Twitter and Other Social Media Should Come With a Warning Label

There are those who are all a-twitter about Twitter. It's probably just the latest communications fad until the next communications innovation replaces it. Just like its predecessors -- blogging, e-mail, texting, and cell phones -- there are potential pitfalls for businesses and for individuals who choose to use these media.

James Andrews works for Ketchum in Atlanta. He went to Memphis in January to talk with the corporate communications people at FedEx, a client, about social media. After landing there, he posted this message on Twitter: "True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.'" Someone at FedEx picked up Andrews' message and shared the post among the company's top executives and the company’s corporate communications staff. How much credibility do you think he has now with his client -- and anyone else in Memphis who has heard this story.

Someone in FedEx communications sent a note to Andrews that, in part, says: "Mr. Andrews, if I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith. Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write.... Many of my peers and I don’t see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do in Employee Communications." (See http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/01/21/key-online-influencer/ for more details.)

If you're going to use Twitter and other social media, don't create a crisis for yourself and your employer. Watch what you're putting out there. Same goes for your profile on sites such as FaceBook and LinkedIn. Don't put out anything you wouldn't want your boss and your mother to see. You'd think this Andrews fellow working in PR would have known better.

And while I'm talking about Twitter: Jane Irene Kelly of Ragan Communications recently wrote a warning to companies to carefully weigh the pluses and minuses of Twitter. Companies like General Motors and JetBlue are looking to strengthen their relationships with consumers who have positive things to say and address the concerns of disgruntled people "before their negative vibes can taint the opinions of others flitting about in the Twitter nest."

Kelly warns, "In the quest to be on the cutting edge, organizations diving into social media like Twitter without a clear and thoughtful strategy actually can end up doing damage to customer relationships as well as their image. That’s because even if their communication is ultra-brief or seems just plain random, users who embrace applications like Twitter are actually trying to have a meaningful connection with others. And they have extremely low tolerance for what they view as spam disguised as 'communication' invading their dialogue.

These social media are a smoldering crisis that you need to manage for your organization, just like any other smoldering crisis. Anticipate what might go wrong that could affect your reputation and your bottom line, and then take appropriate measures to fix those potential pitfalls. If you can't fix them, your crisis plan better include these as a sudden crisis so you are ready if that pitfall opens and swallows you.

More Bad Peanut Butter Is More Bad News

I better temper my previous praise for Peanut Corporation of America (below). I still think it's doing a good job of communicating and its emergency dark site was updated this past week (http://www.peanutcorp.com/). But you've heard the accusations I have about mold and cockroaches in the Blakely, Georgia, processing plant. Now the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration are looking at filing criminal charges.

At least PCA is still communicating.

I'd like to give the company the benefit of the doubt. After all, I love peanuts and peanut butter. And the company is still communicating. Maybe it will turn out that there was a single bad manager in Blakely and the company is just guilty of missing a smoldering crisis. Morton International's plant in Moss Point, Mississippi, had an environmental manager who falsified water discharge reports. Later, after my company bought Morton, we had to pay the largest environmental fine ever levied against a single company. It wasn't Morton's fault necessarily. The acts of a single employee can create a crisis for any organization.

I'm rooting for PCA to come out of this alive.

What Happens When You Release Bad News on a Busy News Day?

It appears PR folks have lost a strategic advantage when making negative news announcements. It used to be you could hide under radar if you issued a release on a busy news day. I guess that doesn't work any more, if indeed it ever did.

New Jersey-based Heartland Payment Systems chose, coincidentally or not, to announce on Tuesday, Inauguration Day, that it had suffered a data security breach that infiltrated its processing system last fall. Heartland Payment Systems "delivers credit/debit/prepaid card processing, payroll, check management and payments solutions to more than 250,000 business locations nationwide.... Heartland handles over 4 billion transactions per year, putting us in the top five processors of payment transactions in America (http://www.heartlandpaymentsystems.com/company/history.asp)." Intrusion into its data base sounds like a pretty big news story -- unless it's the most significant inaugural day in our lifetimes.

PR Week took the company to task. "Noted trade InformationWeek outright called the dissemination a PR tactic; security analysts were brutal in their commentary on the timing; and nearly every publication covering the incident mentioned the inauguration.... Whether or not Heartland had to release the news on Inauguration Day is up for debate. But that few media covering the situation accept that explanation only solidifies the folly of attempting to bury bad news. Not only was the news still covered – as of January 21, more than 200 news stories had mentioned the breach, according to a Google News search – but it is also covered more negatively because reporters, through blogs or more opinion-informed news coverage, no longer hold back on adding color to their news reporting."

Clear Channel Communications faces similar accusations after announcing this week that it was eliminating 1,850 jobs. Clear Channel stations in scores of communities across the country had a 1 p.m. meeting on Inauguration Day at each station, firing people and apparently hoping the rest of the media in each city would be too busy to notice.

The glut of information available and the speed at which news is disseminated should make us re-think how we release news, both good and bad. Be wary of sending out bad news on big event days. Whether coincidence or strategic, you may get more attention and criticism than you hoped for.

Football Coach Indicted in High School Player's Death During Practice

If you work for a university, college, or school district, how far will you go to support athletic coaches? The University of Indiana certainly has faced that issue a number of times through the years in its basketball program. High schools need to be looking at this issue as well after an indictment of a Louisville football coach.

The head football coach of Pleasure Ridge Park High School has been charged with reckless homicide in the death of a 15-year-old player who collapsed from heat stroke at practice. It's the first time a criminal charge has been filed in such a case, according to sports experts(http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage). The decision will have an effect on football coaches at all levels across the country, according to The (Louisville) Courier-Journal (http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009901230440). It also better have an effect on those responsible for crisis communications plans at all schools. The Jefferson County Public School District at first supported Coach David Jason Stinson after a quick investigation. But after several witnesses claimed to have heard the coach denying water and threatening to run the players until one of them quit, defense of Stinson seemed to wane. Now he will stand trial and faces one to five years in prison if convicted.

Interestingly, in the same edition of The Courier-Journal is an interview with Hall-of-Fame Packer and Louisville native Paul Hornung. He is quoted as saying, "(Coach Vince) Lombardi got away with murder. If you were hurt with him, you played. And he was lucky. He had some guys who played who shouldn't have played. I shouldn't have played three or four games, because I could have been a paraplegic. If I got hit a certain way it was over with. But injuries back then, maybe the word is not force, but they would suggest your ass play when you were hurt. You had to play with your injuries back then."

That's not how things work in sports any more. Are you prepared for an athlete's death or serious injury? I mentor a young lady who just got a job with a company that puts on fund-raising bike-riding events. I asked the regional PR person if she had a crisis plan in place in case a bike rider died during an event. She went pale. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

TechCrunch Says No to Embargoed Releases

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch last month blasted the PR profession and the practice of embargoing news releases (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/).

He wrote, in part: "PR firms are out of control. Today we are taking a radical step towards fighting the chaos. From this point on we will break every embargo we agree to. Tech companies are desperate for press and hammering their PR firms for coverage on blogs and major media sites. That in turn means that PR firms hammer us to get us to write about their clients. Gone are the days of polite pitches and actual relationship building. Today, PR firms email a story to us as many as 20 times, and call every TechCrunch writer on their cell phones repeatedly. If we say we won’t write a story (which is most of the time), things often turn nasty (check out Lois Whitman at HWH PR/New Media for a fine example)....

"We’ve never broken an embargo at TechCrunch. Not once. Today that ends. From now our new policy is to break every embargo. We’ll happily agree to whatever you ask of us, and then we’ll just do whatever we feel like right after that. We may break an embargo by one minute or three days. We’ll choose at random."

I would be interested to know if you have experience with making or breaking embargoes. If you check out the TechCrunch link above, you'll read some strong opinions from both sides. Are we PR types guilty as charged? Please let me know if you see this as an issue we should take under advisement or is this the ranting of a minority?

More on Peanut Butter and Electronics

Here is an update on a couple items I wrote about previously.

The peanut butter recall by Peanut Corporation of America has been expanded. The FDA has updated its information (http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html) today, but PCA's emergency dark site (http://www.peanutcorp.com/) hasn't been updated since Sunday. FDA has more and better information. I need to temper my praise of the company from last week. I'm lowering my grade from an A to a B-.

Meanwhile, Circuit City gets an F. I've written a couple of times about Circuit City and its management problems. The smoldering financial crisis at that company ultimately brought about its demise (http://www.circuitcity.com/closed.html). I'm sorry for the 34,000 people who have lost their jobs. Better recognition of a smoldering crisis and better response to it could have prevented this company from closing.

Blue Grass Airport Probe Goes Still Deeper

The plot thickened earlier this week at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky. The lesson we can learn here is this: If you have employees with company-provided credit cards, set up a system to regularly monitor use and then have a second way to monitor the monitoring system. So many crises could be prevented if organizations watched employee expenses more closely.

A story by the Lexington Herald-Leader in November accused Michael Gobb, executive director of Blue Grass Airport, with spending more than $200,000 for trips and other expenses from January 2006 through March 2008, an amount higher than any other airport studied. If the newspaper thought the expenses looked out of whack, shouldn't the board have noticed it too? Anyway, Gobb was suspended with pay during an investigation. "I appreciate the ongoing support of the airport board and the community leadership as we work to ensure a transparent review of airport policies and practices," Gobb said in late December. He resigned from his $220,000-a-year salary (plus perks) a week later.

In early January, six more top airport officials had their cards revoked after the board learned that three employees racked up $4,500 in charges at a Texas strip club in 2003. Gobb was one of them; the others are still unnamed.

Tuesday, three top airport officials resigned as the investigation continued. They were the finance director, operations director, and planning and development director. The board also elected a new chair. Some elected officials demanded the former chair, Bernard Lovely, be removed from the board entirely due to his lax financial oversight, but Lovely, with the new chair's support, plans to remain. Credit card use of at least two other airport officials continues. Charged expenses uncovered so far include Hanna Montana tickets, video games, and golf lessons.

I can say with confidence that passengers won't take their business to other airports as a result of these boardroom shenanigans. But this crisis still comes with a price. The airport board had to hire a consultant to review policies and practices, and the state auditor's office is examining the airport's finances. There will be the inevitable lawyers' fees and perhaps costs associated with recovering misspent money by these individuals. Perhaps there will be criminal charges. Then there's the cost of replacing all those knowledgeable managers who were forced out. Blue Grass Airport is a public, nonprofit corporation run by a board appointed by Lexington's mayor, who you can bet will be more involved so the scandal doesn't reflect on his future political fortunes.

Many of these smoldering crises can be prevented if you remove opportunities for dishonest people to abuse the system. I tend to be over-trusting of others. Your organization can't afford to be so. Suspect everyone and you may prevent that one bad apple from spoiling your reputation.

Peanut Butter Recall Is Being Handled Responsibly

I've seen too many companies, and have written about many here, who believe the best way to manage a crisis is to say nothing and lock the doors -- literally sometimes. It's refreshing this week to watch a manufacturer doing a very good job.

Peanut Corporation of America on Tuesday voluntarily recalled peanut butter produced in its Blakely, Georgia, processing facility because it may be contaminated with Salmonella. More than 430 illnesses in 43 states have been reported, with five deaths. The peanut butter was distributed only in bulk to institutions, food service industries, and private-label food companies. (See http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/peanutcorp01_09.html for FDA information on the recall.)

The company stepped up and took aggressive and corrective action and accepted responsibility. “We deeply regret that this has happened,” said Stewart Parnell, owner and president of PCA. “Out of an abundance of caution, we are voluntarily withdrawing this product and contacting our customers. We are taking these actions with the safety of our consumers as our first priority.” That quote made it into the FDA announcement and AP stories.

The company doesn't stop there. It set up a media web page to provide copies of releases. We see more companies going to such "dark sites" that can be fired up quickly if needed. PCA seems to have been prepared. See http://www.peanutcorp.com/ for an example of an emergency web site. The main corporate site, unfortunately, seems to have been taken down. The company might be better served to keep its main web site visible so that reporters and others can get background information about the company.

PCA clearly still has plenty of work to do. Earlier this afternoon, Kellogg Co. asked stores to stop selling its peanut butter sandwich crackers until it can be determined if the peanut butter is contaminated. And The family of a 72-year-old woman from Minnesota who died after contracting salmonella is planning legal action, probably the first of many individual and class action suits. But as Larry Smith, Institute for Crisis Management, says, companies should be worried about the court of public opinion at least as much as the court of law. So far, PCA seems to be doing just that.

Are you as well prepared as PCA for your next crisis? If not, what's holding you back? When the peanut butter hits the fan, it's too late to start planning.

Airlines Create Their Own Problems During Bad Weather

"If you take care of your guests, the guests will take care of your business."


Guess the industry that originated this quote I found in a Calgary Herald article online today. It could be anybody, right? In this case, it comes from the airlines, WestJet spokesman Robert Palmer to be specific. He was commenting on the weather-related mess across Canada during the holidays, and how WestJet did its best to make the holiday delays "a little less miserable."


How many of you traveled by car during the holidays and had any significant delays caused by weather? Let's see a show of hands. Okay, now how many of you traveled -- or tried to travel -- by plane and experienced significant delays due to weather? That's what I expected. I only see a couple of you had problems with the highway, but a bunch had flight problems. I drove 6 1/2 hours from Louisville to visit family in western Pennsylvania during the New Year's weekend. We had no delays, no problems. It didn't matter if it was snowing in Toronto or Chicago or Spokane or Calgary.


When I fly, however, I care very much about the weather in other cities. If equipment can't get out of Milwaukee, it can't get to where I am waiting. That used to mean a delay of a few hours. Now, airlines have fewer flights and smaller planes that are mostly booked full and overbooked. Even if it's warm and sunny in Nashville and warm and sunny at Grandma's in New York, travelers still may have trouble getting from Point A to Point B, especially during the holidays. Grandma may have to mail that sweater she made for you if you can't get out of Nashville in time for the holidays. I can't really blame the airlines because they can't afford to run the same way they did in the '80s. At the same time, they are creating crises for themselves when they don't have adequate alternate plans in place. We all know that someone somewhere is going to experience weather delays the last two weeks in December. It's inevitable.


It helps to know your rights. Rule 240 says that if the delay is the airline's fault due to a mechanical delay and not a weather delay, carriers have to honor their agreement to get you where you're going -- even if that means putting you on another airline at their own cost. In Canada, Bruce Cran, a consumer group national president, wants to meet with federal Transport Minister John Baird to press for a tougher passengers' rights charter that will include weather-related problems. According to the Calgary Herald (http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/city/story.html?id=3c780f07-cc4d-4935-a5f4-54918b3fc639), some travelers remain stranded, luggage is still lost, and mountains of e-mails and phone messages still haven't been attended to, now one week into the new year.


WestJet chartered third-party planes from as far as Florida to help move passengers along. But it's not enough. Airlines need to do more to accommodate irate passengers, especially during Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's not good enough to make them "a little less miserable." If they can't fly passengers to their destinations, they better do a doggone good job of communications. If travelers feel the airlines are doing all in their power to help them, hostility may more likely be directed to those uncontrollable forces of nature. But a curt ticket counter employee, perceived unfairness over standby, and an attitude of ambivalence toward customers can hurt airlines' reputations and lead to costly new rules about weather-related delays. The airline that stands above the rest in these actions will be the one that does best in spring and summer, too.



We have three inspirational rallying cries in this country: Remember the Alamo, Remember the Maine, and Remember JetBlue.

Correcting Media Errors and Misrepresentations: Know When to Scold 'em, Know When to Walk Away

I just read an article by a colleague/competitor that gave me cause to pause. He was advocating setting up web sites that enable organizations to respond to media misinformation. He suggests listing the article or text from video news on one side of the screen and your corrections, clarifications, and links to third-party authorities on the other. It sounds like a good idea but with this caveat: Are we talking “old media” or “new media?”

If we’re looking at new media – web sites, blogs, and the growing plethora of instant communications – then the idea is sound. If new media users are libeling your organization, respond with similar media that will reach largely the same audience.

But if this suggests we fill web pages and blogs with counterattacks against the old, traditional media, then I’d suggest thinking again. Maybe I’ve lived a charmed life, but I’ve met very few reporters who are out to get you (unless, perhaps, you don’t treat them fairly and honestly). And when I worked in the media, I don’t recall any co-reporters who were less than professional journalists trying to get facts straight without bias. Reporters want to get the facts right and usually want to tell them in an unbiased manner.

Nevertheless, reporters are human (or so I’ve been told). They make mistakes. But sometimes you can create an even greater controversy and provide reporters with more fodder for more stories that you’ll like even less than the original. Sharing your version of the story with employees and other key stakeholders is fine, but I wouldn’t want to create an online he-said-she-said spat.

Here is a condensed version of my media relations philosophy, and as always, tell me what you think. More often than not, you’re one-day news. If you want to correct a story, you’re two-day news. Don’t be afraid to walk away from a slur and lick your wounds in private. Let it go. Second, sometimes, misinformation might be part of an ongoing story that will be repeated each time the reporter develops an update to the story. In that case, you ought to set the record straight so the error won’t be repeated. A third approach is to tell the reporter you think he or she missed the mark without asking for a correction or retraction.

That third approach worked well for me a few years ago when I was media relations go-to guy for a chemical company and, informally, for a group of plants called Rubbertown in Louisville. A TV reporter did an in-depth sweeps-month piece about plant neighbors who believed the cancer rates were high because of the Rubbertown companies’ emissions. He interviewed grieving spouses, sickly cancer victims, and asthma sufferers, sometimes as voice-overs while showing cemeteries and billowing steam from a stack. I called the reporter and told him where he could find cancer registry numbers and see that cancer rates aren’t any higher around Rubbertown than other parts of the state. I also suggested strongly that the next time he wants to do a Rubbertown story to please talk to me or someone else who could provide a balanced view. He agreed with me and vowed he wouldn’t do another Rubbertown story unless he talked to me first. He always was true to his word. I felt like we gained a mutual respect.