Blogs

The ongoing Costa Concordia cruise ship tragedy once again raises the age-old crisis communications debate: when should the CEO be the spokesperson?

“Carnival CEO Lies Low After Crash” is the headline of yesterday morning’s story in the Wall Street Journal that asks, “Where is Micky Arison?”

In our media training sessions we do our best to let participants in on some of reporters’ best kept secrets – the little tricks they frequently use in the course of gathering information, conducting interviews and writing stories.

We’re familiar with these tactics because in our many years as reporters and producers, we used many of them! But I admit I was shocked to learn what’s apparently been going on between scribblers and their police sources across the pond.

Talk about a one-two Christmas punch!

First, FedEx gets slammed when a delivery guy tosses a package over a customer’s fence. The customer posts a video of his monitor clearing the uprights on YouTube. At last count 6.3 million people had watched it. Mentions on Twitter and other social media were running at one every 25 seconds.

In the court of public opinion, a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice is as good as guilty.

A front page story in this morning’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel details how Justice Michael Gableman has cast votes in favor of a law firm that has provided him free legal counsel in an ethics case. Whether that’s right or wrong is up to you to decide – that’s not what I’m writing about.

I’m writing about a short sentence that appears about halfway through the story: “Gableman has not responded to requests for an interview.”

For the California-based non-profit Love Ride Foundation, last month’s headline in the LA Times could hardly have been more devastating: “Motorcycle accidents cast gray clouds over Love Ride event.”

When I was a news reporter, we called it “burying the lead.” A producer (like my business partner and friend, Barb Haig!) would accuse me of doing this if I put the most important or most interesting part of my story anywhere other than at the top.

I hadn’t thought about “burying the lead” for a long time, until recently as I watched a presenter do it in such spectacular fashion.

I was at an awards luncheon and he was the keynote speaker. Following a brief introduction, he started with, “It’s always good to be here,” but then had to add, “although I’ve never actually been to Milwaukee before.” Awkward groans from the audience.

“How do I get corporate spokespeople who hate the news media and refuse to work with them to understand that they’re shooting themselves in the foot?”

An important question and one we hear a lot, including recently. Here’s how we address it in our media training seminars: 

It often seems that businesses and organizations are in denial when it comes to crisis communications.  They tend to fear taking the scary step of getting company leaders and stakeholders in a room to brainstorm for worst-case scenarios.  But if they do, they may just find out they’re much better prepared to handle a crisis when it comes along.

Now they have a place to start with their risk management team – but they still need help with the communications directions.

In the popular comic strip For Better or For Worse, one character makes a suggestion to another who is hoping to mend a damaged friendship: “An apology is the superglue of life! It can repair just about anything!!”

That advice is sound, but a little incomplete. The last sentence could have read, “It can repair just about anything – as long as you get it right!”

The final film in the blockbuster Harry Potter series – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – opens in London this week, in the U.S. on July 15^th. I must admit some sadness as the saga draws to a close.

From the series’ birth 14 years ago, my family and I were enchanted with Harry, his friends and enemies, and their remarkable adventures. My kids were 12 and ten back then, and have literally grown into young adulthood following the unfolding dramas at Hogwarts and beyond.