Monday Morning Media Minute

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Toyota began fixing the accelerators on its cars last week, but the threat to its brand got significantly worse.

At least two reasons for that:

• The fix may not solve the problem.  Toyota’s fix is mechanical.  But there now are reports of a possible electronics problem with the accelerators.  The mechanical fix won’t fix the electronics problem, if there is one.  Are Toyota’s executives still in denial about a second problem with the accelerators?  I don’t know.  But if they are, then the company’s reputation may take a hit that will make its current problems pale by comparison.

• Toyota may be forced to recall some of its Prius hybrids because of a problem with their brakes.  In fact, at least one newspaper says this recall will come this week.  Not good anytime.  Potentially disastrous with another high-profile recall at the same time.

Toyota became the world’s largest car maker based on its reputation for quality and reliability.  People buy Toyotas expecting them to be more or less trouble free.

The sticking accelerators put a chink in that aura of quality.  If there’s yet another problem with the accelerators, the damage to the company’s reputation will rise exponentially – and be much longer lasting.  The simultaneous problem with the Prius makes this a truly dangerous situation for Toyota.

I have some personal experience with this.  Some years ago, while I was at U S WEST (one of the Baby Bell phone companies), the company’s executives chose to cut back on investing in the company’s phone network to increase profits.  The result?  U S WEST’s reputation for quality began to suffer.

For a while, we were able to counter the negative hits by trading on our reputation, just as Toyota is trying to do now.  But U S WEST’s executives ignored suggestions to fix the problem before the complaints grew any louder.  And the company paid a huge price — financially and otherwise — for many years to come.

What’s the lesson for the rest of us?  Today’s nagging problem could be tomorrow’s reputation breaker.  These problems almost never develop overnight.  But there are immense pressures within any organization to ignore them until they turn into a crisis.  Then the fix is much more expensive.  That’s where Toyota is today.  It’s in danger of becoming another U S WEST.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Truth in advertising.  I’ve always thought Domino’s pizzas tasted like cardboard.  But I never expected them to agree with me.

So, I was pleasantly surprised a couple weeks ago when I saw the Domino’s ad, you’ve probably seen it too, acknowledging what I already knew — their crust tastes like cardboard and their sauce tastes like ketchup.

Well, they were just repeating customer complaints.  But they also said they’ve fixed the problem.  And they’re hoping a lot of us will buy one of their pizzas to see if their new pizzas really are better than the ones they used to make.

It’s great advertising.  And it makes several points worth noting:

• Great storytelling starts by grabbing your audience’s attention.  They did that.  Looking for a way to get your audience’s attention?  Start by telling them something that surprises them.

• Conceding obvious weaknesses in your story can help you gain credibility for the messages you really care about.  This is a point I often make during media training.  Don’t try to defend every point — especially the ones you know are indefensible.  Acknowledging a mistake or two is a great way to gain credibility for the things you really care about.  Okay, your pizza tasting like cardboard isn’t a small point.  Unless, of course, enough of us believe it that it’s hurting your sales – and you can tell us with a straight face that you’ve fixed it.

• No matter how strong your story, the proof is in the . . . pizza.  Domino’s “cardboard” ad works as an ad because it got our attention.  But the real proof of whether it worked will be decided by whether enough people who give them another try agree they’re now making good pizzas.  I think the verdict is still out on that one.

I also heard from several of you last week who said Toyota is mishandling their big recall.  I don’t agree.  I think the verdict is still out on that one, too.

Crisis Communications 101:  Acknowledge the problem, fix it, and make a credible promise to assure us it won’t happen again.

Toyota has stepped up to the problem.  And they say they’ll begin fixing it this week.  If they do, and if they live up to their promise of restoring our confidence in the quality of their cars, then they will have done a good job.

But they’re in the same boat as Domino’s.  What they say will be less important than what they do.  If they’ve really begun cutting corners that affect quality as some analysts have suggested, and if that shows up in more problems with their cars, then Toyota’s reputation will suffer.  Ditto, if they screw up the repairs to the cars they’ve recalled.

But if the accelerator problem proves to be an aberration and if they fix the problem, they’ll ultimately come out of their current crisis just fine.  In fact, if they do a great job of fixing the accelerator problem, this incident could actually help their reputation. But the jury’s still out on that.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

What would you do?

I found that question from MMMM reader Neil Hrab of Toronto in my mailbox last week — along with a New York Post story about billboards put up in three cities by the jilted mistress of Charles E. Phillips, president of Oracle and a member of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

My answer:  I wouldn’t do anything to respond publicly to the billboards.

That’s essentially what Phillips did.  Phillips and his wife filed for divorce in 2008, but recently decided to get back together.  That’s what prompted the billboards.  He issued a statement acknowledging he had an eight-year “serious relationship” with YaVaughnie Wilkins that “has since ended, and we both wish each other well.”  Except for that, he’s had no public response.  Good choice.

Why?  Because most of us aren’t affected by what’s happening.  Except for the curiosity factor of someone spending a lot of money to publicize being jilted — estimates I’ve seen ranged from tens of thousands of dollars to as much as $500,000 — most of us don’t care.
So, anything Phillips does to respond publicly would simply keep an embarrassing story alive.

In fact, at least one of the billboards has already come down.  So, has the Web site that showed pictures of Phillips and Wilkins together during the eight years of their relationship.  Maybe Wilkins figured out she was making herself look foolish.  Or maybe Phillips’ attorneys intervened with a cease-and-desist letter that worked.  Remember, I said I wouldn’t respond publicly to the billboards.  Legal action to shut down defamation is another matter.

The billboard incident brings to mind three other troubled marriages that have been in the news recently.  Each will have a different impact on the careers of the principals involved.  And that, too, offers an interesting lesson in crisis communication.  For example:

• John Edwards.  His political career is done, thanks to his infidelity.  The former presidential candidate finally admitted last week what most of us suspected — he’s the father of the baby girl born to Rielle Hunter, the woman he was sleeping with while running for president and his wife was undergoing treatment for cancer.  His political career is done.  Not only did he cheat on a woman liked by the public, he’s lied about it repeatedly.  New disclosures — acknowledging the affair, acknowledging it continued while his wife was sick and finally admitting he’s the father of the baby — have come one by one and only after he had no choice but to admit them.  It’s hard to see how he can resurrect a political career, which involves asking the public to trust him.
• Tiger Woods. His image and bank account have both taken big hits.  His marriage may be over.  But if he continues winning whenever he returns to the PGA tour, he’ll quickly regain his standing as the world’s greatest golfer.  Working on his personal reputation will be important, too — if for no other reason than regaining some of his lost sponsorships.  But that one will be tougher.

• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Technically, not married.  But apparently splitting up.  Not likely to affect the career of either one of them.  If anything, the publicity will prove to be a plus for both.  Why won’t a breakup affect Pitt and Jolie the way infidelity hurt John Edwards and Tiger Woods?  What happened with Edwards and Woods violated their public personas.  Not true with Pitt and Jolie.

One final thought.  I always remind media training clients about their Media Miranda Rights.  When a reporter calls, you have the right to remain silent.  If you give up your right to remain silent, anything you say can be used in a story and attributed to you.  Sometimes it makes sense to talk to reporters.  But not always.

All of the principals involved in the problems discussed above have good reasons to keep quiet.  At times, so will you.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Former Major League home run hitter Mark McGwire finally confessed to the obvious last week — that he used steroids back when he was hitting all those home runs.

It may be too little, too late.  But it’s also too early to tell.

A basic tenet of crisis communication is that you need to act as quickly as possible to acknowledge your mistakes, fix the problem and take convincing steps to prevent the problem from happening again.

Even with last week’s confession, McGwire falls short on all three counts:

• His confession is late.  And self-serving.  Five years ago, McGwire refused to answer questions about drug use during a congressional hearing, saying he was “not here to talk about the past.”  Five years ago, he wanted to protect his reputation and avoid legal liability.  Now he’s talking because he’s accepted a job as hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals and apparently has gotten advice that a preemptive confession would make it easier to keep the job.  In short, the reason for his confession is self-serving.  And he’s still making the unbelievable claim that he would have hit all those home runs even without the drugs.  He only took them for “health” reasons, he says.  Really, Mark?

• He can’t “fix” the problem.  The Major League record books still list all those home runs, including the 70 he hit in 1998 to “break” Roger Maris’ single-season record of 61.  Statistics are a really big deal for many baseball fans.  McGwire and others who rewrote the record books while on steroids have created a huge statistics problem for Major League baseball.  And McGwire is still trying to argue his records should stand because the drugs didn’t affect his performance.  Of course not.

• McGwire retired nearly a decade ago.  He certainly can urge younger players not to follow his example.  But he can’t undo what he’s already done.

I heard at least one on-air suggestion following McGwire’s confession that he be banned from baseball.  Baseball commissioner Bud Selig almost certainly will face pressure to do just that.

McGwire’s already been passed over several times for baseball’s Hall of Fame because of suspicions about his drug use.  The early evidence is that finally coming clean won’t improve his chances.  If anything just the opposite is likely to be true.

There is one thing that may work in McGwire’s favor.  Apparently, he’s still popular in St. Louis.  McGwire received a standing ovation this weekend from local fans in his first public appearance in St. Louis since making his confession.  Popular support may help him keep his new job.  But stay tuned.  This story isn’t over yet.

In the meantime, what’s the lesson for the rest of us?  The opportunity to begin restoring your reputation by acknowledging your mistakes is short-lived.  Wait too long and it becomes virtually impossible to do.  Just ask Pete Rose.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

The big political news here in Colorado last week was Gov. Bill Ritter’s surprise decision to drop his bid for re-election.

Ritter said he was dropping out of the race to make his family a bigger priority.  I’m willing to take him at his word for now even though the pundits and others will be speculating for quite a while about Ritter’s motivation.

Politics aside, there’s an important question underlying Ritter’s decision:  Why?

Ritter asked himself why he was running and whether it was worth it.  I’m an advocate of asking why any time you embark on a campaign to tell your story.  Why do you want to issue this news release?  Why do you want to talk to this reporter?  What do you want to happen as a result of telling your story?

I know this sounds obvious.  But I frequently find clients and others haven’t asked that question.

Your answer to that question may not be as dramatic as Ritter’s.  But it’s worth asking every time you set out to tell your story.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Happy New Year.  Do you have an agenda for 2010?  Do you know what your story is for the next 12 months — and what you want to happen during that time as a result of telling it?  If not, I encourage you to stop what you’re doing and develop one.

Something to keep in mind as you do:  Nothing is permanent, good or bad.

If you’re starting from a position of strength, don’t assume you’ll stay there just because of where you are today.  Remember PanAm, MCI, Burger Chef, Compaq, RCA, Lionel, Pullman, Montgomery Ward?  At one time all of these companies were national icons, leaders in their respective industries.  Today, they’re all defunct.  There was a time when just about every boy in America, including me, wanted a Lionel train.  Burger Chef once was second only to McDonald’s in the fast food industry.  America shopped at “Monkey” Ward’s, Sears and J.C. Penney.  And Pullman was synonymous with sleeping cars on passenger trains.  Those days are gone forever.

Who would have predicted in the year 2000, just 10 years ago, that Google, Facebook and Twitter would be major forces in our lives?  Or that we’d be buying cars from Korea while American car companies teetered on the brink of possible extinction?

If you’re beginning the year from a position of strength, how will you tell your story this year to help your company stay there?  If you’re just starting out or if you suffered setbacks that mean you’re starting the year weaker than you were a year ago, how will you tell your story to start 2011 in a stronger position than you’re in today?

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

It was a story with a predictable ending.

Early this month, Colonel Van Barfoot, a 90-year-old World War II veteran and Medal of Honor winner, was ordered by his homeowners’ association to remove a flagpole he uses to fly the American flag in front of his house.  Even if you haven’t seen this story before, you already know who won.

The fight between Barfoot and his homeowners’ association in Richmond, Va., made national headlines when the association ordered him to remove the 21-foot-tall flagpole from the front yard of the house he moved into last summer.  The trouble started after Barfoot flew the flag on Labor Day and again on Veterans Day.

The homeowners’ association objected to the size of the pole.  But it beat a hasty retreat after its argument with the highly decorated veteran generated headlines nationwide.

Good for them.  Sometimes the best thing to do when you find yourself on the losing end of a story like this is to surrender quickly and beat a hasty retreat.  To its credit, the homeowners association did just that.  And the story disappeared immediately.  A good lesson to remember if you find yourself in the wrong end of a story like this.

Unlike the fight, the association’s decision to let Barfoot keep his flagpole didn’t make national headline.  I had to do a little searching to confirm this story came out the way I assumed it would when I first saw it a few weeks ago.  Is it unfair that the media covered the fight but not the resolution?  Maybe.  But that’s predictable, too.  And, in this case, I suspect the homeowners’ association didn’t mind dropping out of the headlines.

This is the last Monday Morning Media Minute of this year.  As is my custom, I’ll be taking next week off.  I’ll check in after the first of the year.  In the meantime, Merry Christmas (or whatever you celebrate).  And I hope you have a happy, prosperous and way-better-than-swell new year.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

You don’t like that story about you in today’s newspaper?  And you’re tempted to complain about it?  Be careful what you ask for.

Consider this item by Denver Post columnist Susan Greene:

“Snow means spin for the ski industry.  Mountain folk long have chided ski companies for overestimating accumulations and hyping snowfall.  Take, for example, the October storm on the (Colorado) Front Range when Vail Resorts eagerly announced that it shut down its headquarters because the heavy snow was so terrific.  What the company didn’t mention is that its offices are in low country in Broomfield, 75 miles from its closest slopes, where it was warm and sunny that day.”

Veteran reporter Bob Berwyn of the Summit Daily News had the temerity to point this out and observed:  “I sometimes wonder whether the ski industry wouldn’t benefit more from being completely transparent about weather and snowfall with its customers.  But when snow = money, perhaps that’s expecting too much.”

The Grand Poobahs at Vail complained to Berwyn’s editor and he was told he needed to do a “lot of groveling.”  Berwyn declined to grovel.  And he was fired with a couple weeks.

Score one for the ski resort?  Not so fast.  As the headline on Green’s column puts it, the controversy snowballed from there with the result that reputation and credibility both Vail Resorts and the Summit Daily News have suffered.  Part of the snowball was Green’s column.  I’m adding a small flake or two now.

If a story about you contains a significant mistake, by all means consider asking for a correction.  If it unfairly paints you in a negative light, consider your options for telling the story differently – and for pointing out to the reporter involved why you think you were treated unfairly.  But complaining about a story just because you don’t like it.  That can be dangerous territory.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Most companies and government agencies hate controversies — especially controversies that involve them.

So, you’d think the head of the climate summit opening this week in Copenhagen would be upset by the recent “Climategate” controversy over email messages and other documents stolen from the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia.

The stolen messages and documents appear to indicate some leading scientists manipulated or withheld data showing a decline in worldwide temperatures over the past decade.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, isn’t a global-warming skeptic.  Far from it.  He opened the Copenhagen summit by saying “time is up” and the world’s governments “have to deliver a strong and long term response to the challenge of climate change.”

de Boer’s response to “Climategate”?  “I actually think it’s very good that what is happening has been critically addressed in the media,” he says.  “This process has to be based on solid science.  If the integrity of the science is being called into question that needs to be examined.”

I don’t know whether de Boer really is happy about the “Climategate” controversy.  But his point is a good one:  Controversy can help you tell your story if it draws attention to an issue that wouldn’t get attention otherwise.

As a former phone-company employee, my favorite example is Caller ID – the feature that shows names and numbers of the people calling you before you answer your phone.

Most of us take Caller ID for granted.  But Caller ID generated a lot of criticism from privacy advocates and others before it was introduced in the 1980s.  The controversy generated a lot of media coverage.

Phone companies hated all that “negative” news coverage.  But they should have embraced it because the controversy helped sell Caller ID when it was introduced.  That’s because a whole lot of people, including me, read those stories and couldn’t wait to order the new service.

I’m not suggesting you pick a fight to sell your story – or even that every controversy is useful in telling your story.

But I am suggesting some controversies can be helpful when it comes to telling your story.  The trick, of course, is to recognize when those “negative” stories are really an opportunity.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Some stories feel incomplete the first time you hear them.  They leave you feeling like there’s a lot being left unsaid.  And, of course, the part that’s being left out is the juicy part — the stuff you really want to hear.

That’s the kind of story that makes reporters dig deeper.  And the kind of story the rest of us are likely to follow as it unfolds.

Tiger Woods’ weekend car wreck was one of those stories.

Where was he going at 2:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving night?  How did he manage to get going fast enough right out of his driveway to knock himself silly?  What about that tabloid rumor he’s been fooling around with another woman?  Was he trying to get away because his wife was attacking him?

In his only comment so far, Woods refers to such speculation as “false, unfounded and malicious rumors.”  That may be true.  And you could argue it’s nobody’s business anyway.  After all, there’s no apparent crime and he didn’t hurt anyone but himself.

But Woods is a celebrity.  He’s canceled at least three appointments to discuss the wreck with the police.  And he’s being extremely secretive about what happened during an incident that should be easy to explain in detail.  If Woods’ version is true, the story goes away as soon as he fully explains what happened.  Keeping quiet keeps the story alive.

Woods is known as a man who protects his privacy.  Maybe that’s what’s going on here.  But his secrecy will keep the story alive longer than simply explaining what happened – even if the full story is more embarrassing than what he’s said so far.

One of the things that makes crisis communication so interesting is how often people who should know better make the same mistakes.  Clamming up in the face of bad news is one of the classic mistakes people make during a crisis.

What really happened Thursday night?  Stay tuned.  This story isn’t over yet.

In the meantime, here’s my advice for you:  Don’t make the mistake of keeping your bad story alive if you find yourself tempted to hide behind a wall of secrecy when your crisis arrives.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?