Taking the drama out of a crisis

The PR disaster surrounding Eurostar this week has left people amazed the company did not appear to have a crisis plan in place.
Thousands of passengers were stranded for hours and hours on broken down trains in the Channel Tunnel after the operator seemed to be caught out by the cold snap.
Travellers were left angry that so little information was filtered down to them by staff about what had happened and when they would get to their destination.
Of course, the whole world soon found out what a huge mess it all was as people began to send text messages and Tweets complaining about their ordeal.
It reminded me of flights I have taken, coincidentally (or not) both with Ryanair. We were stranded in Rome for eight hours and on another occasion I was waiting for nine hours at Shannon Airport in Ireland.
In these two instances the only information given by the airline was the occasional change in the flight time on the departures board.
Not a single member of staff came out to explain why our flights were delayed - if they had then maybe most passengers would have understood and calmed down.
As strangers chatted about their plight the overwhelming theme was along the lines of 'I'm not flying with this lot ever again'.
That must have also been the overrding feeling for Eurostar passengers last week. 'They obviously don't care about us so I won't bother travelling with them again' would have been in most people's minds.
Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown admitted as much in an interview with the Financial Times when he said the company faced a big battle to rebuild public confidence in it.
It all goes to show that crisis management is an increasingly important role for public relations professionals.
The ability to deal firmly with a potentially damaging incident or development and take the drama out of a crisis.
Martin Langford's chapter in Exploring Public Relations, Crisis Public Relations Management, cites the key ingredients as knowledge, preparation, calmness, control and communication.
Eurostar has since converted accountants and administrators from its corporate offices into temporary customer service reps at its St Pancras terminus.
But the horses had already bolted, as the saying goes. The damage has been done but at least the company knows that if the incident is replicated again they must be prepared and, above all, communicate from the start.

Christmas Number One decided by Facebook

So the power of social media has spectacularly destroyed the X-Factor’s vice-like traditional grip on the Christmas Number One spot.
Geordie teenager Joe McElderry, who won the top rating television music talent show earlier this month, would normally have been a certainty to have the Yuletide best seller on the back of his success.
But a Facebook campaign propelled American band Rage Against the Machine (RATM) to the top of the charts in an act of defiance against the influence Simon Cowell’s multi-million pound X-Factor empire has wielded over the music industry.
An astonishing 500,000 people bought the RATM single, Killing in the Name, to topple McElderry’s The Climb by 50,000 copies.
The Facebook page for the RATM campaign had almost one million members the last time I looked, many of them attracted there via discussions on online social networking sites like Twitter and interactive chatrooms.
What this demonstrates is the remarkable ability of the internet to bring people together to fight against something they disagree with.
And it has major implications for public relations professionals. It used to take time for action groups to organise themselves in opposition to new developments or environmental transgressors. Public meetings had to be arranged and householders visited to rally support and get people together.
Now it is easy to set up a website and send online messages to people regionally, nationally and even internationally to build backing for a campaign.
Supermarket chain Tesco have to battle a nationwide action group aiming to prevent it setting up yet more stores around the country to the detriment, the campaigners believe, of local businesses.
Unhappy passengers have banded together on websites to lampoon airlines and football supporters chatter away in cyberspace whenever they are unhappy about the way their club is being run.
PR people need to monitor these messages so they can counter what is being said in the never-ending quest to protect an organisation’s reputation.
But how do they tackle something like the monster created by RATM fans on Facebook?
Cowell was initially scathing of the campaign, leading to widespread condemnation of his perceived arrogance. Interestingly, he has since changed his stance and praised the initiative, even going so far as to personally congratulate the main organisers.
A clever PR move maybe but it remains to be seen whether the X-Factor winner will ever grab the Christmas Number One spot again to follow Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis, Leon Jackson and Alexandra Burke between 2005 and last year.
It makes you wonder what else can be influenced by the power of Facebook. Could the electorate band together to get a political party in power at the next General Election. Maybe dissenting voices on the social networking site could get together online to oust a Prime Minister.
A final thought. In 10 years’ time we might be talking about campaigns being started to break the hold of Facebook on popular opinion.

How best to regain a damaged reputation

I have been pondering the concept of reputation and how public relations professionals can best deal with situations where the image of their client has taken an almighty hammering.
Every day, it seems, the media is alive with the latest scandal involving a high profile personality. This was particularly the case in the world of sport in 2009.
We witnessed the remarkable fall from grace of golf legend Tiger Woods, whose acknowledged status as one of the greatest ever sportsmen has been soiled by his alleged infidelity with a succession of women.
His marriage is reportedly on the rocks and fellow golfers, as well as newspaper columnists, bloggers and comedians, have rushed to condemn and lampoon his behaviour.
We have heard very little from Woods himself, save for the occasional brief rambling comment on his official website. He is taking a break from the sport but has not fully explained the reasons why.
His silence led to widespread speculation through social media forums like Twitter where his reputation was attacked and ridiculed across cyberspace.
This has all blown up at the same time that another sporting hero – former tennis champion Andre Agassi – told the world he had taken the highly addictive drug crystal meth during his playing days. He writes graphically about the issue in his autobiography and explains why he did it.
Yet another sports icon, Great Britain sprinter Dwayne Chambers, has spent all year trying to repair the considerable damage done to his reputation after he was banned for taking performance-enhancing stimulants.
I got the chance to interview Chambers for a local newspaper last year as he visited a school to warn its students about the perils of taking drugs in sport.
It was part of a tour of the country where the athlete was seeking to garner public sympathy as he explained why he had resorted to cheating and how sorry he was.
The sprinter told me how warmly he had been received around the country and he was eventually welcomed back into the British team after qualifying for championships as a clean athlete.
Telling the truth and opening up to the public has certainly benefited Chambers, as it has clearly done for Agassi. The ex-tennis player’s book is selling impressively and he has enjoyed adulation wherever he has gone to promote it in book shops and on television and radio chat shows.
This is surely a lesson for Tiger Woods and his PR team. In an age when issues can be publically debated across the globe seconds after they are publicised it is not a smart move to lay low and hope the problem goes away. Telling the truth and showing genuine remorse is essential.
If you open up to the public they will take you to their hearts again. Exuding a sense of vulnerability is not a bad thing for a high profile individual because it shows they are human, like the rest of us.

Jury out on newspapers charging for online content

As an experienced former newspaper journalist I was intrigued to hear about a potentially momentous development in the industry this week.
Newspapers have started charging for online content in a desperate attempt to halt rapidly declining revenues.
Johnston Press is trialling the venture with six of its 300-plus titles with internet surfers paying £5 for a three-month subscription.
Newspaper sales are falling as readers seek their news on the net instead. Advertising proceeds are also dropping with the combined effects of the credit crunch and advertisers such as motor dealers and estate agents choosing to promote themselves on their own websites.
The long-term prognosis for newspapers is not encouraging with many industry insiders fearing they will all end up as online news services.
The advantages are obvious - there are none of the overheads of printing and items can be published 24 hours a day alongside videos and photographs.
But what about those people who prefer to hold a newspaper in their hands and flick through the pages on a train journey or during a lazy Sunday morning lie-in?
There are also older readers who are not internet-savvy and those in low income households who can't afford a computer.
The hope is that by charging for online content, newspaper publishers will be able to continue printing their titles instead of merely uploading content to the web.
The argument in favour is that local papers will cover council meetings, court hearings and sports matches which are not written about elsewhere so readers will pay to view them on the net. It is also relatively cheap at £20 a year.
On the other hand people have got used to getting their news free online and many will baulk at paying for it.
My own feeling is that unless every newspaper in the land begins charging visitors to their websites it won't take off.
I am also concerned that already overworked and underpaid journalists will have to toil even harder to keep up with the need to update their website 24/7.
The answer maybe is to invest in the online output by employing more journalists and training them in the art of video-making and photography.
Rupert Murdoch has been threatening to charge online readers of the Times and the Sun so it is clearly a significant issue in the industry right now.
It is difficult to gauge which way it will go. Charging for website viewing could be the lifeline newspapers have been searching for. But if people turn their backs on the online content it might also sound their death knell.