Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same actions, but expecting a different outcome. If that is true, insanity rules the day when it comes to crisis response.

We all know that the effectiveness of advertising is in a free fall. Yet I keep seeing articles about how companies are responding to crisis issues – from Taco Bell to BP – that are focused on their advertising. Who needs to up their Super Bowl spend. Who needs to launch a campaign. Who is fighting back with advertising.

While an ad campaign can create “air cover” and help unify a story, when it comes to crisis response, advertising alone is about as effective as hiding under a rock. It is expensive, slow and ranges from irrelevant to untrustworthy among your key constituencies, who pretty much discredit it before the spot is even over. Sometimes, it can be a catalyst for something really interesting, like Toyota’s ads for their Ideas for Good campaign, which actually sent me to their website to learn more.

So why do people still rely on advertising so heavily? Because it is safe, and controllable. You design the ad, you control the message. No one ever gets fired for recommending a full page ad or a TV spot. And when a CEO is demanding, we do more…we can buy more of it.

Insanity. But safe insanity.

cwinters Crisis Communications advertising, BP, Super Bowl, Taco Bell, Toyota

I remember this day 25 years ago vividly….there was so much excitement about the Challenger, and the first civilian trip into space. TVs were rolled into our classrooms, and there was serious discussion about the significance of sending a teacher on the first civilian mission (by the teachers, of course.) Then the unthinkable happened.

Today, in a post 9-11 world, watching horror unfold on live TV seems ordinary. In a Whatever, Whenever, Wherever You Want It news environment, we can listen, view, engage and interact with our news with a whole host of devices, in real time. Like NASA, people and companies who suffer reputational implosions do so in the public eye, and can no longer lick their wounds in private.

For the countless companies who’ve suffered catastrophic (or not so catastrophic) setbacks in 2010, there are a number of lessons to be learned from NASA, 25 years after the Challenger:

1. There are no shortcuts – Much has been written about NASA’s errors in rushing this mission, and failing to take safety seriously. Today, the same has been said about BP, Toyota and others who’ve suffered reputational implosions. Communications, even great communications, cannot substitute for good operations.

2. Confidence and trust can be restored over time – The Challenger could have easily been the end of NASA as we know it. Yet they stayed the course, and with a series of successful missions, restored the confidence of America, and the world.

3. After a crisis, what you do is more important than what you say – No amount of conversation about re-upping safety priorities would have corrected the course for NASA. They needed to demonstrate that they could continue their mission, safely. That isn’t to say they haven’t had any other accidents….space exploration is, by design, a dangerous business. Like aviation, mining and others. But they accepted responsibility and learned from it (they didn’t try to minimize it, point the finger at a subcontractor, or blame anyone.). NASA focused on the future and on fixing its own house, restoring confidence along the way (Something that would admittedly be much harder to do in today’s environment.).

Perhaps the most important lesson of all is the power of resilience…a uniquely America quality that enables us to brush ourselves off, move forward and aspire to bigger and better things, even in our darkest moments. When President Obama told America, “We Do Big Things” – that wasn’t arrogance. It wasn’t happy talk. It was his belief in the power of our resilience.

cwinters General Corporate BP, Challenger, NASA, Obama, Toyota

This weekend, in the frigid cold, my kids “had to” go to a major sporting goods chain in order to procure Power Balance bracelets. Yes, those very bracelets that originally claimed to use magnetic frequencies in your body to improve balance, but later admitted to doing pretty much nothing. These are the very same bracelets that sports heroes so famous that they require no last name – Kobe, Shaq – have been rockin’ on the court.

Normally, this would be considered a crisis of major proportions…you are admitting to scamming consumers, and you’ve co-opted iconic sports heroes whose reputation currency is counted in the millions, or billions, via product endorsements.

So what does Power Balance do? In a classic Oz-like “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” move – they’ve inked a deal to name an arena with dollar values so low the experts are predicting it could de-value future deals, and the reputation of the Kings along the way. Clearly the combination of small media market and a pretty poor win-loss record despite a small bump in attendance didn’t help the Kings.

The question is this – have the Kings further damaged their reputation by partnering with a questionable sponsor? Or has Power Balance brilliantly deflected what could have been a business-destroying revelation that the performance bracelets are no more than a fashion statement?

And yes, I plunked down 60 bucks for a very fashionable plastic bracelet. My high school baller knows they are just a fashion statement – and bought one in her team colors. My younger one thinks it will make him run faster, shoot better and stay on his feet when he is bumped around…after all Lamar Odom says they make a difference for him. I think that is called the Placebo Effect.

cwinters General Corporate Kobe, Lamar Odom, Placebo Effect, Power Balance, Sacramento Kings, Shaq

This is a great post by Deloitte’s Chairman Sharon Allen about the dividends from investing in developing female leaders. Sharon is a consistent advocate for Diversity in Leadership – and that is diversity of all kinds – including diversity of experience and diversity of thought. As one of Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women in the World, she knows of what she speaks.

cwinters General Corporate Deloitte, Women in the Workplace

MWW Group recently bought back its independence from IPG….a move that we believe will enable us to preserve our entrepreneurial culture and take advantage of a lot of changes in our businesses. We will continue to be led by our CEO and founder, Michael Kempner…which has gotten me thinking about the power of founders on an organization and its reputation.

Few would argue that founders care more than the average bear about their Company, its employees, its customers and its future. Transition of leadership from a founder can often cause angst in the marketplace – from Steve Jobs’ illness to the rather public ousting of Seventh Generation’s founder.

Which leads to an interesting case…Google. Larry Schmidt, who oversaw the Google IPO and navigated the early skepticism around search and ad models, is passing the reigns back to one of its founders, Larry Page. Continued day-to-day engagement of the founders is making lots of stakeholders feel comfortable and confident, and many point out that Schmidt has been mentoring Page to prepare him for the top job. All sounds good. Except for one thing – Larry Page has never been a CEO before, much less a public company CEO. Or the CEO of a Company facing competitive pressure like it’s never seen before – from giants like Facebook and Apple.

It is an interesting contrast that questions abound about whether acting CEO Tim Cook has the vision to lead Apple forward if Jobs doesn’t return, while Schmidt prepares to become “schmoozer in chief” claiming that adult supervision is no longer required at Google. (Not sure those would have been my recommended choice of words!)

Seems the “founder” currency is very powerful indeed.

cwinters Executive Visibility Apple, Facebook, Google, MWW Group, Seventh Generation

For Johnson & Johnson CEO William Weldon, 2010 was, as Queen Elizabeth put it a few years back, an “annus horribilus.” The Company’s various divisions issued a seeming never ending string of recall notices from pain relievers to cold remedies to contact lens solution to antacids. J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare division, makers of Tylenol, Sudafed and Benadryl captured headlines throughout the year with a series of problems at its facilities.

Through a series of public relations fumbles, belated mea culpas and operational gaffes, J&J, a consumer healthcare icon, whose 1980s Tylenol tampering response was widely seen as the crisis communication gold standard, has seen its reputation significantly tarnished and its sales plummet. Generics and store brands from CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid have never had it so good.

This track record garnered for Mr. Weldon a place next to the likes of BP’s Tony Hayward and HP’s Mark Hurd a place on list of the worst CEOs of 2010 by Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth as reported by CNBC.

Unfortunately, it appears that 2011 is starting right where 2010 left off for J&J as the company issued its latest recall of 43 million bottles of Tylenol, Sudafed, Benadryl and Sinutab manufactured at McNeil’s now infamous Fort Washington, PA plant. Using a time-worn public relations ploy, the news of the recall was released on a Friday evening prior to a long holiday weekend. Mr. Weldon, once again spoke of action plans, quality reviews and commitment to consumer safety.

For those of us in crisis communications who know all too well how reputation is tied to a company’s proactive, transparent and thoughtful response, it is sad to see what has become of J&J. The blogosphere is once again full of chatter with reminiscences of J&J’s gloried past, recollections of its expert management or previous crises and calls for executive changes long overdue.

This past weekend also brought news of another medical leave to be taken by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The issues of Apple’s history of communications or non-communications about Mr. Jobs’ illness and succession planning at the Company are fodder for another blog post. This latest episode and the quick hit to Apple’s stock price shows the close relationship between corporate and executive reputation at Apple and what may happen with the Company’s visionary leader on the sideline. Conversely, for J&J and Mr. Weldon the reputational issue may be a CEO staying too long in a position.

rtauberman Crisis Communications Apple, BP, CVS, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Rite Aid, Steve Jobs, Tylenol, Walgreens

The Apple PR machine is on overdrive convincing the world that the team at Apple is up to the task of running the company without Steve Jobs. And they’re doing a pretty good job of it, in large part because they’ve weathered this crisis once before, and have the results to prove it. They’ve got the financial community on board, with supportive analyst quotes about the depth of management. And they even got a NYT story today with a headline that talks about Apple’s deep bench.

Yet an informal poll around the office today failed to yield a single member of our MWW Group news junkie team that could name a single member of theirs (other than Jobs) — even with all of the media attention around this news and the management team at Apple.

Has Jobs become so larger than life, that Apple just couldn’t be Apple without him? Is his “brand” too much of a good thing?

The tech sector is filled with iconic, branded leaders –Ellison, Jobs, Gates, Bezos. No first names, or companies, needed. Even in that crowd, the Jobs mystique is legendary – it’s hard to say whether the iPad, and its migration to an entire i-lifestyle, made Jobs cool again, or if it was the other way around. (Remember, he was actually ousted from Apple in the mid 1980s).

I think the question isn’t whether Jobs has been “over-branded.” Plenty of organizations have transitioned an iconic CEO – Welch at GE, Gates at Microsoft, Kelleher at Southwest Airlines – to name a few. All of these companies have retained strong, positive reputations. The question really is whether Apple has done enough to prepare for an eventual transition. Should members of their team have better name recognition outside of Wall Street, particularly since this is not Jobs’ first time taking a leave of absence for serious health issues?

It is my sincerest hope (and seemingly that of the Twitter-verse) that Jobs will return to the helm, fit as a fiddle. But even under the best of circumstances, he can’t stay forever.

To me the real question is whether Apple can “culture-ize” the Jobs mystique, so it can continue beyond his years of service, like Walt Disney. Or will it need to re-invent itself under the vision of a new leader, and become a new, equally successful Apple?

cwinters Executive Visibility Apple, CEO Succession Planning, Disney, GE, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Steve Jobs

Recently I posted about the declining impact of celebrity tweets, citing the major failure of Keep a Child Alive’s Digital Death Campaign (which barely raised a million dollars for HIV/AIDS btw). Just goes to show you that for every rule, there is an exception. Like the series of tweets from 50 Cent, that translated into a $50 million increase in market cap for a Company you probably never heard of before, H&H Imports.

Closer analysis suggests that while the tweets certainly had some impact, there were also some more classic IR strategies at play. The rapper appeared on CNBC – long recognized as a market mover. And the Company wisely engaged a high profile third party investor to advocate for their story. But his tweets were not all that substantive, or even frequent on this topic – he gave a lot more attention to pushing his new headphones, for example. But everyone is talking about how 50 Cent pumped this stock.

Here is what they didn’t tell you – this is a penny stock, with a 52-week range of 4 – 51 CENTS. It hit a high 45 cents on the celebrity plug, and is already back down to 25 cents. That’s better than the 14 cents they opened at before all of this tweeting started, but hardly makes them a blue chip.

Sure, the company got some short term pop and media coverage with the rapper’s involvement. But from a strategic standpoint, what did that really do for them? Good financial communications is about helping companies achieve their highest sustainable valuation, based on articulating a story, establishing and meeting benchmarks, demonstrating quality management with a vision for the future that resonates with investors. And of course, performance.

For the short term, you may see the celebrity investor gimmick attempted by lots of me too companies. But you won’t see us advocating for that at MWW Group/FRB.

H&H Imports…if you want some real IR/financial communications help, you should contact Claire Koeneman, the President of FRB…otherwise, you’ll still be a 50 Cent stock, in every sense of the word.

cwinters Investor Relations 50 Cent, H&H Imports, Keep a Child Alive, Penny Stocks

One of the great perks of my job is that I get insight and visibility into the leadership of many different Companies – some major household names, and others that are companies on the rise. I get to help them craft their “stories” – both internally and externally, and observe and engage with leaders of all kinds.

One of the greatest challenges clients face is creating culture – how do they take their mission, their vision or their “credo” and make it meaningful and authentic in the organization? I’ve said before that it all comes down to leadership, and I came across this blog that approaches it from a visibility standpoint…you have to make values visible in order for them to be relevant.

The leaders of the organization have to demonstrate the behaviors and values, and they need to recognize and reward the behavior they want repeated, emulated and adopted throughout the organization. Simple to say. Not so simple to do.

cwinters Employee Engagement Employee Values, Leadership, Organization Culture

Now that MWW Group is independent again, it gives us the opportunity to once again become entirely independent in our thought. To serve only one master….our clients. And to rediscover and re-connect with the truly provocative edge that made us successful to begin with. While January often brings the regroup, reset and refresh conversations to an organization, the new year for MWW Group is NEW with a capital N. E. W.

In this self reflection, and analysis of the landscape in which we operate, it is always refreshing, (and OK, maybe a little bit reassuring) to uncover other sources who agree with the counsel you’ve been giving. Take this blog about the Four Keys to Influence, which was written with a social media spin. It tracks with what we’ve been saying at MWW Group long before we Tweeted, GroupOned or otherwise became digitally engaged.

One of the big questions clients always ask is how to be more influential with their key audiences…whether an employee communications program; a new product launch; a reputation management program or a public affairs initiative…it all boils down to influence. Or does it?

The funny thing about influence is that it really all boils down to relevance….what does it mean to me…and why should I care? Because the other elements of influence – trustworthiness, authenticity, authority, connection…are all predicated on relevance.

The world is a crowded, chaotic, noisy place. More and more, we have the ability curate our own content, customize our own stories and filter out what is not important to us. This is, after all, the TiVO generation. Relevance is the point of entry – without it, you aren’t just lacking influence…you are invisible.

I’d love your thoughts on what it takes for a company or a brand to be relevant to you…

cwinters General Corporate GroupOn, Influence, Relevance, Social Media, TiVO, Twitter