Author: Jonathan & Erik Bernstein

Tech giant fails to predict a negative response

Misguided attempts at creating viral social media campaigns are constantly leading to crisis, yet organizations of all kinds continue to utterly fail to predict potential negative reactions. Case in point, IBM ticked off a hefty number of Twitter users when it attempted to launch a campaign pushing for more women to enter STEM careers. Certainly a good cause…but you kinda spoil the whole statement when you decide to use the hashtag #HackAHairDryer.

Females from STEM fields and their supporters were quite understandably offended, and took to Twitter to mock the campaign with shares like this:

@IBM shame I don’t use a hairdryer. I guess that’s the end of my career in STEM. Brb quitting my astrophysics PhD. #HackAHairDryer

— Jessica V (@ThatAstroKitten) December 7, 2015

Here, @IBM. My lady brain came up with this for #HackAHairDryer. Kuhn would declare it paradigm shifting, surely. pic.twitter.com/QTfWwnFolB

— Jo Alabaster (@joalabaster) December 7, 2015

Facing mass criticism that quickly bled over from social media into more traditional channels, IBM removed content created for the campaign from the web and canceled any further promotions stating, “(The video) missed the mark for some and we apologize. It is being discontinued.”

The sheer frequency of these events is what led us to create our AvoidTheApology service, and although there are alternatives to placing a foot firmly in one’s own mouth we’ve no doubt many will continue to fail to predict the consequences of their actions.

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/12/07/what-happens-in-a-social-media-minute/#sthash.FIrWfbrs.dpuf

An incredible volume of communication

While traditional media does its best to adapt to changing audiences social media continues to grow. The sheer amount of communication happening on social networks in any given day is mind-boggling, but what we found even more incredible was the 60-second breakdown assembled by Social Jumpstart:

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/12/03/advanced-phishing-poses-new-threats/#sthash.BN76t58R.dpuf

Protecting yourself from an increasingly sophisticated threat

Your credit card information is probably already for sale on the black market, sad to say. But odds are you’ll be hacked in a more insidious way in 2016, sadder to say. Your identity has by now been logged into some vast spy database in a foreign country (probably China), where an intelligence agency is building up a profile around your persona—sourced from personal information available on social media and through breached health insurers, airlines, government offices, and the like. That means these state-sponsored attackers have everything they need to target you with crafty phishing schemes to help them compromise your networks, your data, your contacts. So think twice before opening that next email attachment.

This ominous prediction, from The 2016 Fortune Crystal Ball, should give everyone pause. As the quote explains, it’s not tough for hackers to put together a fairly accurate profile purely from your public presence on the web. Heck, most teenagers could do the same. The widespread availability of of information creates the ideal scenario for attacks in which hackers fool users into submitting personal data via increasingly realistic emails, IMs, and even text messages. In other words, phishing is being taken to a whole new level, and we will be the targets.

As with many other forms of digital attack, education is the best tool to prevent problems. If you (and your employees, family members who share a network, etc.) know how to identify a potential phishing attack and how to react/who to contact when you see something suspcious you’ll avoid all but the most sleek and intelligent attempts.

That said, there will always be those you can’t or fail to steer clear of, and that’s why you also need a plan for when precautions fail. Have messaging in place, stay on top of your backups, and learn how to rapidly regain control of your accounts before you’re attempting to do it while sweating bullets.

As long as they continue to be profitable digital attacks are here to stay. Don’t make yourself an easy target.

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/11/27/is-your-company-culture-scaring-off-big-bucks/#sthash.4e66r4sG.dpuf

An enlightening infographic for the season

The holidays are a massive season for retailers, but did you realize many other organizations face added reputation risk from their own customers in the season as well? Time is short, folks feel frenzied, and that means patience is at a low. That irritated individual who just walked out the door because someone misspoke or they felt their wait was a minute too long is quite likely to pull out their smartphone and immediately post a scathing statement on review sites or social media, meaning you need to be on your toes.

For more compelling reasons why it pays to keep tabs on your reputation, check out this infographic from MovingTargets:

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/11/14/takata-facing-record-fine-from-nhtsa/#sthash.fhFWxr5r.dpuf

Regulators losing patience with auto industry deception

When the massive auto industry airbag recalls were first announced we were critical of the airbags’ manufacturer Takata and the way it chose to handle crisis management. Now, months down the road, Takata’s failure to come clean is resulting in serious monetary loss.

At $200 million, the fine handed down by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is the largest civil penalty in that organization’s history. In a scathing statement, the NHTSA took Takata to task for failing to issue a timely recall and allegedly cherry picking test data to deceive regulators among other faults.

“For years, Takata has built and sold defective products, refused to acknowledge the defect, and failed to provide full information to NHTSA, its customers, or the public,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “The result of that delay and denial has harmed scores of consumers and caused the largest, most complex safety recall in history. Today’s actions represent aggressive use of NHTSA’s authority to clean up these problems and protect public safety.”

In the wake of this announcement Honda, Takata’s single largest client, dropped the manufacturer, stating that, “Honda expects its suppliers to act with integrity at all times and we are deeply troubled by this apparent behavior by one of our suppliers.”

The past couple years have seen hefty fines laid on several major auto-industry players as a result of what very much appears to be deliberate deception regarding everything from faulty parts to reporting on deaths and injuries. While the massive size of the organizations involved means paying out millions isn’t always as painful as those doling out the penalties may hope, lawmakers are beginning to agitate for those responsible to face time behind bars, a situation that has the industry panicking (and spending millions on lobbying to stop it from happening).

The time to sweep things under the rug is clearly coming to an end. If the auto industry wants to avoid seeing even higher fines and, eventually, executives jailed for their actions, a change must come.

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/11/11/a-dash-of-reputation-management-for-penzeys-spices/#sthash.vh3Ru0TI.dpuf

A bit of PR can go a long way

Everyone makes mistakes, and although the public is quick to punish they’re also quick to forgive if you truly show you understand your error and are working to correct it. An email we received from the spice purveyors at Penzeys showed a great understanding of this fact, an example we wanted to share with you:

This has been a breakthrough year for us, but along the way there have been a few glitches. At times the things I’ve done have crashed our website, overwhelmed our ability to get mail orders out the door or, with the Curry/Cocoa weekend, caused far more people to visit our stores than we thought possible. I really am sorry. We really don’t want anyone to have a bad experience.So to try and make it up to you, here’s a free half cup jar of your choice. To make sure I don’t overwhelm everyone here, once again we’ve made this “with $10 spending” and excluded Vanilla & Saffron items and Extracts. Still, if you are coming in to pick up a few things for Thanksgiving I’m hoping this will help.Simply bring the coupon below to one of our stores. Or visit us online at Penzeys.com

Spend a minimum of $10, select the coupon item you’d like to receive by entering the SKU number into the coupon code field, followed by the letter C. Example: 12345C. It’s easy.

And even if you missed all the glitches, please feel free to use this coupon. Our growth seems to be accelerating, so just in case another glitch arrives we’ll have you covered 🙂

Thanks for being our customer, Bill
bill@penzeys.com

Demonstrating you know what went wrong, making amends that are equal to the difficulty your issues placed on stakeholders, and communicating it all in a clear and upfront manner. Sometimes, it really is that simple.

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/10/30/zendaya-modeliste-and-a-lesson-in-reputation-management/#sthash.szASmeNx.dpuf

New additions to the Bernstein Crisis Management Resource Library

We love to remember those who helped us learn by sharing our own knowledge with the community. Recently, we decided to start giving away the formerly $10 PDF version of Jonathan Bernstein’s media training manual, Keeping the Wolves at Bay. Now, from Bernstein Crisis Management’s Home Page, you can choose to download the media training manual or any of these three free valuable resources:

• Crisis Communications Preparedness Checklist – a self-examination by which any organization can determine its readiness to communicate effectively during a crisis.
• Public Affairs Preparedness Checklist – a self-examination by which any organization can determine its readiness to community with key influencers, community leaders, elected officials, etc.
• “30 Lessons from 30 Years of Crisis Management” – de facto, a Best Practices in Crisis Management primer for any organization.

We appreciate you reading, and of course feedback is welcomed!

What does your online activity tell others about you?

If you pay any mind to the news or happenings on social media you’ll see a constant stream of people landing themselves in serious trouble as a result of online activity. So many, in fact, that we created the Weiner Awards in their honor. Despite that, however, people continue to make serious online mistakes without even thinking about it.

The infographic below, created by Microsoft answers the question, “What does your online image project about YOU?”

 

 

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/10/30/zendaya-modeliste-and-a-lesson-in-reputation-management/#sthash.h8MMNsR0.dpuf

A public call-out and quick resolution

Nineteen year-old entertainer Zendaya has a reputation as being an outspoken champion of positive body image, and she lived up to it when she realized that L.A. fashion magazine Modeliste had done significant digital plastic surgery on images of her used in the publication. Showing off the power a simple message holds when it comes from someone with a rabid following, the singer/actress/model shared from her @Zendaya Instagram account:

Had a new shoot come out today and was shocked when I found my 19 year old hips and torso quite manipulated. These are the things that make women self conscious, that create the unrealistic ideals of beauty that we have. Anyone who knows who I am knows I stand for honest and pure self love. So I took it upon myself to release the real pic (right side) and I love it??

This of course put Modeliste under the microscope, and the magazine’s editors did some smart reputation management of their own, releasing the following statement via the same platform their issue was brewing on:

As Modeliste Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, I would like to send a message to all of @zendaya beautiful, shining and loyal fans: We hear you and thank you for your outpouring support of the issue and this talented and inspiring young woman that we are all blessed to have as a role model and who will continue to inspire us through her artistic talents, intellect, creativity and honesty.

I am compelled to publicly address this situation which was brought to my attention yesterday, personally by Zendaya, prior to the issue’s anticipated premiere. Upon review of the final edited images which had been submitted to us by an independent editing company, together as a collaborative between myself, Zendaya and her parents, we concluded that the images had been retouched to an extent that was not acceptable and not true to the values and ideals we represent and promote in our publication I, therefore, made the executive decision to immediately pull the issue in order to have this rectified and have the images restored to their original, natural state which will reflect the true beauty and radiance of Zendaya. We look forward to sharing these shortly upon the issue’s re-release.

Although this was fairly well done, placing responsibility on the editing company felt like a bit of a cop-out, and overall left the statement less effective than it could have been. It begs readers to ask, “Are they dumping blame or is an outside organization really left 100% responsible for decisions that can drastically affect the organization as a whole?” Neither one is a positive conclusion, and frankly leading your stakeholders to decide whether you’re incompetent or lying is a dangerous situation to be in.

In the end major controversy was avoided by all parties. Zendaya further cemented her already strong brand by sticking to her guns, and Modeliste was able to get back to “business as usual” after a brief hiccup. With how fast your average person is to leap into outrage mode, near-misses are a common occurrence today, making constant monitoring of sentiment both on and off-line and the ability to immediately leap into action a must to protect your reputation against the constantly growing number of reputation threats that do exist 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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/10/25/is-the-us-china-cyber-espionage-agreement-making-a-difference/#sthash.JhWGuYNX.dpuf

 

Short answer: No.

While the U.S. and China now have an official agreement that both nations will refrain from cyber espionage intended to steal intellectual property or trade secrets, experts are saying it’s all hot air.

Citing findings from the time period immediately following the announcement of the new agreement, security services provider CrowdStrike published a blog post accusing actors believed to be affiliated with the Chinese government of continuing their steady stream of attacks:

Over the last three weeks, CrowdStrike Falcon platform has detected and prevented a number of intrusions into our customers’ systems from actors we have affiliated with the Chinese government. Seven of the companies are firms in the Technology or Pharmaceuticals sectors, where the primary benefit of the intrusions seems clearly aligned to facilitate theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, rather than to conduct traditional national-security related intelligence collection which the Cyber agreement does not prohibit.

The very first intrusion conducted by China-affiliated actors after the joint Xi-Obama announcement at the White House took place the very next day – Saturday September 26th. We detected and stopped the actors, so no exfiltration of customer data actually took place, but the very fact that these attempts occurred highlights the need to remain vigilant despite the newly minted Cyber agreement.

With many other U.S. security firms echoing these claims, one thing is clear – the rampant attempts at corporate espionage via digital avenues are not stopping anytime soon.

It is more important than ever to take the proper steps to prepare your organization to prevent, and where you cannot prevent to mitigate, the damage that can result from a hack. Investment in security, as well as preparing important aspects of crisis response such as stakeholder communications and internal protocol in advance of facing issues, is the very best way to protect your organization from the threats cyber attacks present.

You can prevent many, but you can’t stop them all. Be ready.

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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 vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/10/19/crisis-document-audits-to-determine-flaws-in-crisis-planning/#sthash.ZHCp1W5w.dpuf