Public Health Affairs

Category: Uncategorized

  • All the News, However You Can

    There was a really cool story that came out of the tornado outbreaks a couple of weeks ago having to do with emergency communications that I felt I had to pass along, if only to force you to update your media monitoring strategy (though I obviously hope it does more).

    With the latest advancements in tornado predicting equipment and technology, it was possible for local television stations to give up-to-the-second take cover recommendations—oftentimes before the National Weather Service could make those warnings. The problem, though, is that the wind and damage caused by a tornado often precedes the tornado itself and can damage power transmission lines; and well, turning off people’s TV. The local television stations were in a bind as to how to communicate the adjusting prediction models and tell people in real danger to take cover.

    So, they diversified. If they couldn’t send messages via TV, they looked to other methods of communication. Like radio:

    “When the area started losing power, we were simulcasting on our radio partner WUSY-FM,” said Derrall Stalvey, news director at WRCB Chattanooga, an NBC affiliate owned by Sarkes Tarzian.

    And social media:

    “Even without power, people had access to Facebook and Twitter and we had two employees dedicated to nothing but updating social media in addition to the station website. That’s another way people were hearing about warnings.”

    “We did several reports via Skype, several where our reporter was in the field and literally did a live report through smart phone. Does it look as good as an HD signal? Absolutely not, but it’s a lot better to have that than to have nothing.”

    The best part of this multiplatform simulcasting?

    “We had people tell us stories about hiding in the bathtub, the power off, watching us on their iPhones, hearing the reports and warnings,” Henderson said. “They saw it as a lifeline.”

    What does this mean for you and your operation? You’ve got TVs in your EOC and JIC for media monitoring, right? Well, what if the news is counting on using social media and radio for the breaking-est news? Do you have a radio in the room? Someone monitoring it? A station to monitor the Facebook and Twitter feeds of all of the local news stations? A person (or persons) to do that monitoring?

    From the public’s perspective, this is great news. You get the latest news where you are (even in a bathtub with your whole family) when you need it. But from a responders point of view, have you updated your plans to account for all new avenues of monitoring? If not, what are the consequences of that? When seconds count, are you ready to receive the message?

  • Via The Guardian: PlayStation Network Hack Headsmack

    Sony sought to explain to PlayStation owners why it has taken seven days to reveal the extent of last week’s PSN hack. In a post on the company’s blog, Nick Caplin, head of communications at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe issued this statement:

    “There’s a difference in timing between when we identified there was an intrusion and when we learned of consumers’ data being compromised. We learned there was an intrusion 19th April and subsequently shut the services down. We then brought in outside experts to help us learn how the intrusion occurred and to conduct an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the incident.

    It was necessary to conduct several days of forensic analysis, and it took our experts until yesterday to understand the scope of the breach. We then shared that information with our consumers and announced it publicly yesterday evening.”

    via guardian.co.uk

    In what world is it okay to have at least a reasonable suspicion of a personal data breach and then wait for seven days to inform your customers?

    Where is the harm in letting people know what’s going on? “We shut down the PSN because we suspect the Network has been hacked and we’re working with forensic analysts to identify what, if any, personal data has been exposed. We’ll keep you updated as our investigation continues.”

    Seems easy, right? Seems at least better than shutting down the Network and going dark for a week.

    This little lesson doesn’t do much for our traditional emergency management folks. Explosion = can’t deny it. But for executive communicators, get ahead of the story! Set the tone! If you’ve got bad news coming down the pipe, let people know about it sooner rather than later. The reason why is because once you start holding off on releasing it, it becomes that much easier to continue holding off on it.

    Consider Sony’s case. I’m sure the initial conversation had someone saying, wait, let’s just make sure we were hacked. Which quickly turned into, before we say anything, we should know how bad it is; and then into, I’m not breathing a word about this until we know for sure that personal data was compromised. And then–boom–it’s seven days later and the world knows you’re hiding something.

    For a great example of how best to do it, check out my coverage of the WordPress.com hack.

  • There Are No Crisis Communications Rules

    There was an article that’s been sitting in my queue for a while now about the so-called “rules” of crisis communications. Gerald Baron’s latest post on Taco Bell’s recent troubles has caused me to resurrect this post and confirm that my original feelings were correct.

    An article from March in The Globe and Mail’s The Manager blog relayed an article from the Harvard Business Review that examined Apple’s so-called AntennaGate. You remember AntennaGate, right? After the release of the iPhone 4, there were complaints from across the country that if you held the phone just so, one’s connection to the network would be significantly degraded. The media, at the time, was full of stories about refunds and recalls and free cases and Apple being in turmoil. Less than a month after the launch, Apple held a press conference to address the situation.

    Crisis communications experts around the globe all finished watching/reading/hearing about the press conference with their jaws on the floor. The response broke every one of their sacred rules for how to address calls for one’s company’s head. Within weeks, the issue was gone. Not in the media, not online, nowhere in any force.

    Most PR folks were quickly engrossed in the next meltdown and moved on. (Experts and gurus and ninjas, hmph.) Until HBR came out with a review in mid-February, it was pretty much out of the public’s eye. And what they found was that Apple broke all the rules, and survived. And that there’s something we can learn from that.

    Amongst the rules broken:

    1. Apologize and take full responsibility.
    2. Don’t create expectations with a media event.
    3. Announce the give away first.
    4. Avoid specific comparisons with competitors.
    5. Don’t air your industry’s dark secrets.

    I advise you to visit the HBR or Globe and Mail pieces for the full breakdown, but the bit that I found interesting wasn’t how they broke the rules, but instead why. Plain and simple, they broke the rules because the rules didn’t satisfy their needs. They’re Apple and they’re disliked by their industry and are widely considered to be the premier cellular phone manufacturer in the world. Cowing and and bowing and scraping doesn’t do them any good—so they didn’t do it. They maintained throughout the situation that this was not their fault and not unique to their handsets. And then proved it.

    This applies to all of us in PR and emergency public information not because it means we can throw away the rulebook, but because we should understand why the rules are what they are. What are you trying to accomplish by apologizing right off the bat? Does that set you up poorly for future problems? What are you saying when you minimize the problem and why are you saying it that way? If the problem has always been around, say so.

    This applies to the Taco Bell piece because they did something similar. Instead of cowering when accused of having not enough “meat” in their meat, Taco Bell grabbed the offensive. Not only did they use the crisis as an opportunity to educate the public about their product (Geez, how many times can I push the whole “take advantage of the media attention” bit?), but they fought back because they were right.

    What I’ve learned from all of this? There are no crisis communications rules. There is only your response to your crisis. And that should change according to the situation, the players and the world around you. In emergency planning, they say the first casualty of a situation is the plan. Why do we feel that communicating in a crisis should be any different?