Category: Organization Development

Deleting posts once they’ve grabbed the public’s attention is a cardinal sin of modern crisis management

Anyone experienced with social media crisis management can tell you, deleting a post after it’s become the center of public controversy is a major faux paus. Of course, that doesn’t stop an incredible number of well-known figures and organizations from doing just that.

The backlash is even worse when public perception is that the person should have known better, as was the case when Dr. Phil sent out tweet asking, “If a girl is drunk, is it okay to have sex with her?” Here’s more on the story, from a Washington Post article by Monica Hesse:

On Tuesday, Dr. Phil, drawling psychologist to the masses, posted a tweet that some interpreted as, at best, tone-deaf and, at worst, a tacit encouragement for date rape. “If a girl is drunk, is it okay to have sex with her?” someone from his account tweeted at 5:49 p.m. “Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.”

“If Dr. Phil is drunk, is it okay for him to tweet?” responded one follower. Another wondered, “If a person is a mysognyist [sic], is it okay to just refer to him as ‘Dr. Phil’ from now on?” Within a few hours, Oprah Winfrey’s former acolyte became thoroughly detested online. Then, he compounded the situation by committing what has become an unpardonable sin in the public venues through which we conduct discourse: He deleted the tweet.

On his timeline, the comment no longer appears, but other Twitter users quickly made sure it wasn’t gone.

“Hey, @DrPhil, if someone deletes his tweet, is it okay to post a screenshot of it?” queried a user who attached a cached image. Others were more direct: “@DrPhil is a bloody coward and has since deleted the tweet.”

The unspoken rule in social media is that if you say something dumb, you have to live with it. Apologizing can work wonders in terms of helping stakeholders accept, and forget, your mistakes, but, as Dr. Phil discovered, trying to cover things up will only serve to draw out hordes of folks who are more than happy to ensure that everybody knows exactly what you wanted to hide.

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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]

U.S. CPSC putting social media and e-comms to work to better protect the public

Just yesterday we ran a post applauding the crisis management efforts put forth by FEMA’s Ready.org, and now we have another example of excellent crisis communications to share, this time from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. These are the guys responsible for many major product recalls, so they definitely have some important information to share, and they’re taking full advantage of electronic communications and social media to do it.

Check out the email we received as members of the CPSC.gov recall information list:

When we first launched CPSC recall e-mails, many other electronic forms of communications didn’t exist.
Now that so many of you receive information in multiple ways, we want to make sure you know all the ways you can receive recall information from CPSC.

1. Twitter @OnSafety: We post nearly all recalls and all news releases on our Twitter feed. You’ll also receive important safety messages, tips and other information. Url: https://twitter.com/onsafety

2. Flickr: Photos are a priority for us, as they help you identify if you own a recalled product. You can find the photos of many recalled products on our Flickr page. Url: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscpsc

3. Google+: CPSC recently launched a page on Google+. We are still experimenting with how many recalls we post on this page and are open your thoughts on what you want to see here. For now, we’re posting Recall Roundups and some of our larger recalls on Google+. Url: http://bit.ly/14ZhXNL

In addition to these social media platforms CPSC posts all recalls on its website at www.cpsc.gov/recalls. Recalls and Consumer Safety Reports are available on www.SaferProducts.gov. We encourage you to search SaferProducts.gov for products you own or are thinking of buying to see what others have told us about those products.

********************************************************

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is still interested in
receiving incident or injury reports that are either directly related to a
product recall or involve a different hazard with the same product. Please
tell us about your experience with the product on SaferProducts.gov.

Media Contact
Please use the phone numbers below for all media requests.
Phone: (301) 504-7908
Spanish: (301) 504-7800

CPSC Consumer Information Hotline
Contact us at this toll-free number if you have questions about a recall:
800-638-2772 (TTY 301-595-7054)
Times: 8 a.m. ? 5:30 p.m. ET; Messages can be left anytime
Call to get product safety and other agency information and to report unsafe products.

Impressed yet? We can tell you from experience, the vast majority of organizations out there are barely communicating at all, much less doing it via three of the most popular social media platforms in addition to phone and email. The best part? The CPSC has realized that making communication a two-way street is crucial to crisis management, and has made efforts to not only be able to easily share information, but receive it as well. Heck, they even make it simple for members of the media, who will be far less likely to report based on hearsay or rumors if they can easily get facts straight from the horse’s mouth.

Kudos, CPSC, well done!

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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]

Innocent on a technicality, but the court of public opinion has already judged Deen guilty

In an interesting development, a judge has denied the claims of racial discrimination brought against Paula Deen by ex-employee Lisa Jackson. That’s right, the charge that brought Paula Deen’s TV empire crashing down in a matter of days has been dismissed altogether. Here’s some more info, from a NY Times article by Alan Blinder:

A federal judge on Monday dismissed claims of racial discrimination in a lawsuit against Paula Deen, the celebrity chef who was the target of criticism this summer after she acknowledged using a racial epithet.

Lisa Jackson, who managed one of Ms. Deen’s restaurants in Savannah, Ga., had alleged that widespread discrimination against black workers created a challenging work environment for her.

But Judge William T. Moore Jr. ruled that Ms. Jackson, who is white, was unprotected by federal law and no more than “an accidental victim of the alleged racial discrimination.”

As we all saw in Deen’s case, if your laundry is dirty enough, simply having it aired in public is enough to ruin your reputation. In fact, in many crisis management scenarios we see, the real damage is done long before the case ever hits a court of law. It’s natural to want to bury a past that you know looks bad, but the reality is that you’re best off admitting your mistakes and confronting them head on before the public, or a story-hungry media, digs it up for you and takes you 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]

Apple is in trouble as it faces court cases and political scrutiny without a cushion of goodwill

Apple is infamous for its approach, or, perhaps more accurately, lack of approach, when it comes to creating goodwill. While this approach stood as an anomaly in the PR world for some time, the company is now facing negative repercussions in Washington and in court as a result of some less-than-ethical decisions and its standoffish attitude.

Interviewed by Politico’s Steve Friess, BCM president Jonathan Bernstein had this to say:

Corporate reputation consultant Jonathan Bernstein said it hurts Apple to have “the perception of being a go-it-alone, arrogant corporation.”

“They’re going to pay a price in decisions made against them, whether it’s by litigators or prosecutors or the consumer,” he said.

In other words, when you’re David refusing Goliath, you can sometimes get away with it because, essentially, the public likes a little guy to stick it to “the man.” When you’re the Goliath in your industry, though, you get to toe the line, and a refusal to do so is seen by both public and regulators as, to borrow Jonathan’s wording, arrogant. When you’re arrogant, you get no sympathy, and when you get no sympathy in the court of law, the court of public opinion, or D.C., it’s hard to come out ahead.

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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]

Do your crisis management plans include being blackballed by the competition?

So-called “black hat” tactics, often effective but unethical, or even illegal, ways of achieving goals, do exist in the world of PR and marketing. While, for the most part, reputable organizations have a policy of not putting shady tactics to work, employees looking to cut corners or get a leg up on the competition can easily be tempted into joining the dark side, as can desperate business owners and those who simply lack ethics.

Even though Reddit is quickly joining the mainsteam, it still maintains a reputation of being friendly to those who dabble in the grey areas of the web, and as such it’s not an entirely surprising place to find questionable tactics being put to use there, and exposed as well!

Yesterday, PR Daily’s Michael Nolledo reported on one of the black hat tactics being used on Reddit, essentially the practice of having your competition banned from the site, as exposed by a self-purported search engine marketer who goes by the name, “Friggersly.”

The conversation Friggersly reportedly came across reveals a candid discussion that outlines tactics for knocking down a competitor. Here’s a snippet:

[17:10] Personally I prefer just making a load of accounts off one IP then trying to make them look savvy.
[17:10] They’re going to get caught at some point but that’s the point.
[17:10] Post in all kinds of s— subreddits but make sure you’ve got the target site being used on all of them.
[17:10] Make it look like you ALMOST know what you’re doing.
[17:11] Then keep that up for a few weeks.
[17:11] Then BAM
[17:11] Banned.
[17:11] Yeah that’s how I do it.
[17:11] Got one in progress today and another on the list for next month.
[17:11] Takes f— all time too. Just do it for an hour or so a day.
[17:11] Then before you know it none of your competitors can use Reddit.
[17:12] hehe mean 😉
[17:12] But yeah it works 😛
[17:12] Can’t argue results.
[17:12] You guys do this often?
[17:12] moreorless

Although this online conversation cannot be readily verified due to the covert tactics involved, knowing there’s potential success in such a calculated takedown effort is a scary thought. (Of course, this conversation could itself have been falsified; you never know on the Internet.)

While it is POSSIBLE that this conversation could have been falsified, the original Reddit post, and accompanying replies on the topic, are quite in depth, and sound awfully believable if you’re familiar with the way Reddit works.

Competition is fierce these days, making it important to cover your butt with a bit of preemptive crisis management. Victims of tactics like these may find themselves suddenly banned from a website on which they have spent months crafting communications and promotions, with little recourse except to plead their case to busy moderators who are taking on a hefty workload for no pay.

The best thing you can do to prevent becoming a victim of a scheme like the one described is to keep an accurate log of all online marketing and PR activities. Not only will you have plenty of proof that’s you’re operating above the board to provide site owners or moderators with should an attacker sully your good name, but you’ll also have a clear representation of the hard work you’ve put in that can be shared with clients when you have those, “what exactly are we paying you for?” conversations that anyone working on the web is all too familiar with.

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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]

Take steps to avoid this preventable crisis

The focus on content creation as the new, must-do form of marketing has resulted in an incredible number of completely involuntary copyright infringements across the web. Even experts who literally work with web content every single day are running into foul territory! For proof, look no further than this quote from a refreshingly honest tale, by The Content Factory’s Kari DePhillips, that describes the $8,000 lawsuit her organization caught as a result of running the wrong photo in a blog post:

More than three months after the blog had been posted, the client got an email from an attorney. This particular lawyer deals with one thing and one thing only: image copyright infringement. For the sake of the story, let’s say his name is Curtis M. Leech, Esq.

The long-forgotten blog that was posted months ago had come back to haunt us. Mr. Leech sent the client a formal complaint letter, saying that they were being sued for $8,000 for using his client’s copyrighted photo on their website.

We were under the mistaken impression that before anyone could be sued, the offender had to ignore a request to take down the copyrighted image. Because the lawsuit came without any kind of warning and this was the first time we’d ever been accused of such a thing, we were hoping that replacing the image and sincerely apologizing to Mr. Leech and his client would remedy the situation. We were wrong. Welcome to the world of “Fair Use.”

Current Fair Use image copyright laws say that you’re financially liable for posting copyrighted images, even if:

• You did it by accident
• You immediately take down the picture after receiving a DMCA takedown notice
• The picture is resized
• If the picture is licensed to your web developer (Getty Images requires that you get your own license, thankyouverymuch)
• You link back to the photo source and cite the photographer’s name
• Your site isn’t commercial and you make no money from your blogs
• You have a disclaimer on the site
• The pic is embedded instead of saved on your server
• You found it on the Internet (that’s not an excuse!)

Spot check: How many of you have used images you found via various free stock image depositories on you or your organization’s blog? Ok, now how many of you checked to see if that image was licensed for not only private, but also commercial, use? Don’t panic! Go ahead and pull them down, sigh in relief that you didn’t have to eat a lawsuit, then read on…

Still not worried?

If you think this isn’t a crisis management risk, consider how many one-man shops and small businesses would be completely devastated by losing $8,000 from their operating budget. Heck, just consider how much additional work you would have to do to replace that $8,000 yourself. Even if you are a mega-corporation, the fact copyright infringement crises can be avoided simply by educating your editors content crew makes this one a no-brainer.

Sometimes, software-powered copyright protection services are so zealous to catch violators in the act that they cause issues for legitimate users. We experienced this ourselves just recently when a client, who was fully authorized to use the name of a network television show in one of their popular YouTube videos, was repeatedly flagged as a copyright violator, even after obtaining re-authorization from the network. It eventually actually took legal representatives getting involved in order to have the video placed on the protection services’ “white list” of authorized users.

The lesson here is that any time you’re using something created by someone outside your organization, whether it be art, idea, name or manufacturing process, make certain that you have the proper rights to do what you’re doing. Acting without research, or without permission, may save you money in the short term, but you will eventually pay.

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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]

 

 

Ignoring the 24/7 nature of social media is asking for trouble

Neglecting the fact that social media pays no regard to standard business hours led to embarrassment for Qantas airlines after a pornographic image sat on its Facebook page for some seven hours, only being removed after a child spotted the pic and brought it to his father’s attention.

Here’s the story, from Australia’s Marketing Magazine:

The boy had visited the page to enter a competition the airline is currently running. The image was left up on the page for up to seven hours and was removed after the boy’s father complained to the airline.

The father of the affected boy told The Age, “When you rolled over it on the iPad a larger version of the image popped up… the anatomical details were quite clearly recognisable.”

A spokesperson from Qantas told Marketing, “Spam was posted to the Qantas Facebook page in the middle of the night, which included an inappropriate image the size of a profile picture. We removed the post as soon as we saw it and offered an apology to a gentleman who contacted us to complain.”

Currently the airline’s social media pages are only monitored during business hours.

Now, is this really a crisis for Qantas? No, it’s not, and a sincere apology to the family involved is just fine as far as a response. However, it is a perfect example of why organizations, especially huge global brands like Qantas, should include 24/7 social media monitoring as part of their standard crisis management and reputation management plans.

Imagine if it wasn’t just a single small image, but a massive flood of pornography. How about an organized consumer protest, timed to hit at, say, 7 PM on a Friday night. Getting a bit more serious, right? The airline certainly has stakeholders in a wide variety of time zones, so why would its social media monitoring stop in its tracks when it’s quitting time in Australia?

Between computers, smartphones, tablets and the enormous number of monitoring solutions out there, it’s not difficult to at least keep tabs on what’s happening at any hour of the day. Although you can’t guarantee that your social media presences won’t come under attack, or that an unpredictable crisis won’t emerge, you will be aware of the situation, and can act quickly to take the appropriate action.

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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]

Pointing out how poorly you pay your own employees is a crisis management faux pas

So, you set out to create a website, accessible to the public, aimed at helping your employees budget. You have hopes of helping them out, but let’s be real here, you’re also looking to grab you some good PR in the process. Once you get started, however, you realize that there is no way a typical employee at your organization makes enough to live on, even with a second job, and leaving out minor expenses like food, water, and clothing…because those are luxury items, right?

Most of us would scrap the project on the spot, but not McDonald’s! The company, which has already run into a few stumbling blocks while getting acquainted with how the modern web works, must not have thought it was a problem because they went live. As could be expected, the company took a beating in the media, largely as result of the buzz generated following video, from the activists at Low Pay is Not Okay:

In a market where consumers are more aware than ever of the ethics behind their favorite brands, coming across as a cold, callous company is a major crisis management faux pas. While obviously it’s better to not BE that cold, callous company, reality is that some organizations are solely focused on making as much money as possible. If that’s your deal, be realistic and try not to point it out to the public in a glaringly obvious manner.

There really is no crisis management move that would make this situation better for McDonald’s, and since its leadership clearly has no plans to raise the wages of its employees, our recommendation would be that in the future at least they keep anything that directly points out how poorly their employees are treated away from a publicly accessible site.

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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]

Report sheds light on heated race

A new study has revealed that, contrary to what many believe, major news websites and Twitter are neck and neck when it comes to breaking high-profile stories.

The UK’s Metro has more details:

The research by the University of Edinburgh shows Twitter brought ‘added value’ by providing ‘local perspectives on major news items’.

Dr Miles Osborne, who led the work, said: ‘Twitter and traditional news outlets each have their strengths in terms of delivering news.

‘In contrast to popular belief, our results show that neither stream consistently reports on breaking news first. Indeed, traditional newswire sources often report events before Twitter.

What the study didn’t investigate is the thing that’s sent a growing number of mainstream news outlets into crisis management mode, namely the lapse of fact-checking and other traditional journalistic ethics considerations that has occurred in the rush to beat social media to print.

The precise roles that social media and traditional news outlets should play remains a hot topic, but perhaps studies like this one will help the organizations involved determine who should be reporting on what, and how.

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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 wrong words online can come back to haunt you

The case of Justin Carter, the Central Texas teen jailed for over five months as a result of a Facebook comment, is a powerful lesson in just how serious social media has gotten, and why your personal crisis management considerations should include careful censorship of controversial conversation.

Here’s what went down, as described in a HuffPost blog by Ryan Grenoble:

Earlier this year, Carter and a friend got into an Facebook argument with someone regarding “League of Legends,” an online video game with notoriously die-hard fans. Justin’s father, Jack, explained to ABC local affiliate KVUE that at the end of the conversation “[s]omeone had said something to the effect of ‘Oh you’re insane, you’re crazy, you’re messed up in the head,’ to which [Justin] replied ‘Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk [all sic].”

Now, we fully agree that Justin’s comment was wildly inappropriate, and warranted a full investigation, but here’s the rub…after finding no weapons, plans, web searches, or any other evidence that Justin was using anything other than very poorly planned sarcasm, he still went to jail with a $500,000 bond. Nearly six months later, having celebrated, if you could call it that, his nineteenth birthday behind bars, and, according to his father, being beaten and thrown naked into solitary confinement for a large part of that time, Justin’s family has just barely managed to bail him out. Of course, he’ll still stand trial for making a “terroristic threat,” a charge that could haunt him for the rest of his life whether he is exonerated or not.

From what we see on Facebook and other social media sites on a daily basis, this could end up being just about anybody. People post statements like, “I wish I could just burn this office down” or “I’m going to kick my boss’ ass if he yells at me one more time” without a second thought, not realizing that with a phone call and the wrong judge (of which there seem to be an inordinate number in Texas), they could wind up in a situation very much like Carter’s.

Crisis Management 101 for personal social media communications: You aren’t just speaking to your friends. Sure, those close to you may know you, and “get” your sick sense of humor, off-color jokes, etc, but when you post a message on social media, it’s out there for all to see. If you want to cover your own behind, make sure the things you post can’t be misconstrued, especially as a threat against person or property, or you could wind up the next Justin Carter.

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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]