The latest in a series of shocking revelations in the BP incident, the CEO acknowledges that their crisis plan was inadequate. ”We didn’t have the tools in the toolbox.”

For communicators (ok, maybe for everyone), the revelation that there really wasn’t much of a crisis plan is nothing short of astounding. And the rapid succession of crisis issues this past year in energy, mining and banking, just to name a few, suggests that the for some of these industries, the lack of preparedness is nothing short of breathtaking.

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Here is my POV about the 4 things that separate the “men from the boys” in terms of good, effective crisis preparedness.

• An integrated plan that deals with both operations, and communications/stakeholder management. Nothing does more damage than actions that don’t synch with the words…building your plans together ensures a coordinated response.
• A process with clearly defined roles and approaches to decision making….not a plan built on individuals, who may or may not be available. Person-centric plans are reputational Kryptonite…they rarely work, and when they do, they are too slow to be effective in an environment where the proverbial “first hour” has become 60 seconds.
• A mechanism that allows for speed, and use of judgment and application of your principals – because no plan can plan for everything….and if you try, it becomes too big and cumbersome to use effectively. A crisis plan should be able to be carried in your pocket, not your wheelbarrow.
• Total Stakeholder Approach…my recent blog about President Obama saying the BP CEO wouldn’t work for him says it all. And do we really think the families of the 11 men killed care that Mr. CEO wants his life back?

cwinters Crisis Communications BP, Crisis

Someone was in a Walmart in Louisiana, and took a picture of a black and white Barbie, the exact same Barbie save for skin tone, sitting side by side on the shelf. The black Barbie was cheaper than the white Barbie.

The photo found its way to a humor website, then to a Latino website, and ultimately, into an ABC News report among others, then cycled back into the blogosphere.

I don’t believe for a second there was a sinister motivation on Walmart’s part. ABC had comment from experts that feel the same. I, like them, think it was just a stupid mistake. Perhaps “smart business,” based on very business-y calculations – inventory, demand, pricing. But not smart business – boneheaded, really – in that it ignored what a customer might think, how it might be perceived, and the challenges facing Walmart’s reputation in general.

Two things are salient here.

One is that social media and mainstream news are increasingly not separate things. It isn’t breaking news, but a customer with a cell phone camera can imperil your reputation. Have you ever watched the news – be it CNN or MSNBC or Fox – in the middle of the day? It’s dotted with reporting , a term I use loosely here, on what a celebrity said on Twitter or what video is ripping hot on YouTube. We have to consider this and think more critically.

The other is the sometimes yawning gap between intention and perception. That’s where reputation much of the time lives. The spokesperson for Walmart said “Pricing like items differently is a part of inventory management in retailing.” No question, makes sense, perfectly reasonable. But I’m sure they understand why in this particular case that’s not the whole story.

Reputation managers must advocate to their company or their client that we are all communicators now, like it or not, and we need to take our thinking one or two steps beyond our job description. Of course, with 20/20 hindsight, an inventory or pricing manager should have recognized the problem here.

We should try for the foresight.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate Barbie, Crisis, Social Media, Walmart

We wanted to share this commentary from our CEO, Michael Kempner, which was also published at New Jersey Newsroom

The old rules no longer apply. In fact, they have not applied for quite some time.

As recent headlines made clear, crisis communications is now driven by digital media. Television. Radio. Newspapers. Rather than leading the public discussion of Tiger Woods or Toyota, these traditional – some would say increasingly archaic – mediums seem more like they are trying to catch up with the drama being played out minute-by-minute on Twitter, on Facebook, and on blogs.

To say that the news cycle moves at a frenetic pace may be an understatement. This is the new normal … and it has been for several years. In fact, shrewd companies implemented corporate social media policies years ago and have incorporated them into their daily marketing and communications activities.

This is particularly true for brands in crisis.

Gone is the focus on the evening news or the morning newspaper. Gone is the ability to craft a single, official-sounding press release. Gone is the ability to control the flow of bad information.

When the 1982 Tylenol scare was unfolding, company executives had to deal with a relatively new, relatively challenging phenomenon: a 24-hour news cycle. Information had to flow faster. Stories were harder to control. And crisis communications took on a whole new meaning. In other words, CNN made life a whole lot more challenging for companies trying to do damage control.

Yet, the medium and the message were essentially unchanged. Johnson & Johnson still relied on traditional media and were still able to use the same statements – substantively – for each venue.

Fast forward to 2010 when Toyota and Southwest Airlines were confronted with their own crises, and you have a vastly different, vastly more challenging picture. New venues. New expectations. New opportunities. New challenges.

Without question, Toyota’s response to its growing recall has failed in almost every respect. It has been slow. It has been confused. And it has been premised on the company’s misguided belief that it could control the flow of bad information. These missteps, in turn, have been compounded by Toyota’s failure to effectively use social media – something that is further undermining the company’s ability to tell its story, connect with its customers and maintain its credibility.

Southwest, on the other hand, immediately turned to digital outlets when actor Kevin Smith began tweeting to his 1.6 million followers about his “embarrassing” experience aboard a recent flight. Granted, the airline got beaten to the punch in this case of “he said, she said”, but it moved swiftly across a range of digital mediums — with a host of individually tailored messages — to issue its apology and clarify the situation.

Yet, it is instructive to recognize that this relatively minor story – which started from less than 140 characters on Twitter – almost immediately resulted in over 500,000 Google web results, over 50,000 blog entries, and nearly 2,000 news stories on the matter.

Back in the day, Tiger Wood’s carefully choreographed press event would have largely controlled the story. The evening news would have covered it. The morning newspapers would have covered it. And that would be the end of the conversation until later that evening. No blog postings. No Facebook comments. No tweets. No nothing. Just some water cooler talk among colleagues.

That was then.

Today, regardless of the company or the crisis, the fact remains: Information – real and rumor – travels at lightning speed…literally. The pace and form of information flow is now near impossible to control. The best a company can hope to do is try to manage it. And the best way to manage it is to embrace the new normal with respect to crisis communications.

In other words, go digital … yesterday.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate Crisis, Tiger Woods, Toyota

Tiger Woods’ Thanksgiving weekend car crash spawned a cottage industry for the media. The tabloids have reported breathlessly 24/7 about his alleged extra-marital exploits, the participants (both outed and self promoted) and a possible stay at a rehab facility. Cable and national TV news programs have to various extents joined the tabloid fray or just reported on the tabloid reports. The business/financial media have covered Tiger’s myriad sponsors and their varying reactions to his debacle as well as the financial impact on him, his sponsors and the golf industry.

Now comes Tiger’s first public pronouncement on the dalliances that have gripped the nation (ABC News ran the news as their lead story last night in front on the release of Americans held in Haiti, the one-year anniversary of the stimulus and the US gold medal haul in Vancouver). Tiger and his people, who already have a nice record of pr/crisis communications missteps since late November, have dictated that his appearance in front of a group of hand-picked friends, colleagues and close associates will include only a short statement in front of one camera with no reporters or Q&A.

The logistics and choreography of this event should be a primer for celebrities/sports stars as well as corporations/executives on how not to respond to a reputational crisis. Corporations and sports stars who deal with crises successfully have learned that the best way to move forward and begin reputational repairs is to address the situation quickly and factually, to be transparent and to engage the questions of the media and the public. To do otherwise only perpetuates the crisis, allowing others to fill the void with their own answers, competitors to seize on the opportunities that are afforded and reputations to remain denigrated.

The executives at Toyota (who made numerous communications missteps but are slowly figuring things out) and former baseball star and now avowed steroid user Mark McGwire (who after years in the wilderness is making his way back) are just two recent examples of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to crisis communications and reputation. Tiger is arguably the greatest golfer of all-time but is terms of crisis communication and repairing the reputation he worked so hard to build he is nothing more than a weekend duffer.

Richard Tauberman can be reached at rtauberman@mww.com.

rtauberman Crisis Communications Crisis, reputation, Tiger Woods

If you missed the coverage yesterday, Johnson & Johnson’s response to FDA warnings on the dangers of excessive acetaminophen use and its calls for ‘extra strength’ doses to be available by prescription only was a great example of aggressive issues management. 

Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol, one of J&J’s biggest sellers.  Rather than assume a defensive posture, go dark and avoid the issue or contest the FDA’s claims with a torrent of scientific facts and figures, J&J took a clear and simple stand.  They took out full-page ads in USA Today, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others clearly stating that Tylenol is “the safest brand of pain reliever you can choose”…”if you take more than the recommended dose…you can cause serious liver injury.”

It is refreshing to see a company which has specifically told us how to use their product, stand their ground and hold consumers accountable for their own actions.  If the box says take two…and not to exceed a certain number of doses per day…and you proceed to down half a bottle like they were jelly beans…guess what, you did it to yourself. 

In a perfect world all manufacturers would have products as well-tested as Tylenol and all packaging would include directions as crystal clear as those that J&J provides.  In that same perfect world consumers would actually read the directions and abide by them.  Making something as simple as Extra Strength Tylenol available only by prescription really doesn’t solve the obvious problem here – consumers need to start taking responsibility for their own actions and ownership of the outcomes.  After all, once the CVS pharmacist hands you a full bottle of prescription-grade acetaminophen – you know, the one with the big words on it that says “TAKE TWO” just like the current packaging says -isn’t it still in the hands of the consumer to actually use some common sense.

Bravo to J&J for taking a stand.  Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.  Most people shun accountability and lawyers abound.  It shouldn’t take long for someone with liver ailments or an aggressive attorney to start dreaming of a new in-ground pool or trip to Paris financed by a class action lawsuit.  Perhaps one day it will dawn on us that “consumer rights” don’t include the right to avoid responsibility.

msacks Crisis Communications Crisis

On January 15th we witnessed commercial aviation history and saw first-hand the dynamics of crisis communications in today’s digitally-enhanced communications environment. 

Just before 3:30 pm Flight 1549 skimmed to a stop in the middle of the Hudson and immediately became the focal point of a squadron of news helicopters and scores of observers armed with every digital toy known to man.  Within minutes Tweets were flying, bloggers were posting and video was streaming across the Net.

Three hours later the ether was awash in coverage of Flight 1549 – over a quarter million Web pages highlighting the incident, several thousand related Twitter posts, nearly 3,000 stories from media outlets, over 400 blog posts, some 1,500 videos available online. ..all of this plus the expected deluge of coverage from traditional media channels.

The pace at which the news spread was as startling as the potential for catastrophic reputation damage had the landing gone differently.  What could have been a reputation nightmare for US Airways instead turned into something very different thanks to Flight 1549’s heroic pilot and crew.  As far as crises go, this was a “best case” scenario but few organizations get so lucky when crises hits.

Following the incident I wrote a white paper looking at the timeline of events during the early hours following Flight 1549’s miraculous landing.  From a communications perspective all did not go smoothly that afternoon and there is much to learn. You can download the white paper here.

msacks Crisis Communications Airline, Crisis, Social Media