The New York Times ran an interesting piece this past weekend (“In Case of Emergency: What Not to Do”) on what can be learned by crisis management mistakes made by such industry-leading companies as BP, Toyota and Goldman Sachs.

There’s been a lot of discussion over the past several years about how crisis management has changed, particularly with social networks providing a much bigger stage for issues to catch instant fire. We saw this play out most recently with JetBlue, a topic my colleague Rob Goodman discussed earlier this week.

While the need for greater speed, broader engagement strategies and approach to the tone of messaging are a clear change (and in some cases such as JetBlue, what business decisions should be made), it struck me that many of the fundamentals of crisis management have and will always remain the same. And yet, companies still seem to fail at these basics:

1)      Put those who are impacted first. Having managed several crises in my career, I’ve seen the initial defensiveness and temptation to shift blame set right out of the gate.  All the while those who have been or could be impacted get lost. First things first- make sure you’ve expressed sincere concern, start taking immediate action and let the public know what they need to do. Unfolding how things happened and where fingers should be pointed can wait.

2)      Never blame the customer. The NYT piece provides some great examples of how this has backfired, particularly when Audi blamed customers for acceleration issues that led to hundreds of crashes in the 1980s. Even if true, better to explain how to avoid a crash than blatantly say it’s the customers fault.

3)      Know your full situation before making bold claims. In the case of Toyota, they clearly didn’t have a clear perspective on what was causing their acceleration issues, but still moved forward with offering explanations. The problem: turns out their explanations weren’t entirely true, and they were further exposed when the full story was revealed. Better to say you are still evaluating the issue than offer up or provide the wrong answer.

4)      Never lie. This one goes without explanation. One hundred percent guaranteed you’ll get caught. It amazes me that companies (and people) still think they’ll get away with it. Bill Clinton? Steroid users in baseball? Just a few examples.

5)      Have a crisis plan in place. For many companies, crisis is inevitable. Having at least the basics in place for when that time hits is imperative, and yet, so many are left in a scramble because they were in a state of denial. This is a guaranteed recipe for a double crisis- the one at hand, and the one with PR teams, executives and lawyers wasting precious hours trying to figure out what to do.

It amazes me that such established and sophisticated brands outlined in this article missed the boat on these fundamentals which have remained true for eons. I can see not understanding how to implement social media into the strategy, but making claims before you know the full truth? Ouch.

What other companies do you think botched the basics? Which companies do you think have handled a crisis situation wisely?

By now we’ve all heard about the JetBlue flight attendant, Steven Slater, who apparently had had enough of the rude passengers and bailed out on his plane by deploying the emergency slide on the runway to walk away from his job. Not to be caught empty-handed he even had the nerve to take a few beers with him. Kind of reminds me of the scene from the movie Network where actor Peter Finch opens up his office window and shouts “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Steven appears to be the classic anti-hero in this tale and his legend seems to have grown day-by-day. There’s even a Facebook page devoted to this story and it reportedly got over 20,000 Facebook fans in less than a week.

A quick check online came up with a wide variety of stories in such outlets as Forbes, Chief Marketer, TMZ, andABCnews.com. There are tons of other sites (business, general news, airlines, blogs, etc.) that have covered the news but what I find interesting is how JetBlue has handled the situation.

In today’s media-centric, 24×7 news cycle world, reputations and opinions can be severely tarnished if the wrong message gets out. For example BP made a number of mistakes with how they approached the fiasco of the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

JetBlue, a relative newcomer on the corporate scene in the world of aviation, could have taken a hard-line approach by reprimanding or firing Steven. While the airline would have been completely justified I’m sure public opinion would somehow be swayed to provide support to him. My feeling is that almost any company would have taken this approach. However, as soon as I heard how JetBlue was approaching the issue, one company came to mind: Southwest Airlines.

Southwest has always been known as a company that approaches customer service, at least during the in-flight service, as light-hearted. Pilots sharing humorous flight plan information over the intercom, flight attendants who sing, etc. It sets a tone for fun and makes flying, which isn’t the easiest of tasks, more enjoyable.

Following suit is JetBlue, an airline known to take a unique approach to managing an airline and providing amenities for customers who seem to remain quite loyal. In fact JetBlue was the highest ranked airlines in the 13the Annual Loyalty Leaders poll. JetBlue’s blog entry on August 11 poked fun at the situation, went out of its way to praise its entire in-flight crew members, and generally diffused the situation. For a potentially huge crisis situation, JetBlue’s self-effacing approach appears to have paid off.

What about you? How have you dealt with crisis management issues? How did you go about protecting your company’s brand image?

How many times have you heard or read that companies should just forge ahead with a social media program even though the return on investment is hard to quantify? I’m not going to point fingers, but it’s been repeated so often it’s become the mantra of so-called social media experts.

This is really bad advice.

Social media is no different than any other type of marketing activity. It takes time and resources to write blogs and record podcasts, build followers on Twitter or create decent videos for YouTube. If you’re going to suck up those resources they had better bring demonstrable value that advances critical business goals. Without that grounding, you’re just wasting your time.

Every solid PR or marketing plan I worked on over the last decade or so began with a SWOT analysis linked back to business objectives, like establish a foothold in market X with this demographic, or protect our flanks in this segment Y from low-cost competitors.  From there we worked out strategies and tactics – that could involve a social media component –  and thought through a set of metrics to determine if the programs were successful.

A major advantage with social media compared to traditional PR is the abundance of tracking tools. You can see the number of re-tweets or Facebook Like button clicks and then drill down to better understand the type of traction you’re getting. Ideally these efforts generate more website traffic which leads to more business.

Social media is ultimately a tool, another arrow in the marketing quiver. If you combine it with solid business and marketing practices, the ROI is sure to follow.

I guess David Bowie had it right so many years ago. Change, so the saying goes, is inevitable in life. We change jobs, change clothes, and change hair styles. To me, though, it seems that I rarely hear about people who talk about how their profession has changed.

I’ve been in PR for over 20 years with almost all of that time focusing on the high tech industry. I remember the days of faxing information, waiting anxiously for the weekly hardcopy of InformationWeek to see if my client’s news had been covered, and watching the rise, fall, and rise again of Apple—I was at MacWorld ’97 when Steve Jobs returned. Needless to say, it’s been quite a ride but far from boring.

In fact, that’s one of the things I like most about working in the world of high tech PR. To a large extent technology dictates how we perform our jobs. The rise of social media in the past few years has had a  dramatic impact on how our industry functions. Mashable just published an interesting article about how technology, mostly social media, has changed many of the fundamental tools of our trade including press releases and the way we connect with members of the press and other influentials.

But what do these changes mean to your agency brand? Is your agency one to embrace change just to please a client or do you work in an environment that craves new ideas? I’ve had the good fortune to work both in-house on the corporate side and for a few agencies and I can honestly say that the places where technology and new ideas were adopted were the best places to be. Some people are resistant to change and sometimes waiting for the dust to settle is right move. But with it comes the risk getting marginalized and left behind.

The ability to learn, grow and develop is one of the things that gets me out of bed in the morning. What about you? What hooked you and keeps you in the PR world?

It’s Monday morning and I’m in my usual work routine…check the headlines from business and tech publications to see what’s going on in the world. A good PR person never wants to be caught off-guard and have a client call to discuss news that is relevant to them and the industry without being prepared, but that’s just my humble opinion.

I just read what I consider to be a fascinating article by Daniel Terdiman from c/net titled “At IBM Research, a constant quest for the bleeding edge“. The article discusses a handful of projects that are being worked on at the nine IBM research centers around the world. One project with a biology slant involves two researchers who are coming up with a procedure in which they drilled a tiny hole into a microprocessor in order to allow a strand of DNA to go through and impact its nanocircuitry. Another project, called “Lab on a Chip,” is trying to create an inexpensive and quick way for medical facilities to test blood samples. And yet a third project could help municipalities offer residents cutting edge traffic and public transportation system predictions that are far better than anything available today.

What we’re seeing here is an emphasis on researching and developing new technologies that can help people in ways never thought possible before. As Terdiman stated:

“Throughout my visit to IBM Research, nearly everyone I spoke with brought up Smarter Planet, IBM’s corporate innovation program that aims to gather data from a wide variety of sources and use analysis of that data to solve new problems for customers and clients alike.”

So why am I going on and on in praise of IBM, a $97 billion company? Aside from the fact that my father worked for IBM for 30 years, which gave me a natural bias towards Big Blue, it reminded me of why I got into this business. I cannot design a microchip, am not qualified to do biological research and can’t describe how a CPU works. None of that interests me nor has it ever. And yet my world, both professionally and personally, revolves around technology.

What I have always loved about technology is how it impacts our world on a daily basis. Is my T-Mobile G1 phone with the Android O/S saving the world? No, but it has kept me from getting lost thanks to its Map application, allowed me to take a picture while boating in the middle of Lake Pend O’Reille in Idaho and posting it to Facebook in real-time, and let me instant message with my kids during carpools.

It’s these types of advances that give me hope that people and companies will continue to create new technologies that not only help support corporate growth, but allow young minds to be creative and ask the question…why not?

One of my first jobs in the tech sector was working at Regis McKenna Inc., a noted strategic business and communications consulting firm in Silicon Valley. The company is well-known for helping to launch many noted companies and was credited with helping to design the famous multi-colored Apple logo. But that was before my time.

One of my first clients to work with was Go Corporation. The company created one of the first, if not the first (but I can’t remember for sure), PenPoint computers. It seemed like a great idea, full of creativity and imagination, and it felt as though we were ushering in a new era of futuristic computers. I figured we’d finally be able to buy hovercraft cars and jet packs in the near future.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the party. The handwriting recognition wasn’t up to snuff. Around the same time Apple came out with the Newton and, low and behold, the handwriting software still couldn’t cut it. I knew that the technology had entered the mainstream when the cartoon strip, Bloom County, took a few shots at the Newton and mocked its inability to correctly recognize a user’s handwriting.

So why am I getting all nostalgic? Well, sitting in the PR chair allows us communications folks to play gatekeeper on the B.S. meter. While we may be one of the last groups to get involved with a product launch, we should be the voice of reason when it comes to public perception. We have to have a strong understanding of what the editorial community as well as the general public will say about the announcement and play a central role in message development. We have to be prepared to not only orchestrate the launch (everybody likes stuffing press kits into folders in the middle of the night before a press conference, right?), but get ready to react to what the editors and the public say if something backfires. You think Apple might have been caught off-guard recently when the problems with the iPhone 4 erupted? What a nightmare.

Good communicators think ahead and try to plan for a wide variety of reactions when new products are launched. We have to think through the tough questions and figure out what could go wrong. Back in 1993 we thought Go Corporation was going to hit a home run and lead a new market. If Go had adjusted expectations differently – and more appropriately given the limitations of the technology – would Go have found some profitable niches and still be around today? Overhyping immature technology is always a mistake, and more often than not, fatal.

So what experiences have you had with product announcements that have gone awry? What are some tips you’ve found helpful to make sure you’re truly prepared?

Pardon me if I’m a week behind the times but I was out last week. But even being away from my desk for a few days didn’t shield me from the fiasco that Apple has been enduring. For the situation to be referred to as a “Toyota-style PR crisis for Apple sure says a mouthful. By now everyone has heard about the little glitch that the iPhone 4 is suffering from. Even Consumer Reports jumped on the bandwagon and said it couldn’t recommend the iPhone 4 after giving it a positive rating initially.

Now let’s take a step back for a minute. Apple has one of the strongest brands in the world. Known for quality and innovative products, the company has always been more user-friendly than just about another other tech company. Yet somehow this killer new product has fallen on hard times (from a PR perspective, sales seem to be holding up for now) due to a technical error with the antenna. In reading the coverage it seems that more people are interested in the PR fiasco than the actual error, probably because Apple has handled the situation so poorly. As my noted colleague discussed, is the hype around the problem bigger than the problem itself? So what does this Fortune 500 company, with one of the strongest brands in the world, do to manage this crisis?

They tell customers to hold the phone differently.

What do users say? Use duct tape Not exactly rocket science here but you get the picture.

What’s most amazing to me, a PR professional that worked at Apple in the 1990′s, is how badly Apple has handled this crisis. Most of the PR experts who have weighed in on this one agree that there are some very basic principles you follow in a crisis situation like this one—acknowledge the problem, ensure consumer trust by saying the issue is being examined and addressed, craft your story and stick to it.

Many PR pros who focus on crisis management have weighed in on how poorly Apple has handled this one:

Instead of addressing the problem and offering to find a solution like Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol tampering in the early 1980s, Apple has come off more like Toyota and BP during their recent reputation-annihilating incidents. “The biggest mistake (Apple) made is they keep changing their story,” said Ira Kalb, professor of marketing at USC Marshall School of Business. CNET

After users reported problems with signal strength and dropped calls when they touched the lower-left portion of the phone, however, Apple suggested that consumers hold the phone differently or use one of many bumpers to insulate the antenna. It also said that all phones suffered from similar problems when they were cradled a certain way. These comments were widely laughed at in gadget blogs. New York Times

To say it isn’t good to be mentioned in the same breath as BP and Toyota would be an understatement.

So my question is…how could Apple have made such a big mistake in how they’ve handled this? And what impact will this have on the Apple brand? Granted, sometimes you can’t control the story the way you’d like to but Apple really blew this one. Apple has had product issues in the past yet as philosopher Edmund Burke said “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Guess Apple didn’t study its own history. Or is Apple getting a little too big and too arrogant for its own good?

So what communication crisis have you had to manage? Any tips for readers out there?

The Wall Street Journal today is reporting that the vast majority of Toyota accidents were the result of…driver error. Not sticky brake pedals:

The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren’t engaged at the time of the crash, people familiar with the findings said.

The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes.

What’s even more fascinating is how the grievance count suddenly shot up once people heard about the problem. Actually, we didn’t just hear about it, but were barraged by a non-stop, relentless news cycle involving electronic media, print and online media outlet and social media buzz.  Did the hype – not problems with Toyota – lead to the jump in complaints?  I’d say that looks like a pretty safe assumption.

A similar case of hype leading to mass hysteria is the latest (albeit flawed) Apple iPhone.  While it’s a nice device, there is very little that’s truly new or groundbreaking. If you already have an iPhone or an Android device, there’s not much reason to run right out and buy one.  The rational response would be to hold off until your natural upgrade cycle comes around.

The irrational response, fueled by months of breathless expectation by media and bloggers, along with Steve Jobs’ showmanship at launch, resulted in the thousands upon thousands of people waiting in line to drop down their hard-earned money on a device virtually the same as what they already have. Say what? My take, is the hype created a form of temporary insanity on a mass level, perhaps akin to the way mobs work.

Another example is designer handbags among teenage girls. Although somewhat tempered of late by the recession, my daughter went through a phase where she simply had to have expensive purses.  Working a minimum wage job, she would save pennies to get the latest Dooney & Bourke offering. I would see her purses and just couldn’t understand why she along with many other teenage girls would pay so much for what amounted to a fancy label. Hype and peer pressure are the only explanations.

As a PR person, I’m aware of the influence of hype and therefore largely resistant to its influence.  I counseled friends to buy Toyotas when the sales crashed earlier this year, and tend to avoid overhyped, overpriced Apple products.

But I am fascinated by the incredible power of hype to shape people’s behavior.

To no small degree, this is what marketing, advertising and PR people dream about and strategize endlessly to achieve. Get enough hype, and you have just hit the lottery.  So what’s the magic formula?  Still working on that one, but I’ll let you know once I figure it out.

Regardless of what type of business you’re in, it’s fair to say that the phrase “customer is king” is probably your #1 thought. Whatever you build, create, manufacture or whatever service you provide odds are you are selling something to someone else. Heck, in PR we “sell” our story ideas to editors who in many ways are our customers. But really, how many of us truly focus on making sure that we understand our customers and use that information to improve our performance?

Recently I ran across an interesting post on the Customer’s Rock blog by Becky Carroll titled “The Importance of Customer Listening.” Check out the examples of excellent customer service that she shared:

At Lands’ End, professionals had to help out in the warehouse, or on the phones, during the holiday season and during bad weather. You learn a lot about customers doing that. At Nordstrom, we had to physically work in stores, or take orders over the phone, during major sale events.At Lands’ End and Nordstrom, we learned a lot about customers, by actually spending some time being close to the customer. Both brands are well known for their appreciation of the customer, both brands require professionals to have some interaction with the customer.

I can vouch for Lands’ End personally and my wife can for Nordstrom. There are many other companies out there who not only take customer feedback, but they share it within different departments and make changes based on customer feedback.

In the PR world we have clients, editors and analysts who are our customers. We provide them with news, story ideas and references. In the past this was typically done in one of two ways: one-way pitching (e-mail), and two-way/dialogue (phone call). Both of these were one-to-one. But with the continued growth of social media, our world has become much more of a one-to-many environment thanks to social media tools like company blogs, Twitter and Facebook.

While the wide adoption of social media has in many ways made our work easier, what about the personal connection that is established through dialogue and phone calls? Has this technology improved the way PR pros deliver value to “customers” or has it taken the one-to-one, personal connection out of the equation?

As we all know, the only constant in the world is change.  During periods of change we all go through natural cycles of resistance, denial and ultimately everyone moves on and accepts the new reality.

Maybe it has something to do with the speed that news travels via the Web and social media, but class in the face of pressure and change seems to be something that has gone missing in action of late.

The latest example is the scathing letter from Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert about LeBron James’ decision to join the Miami Heat.  In a display of absolutely zero class, Gilbert called LeBron’s decision “a shameful display of selfishness and betrayal by one of our very own.”

What Gilbert fails to mention is that LeBron’s presence in Cleveland for the last several years has increased the value of his franchise by over $100 million and led to a sold out arena night in and night out. Gilbert should have been thanking LeBron for the contribution to his personal net worth and wished him the best in his new endeavor.

That would be the classy thing to do.  Sure Gilbert is in denial, but perhaps he should he should have just kept it to himself. While people in Cleveland might appreciate Gilbert’s diatribe, it’s unlikely this does much for the Cav’s brand around the country.

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