Author: Jonathan & Erik Bernstein

I’ve had a fun day! Over at my Bernstein Crisis Management Blog, I posted an open letter to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the increasingly infamous teller of tall tales about his alleged Vietnam service. The shy title of my blog post?

Dear Richard Blumenthal: You’re a Liar

Practicing what I preach, I then Tweeted about it and also let some media who have interviewed me in the past know about it. In the context of “common causes make for strange companions,” one of those media outlets was the Laura Ingraham show, and they re-ran my blog post on their blog and are mentioning it in their ezine.

So far Mr. Blumenthal hasn’t called to indicate he accepted the challenge with which I closed the blog piece. What a surprise.

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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. and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. He’s also a Vietnam-Era vet who chooses not to lie about his service experience.]

The recent use of social media by the Coast Guard as part of their response to the BP oil spill, and by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation with regard to flooding in that state, are both discussed in recent posts by Erik Bernstein at the Bernstein Crisis Management Blog.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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What type of highly confidential information do you store on your mobile device? Contacts who would hate to see their information shared with spammers or identity thefts? Passwords? Photos or videos you or others wouldn’t appreciate appearing on YouTube? Text messages flirting with someone who isn’t your spouse?

It’s an odd quirk of human behavior that we will put certain types of information under lock and key and password at home or office, but then make the same information easily accessible to anyone who steals (or finds) our phone or other mobile devices. I have helped more than one organization respond to crisis that originated with such thefts. And while some types of crisis aren’t preventable, these situations are, usually employing simple-to-implement measures.

Take my Blackberry Tour, for example. By using the built-in password protection system, I can prevent access to the phone and my data. If someone fails to enter the correct password a preset number of times, all my data is wiped! I can restore it 100% from my corporate Enterprise server (and even a private Blackberry user could restore from their backup), but a thief could not unless he/she could quickly guessed my password. Are there hacks around this system? Probably. But most thieves wouldn’t have that level of sophistication. I set up my Blackberry so that it defaults to “password required” mode if it has been turned off or if haven’t used it in an hour, but there are other options. Even if the device is in password-protected mode, it can receive incoming phone calls and can be used for one type of outgoing phone call – to emergency services (911 in the United States). While it sounds like a pain in the ___ to enter a password first, I became very fast at doing so with just a little practice.

There are built-in and/or inexpensively purchased protection systems of this sort for literally every type of mobile device. Is entering a password a slightly-time-delaying pain in the ass? Sure. But it doesn’t cause nearly as much pain as dealing with the aftermath of stolen confidential data.

I recommend strongly that every organization whose employees use their mobile devices for business purposes require that those devices have some means of protecting confidential information in the event of theft or loss.

Comic Postscript: I know how well my Blackberry’s protection system works because, shortly after getting this phone, I forgot the password I’d set up. I knew my data would be wiped if I kept mis-entering, so I called for tech help with one password try left to see if there was a workaround. I was told no, the system is hard-wired for the protection of the owner. So I tried one more time and *POOF*, all my data went bye-bye.

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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. and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

Which of the following statements about a jury, civil or criminal, are true?

1. Prospective jury members never lie regarding their advance bias about a case.
2. Jury members are always truly “peers” of the defendant.
3. Jury members never talk about a case outside of jury deliberations, or read and watch TV about a case when sequestered, once directed not to do so by a judge.

If your answer is “none of the above,” you begin to appreciate the potential value of crisis/issues management for the purpose of educating a jury pool. Now, I am aware, though not an attorney, that members of the bar are not allowed to influence a jury. Ed Novak, a partner at the Phoenix-based law firm, Polsinelli Shugart, bridges the gap between influencing and educating.

“While it is unethical to attempt to influence prospective jurors, there is nothing unethical or unprofessional about having an accurate picture of your client presented to the media and other audiences,” said Novak.

A jury consultant is typically not called in until there is some high certainty that a case will, in fact, go to trial. By then, if the case in question has been highly visible in the press, it may well be too late to educate a jury pool “contaminated” by the media’s interpretation of events.

Any honest reporter (yes, there are honest reporters who might even acknowledge there are honest attorneys) will admit that he or she brings a natural bias and an institutional editorial perspective to a story. Journalists will do their best, in that context, to report in a “balanced manner,” with the exception of columnists, who are often free to say pretty much what they please and not worry about “balance.” These media representatives are a gateway through which both plaintiff/prosecutor and defendant can communicate not only to the publics thought of most often – business contacts, community VIPs, etc. – but also to potential jury members. It is the responsibility of counsel, with expert assistance as necessary, to direct media relations that can shift the balance of coverage.

“If we say something to the media, we realize we may be talking to future jury members as well, and if we don’t say something, we’re telling those jury members ‘we don’t care enough about you to keep you informed.’ When we get to court, they’ll remember that,” said Novak.

And, he notes, his firm has realized that the same analysis done by crisis management professionals to anticipate multi-audience response to various public relations tactics also helps them anticipate jury response.

“I’ve had a crisis consultant sit in on practice sessions for depositions, resulting in a change in the client’s choice of words,” he said. In that circumstance, the crisis consultant was actually hired as a jury consultant under the law firm’s umbrella of confidentiality.

What tactics can be used for this public education process? They include, but are not limited to:

• The use of spokespersons trained to deliver key messages to the media and other audiences.
• Educating employees of defendant or plaintiff’s companies about what to say or not to say about the situation at hand when they’re back home, out in the community which will eventually be the source of jurors.
• Advertorials — buying print space or broadcast time in which one puts news-like stories about your client organization that are designed to help balance any misinformation which may already be in the public eye. This tactic is usually only employed if the media has consistently mis-reported the facts.
• Launching blogs and websites.

The battle for the hearts, minds and votes of jury members does not begin in the courtroom. In my experience, advance communication begins immediately after a legal situation hits the media. It can work together with legal tactics to (a) preclude a case ever going to trial (assuming that’s a desired outcome for either side of the issue) or (b) affect public perception sufficiently to enhance either side’s chance of a favorable outcome in court.

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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. and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

Last Friday I was interviewed for almost five minutes on Bloomberg TV regarding crisis management and the Goldman Sachs debacle, with about 20 seconds at the end of the interview regarding the BP oil spill in the Gulf.

Funny thing at the interview itself — you probably can’t tell that, in this high-tech TV studio, I was standing…on a box. Seems that they had just installed a new remote camera (no cameraman — just a robot camera mounted on a pole) and it wasn’t set for the right height, nor could they fix it quickly. The engineer on site was quite embarrassed, but I was assured that would be fixed when I next returned. 🙂

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQeU9unToNs[/youtube]

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[From the latest issue of my ezine, Crisis Manager]

Not everyone knows who ED Magedson is, but there aren’t too many consumer-focused businesses that haven’t heard of the RipOff Report (ROR), the consumer complaint site founded and directed by Magedson.

The common belief is that shortly after a complaint about any company appears on the site, it can be found prominently ranked on a Google search for that company’s name. No one, of course, wants complaints showing up on page 1 of a Google search.

There are a number of common beliefs about ROR amongst PR practitioners (self included), and I wanted to hear the other side of the story. So I asked some very candid questions of Magedson and he provided some very cogent replies. I don’t always agree with him, but I can’t fault his willingness to openly discuss sensitive topics.

You can read the lengthy interview here.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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DUE DILIGENCE: “The process of investigation, performed by investors, into the details of a potential investment, such as an examination of operations and management and the verification of material facts.” (Source: InvestorWords.com)

The title of this article may surprise some readers. What possible role, you might ask, can crisis management play in the complex interaction between potential investors or buyers and the organizations that are the focus of their due diligence investigations?

In my experience, those who are in “acquisition mode” — be they venture capitalists, expanding companies, individual or group investors — do not garner certain types of information that could be critical to making and protecting their investment or purchase. For this article, I’m referring to buyers, those who are actually acquiring a business, and investors making significant investments.

The traditional due diligence process usually involves some formal background checking, discussions with references, and probably a thorough Internet search. What it often doesn’t give buyers/investors is information critical to (a) the reputations of all involved in the potential transaction and (b) the potential acquisition/investment target’s ability to prevent and survive crises. EVERY organization is going to have crises; if they can prevent some, and get through others quickly and effectively, then the acquisition/investment will be far better protected.

Categories of Information

Here are some of the categories of information that can be provided via a combination of techniques generally associated with (a) a crisis management vulnerability audit and (b) investigative journalism.

• What reputation does the acquisition/investment target have with all its stakeholders, internal and external? How does that compare with what the company says about itself? Stakeholders would include everyone from employees to customers, from board members to journalists.
• For acquisitions, what reputation does the acquirer have with its stakeholders and with the stakeholders of the acquisition target? That reputation will very much impact the reaction of all stakeholders to news of a possible or actual acquisition.
• How are all stakeholders affected by the acquisition or major investment going to react to it? Positively? Negatively? What can be done in advance — understanding that news of the such transactions cannot be released until appropriate — to optimize all stakeholders’ response to the news?
• Has the acquisition/investment target done any crisis preparedness — vulnerability assessment, planning and training — that would allow it to better survive inevitable crises? Not just its ability to manage any distress caused by the initial business transaction, but the business’ ability to survive all crises to which it is vulnerable? If any reader has not previously received a copy of my free “Crisis Preparedness Checklist,” request it by email to jonathan@bernsteincrisismanagement.com. It will prove useful for a quick preliminary evaluation of any organization’s readiness for crises.

To the extent the situation permits, in an often-sensitive pre-acquisition/investment environment, stakeholders are contacted directly. But there are also many indirect sources of published/public record information that can be identified through comprehensive, Internet-based research (requiring a high level of expertise, not simply a “Google search”), as well as indirect sources of information on the opinions and beliefs of stakeholders. Collected and analyzed, they can provide investors with a sometimes eye-opening glimpse at challenges and opportunities they would not capture through traditional due diligence examinations.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with attorney Mike Lappin, a partner at Quarles & Brady LLP specializing in mergers and acquisitions, on a couple of transactions of this type. We both found that combining legal and crisis management capabilities has brought substantial added value to the entire transaction, from due diligence to “done deal.” Mike had this to say about due diligence:

“Due diligence investigations often focus on financial and legal matters as a buyer attempts to rather quickly understand the target’s business and evaluate the possible risks and rewards from the transaction. However, other factors, such as how the buyer is perceived by the target’s employees or how prepared the target is to deal with unexpected events, can have a significant effect on whether a transaction is a success, and these factors often do not receive the same attention in the due diligence process.”

In the new world of corporate governance regulations and general distrust of investment-related wheeling and dealing, buyers and investors can’t afford to be without all possible critical intelligence. Using crisis management tactics pre-investment or pre-acquisition can provide that information.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Written with a healthcare industry slant, but obviously applicable to most organizations]

There’s a death or serious injury due to questionable circumstances. An employee is accused of impropriety. Your company is acquired by or is acquiring another. A natural disaster occurs. There’s an investigation of your facility by a regulatory or law enforcement agency. By the definition given above, all of these are crisis scenarios such as those routinely faced by most organizations. In any field, there is no such thing as a business in which crises do not occur.

Unfortunately, not all organizations are aware of the difference between marketing in routine situations versus marketing in crisis situations, namely:

Marketing’s routine function is to build the value of the business.

Marketing’s crisis communications function is to preserve the value of the business.

Often, organizations are prepared to respond to the operational components of a crisis (e.g., for a fire: call the fire department, evacuate the building, etc.). However, there are many audiences potentially affected by any crisis, and each of these will want to know the facts as soon as possible; members of each audience will start to worry and/or react inappropriately in the absence of such facts.

Typical audiences include clients/patients/customers, the media, employees, investors, community leaders, and regulatory agencies. Each of them requires a specific type of communication (e.g. phone call, fax, mail), and has differing information needs. If an organization is prepared, in advance, to respond to those needs promptly, confusion and damage is minimized.

I am aware of a health care company which operated for over ten years without a significant crisis, and then experienced a half dozen crises over a two month period. Some of these situations, lacking proper response, could have resulted in significant damage to the firm’s credibility and profitability.

Fortunately, and very atypically, the organization had recently commissioned a crisis communications plan which provided them with a system for coordinated, prompt, honest, informative and concerned response to crises. This plan consisted not only of a manual with scenarios and instructions, but also involved a comprehensive audit of the organization’s vulnerabilities that resulted in numerous recommendations for operational/system changes which, unchanged, created a potential for crises.

For example, the audit and subsequent analysis (conducted over a six-week period) revealed a lack of standard procedure on how to route media calls and who should handle the calls. Yet, particularly during a crisis, all employees need to know to whom a reporter should be referred or else a number of “loose cannons” are likely to be quoted instead of trained, authorized spokespersons.

Additionally, there were no fixed policies on some controversial issues such as the interaction of HIV-positive employees with patients nor was there a standard procedure for responding to needle sticks by medical personnel. This lack of policy could have resulted in significant criticism or worse, and the recommendations made during the crisis planning process ensured that the crisis would not happen. In some cases, the board of directors or administrative staff were aware of system weaknesses but hadn’t thought of the marketing communications/bottom-line impact of failure to quickly correct the problems.

Prevention, then, versus reaction, is the ultimate key to successful crisis communications. How many of my clients create a crisis plan BEFORE having a significant crisis? Less than five percent. That’s because they look at the one-time cost (typically under $15,000 for a single small to mid-size firm) and choose to avoid impacting their budget now versus giving significant thought to the fiscal impact of a crisis. I am usually asked to do a plan AFTER a damaging crisis, during which we have to spend considerable time, at client expense, attempting to minimize damage “fire fighting” in the public relations sense that would have been unnecessary if a plan was in place. Yes, crisis communications counsel will be needed even if a plan has been created but far less of it.

In conclusion, if I may risk a medical analogy presuming that I am, to crisis communications, what a highly trained physician is to his or her specialty: crises will occur, and they can be very damaging to your organization’s health. There is treatment available, now, which can eliminate many crises and minimize the impact of others. I recommend prevention, but you’re the patient it’s your choice.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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The consumer complaint site, RipOff Report, has been the bane of many companies’ existence and a challenge for crisis managers everywhere. ED Magedson (yes, he capitalizes his first name), Founder of the site, agreed to a lengthy exclusive interview for my ezine, Crisis Manager, that I plan to publish on Thursday, April 29, along with my own editorial comments and teaching points. If you visit the Crisis Manager Archives, you’ll find a place where you can subscribe – it’s free.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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