Social Media & Crisis Communications: Not an Oxymoron

Is Marrying Marketing & News Like Kissing a Pig?

by Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®


My good friend Richard (Dick) Miles’ recent post on his own blog, Edit30, brilliantly captures the collision of today’s new media with the age-old challenge of addressing a crisis. Social media now have a major role in alerting the masses.

Dick sites a fascinating and very valuable AdAge article by Pete Blackshaw, exec VP of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services. He uses the response to the swine flu crisis by the Centers for Disease Control as his case study for the intersection of a crisis and social media. Blackshaw says,

“At the end of the day, communities are popping up all over the social-media landscape around the swine flu issue, which means CDC needs a presence, or some level of representation everywhere. The CDC has made its swine flu information easy to share and pass-on virally through social networks. Whether through widgets, Twitter links or embeddable mobile apps, they did precisely this.”

What’s especially interesting is that Blackshaw’s whole premise is based on how marketers are responding to the new, social media. In my years of experience, news and marketing were rarely, if ever, brought together. But Pete Blackshaw is absolutely correct. Communicators dealing with the news media have got to take a marketing approach.

This does not mean developing and delivering messaging that is laden with company/organization slogans. But, with all the available channels of information today, you have to think as a marketer, determine all the possible places your audiences can be located and then strategically create valid and newsworthy messages.

Will Mike Vick Become a PETA Spokesman?

Credibility is earned by what’s said and who says it!

By Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®

AdAge is reporting imprisoned NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s people are talking to PETA about Vick becoming a spokesman on behalf of the organization. Of course, Vick is serving time for engaging in dog fighting. I suppose both Vick and the animal protectors have lots of questions to consider before, or if, this becomes a deal.

Is it a good idea? Who has more to gain? Better yet, who has more to lose? Will Vick be sincere? More importantly, will he be perceived as being sincere? Does his history offer evidence that he can honestly change?

At a recent federal court hearing updating Vick’s financial obligations, the judge made a point of telling the imprisoned pro football player that he—the judge—was not yet convinced of any remorse on Vick’s part. He sent him back to his Leavenworth prison cell with that admonition to ponder.

Vick has had well over a year to begin apologizing and retooling his image. Instead, he’s remained silent while news stories about his questionable financial manipulations have filled the void.

It does appear that PETA, sometimes extreme and unrealistic in its causes, has more to lose in this situation. If Vick is not believable, then PETA appears to have been sucked in and used. Vick’s history does not offer strong evidence he can be convincing.

PETA’s director of youth outreach and campaigns, Dan Shannon, wants Vick to undergo psychological evaluation before any decisions are made:

"We're suspicious this may come from a place of simply wanting to repair his public image, rather than genuine remorse. He was dishonest all the way up the line until he finally had to admit to what he did, which is a hallmark of [antisocial personality disorder]. If he can't tell the difference between right and wrong, we can't get in bed with this guy. At this point, he hasn't chosen to submit to an evaluation. We hope the NFL will require that evaluation as a precondition of reinstatement. The bottom line is: Everybody knows he's going to
apologize, go on Oprah and Larry King and say he did wrong, that he learned his lesson. But there's no reason for anybody to take his word for that based on the pattern of dishonesty and the severity of cruelty he took part in."

That being said, one has to wonder if/why PETA really is seriouly considering it. As for Vick's side of this story, no one was willing to talk to AdAge.

And, finally, it’s of some interest to note that nothing about any discussions with Mike Vick can be found (at this writing) on PETA’s homepage or news page.

Lessons from the Dominos Experience

By Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®

Two teenagers with a twisted sense of humor, incriminating themselves with a phone camera as one of them appears to be disgustingly tainting a customer’s sandwich as he prepares it in a Dominos kitchen in North Carolina. They post their mischief on youtube.com and it gets hundreds of thousands of hits.

According to Advertising Age, Dominos management first wanted to remain “below the radar.” It was a poor decision, and one management had to reverse in order to fight fire with fire. But, Dominos hesitation may have cost it more on image than necessary, even though some loss was inevitable had the pizza chain reacted positively immediately.

The AdAge online story reports: “Unfortunately for Domino's, the video has already taken at least a temporary toll on quality and buzz ratings, as measured by BrandIndex. So far the changes are driven by negative perceptions among women. Buzz fell from 22.5 points last Friday to 13.6 yesterday. More significantly, Domino's quality rating fell from 5 on Monday to minus 2.8 yesterday. Quality ratings are generally more stable, less susceptible to the news cycle and unlikely to move quickly in one direction or the other.”

But Dominos headquarters still seems to be getting in its own way, with apparent fear of making a bad situation worse. They’ve made it difficult to find the company’s response on its own Web site. It first requires an educated guess, clicking on the tiny font link “Corporate Info” at the bottom of the homepage, then finding a brief blurb “To Our Customers”, clicking on that and finally seeing the full statement. That statement includes the video Dominos USA President Patrick Doyle posted on youtube.com. This message should be loud and clear on the company homepage.

Remaining “under the radar” in this type of situation virtually is impossible today. The Internet has removed that option, just as it has dispensed with deadlines. Everything is immediate and, while not always “fair” game, everything today is in play.

Learn from this experience. You cannot afford to wait. In fact, you need to plan today for tomorrow’s possible crisis. Consider all the situations you can anticipate and craft a plan for quick action. Dominos’ president’s video was effective. He could not prevent some damage to the company’s image, thanks to the immature and, possibly criminal, actions of two teenaged employees. However, immediate, positive response usually will restore a good reputation in the long term.

Remember the finger-in-the chili incident perpetrated on Wendy’s several years ago?