08: Top Communication Fails that Made Headlines in 2018

Last week I revealed my list of 2018's top communication wins. The list was made up of my choices for the top hooks, rebounds or out of the box communication thinking from brands, people, politicians and so on. They put a good spin on a maybe not so good event. This week is all about the not so good event or blunder that became an overall fail. It's not a top 10 public relations fails from a PR practitioner point of view, but from a public opinion point of view. There was an event that made headlines, then there was a fallout, and then there was a lesson to learn for everyone. Want to hear this list? Well then, just keep listening to this week's episode of the Confident Communications Podcast. Episode number eight. Foreign. Welcome back to the Confident Communications Podcast. I am your host, Molly McPherson. This week, the top communication fails for 2018. Now, why this topic? I'll tell you, I give a lot of talks and workshops and my personal hook is that I bring in a communication fail as a starting point to illustrate the importance of having a sound communication skill set. I think that people are more receptive to hearing me discuss how to take the fear out of communicating in the modern age when I start with a blunder that someone else has made. Now, the great thing about the business that I chose for myself is that someone makes a mistake every single day. I'm not kidding. Every day if I'm at a hotel, I just have to grab the paper in the morning and bring it with me and then show them the headline. Sometimes I might call up on the screen a screenshot of the New York Times or whatever the headline is, but I always give an example. For example, two weeks ago I was in Des Moines, Iowa, and that was the day after that Rudy Giuliani made a punctuation error in a tweet when he was trying to discuss Donald Trump at the G20 summit. He didn't bother putting a space between the period ending one sentence and the first word of the next sentence. Now, on a podcast it's difficult to see that, but what it does is it inadvertently creates a hyperlink. A hyperlink is the blue with an underline that you might see on a website or on a word doc or PDF doc. And what that means is that it links to a website. And in the case of this hyperlink, a super social savvy person saw that Giuliani had tweeted inadvertently a hyperlink purchased the domain and created a website. And I believe it was a.in and a.in will allow you to create a website and the Website, as soon as you went to the page, it said, donald J. Trump is a traitor to our country. I mean, that's just like death, downright dirty social media dark arts. But Rudy Giuliani, he doubled down on it. He did not admit that he made a mistake. He did not admit that he did not know what he was doing on Twitter. He said, I stand by that tweet. Now, my next trip, I was in Oklahoma City just two weeks ago. The headlines in the paper, Heisman Trophy winner Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray apologizing for anti gay tweets that he made when he was 14 and 15. Which means was two years of bad tweets. But of course, with any athlete nowadays that gets, that wins, that wins an award or is on a professional team, fans tend to go back to all their tweets and sure enough, they found something and he had to come out and apologize for it anyway. Bad tweet, bad pr. But these are all good openings for my talks because people pay attention right out the gate. So that's why I created the list of the top communication fails. Many of these I've used in my talks throughout the years, either as a kickoff or I'll use it as an example. They are a compilation of public relations fails or social media fails. The distinction in the response is that it was caused by something they did wrong from a communication perspective. So it could be social media, it could be messaging, it could be just bad publicity. But I, I want to talk about and focus on the communication tactic, thus the title of the podcast, Confident Communication. Because I want to give people the confidence to know how to communicate, whether through the spoken word or online or through social media. So I'm going to go through the list and then I'm going to discuss the fallout and then the lesson learned that all of us can learn from these events. Are you ready? Let's go. Number 10. We are going back to January, which I can barely remember, but I do remember the story because I happened to be in a hockey arena when the tweet came on my phone during the time between the first and second period. But the subject was Hawaii Blair's erroneous missile alert and the idea of sending an emergency alert to warn mobile phone users and news outlets of an incoming ballistic missile. Missile was meant to keep them safe and not terrify them. When this event happened, if you remember, it was during the time of heightened tensions with North Korea. Seems like a lifetime ago, but this was back in January when the North Korean talks were were in the news. Hawaiians received emergency alerts on their phones saying the a ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii seek immediate shelter and this is not a drill. And I remember thinking, oh, that is a bad tweet. Turns out what happened, the snafu came from an employee who pushed the quote unquote wrong button. And the subsequent reports revealed that the employee that pushed the button didn't think it was the wrong button to push at the time because they believed that the practice emergency drill was the real thing. So we were told that the mistake was more of a tactical mistake. There was just some miscommunication. Then at a press conference later on Tuesday, a couple days later, Hawaiian officials released a second report on the incident confirming that the employee was terminated and referred to the employee as employee number one. Which now in December sounds like individual number one in Michael Cohen's testimony. But that this employee had been a source of concern at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. And I have to say, looking back on my FEMA experience, would the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency be hema? I don't know. I have to check that at any rate. But this employee was a source of concern for more than a decade and was unable to comprehend the situation and confused real life events and drills on at least two separate occasions. Doesn't quite sound like the state employee that you want manning the controls if there was an incoming missile strike. So another employee resigned before any action could be taken. So already we can go ahead and assume that employee number one was probably an employee of a certain generation, an older generation, because they had been around for a long time and that there was some form of a cover up. All in all with these explanations, though, the whole sordid affair was pretty unnerving. But it also raised questions about the process of the emergency alert system. And also people really want to know this is something that's changed now in this day and age that people always want to get to the bottom of things when something goes wrong. Why did this happen? Now there was a bigger issue here was that there was a delay, a very significant delay of 38 minutes when they could not stop the, the, the alerts from going out because get this, the person responsible did not know his Twitter password. Huh. Honest to goodness story. So what is the follow? Well, a number of people lost their job. Two, a number of people lost the confidence of emergency management in the state of Hawaii. But the lesson here is if you work at emergency management in any capacity or in any job, or if you're just a human being using anything on a computer, you Must learn your passwords. Everyone needs to know their passwords. If you're still someone that likes to write down their passwords in notebooks, not the safest thing to do. Anyone could find that. The hack could be someone could just open up your notebook. But nowadays there's a lot of programs out there like LastPass, which is what I use. Should I say that? Would that BE private or 1Password? These are all these password applications that people can use. So lesson learned. Know your password number nine. This one happened in May of 2018 and it starts with the viral trend of Yanny or Laurel. Remember this one? It was the next gen blue or gold dress. This one happened in the midst of a bombing campaign in Afghanistan. The Air Force, U.S. air Force decided to send a funny tweet because everyone knows that bombing is hilarious. To get on, the fun with the Yanny and Laurel viral thang is they. They sent out a tweet stating that Taliban forces would rather have heard Yanny or Laurel instead of the noise of an A10 dropping bombs. Talk about a bomb. Was that tweet. So it was widely panned online. No surprise for being insensitive and also diminishing the potential loss of many, many civilian lives in the Middle east due to the war on terror. And no surprise, the original tweet was quickly deleted. I am going to show my generational bias here and assume that it was younger than a baby boomer that saw the humor in that. I might even say younger than a Gen Xer. So the fallout, the tweet was deleted. The Air Force had a lot of egg on their face and no one really cared about the Yanny or Laurel after that. It's funny like once that tweet came out, not many people heard about Yanny or Laurel anymore. But this is why you need guidelines. You do need social media guidelines if you are running a business, an organization, or I don't know, like a military. So if, if you're a business and you want to jump into pop culture and you want to incorporate these types of jokes and elements into your social media updates, I mean, usually it's a good deal. I. It's a good idea. I think years ago, like the blue and gold is when things, all things discussing blue or gold worked for the first two days. And if you remember, like every celebrity kind of jumped on the blue and gold. And I don't know if you remember it, I only saw blue, I never saw gold. But the whole thing was cute and kitschy, but it was kind of a one and Done. The Yanny Laurel is an also ran. So if you are going to jump on it, try and be ahead of the curve on something. I would argue that Yanny, this whole Yanny phase was a little behind the curve. Maybe it was right on the curve. But if you're going to do it, you have to be really, really clever. So take the time to look at the guidelines, look at the social media policies, run it up the chain, and run it up the chain through a lot of different people that have lots of variations on humor, some people that are witty, some people that are silly and really pull. Is this a wise thing to do? Don't leave it up to one person. All right, now, speaking of social media guidelines, number eight. I'm just going to call this the Red Hen. I use this one a lot of my talks. And someone will tell me, and I'll always use it at this point, when someone says, you know, what's the big deal about having a social media policy or guidelines? It really doesn't matter. And then I'll ask, and it doesn't matter where I am in the country. I'll just ask, could someone tell me where the Red Hen is? And some people look at me. I won't even say restaurant. I'll say the Red Hen. And then someone will say Virginia. And then I'll look at them and say, now tell me, how do you know that we're standing in wherever we are, Tennessee, Washington state, how do you know about a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia? And then the story will slowly dribble out. And most people remember it. So the Red Hen is this tiny farm to table restaurant that was on Main street in this tiny, I won't call it tiny, but a smaller city of Lexington. It's in the western part of Virginia. So this event happened in June when President Trump, this was around the time in the summer where a lot of the anger in the country, it was heightened. There was a lot of heightened tension around Trump's policies and his desire to bar, you know, transgender people from the military. And this idea of, you know, the transgender became a very hot topic, a hot issue, hot button issue that many, many, many people were discussing. So along those lines, in comes Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She's the press secretary to President Trump. She came into the Red Hen with a large group of people to sit down and eat a meal. Can't remember if it was lunch or dinner. I somehow feel it was a lunch. But she's with, she's with family and friends. And then the owner of the restaurant. Stephanie Wilkinson said later in a story with the Washington Post that she wasn't a huge fan of confrontation, but she wanted to stand her moral ground and ask Huckabee Sanders to leave because she did not agree with the inhumane and unethical treatment from Trump's administration, and she thought that his policies were cruel. And she. And part of her reasoning, too, is she said that several Red Hen employees are gay, and she knew that Sanders had defended Trump. Now she asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. Now, when I ask people to recount the story, I'll ask them, okay, how did we all find out about it? How'd the press find out about it? And they'll inevitably say, Sarah Sanders tweeted about it. Which is true. She did. So she did. The next morning, she took to Twitter and said that she was told by the owner of the Red Hen, and she pointed them out in Lexington, Virginia, asked her and her family to leave, to just to politely leave. And she said here in her tweet, her actions say far more about her than me. I'll always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so, in my opinion. That's one for Sarah Sanders. That's a pretty good tweet. But now we had this fallout. I mean, naturally, there's going to be fallout on both sides. And the restaurant got hit hard. And where do you get hit hard first? And where do you get hardest is online. Their Yelp reviews sank. Their Google reviews sank. Everyone was targeting this restaurant. The Trumpers, you know, wanted to support Sarah Sanders and by extension, President Trump. And I think that this. The owner of this restaurant had absolutely no idea what hit her. Because what happens a lot, and this is with a lot of the clients that I deal with, they never think of that digital fallout. You know, they're still operating many times in that 90s culture, that 80s culture, the 70s culture, where everything was interpersonal, it was person to person, and it was, you know, phone calls and Yellow Pages. Thinking about anything online and online reviews is kind of like another step. Well, she found out very, very quickly that this was going to hit her business. Now, what makes this a fail is not because Sarah Sanders responded to getting kicked out. It's not because Wilkinson kicked out Sarah Sanders. Although I will say when she was kicked out, the owner of that restaurant did know that she was going to. That this was going to make some news. But it was in how it leaked is what landed it on this list. Because what The Red Hen did not have. I can't say this for a fact, but I can assume this is a social media policy for employees, because the reason why this story leaked was not because of Sanders tweet. It wasn't because of the owner. It was because of an employee at the Red Hen restaurant took a photo of a whiteboard and at the restaurant and tweeted it out. Now, the whiteboard in the restaurant had had information written about the day's events at the restaurant. So it was what they needed to order what they were out of. And then in one column off to the right, it said 86, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was Sarah misspelled, by the way. And that was tweeted out. So in other words, 86, meaning kicked out. Now, that went viral and that, I believe, is what triggered Sarah Huckabee Sanders to tweet about it, because it already got out in the ether, so to speak. So the fallout, the Chamber of Commerce had to get involved in the area because that whole area took a hit in terms of tourism and tourism matters to that part of town, especially when it was summer heading into the fall. And as of this year, they had commissioned a research study to analyze the financial hit that that entire region took. Now, the lesson here again, have social media guidelines for employees in place. Be sure to tell them what can and cannot be posted online on social media. But also if you are a business owner, especially if you're a small business owner, be very mindful of the actions that you take in your business and how they can reverberate online. Never forget that online piece, because when you get hit with a swarm of angry critics or trolls, it can sink your business quickly. They're still in business, however, but check the reviews. You'll. You'll be able to still see some colorful, colorful reviews. Next on the list, number seven. I didn't even need to write down the date that this happened because I remember because it was near Halloween. And number seven belongs to Megyn Kelly. Megyn Kelly, who is now the former host of the Megyn Kelly Today show on NBC. I'm sure all of you are have heard or have seen this clip. There was a controversy on the Real Housewives of New York with Luann as she dresses Diana Ross, and she made her skin look darker than it really is. And people said that that was racist. And I don't know, I thought, like, who doesn't love Diana Ross? She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day. I don't know how like that got Racist on Halloween. It's not like she's walking around. I have not seen it. Now, the fallout, as we all know, Megyn Kelly lost her job. There was a buyout to her contract right now. And as of this recording, she has cut her hair back to the Fox News length of what she looked like when she was at Fox News. She is still not yet employed. Not clear who her future employer will be or if they'll even be one. But she is still in the press a lot. There's a lot of paparazzi photos of her, like, just sauntering, not sauntering. I mean, she's a mom, so she's, she's always buzzing around Washing Wash, New York City. Excuse me, but she is out of a job because of the comment that she made about blackface not being an issue, especially when she was a child. Now being the same age as Megyn Kelly and many people that are the same age immediately went back to that time and said, wait a minute, blackface was never appropriate, ever. And so she was trying to do something. It didn't work. Clearly didn't work. And she is out of work now. As an aside, I think NBC was definitely looking for a reason to get rid of her. Her ratings were very, very low. They were lower when the previous hosts of the show, Al Roker and Tamron hall, had the hosting duties on that show. And her ratings were much worse and she just didn't fit in that format at all. But she lost her job. So the fallout, NBC is still trying to recover. They are going to have a new program and then Jenna Bush reportedly is going to be, or the rumors say that she's going to be one of the people to take over that show, if not the solo host, which ironically, she was sitting on the panel when that happened. But you are not going to hear NBC mention that. They want everyone to forget that Jenna Bush was sitting at the table. But the lesson here, never make a guess on racism. 2018, heading into 2019, there is no place for bigotry, especially public cries of it and public speeches and public conversations. It shouldn't be in the discourse. It shouldn't be in the commentary. And if it is, there's going to be fallback. Number six belongs to Rob Porter. Does that name sound familiar? Whenever I hear the name Porter, I always go back to one of my favorite movies of all time, all the President's Men. Dustin Hoffman playing Carl Bernstein when he was trying to get the information out from the, from the secretary in the White House when he said P. P. And then Robert Redford says, p is for Porter. We know P is for Porter. Okay, this is just how my mind works. But anyway, Rob Porter, the Rob Porter that I am discussing is, was an employee of the current White House, and he worked for President Trump and he had to abruptly resign because of abuse allegations from two ex wives. Now, where's the communication problem in this? I'm sure that you're wondering, so just stay with me for a bit. John Kelly was at the White House at this time. And this is the point in the program where I'm going to mention I had crowdsourced this list to people that I know, friends and friends that are, you know, kind of in my PR world. And my friend Maura, when I asked her, she said, the mooch, you have to use the mooch. And I thought, oh, the mooches, a great idea. There's so many things we can say about the mooch. But unfortunately, the mooch, as I reminded her, is. Or I didn't remind her of this, but I only thought of it later on was 2017. Maura. The Mooch was not 2018. And the Mooch happened on our way. We were going to Martha's Vineyard, but that's a side story. But mooch is of circa 2017. But 2018 is Rob Porter. And Rob Porter, when he was working with President Trump was around the time that John Kelly was there. And John Kelly was a chief of staff and he was a big fan of Rob Porter. So was President Trump. And then Rob Porter at the time was allegedly dating Hope Hicks. Now, this is the Molly conspiracy theory. I tend to think when unusual things happen in the White House or Hollywood or whatever, that there is something else afoot. And when there is a story that Hope hooks and wait, did I say that right? Hope Hicks and Rob Porter were dating. I thought, hmm, why is this a news story? No one even knows who Rob Porter is. People know who Hope Hicks is. At the time, she was the communications director at the White House. She was a longtime president, longtime Donald Trump employee, and he brought her to the White House. But I thought the news story was suspect. And then, sure enough, a couple days later, Rob Porter was now a big story because his two ex wives had accused him of abuse. Now, here's where the communication fail comes in. John Kelly, as we later learned, knew about the abuse allegations, and it was questionable, like what he knew. Exactly. But take a listen to this clip from a press briefing and listen closely to listen to the words and what they're trying to say. And what Raj Shah, the deputy press sec is trying not to say. Can you tell us, Raj, when the White House first became aware of these allegations?

Well, I know there's been some reports about the chief of staff. He became fully aware about these allegations yesterday. I'm not going to get into the specifics regarding who may have known what pieces of information because they were all part of an ongoing background check investigation.

You said fully aware. Was he partially aware?

Mr. Well, I think we all became aware of the news reports that emerged on Wednesday morning and some of the graphic images.

But did he know any of this back in November?

Again, I'm not going to get into the specifics.

There's very deliberate wording in there. And did you catch it now? When I listened to it, John Kelly knew a lot, but John Kelly ain't saying how much he knew. So there is a cover up there. But now why is it a communication fail? I think it's a fail because I think that John Kelly had planned this from the beginning. He wanted to keep Rob Porter in. He knew that these abuse allegations were out there, but he was going to contain it because it was just in an FBI report. But what John Kelly, John Kelly of the generation of, I'm going to put him as a late baby boomer, never thought about was to look online. If anyone took the time, what, 30 seconds to Google the two ex wives of Rob Porter, they would have seen that one of them had a blog and a somewhat popular blog and she detailed the abuse allegations. So that's why this event is a number six on my list of communication fails because John Kelly or John Kelly's team failed to Google and failed to find this information. The fallout, of course, Rob Porter is gone, Hope Hicks is gone and now John Kelly is gone. They're all gone. But the lesson learned here is if you're doing any type of campaign, any type of work, any type of any type of event where other people are involved, just Google them and find out what you can find with a regular Google search because if you can find it, that means the general public's gonna find it as well. All right. We are halfway through the list and now we are on number five. And I've titled this. I really don't care. Do you, do you remember who said that? Or more exact, do you remember who wore that? So as she boarded a plane to head to Texas for a surprise visit to the heart of the family separation crisis that many thought was started by her husband, President Trump, Melania was spotted wearing a coat as she ascended the stairs to the plane. That said, I really don't care, do you? This would be if. If I could put an emoji out, there would be the face slap, the palm, the palm and the head slap. Why she did this, I will never know. Her handler said that she did it because she wanted to send a message to the press, the press that she felt was attacking her husband or treating him unfairly with their coverage. Now, if you could go back to when all of this was happening again. It was during this, the scrum of the family separation time, and when she had boarded the plane, as she boarded the plane, it was during a time when Melania Trump had a lot of sympathy because she never spoke a lot. And I kind of feel that part of the reason why she doesn't go on camera and do a lot of interviews is that English is her second language. And that would be a challenge because it's nerve wracking enough to be on camera. Everything you say needs to be vetted, so it has to be prepared. And you don't want to cause, you know, do no harm is what they usually say with media interviews. So it's understandable, at least to me, why she would be hesitant to do that. But she, at that point, had a lot of public sympathy just because she was, you know, new to this position and she was married to someone that was creating a somewhat volatile environment in the country with a lot of his policies. But her public opinion, and this, of course, is unscientific. This is just my opinion, I thought was much, much higher than President Trump's. And she kind of rode this wave of a cross between sympathy and also understanding based on who she was and where she came from, and knowing that she publicly had stated that she just wants to be home and be with her son, Barren. However, when she ascended that plane with that jacket, she was making a statement. And this is really the first time she did. And when it came out after the fact, when this story broke, allegedly, her team had no idea that she was wearing this coat. She did this on her own. And then hashtags started. One was, she cares. She cares. And hashtag, it's just the jacket. Because that was the spin that her team was putting out. However, it was the point in Melania's term, if you will, as a first lady, where she likely took her first dip in the public opinion polls because many, many people thought that that jacket, and that statement in particular, was a very cold statement. And even though she claimed it was towards the, the press, that is not clear that wearing that jacket, that coat was making a statement against the press. It looked like she was making a statement against the people who were supporting the children. The fallout. Melania had everyone on her side until the coat. But the lesson here is that optics matter. Melania's loudest, most poignant interview and moment in the spotlight was when she never said a word. It's when her coat did. Now, number four is yet another example of a news story hitting on the day that I was conducting a communication workshop. And it just so happens that I was in the home state of the person at the center of this PR controversy. Who am I speaking about? Papa John. Now, Papa John is known as John Schnattner, which is a name that I can never pronounce, which is likely why it's called Papa John's and he goes by Papa John's because no one else can pronounce it. But John Schnattner had a problem. And part of his problem was that he could not help himself. He when the take a knee issue was happening with the NFL, specifically when Colin Kaepernick of the 49ers wanted to take a knee and it became a big racial. A big racial issue and a big problem for the NFL. Papa John's, a big sponsor in the NFL, stood on the other side of the knee. And John Shatner wanted Papa John's to publicly state that they that he was against players taking a knee. Now, the Papa John's board of directors didn't think this was a wise choice in terms of messaging for their pizza chain. And sales did take a dip. So the board recommended or probably persuaded Papa John, John Shatner to, to get some media training. So when he was in the media training is when things went off the rails. Because ironically, he was given media training to help prepare him for media interviews about the issue of the take a knee. And they needed to develop new messaging around commentary that didn't have any racial undertones. So in other words, he was just being taught how not to sound like a racist when he's talking about pizza. And during the course of the training, he tried to draw a parallel between Papa John's and Colonel Sanders. And he had stated that Colonel Sanders spoke a certain way and based on history and contextual history, that when Colonel Sanders used the slur, the N word specifically, that there wasn't a lot of fallout for Colonel Sanders, but which became more of a brand and more of an iconic brand. But he said way back when there wasn't a public fallout. So why Is there a public fallout for Papa John? So within the media training, he couldn't even help himself. Now, no surprise in the environment that we're in, is that that conversation, which was recorded because I'm sure they had a camera in the room, probably had other cameras there, because that's what media training is. It's getting people comfortable speaking under pressure, in the spotlight with a camera in front of them. You want to prepare them to not say anything stupid. He couldn't help himself and he did. That video leaked, which isn't surprising in this environment that we're in this digital environment. And from that there was a lot of fallout, primarily Papa John himself. So he was asked to leave. Okay, so he's no longer the CEO of Papa John's. The board kicked him out. The additional fallout from it is that when you're labeled a racist, there's not a lot of recovery there. It's pretty difficult to recover, especially when you stand by it or you say that it was taken out of context. It's really difficult to be taken out of context. Is there is evidence of you not taking it out of context? Purdue in Indiana removed his name from building. So did Ball State. They said that they were going to keep it, and then they rescinded that. So did his gem, his personal gem. Took his name off the wall. University of Louisville, also the NFL, mlb, you know, they dropped Papa John's. So Papa John's is still in a recovery mode. And Papa John himself has created a website, savepapajohns.com which is interesting because it should be Save Papa John, because it's trying to save him and not the pizza chain itself. So there's a little mixed URL messaging there. But in this PR tug of war, Papa John lost out. Because the lesson here in this current PC climate that we're in racist, biased, homophobic, hateful, discriminatory, you name it. Any type of hate language does not have a place in society. If you work for a person or an organization that supports this behavior, then get out. The landscape simply does not support it. And they will eventually be found out and ostracized. Either they'll leak it out themselves or someone else will do that. Because we're in a very transparent society. If businesses, business leaders don't want to be transparent, someone will do the work for you. Number three doesn't go to a specific person per se. It goes to a whole collection of them. And these are the mistweeters. And the mistweeters are the people in 2018 that sent out previous tweets or tweets that either harmed or derailed their career or an event that they were involved in. Now, I mentioned earlier, the Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray had to go back and apologize for tweets that he had made just a few years earlier. And there are plenty of examples in 2018 where tweets came back to bite people. There were a rash of tweets from baseball players. Hayter, I think, was the picture that he's the one that tweeted negative comments. Trey Turner from the Washington Nationals, they dug up some bad tweets about him. And this is like Mr. Nice Guy Baseball USA. And those were really bad tweets. So there are a lot of athletes out there that got caught up in this bad tweet. But also recently, Kevin Hart, who was going to be the host of the Academy Awards coming out in the new year, he had to relinquish his position as the host for tweets that were anti gay, homophobic tweets. At first he didn't want to apologize, but then he gave in and apologized and no longer, but still didn't keep with his hosting duties. And the mistweets go on and on. Now, I think the person, though, that probably suffered the most from a MIS tweet, so we will give this person the number three slot, is Roseanne Barr. Now, Roseanne Barr is someone that always seems to step in the thick of it at some point by doing something. But in this case, it was the tweets. And her tweeting was allegedly when she was on Ambien. And that was the excuse that she gave for tweeting out real derogatory content about Valerie Jarrett and lots of other things. But that's the one that got her fired. And she had just started working with ABC again. She was working on the Roseanne program was back. The ratings were through the roof. And for a network television show and this kind of world of Netflix and Amazon Prime, ABC was really happy to have this show back on the air, but they had to fire her because they could not let these tweets stand. So for number three, it's going to be for all the Ms. Tweeters out there. But, but number one spot probably goes to Roseanne Barr because she, she lost the most. So that was the fallout of the missed tweets. And what is the lesson learned? Oh, my goodness. Of course, if you are someone that does have a social media pass and millennials, I'm mostly talking to you here because when Twitter came on the scene this was 2007, 2008. Most Gen Xers, most baby boomers weren't on Twitter or they just started Twitter. So there wasn't a lot of history there. So when they started, they were starting the social media network when they were 35 or 45, 50. They're at an age where they know better not to say those things on Twitter. But for a lot of the younger generations, these are the people that get caught up in these old tweets. So if you're a millennial, if you're Gen Y, Gen Z, a teenager looking for a job, make sure you take the time to vet your social media. And if you are of a generation that should know better, don't say anything stupid on Twitter. I know you could think, oh, we'll just delete this. Or when the Ambien wears off, I'll go back and delete that post. You can never delete anything on social media. You can hit delete and it can go away temporarily, but it lives forever, especially with screenshots. So that's our lesson learned. Number two is going to go to a collection of people as well. I will call number two, the men of Me two. And the men of Me two goes back a couple of years now. And if I did this list last year, if I had the podcast, oh, my goodness, Kevin Spacey would absolutely be on that list. And it's not from a communication point of view. It's not from the act that got him caught up in the whole MeToo mess, is that that Kevin Spacey tried to tweet his way out of the mess. And that's never, ever a good idea. But for 2018, the MeToo movement, which I discussed last week, isn't going anywhere. It is still here, and it has legs. And I don't see it going away anytime soon. So I think it will still be with us well into 2019. The two people that I want to point out for this distinction of communication fails, number one, Les Moonves. He was the former head of cbs. And I mean, this guy, the stuff that this guy did to women on his way up on the entertainment chain. And I go back years ago, I worked for a CBS affiliate when, when I was in the Twin Cities, and I remember his name. So this is someone that I've always followed. And there was always this kind of blind gossip buzz about him that he really was this type of a guy. So it's no surprise that his antics, his sexual antics were going to come out at some point, and they certainly did. And when it did. Les Moonves made his, probably his biggest mistake, but he really had no choice was in his statement, a lot of women accused him of sexual misconduct, especially as it related to his position with cbs. And his response was this. Those were mistakes and I regret them immensely. But I always understood and respected and abided by the principle that no means no. And I have never misused my position to harm or hinder anyone's career. At the time of this recording. We all know that that is a bunch of hooey. It's a lie. So you never want to lie in a statement. And then we found out that he did lie. And I don't know if you heard this bit about it, but when they were investigating whether or not there were communications that he had on his electronics about any of the COVID ups, they investigators wanted his iPad and he gave them his son's iPad. Okay, so this guy is Gil T. And since then he's lost his 100 million, 120 million dollar payout, which he deserved. Now by extension, the bad communications was his wife, Julie Chen, who is standing by him. Now that's just the act of standing by him. That's for another podcast, I suppose. But the communication angle in this is that Judy Chen is the hostess of two CBS programs, one syndicated by cbs, the Talk, you know, the talk show during the day, the all female talk show, and then also as the hostess of Big Brother and both gigs that she's now stepped away from in support of her husband. Now, where her blunder is, in my opinion, is that her statement was just as ridiculous as his. I mean, she supported everything and believes him. Like now, moving on from Julie Chen, one more person I'm going to highlight in this whole me too movement was someone that I really, really liked. And this was Louis C.K. and Louis C.K. i'm not gonna say what he did. You can just Google it and find out. But of all the MeToo issues out there, this is probably one of the more disgusting ones. But what Louis CK did, right, and he would have been on the list last week, is that unlike a lot of the other MeToo guys, he admitted it. And not only did he admit that the accusations were true, he admitted it right away. He did not even take a breath before he admitted, yes, I did it, it was wrong. And now I'm going to take time off to reflect on what I did, likely working with the PR team. And that was really good advice because he took it until he didn't. And his time off was about seven months, which in the in the timeline of MeToo, really isn't a long time, and it wasn't long enough. So Louis CK slowly crept into the underground comedy cellars where he belongs, and started his comeback. He started it slowly started it in the underground and just showed up on stage. Now, part of the problem with that tactic is, and some of the women had pointed this out online on social media was, if you're just a woman that's going to a comedy show and you don't think that someone who forced women to watch him do, we'll just leave it at that. Perform high. They were required to sit there and have this man walk out, and they had no warning whatsoever that they were going to see Louis CK and that's. You know what? That's a pretty fair argument that they should be aware that he's coming out to perform. That's number one. Number two is that when Louis CK did perform, he didn't really address what his time away in the spotlight was for. I know it's difficult to make jokes about it. Not that he needed to make jokes about it, but there could still be a public statement that he could have put out in the ether like that, hey, folks, I'm slowly coming out and doing this. I took some time off, I reflected on it, and now I have to get back to what I do and what I love. But I am a changed man, yada, yada. But the other piece of it that I think is a communication fails because he brought other people into his communication fail. And in the case of one of his friends, Sarah Silverman, take a listen. But it's not analogous to the other women in this that are talking about the predic. You know, what he did to them. Because he could offer me nothing. We were only just friends. So sometimes, yeah, I wanted to see it. It was amazing. Sometimes I'd be like, gross, no. And we'd get pizza. That was Sarah Silverman on the Howard Stern show addressing the Louis CK issue. Now, Sarah Silverman, a comedian, a pretty bawdy comedian, I assume was part of a plan for Louis CK to slowly get back into the good graces with comedians. I picture Louis CK casting a net to all of his comedian friends and asking them, pleading, please, somebody go on the air somewhere in support of me. Sarah Silverman took him up on it. But the problem was, is that when Sarah Silverman did that, she put herself in the middle of the mess. And whenever a woman does that in defense of a man that's done something indefensible, you can't get out of that. So that was Sarah Silverman's problem, of course. No surprise. She had to come back a day later because she was called out on Twitter and she picked one of the tweets and she ended up apologizing and she said she was sorry. Ugh. This is why I don't like weighing in. I can't seem to do press for my show without being asked about it, meaning Louis C.K. but you're right, you were equals and he blah, blah, blah. And that's not okay. So point being that now Sarah Silverman got caught up in that mess. The fallout for Sarah Silverman, every single time that she's on stage, people are going to think about Louis CK and what he did to her. The lesson, it is very difficult to weigh in and defend indefensible things. Now, before I reveal the number one communication fail, I want to let you all know about something that's happening in early 2019. I am launching a new online course in January called Communicate with Power in Less Than an Hour. The title pretty much sums up what the course is about, as you heard in my list from the last two episodes, is that communication is a challenging hurdle to overcome in the 21st century. And from my work traveling around the country, working with clients, hearing the stories from my audience members after my talks, they don't feel heard in all the social noise and chatter out there. They are afraid of saying the wrong things online or in person. They worry that speaking up for themselves will earn them the wrong label. They fear someone will take what they say or write out of context. They are afraid of the risk that they put themselves out there on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever they're using. They're worried that they may end up as a communication fail. And if you're like most professionals, you spend most of your time communicating online. This course, Communicate with Power in Less Than an Hour, will give you all the tools you need to feel confident communicating in the modern age. That leads us now to number one. Who did I rank as the worst communication fail of 2018? The number one goes to the number one social network in the world, Facebook. I could probably spend another 25 minutes just talking about all the misdeeds of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and company. But I'm not, because all the stories have been in the press. So I'm going to go right to the end, which is what happened this week. That Facebook, we now have learned that they gave even more access and more intrusive access to a lot of companies like Spotify and Netflix. The personal data that all the users give to Facebook, they're giving it to all these other companies. Hmm. What does that make you think about Facebook? Transparency is the key word in this PR fail. Mark Zuckerberg was not transparent back in March when he testified, he clearly sat down with PR handlers that helped him message. But now here we are, we're in December, and his PR stock is as low as it gets. The fallout? Everyone universally hates Facebook right now, even though they still have about 2 billion users. From a PR public opinion perspective, it's probably at the lowest it's ever been. And the lesson here is for business, whether big business or small business, it's about transparency. We are not a society that allows misdeeds to go unnoticed. Someone is going to find out that information. It's either going to be a journalist, a citizen journalist, a looky loo on social media, an activist, someone scorned. Whoever it is, the information is going to get out there. Think about it. If Mark Zuckerberg can't hide, how is anyone else in a business ever going to hide? And there it is. Your top communication fails for the year 2018. I hope you were able to gain some insight into how my brain works, how my PR brain works, but also how you can help navigate this public opinion landscape in your work, in your profession, or in your personal life. And this wraps up the Confident Communications podcast for the year as well. For those of you who listened or subscribed in 2018, thank you so much. Next year is going to be a good one for this podcast. I have a number of excellent guests already lined up to talk about their specialty as it relates to communications. And it's also award seasons. And I'm going to talk all things communications about the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards. I have a friend that I'm going to bring in and we're going to dish on it. I promise you'll love it. Thanks again for tuning into this week's episode. And before I let you go, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and Radio Public. Thanks for listening to the Confident Communications podcast. We'll see you in 2019. Ciao.