By Josh Cline

In crisis public-relations – whether in a corporate or political context – there is an effective, recognized method to limit damage and salvage reputations. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, to his obvious detriment, did not use it at all.

For those who may not know, the website BigGovernment.com published a report on May 28 stating that Weiner had sent a sexually-suggestive photo on Twitter to a young woman who was “following” him. On June 1, after the story had flooded the mainstream and digital airwaves for several days, the representative gave a series of interviews to media outlets about the issue.  Read more...

By Josh Cline

In social media, there is no such thing as “off the record.” And General Electric may have discovered this rule — but much too late.

On March 24, the New York Times published an article stating that GE had not paid U.S. federal taxes on the $5.1 billion in profit last year from its domestic operations. In response, the company’s PR account on Twitter started tweeting about the alleged inaccuracies in the story. (Interestingly enough, all of the tweets that day were on other topics even though the NYT story had just broke. The article was not mentioned by GE until their first tweet of the following day.)  Read more...

Every PR crisis management expert will tell you the three elements of good crisis response: be quick, be accurate and be consistent. These elements are critical. Twitter and the “real-time web” is one important channel that is immediate. The rest is up to you.

Act now

As soon as your alarm bells ring it is “go time.” Whether your response is denial, apology, excuse, attack or justification, it must be quick and relentless. As long as you’re not a politician, forget about the “no comment”.  When your organization’s reputation is on the line, you have no excuse but to defend it. Sometimes tweeting about a slander can even send your own followers to fight for you (that is, of course, if you have strong rapport with your followers). Publicizing a slander against you (say, in a blog) gives you more credibility and shows you are confident and have nothing to hide.  Read more...

If your business or organization is faced with organized opposition that is damaging its reputation, undermining public confidence and jeopardizing its operations, then you are in good company. Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Nike are only three among a vast number of companies increasingly finding themselves facing very vocal, very well organized, and often well-financed critics.

In fact, protest has become a multi-billion-dollar industry involved in political lobbying, staging boycotts and related events, sponsoring ballot initiatives, advertising, and in the most extreme cases, engaging in environmental terrorism. Activists usually go after large, highly visible multi-national targets, but smaller, community based businesses and organizations are no longer immune.  Read more...

If you haven’t already noticed, crises of national and global scopes are being reported by mainstream media and tweeted and blogged on an almost daily basis these days. The crises are being generated by once highly respected brands, such as Toyota and Johnson & Johnson, and the shelf life of the coverage is now weeks and months, instead of days. Even worse, in terms of consequences, the crisis bar has been raised into the stratosphere.

It is an understatement to say that the nature of crisis management and communication has changed. It has, in fact, evolved into a green-eyed monster whose stakes go way beyond bad publicity and temporary loss of public trust or reputation. Today, a crisis of any kind can be life-threatening.  Read more...

A recent posting on The Big Money by freelancer Matthew DeBord made one of the most misguided assessments of crisis public relations that I have ever run across.  Calling it “PR’s evil twin” and “a black sorcerer’s art worth millions,” DeBorg claims that in the social media universe “crisis PR is no longer up to the job”—that the “dark art” is in meltdown.  He bases his conclusion on what he called “a veritable deluge of crises since 2008.”

In his attack DeBord is right about two things:  Read more...

• There have been many high profile crises in the past two years.

Last week I posted an article describing three reasons why the public didn’t believe BP when it said it was taking responsibility for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and would pay all the costs of the cleanup. The reasons I gave—that BPs communication about its commitment was “too little, too late and under the wrong circumstances”—represent only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of public relations blunders made by the oil Goliath and its spokespersons in the weeks since the April 20 catastrophe.

BP has, in fact, violated a good many of the cardinal rules of crisis communication, including these:  Read more...

On April 20, one of the world’s most sophisticated off-shore oil drilling rigs exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and spewing an indeterminate amount of crude oil into the Gulf waters and onto the shores of Louisiana and neighboring states.   Most companies will never have to deal with a crisis of the magnitude of what is now being called simply the BP oil spill, but there are still many lessons about communication and public trust to be learned from this environmental disaster.  Read more...

The current disaster in the Gulf states, with the BP oil spill (you know it’s bad when a disaster is named after your company) shows the importance of incorporating social media in your crisis communications plan, and the importance that social media plays in your communication strategy.

For the past month, millions of gallons of oil have been flooding into the Gulf as an oil drilling rig, owned by Transocean Ltd on behalf of bp plc, exploded, killed eleven crew members, and is now threatening the coasts of Louisiana, Mississipi, Alabama, Texas, and Florida.

Ultimately, while BP is in a horrible position, how they respond matters. And the appropriate response today is far different than what was accepted just a few years ago. Today, social media is part of the story – and you don’t control the message.

One of the core issues today is that people demand transparency and immediate news. Social and online media can provide it. According to Ellen Rossano, who used to be the Coast Guard’s public information officer during the Exxon Valdez oil spill:

“I advise my clients that they have to get the truth out as quickly as possible. One of my common-sense rules is you just can’t lie about what’s going on,” she told me. “You’re going to be found out. You can’t say ‘no comment’ anymore. It implies guilt. It implies you’re hiding something. You can always say to the media and the public, ‘Here’s what I can tell you.’”

She also notes:

“I’m thrilled beyond imagining at how the Joint Information Center has been transparent,” she says. “They’re posting situation reports everyday; there’s not much more they could be doing to be transparent, and I think that’s a phenomenal shift. The fact that anybody from the media and public can go to the sites and download video and audio … it’s just a huge improvement.”

Of course, you can’t always control the message. For example, Facebook recently introduced “community pages” which aggregates discussion about a specific topic. One of the important things for companies to be aware of, is that marketers do not control it. For example, bp’s community page has a lot of negative conversation about the bp oil spill.

bp plc’s Facebook presence is hard to find (I only found it by tweeting their account and asking for it), which means that they aren’t being heard or responding to the litany of complaints. Their Facebook page only has 741 fans. Hence, when someone goes on Facebook and looks for info on bp, instead of an official bp statement, they are more likely to find a group like this:

In fact, on Twitter, someone has created a fake account (@BPGlobalPR) with over 37,000 followers, compared to bp America’s real account (@BP_America) with under 6,000.