If you live in the NYC area and watch the evening news, you might have the impression that Occupy Wall Street is the biggest thing to hit since Lady GaGa.  Think again.

In a recent poll, just 17 percent of Americans say that they are following the protest closely – down from one in four in April.  It is not surprising that more people followed the death of Steve Jobs than Occupy Wall Street…but more people are also following the situation in Afghanistan closely than OWS.  

It seems to me that the OWS protest is more like organized labor’s inflatable rat than a real movement…you see it, and move on without engaging unless you are already a supporter.

Why? The protestors are certainly getting plenty of ink and air – which is the key criteria for legitimacy for many in my profession. 

• Sustainable movements need a leader.  A face for the cause.  Would the Civil Rights movement of the 60s been the same without Martin Luther King Jr.?
• You have to be for something.  Much like the broader, more generic protests of the 60s, it is clear that the OWS protestors are against “the establishment” – but they offer little in terms of specific recommendations.  President Clinton pointed this out in a recent interview, and recommended that the protestors get behind the Obama Job Plan. 
• They need defining moments that create a real connection with the broader population.  Historically, these moments come from the missteps of the establishment, particularly law enforcement.   One of the founders of the movement seems to think that the arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge are that moment – but I’m not sure that is sustainable.  And I’m not sure jumping on the beat up Bank of America bandwagon will do it, either.

In totality, OWS needs a relevant, sustainable narrative, delivered by a credible and compelling spokesperson.

cwinters General Corporate Bank of America, Bill Clinton, Occupy Wall Street, Steve Jobs

If you work in the public relations profession, you’ve probably heard a common lament among clients – “People aren’t getting our story.“

It may be one of the common denominators that make clients from diverse industries and across all practices of public relations alike.  Whether launching a brand, working an issue in Washington, conducting an investor road show or managing a crisis, having a compelling story is a fundamental requirement. 

In the public relations business, we’ve always been storytellers – whether you call it messaging, corporate/brand positioning or narrative – it’s all about the story.   And the greatest, most iconic brands and companies do it really, really well – Nike, GE, Apple and Starbucks all understand that to remain relevant as you grow and change, having a story that resonates is key.

This piece on Starbucks features the philosophies of noted brand evangelist Stanley Hainsworth, and credits great storytelling for transforming a commodity product into a $4 splurge.  He talks a lot about the art of storytelling, and gives us a glimpse into the approach he uses to create an emotional connection with stakeholders.  As I read this piece, I was struck with the significant alignment between his priorities and the way we approach developing a client’s narrative at MWW Group…in particular, the emphasis on tailoring your story for different audiences – what we call the Total Stakeholder Approach.   

The irony is that while this may be a fresh, new approach for the brand evangelist – it has been core to of great public relations programming and strategy from the beginning.   

How do you know if your story needs revisiting and refreshing?

• Any time there has been a significant change in your business – new leaders, new business strategy, new line of business.  Chances are you need to rethink your narrative.  A more thoughtful approach would have made a big difference for Netflix, and saved them lots of backpedaling.
• Significant changes in your industry also call for a new story – because your old story simply won’t be relevant anymore.
• Shift in strategy or emphasis on who, or what, is important.
• If you are underperforming – in sales, in employee retention, in share price performance – that may be a sign that your story isn’t resonating.
• If it feels stale, out of date or misaligned with your priorities – even if it isn’t impacting your stakeholders yet.

cwinters General Corporate Apple, GE, Netflix, Nike, Starbucks, Total Stakeholder Approach

Amanda Knox arrived home in Seattle last night, tearfully thanked her supporters, pinched herself to be sure it was real, then went home to sleep in her own bed after four years in an Italian prison.   Four years is a long time to remain relevant in the American psyche…and I’ll admit that I didn’t follow her case week by week, blow by blow.  But I do remember early reports of the wild, promiscuous girl partying, I mean studying, abroad.  Fast forward two trials and four years, and we see a completely different picture – one of the girl next door – our sister, our daughter, our BFF.   That’s quite a reputational turnaround.

This story in the New York Times is one of the few I’ve seen recently that provides a realistic, constructive view about the role of PR – in litigation support and in reputation management – rather than the popular hobby of bashing the “spin doctors.”   With time, diligence and working with the media – vs. trying to either ignore them, trick them or bully them, Amanda Knox’s family successfully evolved her from “Foxy Knoxy” to the accurate view of a girl unfortunately caught up in a wrong place, wrong time scenario, halfway around the world.

Would an image overhaul alone have secured the reversal of her conviction?  Not likely.   But when the DNA evidence came in to play, the image of the demure girl next door gave the judges and jury emotional permission to reverse that decision – and the public “air cover” for doing so.

That, my friends, is a good day – for Amanda Knox.  And for our industry.

cwinters General Corporate Amanda Knox, New York Times, PR

As Netflix suffers from consumer backlash of price increases and the division of its DVD and online streaming services, communication from CEO Reed Hastings with Netflix’s customers have been just as big a problem.

Will Netflix survive despite its communication woes?  MWW Group’s CEO Michael Kempner explores this in his latest blog post on MWW Straight Talk.

admin General Corporate Netflix

If you are planning to rob a bank, don’t ask anyone from HP to drive your getaway car…that company leaks live a sieve.  In what may be the worst kept secret in America (including no fewer than three articles in the New York Times about the rumor yesterday), HP has named Meg Whitman as its 4^th CEO in six years.   Thanks to those articles, they already know what the concerns are about Whitman – she has no turnaround experience, her background is in consumer tech, she’s built a company – not fixed a company, eBay was a simple, straightforward business – HP is a complex, multi-business company.

All three of her predecessors have been fired.  How can Whitman avoid that fate? Give the communications leadership a seat at the strategy table.   Sources say the board supported the company’s strategy, but didn’t have confidence that leadership could communicate it effectively (aka “sell it” to stakeholders).  It doesn’t get clearer than that.  

Whitman’s first communication to employees was a miss.  In that e-mail, HP failed to define any specific course of action, the board didn’t address the perceived shortcomings of Whitman or provide a compelling rationale for her selection, and contradicted themselves calling Leo Apokother’s “resignation” his decision, then later classifying it as a difficult decision for the board.

How can effective communications help Whitman, and HP succeed?  

1. Building Internal trust — HP needs a culture change.  Reportedly each business is a fiefdom, jockeying for control.  This is one explanation for the leak du jour (or multiple leaks du jour) at HP.  When confidential information is constantly reported in the news, that’s a clear indicator of a trust problem…employees don’t trust leadership to tell them what they need to know – which is only exacerbated when they’ve read about something all day and then get communication from the Company.
2. Creating external relevance — HP’s needs to be more relevant.  They’ve got no real skin in the game in the tablet wars (even though they had one of the first tablet PCs out there, albeit a different take on tablet than the wildly popular touchpad tablets like the iPad and the Galaxy).  The reputational boost they enjoyed from the photo printer wave is long gone. Right now, the most interesting thing about them is the board level drama and the leadership revolving door. 
3. Establishing credibility – stakeholders need to see HP define a course, establish interim benchmarks of success and then deliver.  It’s simple and old fashioned, but it works.  Thus far, Whitman has defined her course as “stay the course” – including proceeding with an acquisition that reportedly played a role in Apotheker’s ouster.   It’s hard to say if that is a meaningful validation of the strategy, or a belief that the same old thing, with some Celebrity CEO pixie dust thrown in, will make it more palatable to stakeholders.
4. Re-define success, at least for the short term.  Specifically, stop defining success solely by share price.  The turbulence and tumultuousness of the capital markets, especially these days, can hardly be considered the benchmark of success.  I’d start with the ability to preserve confidential information as a sign of confidence in leadership and the company’s direction internally.  Build customer relationships…and ultimately sales.  Innovate and bring the right products to market – and grow market share.  Provide stability and predictability for your stakeholders.   The share price will follow.

cwinters General Corporate eBay, HP, Leo Apotheker, Meg Whitman

If you are planning to rob a bank, don’t have anyone from HP driving the getaway car…this company leaks like a sieve. If the volume of news reports today is at all indicative of truth, HP is poised to fire its third consecutive CEO and name a new one, reportedly Meg Whitman. I’ll leave the opining about whether she is a good choice to the experts, but regardless of the choice, HP’s new CEO has a tough road ahead.

What can the board do to enable this 4th CEO to be successful?

1. Choose a great communicator. Sources say the board supported the strategy currently in place, but didn’t have confidence that it would be “sold” properly to the stakeholders. That’s a problem. Great leaders tend to be effective, even inspiring, communicators. 

2. Take control of the story…name your CEO, emphasize the reasons for the choice (hopefully someone with turnaround experience) in a first step to restore trust and confidence in the board. Make sure to highlight relevant skills and experience…one of the big criticisms of Whitman is that eBay is a consumer tech company, and built a company but never fixed one. 

3. Align third party support for the new CEO, and balance all of the negative quotes with some positive or at least neutral ones.

4. Make the new CEO’s first priority to fix the culture at HP. Many describe HP as multiple fiefdoms fighting for control…which explains frequency and volume of leaks that’s high even for tech companies. Build trust internally first, and external perception and performance will follow. 

5. Give your Corporate Communications leadership a seat at the table. A great PR strategist would likely have predicted most of these issues, and offered guidance on preemptive strategies, and remedies.

cwinters General Corporate eBay, HP, Meg Whitman

Like many in the entertainment business, Netflix, with its iconic red envelopes and game changing subscription model, is struggling with digital delivery. This is not a new problem…the old fashioned “record stores” (who by that point were selling CDs) cursed the advent of iTunes. And then video rental stores didn’t have much affection for Netflix, whose convenient, affordable approach caused significant disruption in their business. 

It isn’t called a category killer for nothing…and what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Digital delivery, primarily from the providers, is threatening to dethrone Netflix, in much the same way that they unseated TiVo from its seat of power. It’s cheap, provides instant gratification, and eliminates the need for a DVD player at all. And while Netflix struggles for a solution, they face an issue that TiVo and others like them never did: the power of social media. Social media’s amplification of Netflix’s stumbles in strategy were exacerbated by some questionable choices in communications…which appeared rushed, poorly planned and perhaps the gravest error of all…inwardly focused emphasizing their CEO’s opinion, rather than customer focused. 

It would be hard to believe that the decision to migrate Netflix customers to the Quikster brand and apply the Netflix brand to a different business was likely made carefully, and thoughtfully. Unfortunately, the communications cluster that followed made it look like a desperate, knee jerk reaction. And even if it were a quick decision, fast and well done aren’t mutually exclusive. We’ve been hired by clients the night before they file for Chapter 11, and still managed to communicate effectively. The difference is that those clients understood that communicating well is key to preserving stakeholder trust. This may be just the opportunity Amazon needed to capture the streaming video market…

cwinters General Corporate iTunes, Netflix, Qwikster, TiVO

Like all of us observing the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, I found myself facing a flood of emotions and memories this week that I didn’t necessarily want recalled.  I know my friends in the airline industry felt the same way.

As the lead airline reporter at Reuters at the time, I was closely covering not only the human aspects of the tragedy, but the financial ones as well. In addition to coping with the terrible loss of life and the almost constant anxiety that another attack was imminent, we all knew that there was a serious financial crisis underway that could have caused many airlines to simply go out of business. The situation was incredibly dire.

I remember being amazed and yes, proud, that our government reacted incredibly quickly – just 11 days after the attacks – to set up the Air Transportation Stabilization Board.

Almost immediately, the government was able distribute $5 billion in cash and up to $10 billion in loans to all of our nation’s airlines as they faced a major cash crunch when people simply stopped flying. It was the right thing to do.

Now, a decade later, United Airlines and American Airlines – two of our national icons which had absorbed the remnants of early pioneers Pan Am and TWA – are still flying strong. I remember vividly the almost poetic moment when President George W. Bush traveled to O’Hare airport in Chicago on September 27, 2001, to honor the airline employees and spoke with the backdrop of two jets behind him from both of those airlines.

The photo remains a powerful symbol that we prevailed in the face of horror. Everyone who was at that high-security event – including hundreds of journalists like me – was incredibly moved and many wept. I later went to work at United as the company faced ongoing financial pressures and was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a situation that no one wanted to happen. But once again, it was also very fitting that another one of our American treasures, our legal system, enabled United to fix its balance sheet in an orderly way, saving the jobs of roughly 80,000 people.

The airline industry that was born in this country continues to enable commerce all around the world, thanks in large part to the actions of our government and the airlines themselves in the immediate 9/11 aftermath. While flying might not be a lot of fun these days, we should all be grateful and proud that we can still go about our business as we always have.

We should also use this example of leadership in Washington – in partnership with one of our major industries at a time of incredible duress – as proof positive that our government can and should step up to the plate during this current time of economic turmoil. Where there’s a will, there is definitely a way.

kfieweger General Corporate 9/11, Air Transportation Stabilization Board, American Airlines, United Airlines

To use your CEO, or not use your CEO?  A much debated topic in the crisis communications circles.  But an equally valid question when it comes to other high stakes situations, such as the contract negotiations between the UAW and GM, where GM’s CEO has been actively participating in the negotiations.

It’s not typical for the CEO to sit at the bargaining table, until the deal is pretty much done – when the leaders of both sides can come together for a nice photo opp and a few quotes about working together.  But then again, what has been typical about GM, or the automotive industry lately?

The automotive makers have struggled with remaining competitive; with the labor cost structure cited as a major driver of Detroit’s decline….and ultimate government bailout.  This is a mistake that the automakers can’t afford to repeat. 

As a general rule of thumb, it’s always smart to have an escalation plan.  An opportunity to bring in a bigger gun if communication, or in this case, negotiations, start to go south.  Once you’ve engaged your CEO – you can’t “downgrade” to another executive.  On the flip side, leading with your CEO sends a strong message that the situation is serious, and that all resources are being deployed to resolve this issue.

In the case of GM, this contract (the first that’s been negotiated since the bailout agreements) is the pace car for the rest of the industry for the foreseeable future.  If that isn’t important enough to warrant CEO attention, what is?

cwinters General Corporate CEO communications, GM, negotiations, UAW

Remember when disruptive was a dirty word? As in:

“Dear Mrs. Jones,

Little Johnny is bright, articulate and eager to learn. However, his disruptive behavior is a major concern, and penalizes the other 24 children in our class. Please have Johnny write ‘I will not disrupt the class’ 100 times for homework. Hopefully, this will get his disruptiveness under control.”

Increasingly, I am seeing disruptiveness categorized as a positive attribute…companies want to be known as disruptive (often in the context of innovation); leaders are hailed as disruptive. GM’s Dan Akerson recently held disruption exercises with his leadership team.

It is a radical application of common sense to see that doing “more of the same” isn’t going to get America back to work, or pull our economy out of its malaise. As leaders in Washington debate the debt ceiling and policy initiatives to stimulate the economy – in boardrooms everywhere, people are embracing disruption. They are holding up examples like Apple, Google, Southwest Airlines and Chipotle as examples of the inherent value of disruptiveness, and striving to find their own version of disruption.

When it comes to leadership, “disruptive” is the new black. Like most leadership trends, the devil is in the details. True disruptiveness can reinvent, reinvigorate and restore relevance of a company or a brand. But using the disruptive label, without substance, runs the risk of simply adding to the graveyard of overused, meaningless corporate buzzwords like paradigm shift, collaborate and alignment.

Can we disrupt the nature of corporate speak and preserve the authenticity of being truly disruptive? Only time will tell.

cwinters General Corporate Apple, Chipotle, Disruption, Economy, Google, Southwest Airlines