Public Relations Princess

Public Relations Blackout for Toyota Dealers

I was having lunch with a friend last week and he mentioned that his brother and he had wildly divergent careers. While my friend Larry chose to be a journalist, his brother followed in his father's footsteps and became a car dealer. This seemed like a good decision (money-wise) until last month's Toyota debacle started to unfold.

Larry related a jaw-dropping story to me that inspired this post. Aside from the extra money and replacement parts sent to the dealerships, Toyota did not provide its dealerships much guidance on how to handle the inevitable media crush. In fact, Toyota forbade a group of 1200 dealers from hiring their own crisis communication firm to help them deal with the devastating effects of the recalls.

Larry related his brother's own incredible experience as evidence of the disconnect. His brother received a call from the local ABC affiliate,and agreed to do a live interview. He was stunned when the local affiliate arrived with ABC national in tow! He had no media training and no approved key messages. Thank goodness, Larry's brother was able to keep his wits about him and not blow the interview.

What steps should Toyota have taken ahead of the crisis to help its dealers cope with a crisis of this magnitude?

1. Imagine all the things that could go wrong: The first step in crisis planning is taking on the role of Debbie Downer. You have to sit around a table with your stakeholders and imagine all the terrible things that could possibly happen to the business. In Toyota's case, a massive safety recall certainly would have made that list.
2. Spend the money to create a crisis communications plan. It's possible that Toyota headquarters had a plan before the crisis, though I sure couldn't tell. But one thing's for sure. The dealers were woefully unprepared to handle it. Even car dealerships need crisis communications plans.
3. Be familiar with your local media outlets and cultivate those relationships. Be available year-round for car-related stories and be a go-to source of information. TV stations, especially, are under tremendous pressure to find a controversial public safety angle. Don't take a chance that you'll be the one they pick to "expose."
4. Train your staff to recognize and react appropriately to the crisis. Every staff member should know their role. 
5. Get the advice of a public relations professional, even if you have to pay for it with your own money. No one has to go it alone, and there are plenty of well-trained crisis managers out there who are adept at steering clients through a crisis. Obviously, it's best to retain someone ahead of time so they can familiarize themselves with your business.

I know all my friends in the business can help me think of what I missed. In case you are wondering, I believe that Toyota will recover, but it might take 10-15 years for all the lawsuits to be resolved.

What is Public Relations? Top 10 Things PR Can Accomplish

The number one question people ask me, bar none, is simply: What is public relations? A close second and third: What does a public relations practitioner actually do and what benefits do businesses who hire me get in return? I'm going to try to address the answers to all of these questions in one post.

My best answer to what public relations is: Public relations is a process by which the attributes, benefits and stories of an entity are highlighted in the news media or in other arenas.

Public relations tactics are specific actions that are taken to bring these stories to life.

I've never seen a business that does not need public relations at all. When sales are up and business is rolling in, many owners and managers see no need to spend money on PR or marketing. If fact, they say, we couldn't handle the extra business if it came our way.

This reflects a somewhat twisted view of the fundamental reasons to practice PR in business in the first place. Perhaps the most prominent role of PR in a company should be to build the reputation of the company and increase its "store of goodwill." Increased sales and monetary gains are possible outcomes of public relations execution, but in my opinion should not ever be the sole reason for a PR campaign.

The ongoing reputation management is the ultimate reward for consistent public relations efforts. Media relations campaigns are also part of the mix and should be planned on a regular basis, when there is news to tell. However, I often advise my clients work their plan, but ALSO take advantage of more on-the-spot opportunities. For example, if my client was a car dealer, I would have recommend less sales-y pitches during the "Cash for Clunkers" government rebate. I tell them to try to tie your PR efforts to a national trend when possible. And, keep your stories people-oriented, not "thing" oriented. Story telling is alive and well, and the best stories, of course, feature real people.

Here are the top ten things that PR can do for an organization.

1. Provide credibility: Using relatively non-biased third party sources
2. Promote community involvement: Prove your organization cares about others
3. Show thought leadership and expertise: Smart people with good ideas always have something valuable to share
4. Showcase corporate culture to potential employees:  Future employees use the web to research your organization
5. Praise employees: Awards, promotions, human interest stories
6. Increase sales: PR can create the atmosphere for increasing sales and creating demand for a great brand
7. Boost advertising and social media programs: PR works best in cooperation with an advertising or social media effort and (obviously) repetition creates a more lasting impression
8. Create top of mind awareness: People may not need you now, but they will think of your biz first when they do
9. Protect the organization's reputation during a crisis: This cannot be emphasized enough! Every business needs a "store of goodwill" to cushion a hard fall
10. Use storytelling to convey how the organization benefits its customers/constituents: As I tell all my clients, if you have a story about a real person and how your business helped, TELL IT!

Did I miss anything? Share your thoughts!

Hyatt Fires All Housekeepers in Boston, But Not Before They Train Replacements

In a perfect world, your company's version of events would be heard and believed more than whatever someone else has to say. In Hyatt's world (of hurt), it doesn't matter one bit what the company says. The damage is already done. How to recover from a PR debacle?

Here's what happened. Hyatt has three "properties" in Boston that were taking an economic hit from the recession. Management of the hotels decided to replace the entire housekeeping force in the hotels and hire outsourced replacements, which of course, are cheaper in the short run.

Side note: I hate the word properties. It makes it seem like such a monopoly game, with little red hotels on Park Ave. and Indiana. These are workplaces, employers and destinations. Not properties.

Before the housekeepers were let go, the replacements came in and worked side-by-side with these folks, who were also then forced to essentially train the people who were taking their jobs. But here's the kicker: At first, the workers were told that the newbies were "vacation replacements." What a sick joke.

Of course, the story has reached national proportions, caused protests, and given Hyatt a huge black eye in the public relations department. The bottom line for me is this: Paying people a dollar an hour less to clean rooms is not the kind of cost savings that will allow you to keep a hotel's doors open. It's a drop in the bucket. 

Hyatt has come back with its own version of events, which may or may not be true. But guess what? It doesn't matter. The damage has been done and Hyatt needs to go into hypermode to reverse it.

What could Hyatt have done to prevent this PR nightmare? What can they do now to recover?

To prevent the situation, Hyatt should have:

1. Negotiated a temporary wage decrease or wage freeze with the unionized hotel workers
2. Imposed a temporary surcharge on guests for the shortfall in the budget
3. Communicated with all parties involved and brought them in from day one to help come up with solutions to the problem

To solve the situation and avoid a long-term branding in the most Democratic state in the union, Hyatt should:

1. Immediately reverse course and rehire all the workers and provide bonuses, thanking them for coming back
2. Make a corporate donation to the City of Boston's emergency homeless shelter to extend its message of true hospitality to the unfortunate, and
3. Apologize for the extreme lack of judgment shown and for the unnecessary displacement of the workers

Any short-term costs will be made up ten-fold in potential business retained. As of now, the public is in no mood to forget this callous incident and Hyatt will be the hotel kingdom's poster child of bad behavior.

Will this incident make you think twice before booking a room at a Hyatt?

Atheist Bus Ads Taken Down, ACLU Takes Notice

DART (Des Moines Regional Transit Authority) is in trouble. First there was a public relations crisis when seven pedestrians were hurt when DART buses hit them. Now, a local atheist group's ad, that were bought and paid for, have been removed from the buses, due to the complaints of riders.

The controversy over the ads seems to have taken DART by surprise. They've known about the ads for months. It's not a case of the atheists forcing their way onto the bus lot and tacking up their illegal signs overnight. On the contrary, the atheist group has a signed contract and DART actually produced the signs for the group! The General Manager says the ads were installed on the buses "before getting final approval." Shouldn't the ad concepts been approved before the contract was signed?

So now, OF COURSE! the ACLU is interested in the case. This is a type of case that the ACLU was invented to take. In case you are wondering, here is the formula for an ACLU case: A minority group gets something taken away, laws are violated in the process, and this disenfranchised group asks the ACLU to take its case. The ACLU is often looked upon as a member of the left-wing establishment, but the truth is, they defend the NRA too. In this case, the minority is atheists, they got their signs taken down when they had a signed legally-binding contract, and now they will probably have to sue to get their rights enforced.

As a public relations professional, I naturally have some questions:

1. Does DART have rules about what ads can and cannot be accepted?
2. Who decides whether an ad is acceptable?
3. Who pulls the trigger on the decision to take ads down after they have been produced, paid for and installed on the buses?
4. Was the atheist organization offered compensation for their financial loss and damages for DART's refusal to honor the contract?

And the big question I have is, do they have a crisis communications plan in place? I am not going to judge now, because the issue still needs to be resolved. If I were running the show at DART, I would apologize to the atheists, return the signs to the buses, and review any applicable policies to make sure such a crisis is avoided in the future.

Amazon Needs Common Sense Crisis Management, Not Reactionary Panic

George Orwell is playing with us.

Amazon customers who purchased the e-book "1984" realized this past weekend that the book had been remotely deleted from their devices.

In another completely boneheaded move, Amazon, after realizing it did not have the rights to sell the book to its Kindle crowd, deleted the book without informing customers the reason for the deletion. Customers received the same generic email from Amazon as if they had initiated the refund themselves.

Now let's get the story straight. A third-party vendor was the one selling the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on Amazon. So, follow me now, shouldn't Amazon have worked on a resolution with the third-party vendor instead of inconveniencing and pissing off its customers? That would make sense, but no, in another reactionary move, Amazon redacted the book with no explanation.

Can you tell that Amazon has no crisis communications plan? To me, it's as obvious as a goiter. It's the communication team's job to think of these crisis situations ahead of time and devise a plan to deal with and communicate out to customers the course of action being taken.

The lack of a cohesive crisis communications plan is seriously effecting Amazon's ability to be taken seriously in the brave new world of digital media. Now, a class-action lawsuit is brewing. And Amazon is wimping out on its own flawed strategy, no doubt posed by some fresh-faced attorney in Amazon's legal department. Note to Amazon: Your communicators must be available at all times to deal with these crises. If you go to the Hamptons for the weekend, someone must be left in charge. Twitter does not take the weekend off.

A "Store of Goodwill" for Southwest Airlines

July 14, 2009, on a Southwest Airlines jet on route from Nashville to Baltimore, passengers were horrified to see a football-sized opening appear in the passenger cabin. Oxygen masks fell from the ceiling and the cabin lost pressure.

As I watched the news break on CNN, I logged on to Twitter to watch the trending news to see when Twitter would start going nuts, talking about Southwest's safety record and seeing passengers comment as well.

Even the breaking news was strange. There was an item, about a minute long, about the breach and the fact that the plane had passed a thorough skin inspection in January. There was mention that Southwest had paid a seven million dollar fine in March for delaying inspections.

Where was the social media outrage? Why weren't there any follow-up stories in the mainstream media?

Southwest Airlines is a case study in how PROACTIVE public relations and social media serve as a buffer from a public backlash when accidents or incidents occur. A company must have a "store of goodwill" already in the bank. Southwest, it's employees and its loyal customers all work together to tell great stories about Southwest. From its friendly blog, to its singing flight attendants, to its cheeky ads, to its Twitter updates, Southwest spends money up front to build its reputation and protect its image.

When something bad happens to your company, and it's just a matter of time before it does, what's in YOUR store of goodwill?