raises concerns about the integrity of similar tanks at south-central Washington’s Hanford nuclear reservation and puts added pressure on the federal government to resolve construction problems with the plant being built to alleviate environmental and safety risks from the waste.

The tanks, which are already long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.

This is a fine example of using proactive crisis communications to direct or redirect the heat where you want it focused – away from your organization and onto another.

The governor is far more likely to find results by taking the issue into the court of public opinion as opposed to using traditional channels. While requests from his office to the national government can easily be ignored, or “lost in the shuffle,” a public outcry against the Department of Energy’s handling of the situation makes it far more difficult to avoid addressing. This is especially true given the diligence and level of commitment evidenced by many environmentalist groups, of which there are no short supply in Washington.

Sometimes, in order to manage a crisis, you have to spur others into action. When asking nicely just won’t work, it may be time to try proactive 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]

Keep your ear to the ground and catch the need for crisis management early on

The earlier you detect a building crisis, the more effective your crisis management is able to be, but how can you catch a crisis that’s barely beginning to bubble up?

These days, social media serves as the world-wide watercooler, fostering conversation, debate, rumors and even revolution, so what better place to look for indications that trouble’s on the way?

In the following quote, from a Business2Community blog post, social media expert Jasmine Jaume describes what you should be watching for:

The most obvious method for determining possible crises is to monitor the volume of conversation about your brand online.

If a sudden peak occurs, or conversation appears to be increasing at an unusual rate – especially if it is of negative sentiment – take a look into what that conversation is about.

By looking into the conversation you will have a greater understanding of why volumes have increased and can then act on it appropriately before it escalates.

It’s really not terribly complicated when you get down to it. Set up whatever your chosen social media utility is to track mentions of not only company account names, but also your key terms, your competition’s names, you get the idea. The goal is to catch any bit of talk that could remotely affect your organization, and to catch it long before it’s the trending topic du jour. Will there be a load of results that have little to no significance? Absolutely, but you’ll also catch the social spikes that indicate the early makings of a crisis.

For example…

This is certainly work, and you’ll need someone who knows both your business and at least the basics of crisis management to properly keep a handle on the social buzz, but compare these two situations and see which you’d prefer.

Scenario one: A wheelchair-bound customer visits your flagship retail store, only to find that a great deal of it is inaccessible to those with disabilities. They turn to social media to vent their frustrations, and friends pick up the cause, crying out against your organization and its unfair practices.

Your name starts to pop up left and right with negative hashtags trailing every post, but you never even see them, further increasing the anger level in everyone involved. Civil rights groups pick up on the chatter, and the next thing you know your poor architectural planning has sparked Facebook hate groups and you’re being painted as inhuman and uncaring all over the evening news.

Scenario two: A wheelchair-bound customer visits your flagship retail store, only to find that a great deal of it is inaccessible to those with disabilities. They turn to social media to vent their frustrations, and friends pick up the cause, crying out against your organization and its perceived unfair practices.

Now, here’s where watching for social spikes comes in!

Your social media monitoring catches the uproar and you quickly step in to apologize profusely and announce plans to install ramps and elevators in major locations. In a few short weeks you invite the offended customer to test-drive the new store layout and the local media turns out to capture a feel-good story while you rake in the praise on social media.

Is there even any question of which one’s the better situation for everyone involved? If you take a few moments to look at many major crises, you will see that the tipping point came when early concerns went unaddressed, causing them to flare up into majorly negative sentiment.

Active social media monitoring will help prevent crises, as well as better positioning you to make the ultimate crisis management coup – turning crisis into opportunity. Watch for social spikes, and be ready for action when they appear. That’s not all there is to it, but it’s certainly an strong start.

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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]

Mold crisis management messaging to fit a Tweet and reap the benefits

Today you’re more likely to catch a breaking story on Twitter than the evening news. Both professional and amateur (read: everyone else) reporters are using Twitter to share and discuss current events every minute of every day, and that’s exactly why you need to craft what social media expert Melissa Agnes called “tweet-worthy messages” in a recent blog post:

In a crisis, you want your message to be powerful, to the point, memorable and seen by the right people. Being prepared with a strategic and to-the-point soundbite is a good way to accomplish this crisis communications mission. Now, what if your soundbite was so strategically thought-out that it was short enough to fit into a tweet – and better yet, short enough to be retweeted by others?

This would:

• Up your chances of retweets, and thus providing you with the potential for maximum views
• Make your message easy for others to write about, talk about and share
• Leave your audience with choice-words that are memorable and to the point

By crafting short messages that easily fit in below Twitter’s 140-character limit, you are greatly increasing the potential reach of your crisis management messaging. Instead of simply reading a statement and moving on or, perhaps worse, shortening it themselves and getting key points or facts wrong, interested parties will be able to share your exact statement with the click of a button.

A side benefit of the extreme short form is that it really forces you to hone your messages down to a fine point. There won’t be any rambling explanations or overcomplicated techno-babble here, just short, precise statements that convey the desired points.

If you’re in a crisis, you can all but guarantee Twitter will somehow be involved. Make the most of it by creating tweetable soundbites and let your audience help you get your story out there.

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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]

Crisis management means staying vigilant against potential threats

A man in the United Kingdom is the 11th reported patient to be suffering from a new “SARS-like” virus and health officials are trying to determine if the virus is being passed from person to person.

The virus was first reported in September when a Qatari man and woman from Saudi Arabia were found to be suffering from a new type of coronoavirus.

Coronaviruses, which include the common cold and SARS, can, at their worst, cause acute pneumonia and kidney failure, the result of inflammation.

Since the virus was first reported, five of the 11 known patients have died, with the majority needing intensive care.

This quote, from an ABC News article by Gillian Mohney, explains the facts behind a new type of coronavirus that is causing severe respiratory illness in infected adults. While certainly no cause for panic, the continued spread of what is being called a “SARS-like” virus could be evidence of a smoldering crisis. Just the comparison with SARS, alone, is likely to elicit fear.

What is a smoldering crisis, you may ask? A smoldering crisis is a situation that starts out small, but contains the potential to grow into a much larger, more devastating issue should it continue on its current course.

With crises like this one, where no direct action is likely to have an impact one way or another, the smart move is simply to keep it on your radar. Be aware that there is a virus, similar to others, like SARS, that have triggered dangerous outbreaks, and stay up to date on the latest news regarding the situation.

As with just about every health risk that presents itself these days, the CDC has set up an excellent website filled with information on the virus, and should there be any travel alerts or a spike in risk associated with the virus that page will likely be the first place to have verified information.

Many crises smolder briefly and simply run out of fuel without ever requiring a response, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to ignore potential risks. Vigilance is an essential cornerstone of crisis management, stay alert, aware, and informed of anything that could impact you and your business.

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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]

Did Carnival learn anything from a similar 2010 incident?

As passengers stranded on Carnival Cruise’s Triumph share stories of disgusting conditions, including cabin carpets soaked with water and urine, overflowing toilets, sewage leaking down walls and four-hour lines for hot food, one has to wonder just how seriously Carnival takes its crisis management planning.

The ship was left floating after a fire took out its propulsion system, but that was the least of Carnival’s concerns. Apparently it also caused a ship-wide power failure that took out the climate control systems, virtually all onboard lighting and, for some reason, threw a wrench in the ship’s sewage system as well.

It’s not as if Carnival is a stranger to fire-related problems on its ships either. In 2010, the Carnival Splendor was left without power following a fire, and the brand took a major reputation hit as horror stories from travelers aboard that ship made news across the country.

Tugs are still pulling the Triumph as of this writing, and it is expected to finally make landfall in Mobile, Alabama sometime tomorrow. At that point, you can bet that passengers are going to be lining up to share their distress with anyone who will listen, including morning shows, local news and, of course, the Internet.

For Carnival, we would recommend making everyone’s return home as comfortable as possible. First-class air accommodations and travel to and from the airports would be a good start, as well as assigning plenty of staff to be physically on-hand when the ship arrives in port to at least partially absorb the litany of complaints that are certain to be on the tip of every disembarking customer’s tongue.

At the same time, the cruise line needs to take a serious look at how its on-ship systems can be better protected from fire, and prepare contingency plans that better cope with system failure.

There are plenty of options available for people looking to take a cruise, and in a competitive business world it doesn’t take too many major problems like this one to swing the advantage to another organization. At this point Carnival is risking its name becoming synonymous with a disastrous trip, and that’s not a reputation it wishes to become ingrained in the public consciousness.

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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]

Preparedness lands cookie company in the perfect position to make a move

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably heard about Oreo’s spur of the moment ad, crafted literally DURING the Super Bowl blackout, that has the social media world abuzz.

For those who missed it, this is the ad Oreo tweeted during the extended down time:

The ad is quite crafty, but what we’re really interested in sharing is how Oreo accomplished this. The following quote, from a MediaWeek article by Gordon MacMillan, explains how Oreo’s ad agency, 360i, pulled it off with such short notice:

The agency said that the ad was “designed, captioned and approved within minutes,” according to Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i.

She said all the decisions were made in real time, as the marketers and agency members were sitting together at a “mission control” centre watching the game unfold.

“We had a mission control set up at our office with the brand and 360i, and when the blackout happened, the team looked at it as an opportunity. Because the brand team was there, it was easy to get approvals and get it up in minutes,” Hofstetter told BuzzFeed.

Laurie Guzzinati, a spokeswoman for Mondelez, which owns Oreo, said: “They saw a real-time opportunity with the power outage and jumped it, doing so in a social voice true to the Oreo brand.”

The agency was able to get the ad approved so quickly because members of the Oreo marketing team were on hand to sign it off.

While the team was mobilized this time to create something positive, Oreo and 360i were clearly set up to react to anything that could potentially affect the Oreo brand during the Super Bowl. Monitoring media channels in real-time, in a mission control room with reps from both the brand and marketing teams there, meant that regardless of what came up, they would be equipped and authorized to handle it. In fact, not only handle it, but handle it well, with messaging that remained consistent with the Oreo brand.

This should come as a “how-to” lesson to other organizations. Being prepared and positioned to leap into action is absolutely critical to protecting and enhancing your brand’s reputation. This time, it resulted in the production of a scene-stealing Twitter ad, but next time it could just as easily mean that a crisis management strategy is put into action before negative sentiment can pick up steam.

Congratulations to both Oreo and 360i, you’re doing it right.

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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]

Playing dumb is really not a smart crisis management move

After being taken to court for underpaying a cook at his Oriental Teahouse restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, to the point where she was owed $28,000 in back wages, owner David Zhou appears to have decided some crisis management was in order.

We would assume that’s why Zhou, who runs a restaurant group which operates three other locations in Australia, agreed to an interview with Smart Company, but what exactly made him think that the “I’m so stupid” defense was a legitimate one, the world may never know.

Here’s a selection of choice quotes, from the Smart Company article by Cara Waters:

Zhou told SmartCompany the underpayment was not intentional and the case was an anomaly.

“We had trouble finding out about it because she was not returning calls, if she really had issues she should have raised the question a long time ago,” he says.

“I just ask myself why has this happened and I talked to my bookkeeper about why has this happened and I really think it is a bad mistake.”

Zhou says Oriental Teahouse has tried hard to be a good business, with many staff working for the group for 10 and 15 years.

“We are a happy company and a happy family and always generous but we made a mistake, as more and more people come on board things can get complicated and particularly these HR things,” he says.

Oh well he was TRYING to be generous, see? He just made a mistake cause these HR things, like paying the correct wages, are just SO tricky that honest, happy restaurant groups which run four successful businesses get confused about it. Their professional bookkeepers too!

Why it doesn’t work

Claiming ignorance of the most basic facts of your own business is probably one of the most ridiculous methods of crisis management you could attempt to employ. In this case it’s even more outrageous because Zhou just faced the same type of case last year!

Assuming that your audience is foolish enough to blindly believe lines like, “We had trouble finding out about it because she was not returning calls,” is flat out insulting. It isn’t going to earn you the sympathy of anyone, and it does have a good chance of inciting some folks who might have remained otherwise uninterested (not to mention attracting the attention of some wily crisis management bloggers).

In fact, even if you really were ignorant of the basic daily workings within your organization, it would be extremely unwise to share that with the world at large.

Balanced reporting?

Our colleague Tony Jaques actually sent this story over, and he was quite astute in pointing out that not only was this an example of spectacularly poor crisis management, but also a demonstration of the fact that, if you can find a sympathetic writer, you can get away with just about anything. Well, on the page at least.

Of the 659-word article, 45 words were dedicated to the fact that there was another recent complaint against the tea house, for the exact same reason, that had been settled out of court in favor of the complainant. The rest was filled with Zhou’s protestations of innocence, as well as a hefty segment interviewing the HR consultant who represented Zhou in the case, a far cry from balanced reporting. Shame on you Smart Company!

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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]

Are you prepared for a cyber attack?

On Thursday morning the New York Times announced that, over the past four months, Chinese hackers have been perpetrating a campaign of attacks on the paper’s computer systems.

Here are more details from the Times article, written by Nicole Perlroth, that broke the story:

The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network. They broke into the e-mail accounts of its Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the reports on Mr. Wen’s relatives, and Jim Yardley, The Times’s South Asia bureau chief in India, who previously worked as bureau chief in Beijing.

Not the first

The Times is not the only major news outlet to be attacked this year. The BBC’s Farsi-language service in London was disrupted not two days after the company announced huge growth in the audience for its Persian TV service, and the international news service Reuters actually had hackers succeed in publishing a false announcement stating Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister had died.

While many signs indicate that the attacks against news outlets and government-associated companies could be politically motivated, essentially cyber-spying, what’s to stop hungry and morally-deficient corporations from doing the same to the competition?

It’s up to you

Even if you don’t think it does, your organization’s computer network holds information that is plenty valuable enough to steal. Design specs, release dates, shipping schedules and vendor contacts are just a few of the items that your competitors would very much like to have in their possession.

How about those dirty or incriminating emails (someone’s got them on their machine!) that could be used for blackmail or simply aired to trash your reputation?

A dedicated and skilled hacker could literally have access to every piece of information that crosses your network for years without ever being detected. Every credit card number, company cards and customers’. Every email, Tweet and Facebook message sent from a company computer, personal or work related. Every discussion with customers. Every new idea. Every disagreement. Every. Single. Thing.

Cybersecurity and crisis management

If you haven’t already included cybersecurity risks in your crisis management planning, you’re well behind the curve. We’re not talking installing an antivirus on all of the computers, either. According to the Times, attackers installed 45 pieces of custom malware on their systems, only one of which was identified by the Symantec antivirus used by the newspaper.

One of the best things you can do to help reduce the impact of cybersecurity risks is get your IT and PR/crisis management departments talking. Together, they should be able to put together a plan of action for preventing, detecting and defeating cyber threats, as well as the business crises that are likely to accompany them.

It’s also crucial to put aside time to educate anyone with access to your network regarding safe internet use, signs their computer has been compromised and the common methods used by hackers to get their foot in the door, many of which are not tech-based at all but rather revolve around social engineering, or the art of manipulating people into performing actions or releasing information they otherwise shouldn’t.

Incidents of cyber attacks are skyrocketing as our world relies increasingly on the Internet for even basic functions. Protect your organization from cybersecurity risks, start preparing 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]

League and players in crisis management mode after new reports of PED use

Major League Baseball still hasn’t quite recovered from the scandals brought about by the steroid era. In fact, The Hall of Fame election earlier this month saw players like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa turned down purely because of their association with performance enhancing drugs as voters sent the message loud and clear that they want to keep dopers out.

Of course, we talk about the steroid era like it’s in the past, but the multitude of suspensions last year, in combination with a new and extremely damaging report, indicate that era could still be continuing to this day.

Compelling evidence

Here’s a quote, from the Miami New Times article, written by Tim Elfrink, that may have blown the lid off yet another PED scandal:

…check out the main column, where their real names flash like an all-star roster of professional athletes with Miami ties: San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera, Oakland A’s hurler Bartolo Colón, pro tennis player Wayne Odesnik, budding Cuban superstar boxer Yuriorkis Gamboa, and Texas Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz. There’s even the New York Yankees’ $275 million man himself, Alex Rodriguez, who has sworn he stopped juicing a decade ago.

Read further and you’ll find more than a dozen other baseball pros, from former University of Miami ace Cesar Carrillo to Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal to Washington Nationals star Gio Gonzalez. Notable coaches are there too, including UM baseball conditioning guru Jimmy Goins.

The names are all included in an extraordinary batch of records from Biogenesis, an anti-aging clinic tucked into a two-story office building just a hard line drive’s distance from the UM campus. They were given to New Times by an employee who worked at Biogenesis before it closed last month and its owner abruptly disappeared. The records are clear in describing the firm’s real business: selling performance-enhancing drugs, from human growth hormone (HGH) to testosterone to anabolic steroids.

If the information the New Times has uncovered is indeed accurate, and the paper has documentation to back up its claims, then MLB, and of course the players named, are about to once again find themselves under intense national scrutiny. Coming so hot on the heels of Lance Armstrong’s admission, the public is going to be especially brutal in its demand for honest answers.

The reaction

MLB officials have already trotted out the party line, stating they absolutely do not condone the use of performance enhancing drugs, and have gotten proactive as well, announcing their own investigations into several clinics in the South Florida area.

The players involved are doing their usual, which means lawyering up and vehemently denying any involvement. Of course, their credibility is just about zilch these days, especially considering several on the list have previously been caught using PEDs.

Crisis management advice

Our advice, especially to “brands” like A-Rod? Well, it’s really the same we would give to any CEO or celeb caught red-handed making the wrong decision – fess up.

You did it. Everyone knows, there’s proof, so just tell the truth. Don’t continue to drag your name, as well as the hopes, dreams and trust of fans, most importantly the little leaguers who look up to you, through the mud. Admit what you did was wrong, say you’re sorry and get to work on rebuilding your reputation. Work publicly with the league to better tighten doping controls, make a PSA for the kids, whatever you can do to help, but for goodness sake stop with the outrageous denials, we’re tired of your nonsense.

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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]