by John Cataldi | Sep 17, 2013 | PR Crisis, The Real Mad Men
During a corporate PR crisis, know that without having sufficient pre-planning in place the operational response will break down, customers will see this as a lethargic/half-hearted response or an ignored response and potentially escalate the situation and the brand perception of the company, especially that of management may appear weak, inept and potential civilly or criminally liable.
I have had to manage a few such instances recently to include 1) a major healthcare provider, 2) a Fortune 500 financial institution and 3) a well know fashion well know fashion house. The same techniques can really be applied to any PR or any customer service situation. Remember that there are no easy fixes in crisis management, but the following guidelines should help guide a resolution. If there is a contingency plan, follow it. If not, use the following guidelines to framework for your response.
Step 1. Demand Transparency Internally. If you are the prices manager, the burden of investigation will be on your hands. Take nothing at face value, trust yet verify all of the information received prior to formulating your response. I had client heavily vested into the political arena. I consider myself very much like a lawyer or doctor; I can only help you if you tell me what hurts and where. I require all of my clients to be 100% truthful about their needs and situation. In this case, the client could not stop softening the truth as he called it. Several crises into the project, I began to see character flaws in which my client’s improprieties and lack of candor was the root cause of. Regardless of the money, I require the upmost truth from those I work with. Anything less is not acceptable. I ended up firing the client. If you as a crisis manager are not getting adequate information or responses from your team, escalate to the next level of management ASAP. Do not forget to document everything.
Step 2. Understand what is at stake, Empathize. You need to see every situation through the eyes of your opposition. This may be a customer, partner, environmental group, government regulator or even the media. One of the largest healthcare processors for Medicare/Medicaid ran into a PR nightmare when it was discovered that an excess of $50 MM went uncollected. Jobs of heath care workers, patients and the $1 BB, 10-year contract of this healthcare processor was in peril. In any potential crisis situation where emotions or tempers may be raw it is important to be removed and objective. It is hard for you to address the pain of others without understanding how deep that pain may dwell. There is no one golden bullet statement or action. Tailor your crisis interactions always from the point(s) of the audiences affected.
Step 3. Own it or Assess the Situation! If you know without a shadow of a doubt that you or your company is at fault for the current crisis, then own it! Some good examples of crisis PR that I have working on was a the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill, a 2009 pharmaceutical manufacture that forgets to put the safety seal on a pharmaceuticals or a 2013 major fast food chain gets a report that metal shards were found in a taco meal. In these examples the responsible party was not necessarily clear. So, if your not sure, restate the situation to the respective parties, with empathy. ALWAYS…Tell the truth. By nature, people will avoid pain at all costs.
The following scenario is crisis PR, where guilt is purely by your association with a particular company or individual. The best approach is to own the relationship, have disbelief on the allegations, then create an out. For Example if the press asks about a relationship concerning an individual or company engaged in a (ENTER IN ANY CRISIS HERE – insider trading, embezzlement, etc.)
- Press: Was this man a friend?
- Your response: He is not just a friend he was my very good friend!
- Press: What this man a very good friend of yours?
- Your response: We were lifelong friends
- Press: Did you know that your lifelong friend is under investigations for X?
- Your response: I would be very surprised. I know his family, our kids go to school together, and this would be very much out of character. I will wait and that these allegations have no merit.
This gives the media no place to go because you ripped the Band-Aid off quickly. It may sting ALOT, but the worst of the pain is over.
Step 4. Have a Plan. Now it’s time to really investigate what happened and how to resolve with the least impact to your brand reputation. Always put a timetable with any process and document the progress. Releasing updates in the situations resolution shows strong leadership that is progressing to a resolution. People and press hate double speak, so insuring strong communication with those that will ultimately influence your brand is big. It is when NO action is taken that issues exponentially grow and become viral. Bottom line, if you don’t prepare, you will incur more damage. Don’t forget to continually monitor your situation this can range to viewing all news networks, monitoring social media to having boots on the ground giving near real time updates as the situation unfolds.
Step 5. Create Governance. Best phrased by Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.” In senescence, crisis PR should never be used as a witch-hunt to serve up a head to the mob. This is on opportunity to my your organization better, by putting in the checks and balances to insure that this particular crisis is not likely to recur.
Step 6. Self-Assess / Create a Contingency Plan. There is nothing wrong with being paranoid and having a contingency plan for the most common challenges that can arise with your particular market. As a benchmark, look at the crisis of other brands within the your industry. Then, you will need to preform an objective PR best practices assessment on how to handle. So, when / if the issues ever arises there is an established playbook on how to resolve without it becoming a PR crisis via proper handling. This will lay the groundwork for conducting a vulnerability audit (the first step in crisis preparedness), what I often find is a failure to address the many communications issues related to crisis/disaster response.
Please feel free to comment.
![Congressman Weiner, Don’t Be A Dick!]()
by John Cataldi | Jun 3, 2011 | Anthony Weiner, Politics, PR Crisis, Social Media
Rep Weiner defends his family jewels from media scrutiny – Weiner Gate, Day 7
Rep Weiner is not giving an inch to the rising media attraction to the identity of the infamous masked wiener, as seen on his twitter account “@RepWeiner”, less than a week ago. What are the hard facts in this case? Who cares! The net result of “Weiner Gate” is that the little known, outspoken congressman from New York’s 9th district has been thrust into the National spotlight, and believe it or not, is gaining positive social stature online.
As a media and political consultant, never have I seen so few inches arousing so much negative media attention while simultaneously gaining a positive social perception. So could this political fiasco for one NY congressman be his golden ticket to reelection in 2012?
According to Twitter Counter and Adreka’s social polling metrics, Weiner’s “Alleged” weiner has gained over 60,000 twitter followers over the past week. Moreover, there is a 58% growing positive sentiment that is socially pro-Weiner, regardless if it’s his weiner or not.
So my Crisis Marketing advice to Anthony Wiener, NY Congressman for the 9th district:
1. Stand erect, take credit where credit is due, even if it’s not you, you need to own this wiener.
2. You and your wife use the media to your advantage to make light of the situation. Can you imagine the sound bite, “the secrets out, my husband has a big wiener”, says Mrs. Weiner on the David Letterman show last night.
3. Run with a plausible conspiracy theory…. “It’s my wiener; it was on my desk top, for the wife only, but someone found it and ran with the joke” or even better a plausible truth… “I posted a response to the one of my twitter followers and accidently attached the wrong file, I am truly embarrassed, but not ashamed of my big weiner”.
4. Follow up with another sound bite: If your think my Weiner’s big, you should see my balls; they have served me well both in an out of politics.
5. Conclude the internal investigation with, let the record show it is my big wiener. I sent the offending falus, by accident when I attached and posted the wrong picture online.
6. End of story.
I am feeling an entire campaign brewing…
You know he’s a swinging dick in congress and he has the balls to match, vote YES for Weiner 2012.Ok, maybe I need to work on this political campaign a little bit more.
![Congressman Weiner, Don’t Be A Dick!]()
by John Cataldi | Oct 6, 2010 | Agriculture, Cooperatives and PACs, Industries, Politics, PR Crisis, Social Media, The Real Mad Men
I am amazed that there are groups of people in a variety of industries that have been sold a bag of false hope in spending a substantial percentage of group hard earned dollars, in the form of feed tariffs, to establish change that ultimately could mean the life of death of their livelihoods.
Just last week, I was asked to investigate marketing a farming co-op to look at ways they could use our technology to act as a catalyst to measure and grow the effectiveness of the tens of millions spent to date. I was excited, given one of the perks of my job is to learn about new industries and business models almost every day. So in preparation, I downloaded an armament of industry reports, digitally listened to social conversations within the industry, investigated their competition, market, etc. I eagerly joined the conference call with the anticipation of walking away as a trivial expert on this type of farming, possessing just enough information and industry lingo to impress my colleagues and hold a technical conversation with my soon, would be clients. I gave my world to the head of the co-op I was just an observer and assured him that I was just hear to observe. I assume my reputation of speaking my mind and screaming at injustices across a board room has preceded my arrival. I believe this to be true as my assistant gave me a 3 minute on the proper usage of our phone mute button.
This was really a bad time for me to make a promise! What I soon discovered that the co-op potentially took millions, without creating any measurable change other than repetitive monthly news papers to the group, showing their work in process at luxury hotels and conventions, and a rebate that was given to the farmers because their profits were eaten away by offshore competition. My personal opinion on the second deliverable is that while it’s always nice to receive a rebate, the shininess of the accomplishment wears off when the rebate is given when the co-op, DID NOT DO THEIR JOB! Moreover, I stayed up all night doing my diligence in preparation for this conference, so that the co-op moderators spent the first 10 minutes talking about weather, followed by a sales pitch, of why the farmers needed to spend more money on planning on how to combat the unification of flavor and lowering the cost of processing their food that may help them shave pennies off of the COGS but will cost them millions to implement, at the cost of an increased market erosion from offshore organizations. DID NOT ANYONE READ THE REASEARCH ON THE COMPETITIVE FORCES RUINNING THEM OUT OF THEIR OWN MARKET, AFTER STEALING THEIR BREED STOCK!
I felt my blood pressure ever increasing and my finger moving ever more towards the mute button. When the call ended, I recapped with some of the co-op members which brought me to my most startling discovery of all! The marketing vendor / lobbyist group were controlling the entire program, which the head of the co-op had a duel ownership stake within. This was further compounded by a second discovery that I could find no record of either organization ever being registered as a lobbyist or donating to any political campaigns of organizations. So flustered, I contacted a few of my lobbyist friends in Washington the other day just to be sure I am not completely off base.
So as a RULE, if you are CREATING A CO-OP, TRADE ASSOCIATION, or even a POLITICAL ACTION COMITTEE committee (PAC), I would REALLY recommend the following.
- Create a mission statement which includes why you were created!
- Co-op management should come from within the co-op, not outsiders
- If you really want an outsider, call him a board advisor. I have several board advisors that are scary brilliant, but I would not let them run my company, plus it’s not their job, it’s yours.
- ALWAYS keep control and accountability of the co-op’s money. NEVER allow your media, marketing, lobbyist have complete oversight on all spending. Isn’t it your money?
- In any industry co-op, ALWAYS… ALWAYS… ALWAYS define purpose that is in aligning with short term deliverables. Trying to row to the new world in a row boat, just isn’t going to cut it. But building a ship yard, prior to slapping a boat together is always a better idea. So start small. Small also means small budget, with an ever growing budget built on measured success.
- THIS IS BIG….. FEAR NOTHING! If thinking outside of the box will save your ass, then call UPS immediately to ship the box to Base Zulu, Antarctica.
- Keep it Simple (KISS). Don’t over think strategy or overreact to environmental pressures. If you are in a market that commoditized your industry by 80% from offshore suppliers, then your mission is pretty simple…. RIP THE BALLS OFF OF THE COMPETITION! It literally took me 3 days to lay out a go to market strategy, at no cost to the co-op, which is measureable, scalable, and has freaking teeth.
- FIRE THE AGENCY, including us if we cannot meet deliverable timelines is not aligned with the co-ops interest. If your industry is at the brink of destruction, I promise not to schedule any vacation time until the co-op’s master strategy is put into motion.
- ACT AS A COHESIVE UNIT – Co-ops for some reason place the agency, board members, vendors, politicians, etc. on a pedestal, if an organization hinders your process that hinders profitability the course of action is simple… (Please see Point #7 – KISS and Rip Balls).
Just food for thought… and a final question… does competitive balls go well with some flava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti? Just a question… all this talk about farming has made me hungry.
by John Cataldi | Sep 16, 2010 | Marketing Mishaps, PR Crisis, Social Media, Software Industry
Could a Stock Buyback of 2.9 million shares be a factor in TuCow’s Slow Response?
TuCows (NYSE AMEX:TCX, TSX:TC) , out in the pasture?! With possibly 6M consumers affected my Malware spread through popular web portals, ground zero for the Malware attacks came from a known vulnerability in OpenX’s Ad server. Among the affected carriers, TuCows, Pirate Bay, ESarcasm And AfterDawn among the effected carriers. According to Web security vendor Dasient, an estimated 1.6M ads may have been served daily. According to Adreka social analytics, appearances of social reports, earmarking the malware attack may have started as early as the over the past 96 hours, and may have begun it’s proliferation as easily as midnight, 11th of September 2010.
CyberInsecure reported that the malicious code was being loaded from external domains registered to an address in Russia and was targeted the Microsoft Windows Help Center vulnerability patched earlier this year, the successful exploitation led to a variant of the Bredolab trojan being installed on the victim’s computer. This threat is known a distribution platform for rogue antivirus programs.
TuCows general manager, Andy Walker, confirmed for ParetoLogic that the incident was the result of hackers compromising the OpenX server used by the company to deliver ads. “We detected the intrusion, patched the vulnerability in OpenX and resolved the issue quickly,” the company representative noted. According to Adreka’s Social Monitoring, the OpenX vulnerability issue was known as early as May, 2010, as reported by dozens of active OpenX communities, programmers, and malware boards.
Moreover, less than 12 hours ago, my attempts to access the TuCow’s main site and affiliate pages resulted in AVG halting my systems infection. So exactly why was the largest software company in North America, out to pasture when their systems, webmasters, and millions of consumers were being affected by a massive malware attack?
Granted it a cow’s top speed, is 5.5 mph, so TuCow’s should get there in ½ the time? – LOL
As a question, NOT AS AN ACQUISITATION, could the deadline for TuCow’s slow response come in the wake of the company trying to push their existing investor base to sell 2.9 million shares back to the company in a Dutch auction, what expires on September 17th 2010? According to their own financial release, dated September 9th 2010, TuCow’s intends to commence a modified “Dutch auction” tender offer to repurchase up to 2,900,000 shares of common stock, representing approximately 5.1% of Tucows’ outstanding shares. The tender offer is expected to commence on Friday, September 17, 2010 and to expire, unless extended, at 5:00 P.M., New York City Time, on Tuesday, October 19, 2010. Tucows also announced that it has terminated its normal course issuer bid commenced in February 2010 pursuant to which Tucows has repurchased 3,409,300 shares of common stock.
As a past investment banker and now current media evangelist, you have to ask the question, unless their technology team was completely out to pasture, could long term financial gain been the catalyst for a Cow Speed Response, in relation for all other systems effected?
by John Cataldi | Sep 16, 2010 | Marketing Mishaps, PR Crisis, Software Industry, Viral Marketing
Digital Social Listening Detects a Global Attack of One of the Webs Largest Software Sites!
Reports began coming in September 14th that TuCow’s (AMEX: TCX) may have been affected via Ad Malware from blog sphere reports as detected by Adreka, Inc, using social digital listing tools. Tucows (originally an acronym for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software, a name which has long since been dropped) has been is one of the few companies that survived the destruction of the dot bombs, only to now fall victim to a new enemy, 3rd party malware, which their systems are, at this moment, currently distributing, possibly either undetected or not being discussed by their management given their publicly traded status. At this hour, the company has not made any statements, shutdown their Ad Servers, or hosting network.
Compounding the danger, TwoCows is perhaps best known for its popular website directory of shareware, freeware, and demo software packages available to download. A system of mirror sites is maintained to allow the traffic to the site to be distributed among several worldwide server locations. The 3rdparty Malware may have effected it’s an extensive reseller network, which services over ten million domain names, millions of mailboxes for a network of over 10,000 web hosts, ISPs (Internet Service Providers), and other resellers around the world. It can only be speculated that in the past 48 hours, TuCows, may have inadvertently infected millions of computers of Windows visitors to their software, email, and associated websites though a vendibility exploited via a 3rd party advert being served across TuCow’s entire network. The exploit will download and run a malicious file, a variant of the Bredolab Trojan. Upon execution it will unpack its code and try to connect to various remote addresses through the HTTP protocol for downloading and executing other Trojans, which results in a pop up frenzy of advertisements then usually fake antivirus or antispyware scanners (like PC Antispyware 2010). This potentially leads to a second problem of potential credit card fraud.
This is not the first time we see a high-traffic website being used to distribute malware. The bad guys always go for Achilles’ heel, and what looks like an innocuous advert can trigger a wave of nasties. This is why for networks big and small, third-party advertisements must be verified carefully, otherwise this is the kind of things that can happen. Though the lack of response, admittance, or lack of actions on behalf of TuCow’s is very unsettling. As of this evening TuCow’s systems still remain affected with the Malware spreading, and TuCow’s traffic base is exponentially decreasing as virus scanners and web browsers begins to alert web traffic of the potential danager. As a publicly traded company, news travels from the social sphere, to consumers, to Wall Street fast than most think.
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